Combat Wounded Green Beret | Special Mission Unit | Lt Governor

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: Tier 1 Podcast
Host: Brent Tucker
Guest: Lt. Governor Jay Collins (former Special Forces medic, combat-wounded veteran, political leader, gubernatorial candidate)
Date: April 27, 2026

This episode features an in-depth conversation between Brent Tucker and Florida’s Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins—former Green Beret, Purple Heart recipient, and gubernatorial candidate. They explore the transition from special operations to political office, leadership under extreme pressure, the experience of injury and recovery, and Florida’s path forward in turbulent times. The discussion blends gritty firsthand accounts from the battlefield with insights into public service, policy, and the values driving effective leadership.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Road from Combat to Politics

• Background and Mindset
  • Jay Collins shares his humble beginnings—growing up in rural poverty, adopted by grandparents, learning about loss and hard work.
  • Military service was initially an unforeseen path: “God’s plan is so much bigger than ours.” (10:39, Jay Collins)
  • Lessons in leadership came from both good and bad examples—bad leadership often left the deepest imprint.
• Early Military Career and 9/11
  • Collins and his wife (both in intel) navigated dual military life pre-9/11, eventually both stationed at Fort Bragg.
  • Vivid account of being in airborne jump school on 9/11: "We were in the air, getting ready to jump...they wouldn't land, they couldn't land." (14:11, Jay Collins)
• Special Forces Selection and SF Medic Training
  • Driven by a desire for greater impact, Jay set sights on Special Forces, becoming an 18D (Special Forces medic).
  • SF medic school is described as “basically uncontested in the special operations world—18 Deltas are the best medics in the world.” (22:33, Brent Tucker)
  • The course covers advanced trauma, surgical, veterinary, dental, and general care, followed by real-world rotations in ERs and Indian reservations for trauma experience.

Combat Realities: Trauma and Leadership

• First Deployments, Tragedy, and Responsibility
  • First ODA assignment in 7th Group; was thrust into senior medic roles immediately.
  • Emotional account of burying best friend Leroy Alexander: “As a medic, people’s lives hang in the balance. That responsibility is on you. Don’t be found wanting.” (34:03, Jay Collins)
• Afghanistan: Combat, Injury, and Grit
  • Collins’ team faced near-constant firefights at Firebase Anaconda: “We had like a 95% troops in contact rate.” (44:18, Jay Collins)
  • Describes being wounded—shot in the arm during a firefight, self-applying a tourniquet, performing surgery on himself due to lack of evacuation: "I did get shot, that's completely overrated...I saved my arm." (39:31, Jay Collins)
  • Endured multiple injuries, including traumatic spinal injuries and leg damage that eventually led to amputation.

Recovery, Resilience, and Continuing to Serve

• Injury, Amputation, and Comeback

  • Jay details the years-long ordeal of undiagnosed leg injury culminating in amputation: “They told me, look, you’re done. You’re gonna have to medically retire.” (55:17, Jay Collins)
  • Rehabilitation was relentless: racing triathlons, qualifying as an active-duty Green Beret with a prosthetic leg, and adapting creatively (dummy-cording his prosthetic before parachuting).
  • “If I can do it, I will do it...You get one chance to live—live right.” (66:06, Jay Collins)

• Transition and Adaptive Leadership

  • After military, served as COO of a large nonprofit, delivering emergency meals in disaster zones: “Excellence is the expectation. We were a problem-solving organization first. The answer was yes, we’ll figure it out.” (70:43, Jay Collins)
  • Lessons from special ops—problem solving, adaptive teamwork, and resilience—directly inform post-military roles and politics.

Florida Politics, Covid Response, and Policy Vision

• Florida’s Distinct Path and DeSantis' Leadership

  • Jay credits Governor DeSantis’ decisive leadership during Covid as separating Florida from states that imposed harsh restrictions: “He stood strong and said, that doesn’t make sense. Here’s what we’re going to do. And he was right.” (73:12, Jay Collins)
  • The cost of Florida’s freedom-first policies was minimal compared to economic devastation elsewhere.

• Big Policy Issues

  • Platforms: public safety, deterrence against terrorism in a major tourist state, economic growth, education, state rights, and keeping “government out of the way.”
  • Proposals: removal of property taxes for homesteaded properties, modernization of energy and security infrastructure, cutting outdated regulations.
  • “If you’re not vigilant and looking for safety every day, you’re a target.” (06:05, Brent Tucker)

• Leadership Philosophy

  • Importance of integrity, accountability, courage, and practical experience—especially from military/veteran backgrounds: “Groupthink kills, man. You've got to solve problems and win.” (88:13, Jay Collins)
  • “Best indicator of future potential is past performance.” (83:07, Jay Collins)
  • On public disagreement: “Just because I disagree with you on a thing doesn’t mean I hate you…we all bled the same.” (90:35, Jay Collins)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On DeSantis and Florida’s Unique Leadership:
  • “He [DeSantis] stepped into the breach, protected our people and frankly, our nation. I shudder to think of where it would have been [under other leadership].” (02:43, Jay Collins)
• Defining Combat Mindset:
  • "When you get injured like this, you kind of lose your window...But you’ve got to have those people. Those are the difference makers. They move the bubble.” (48:47, Jay Collins)
• Resilience and Recovery:
  • “If I only got 70% in the tank, then you’re going to get 100% of 70%...If my leg falls off, so be it.” (66:22, Jay Collins)
• Why Policies Matter:
  • “Businesses are moving here. They’re starting fresh. And it’s amazing what happened…” (75:45, Jay Collins)
  • “Math always wins...When you pay off your mortgage, you own your home free and clear of the government.” (86:08, Jay Collins)
• On Veterans in Leadership:
  • “I want veterans to step up and lead. I do.” (102:41, Jay Collins)

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:43 | Jay Collins on DeSantis’ solo Covid leadership | | 09:13 | Discussing Reagan’s philosophy about allies vs. political opponents | | 15:01 | 9/11—being in jump school, learning about the attack on return | | 22:41 | The rigor and unique capabilities of Special Forces medics | | 34:03 | Losing and burying best friend Leroy Alexander—“responsibility is on you” | | 39:31 | On being wounded, self-treating, and returning to duty after 30 days | | 44:18 | Description of Firebase Anaconda—constant combat | | 55:17 | Being told by Mayo Clinic the leg has to be amputated, after years of undiagnosed decline | | 66:06 | “If I can do it, I will do it… You get one chance to live—live right.” | | 70:43 | Excellence as a standard in nonprofit disaster response | | 73:12 | “I saw one man lead...and he was right” (on DeSantis during Covid) | | 83:07 | “Best indicator of future potential is past performance.” | | 88:13 | “Groupthink kills, man...You got to solve problems and win.” | | 90:35 | "Just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I hate you…We all bled the same." | | 102:41 | “Lead, follow, or get out of the way...I want veterans to step up and lead.” |

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Flow and Tone

The conversation is candid, energetic, and at times intimate—alternating between soldiers’ gallows humor, direct commentary on policy, and unfiltered personal testimony. Both Tucker and Collins speak in a manner that’s direct, patriotic, and mission-focused, often referencing real-world consequences of decisions, wartime brotherhood, and a deep sense of public duty. The banter is relatable for veterans and civilians alike, capturing not only the gravity but also the camaraderie of service.

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Episode Takeaway

This episode powerfully illustrates how the crucible of combat forges not only warriors but also community leaders. Jay Collins exemplifies the modern soldier-statesman, emphasizing that the same resolve needed to win on the battlefield is needed in governing and public service. His perspectives on preparedness, resilience, and putting “team over self”—whether on the ground in Afghanistan or in Florida’s capital—are directly shaped by adversity, continual adaptation, and the will to win for others.

Brent’s closing sentiment:
“If you don’t vote for a Green Beret with one leg, that’s already been the Lieutenant Governor—what are we doing? … You have my vote.” (93:49, Brent Tucker)

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For listeners:
Whether you’re interested in special operations, state leadership, overcoming adversity, or how experience translates from combat to public office, this conversation delivers unvarnished insights, hard-earned lessons, and a clear-eyed vision for the future.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome back to the Tier 1 podcast. I am your host, Brent Tucker, owner of FRCC. Go to www.frcc shop and use promo code Tier 1 to get 15% off the world's best coffee, cigars and bourbon. Brandon, that's a great discount. And I'm Drew Tucker with FRCC Shop. I invite you guys to join our Patreon here, the Tier one podcast. It's brought to you by Cobalt Kinetics. There at our Patreon, you will get behind the scenes content, exclusive content. You'll get a fitness forum, a weapons forum, and there's a Cobalt Kinetics gun expert to answer all of your gun questions. Join the Patreon today, guys. And as always, this episode is brought to you by Human Performance TRT. Go to hp-trt.com and use promo code TIER1 to get 20% off all your testosterone and peptide needs. Let's go, Drew. Welcome to the Tier one podcast. This is amazing. Dude, check this out. With us today, we have Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins, former special Forces medic with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, South America. He's a former Florida state senator and he is running to be the next governor of Florida here in 2026.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Welcome to the show, brother.

[B]

Good to be on, bro. How are you doing?

[A]

Doing good.

[B]

Good.

[A]

What's. It's good. It's good to be living in the state of Florida, man. You know something about that?

[B]

It is. Look, you know, it is crazy to think that after all the things I did in the military, that life brought me around to politics. But I am so glad we live here in a world gone crazy. Florida is the common sense solution to so many things.

[A]

I. I call it the. The great state of Florida. That's how I refer to it now. Where you from? The great state of Florida.

[B]

That's right. The free. The great state of Florida is what we do.

[A]

I don't. I don't remember. I don't know when it happened. I'm. If I'm a. I'm a guest. To be honest, for me, prior on Covid, when I realized how great this

[B]

state was, well, let me tell you, Covid is really where Governor Ron DeSantis became America's governor. It was incredible. He had just come in doing good things. But, you know, one of the questions I get asked as lieutenant Governor is can you imagine where the state would be if Governor DeSantis hadn't won? Sadly, I can. But I worry about where would the country be? That man stood by himself while our state, you know, other officials Mayors, our president, members of congress, other countries attacked him and he stepped into the breach, protected our people and frankly, our nation. I shudder to think of where it would have been under the Biden administration. It was just so horrible at that time. His leadership changed the game. So grateful to work with him.

[A]

You couldn't be any more right about that. And selfishly, as a Floridian, when he was running for the presidency, I was like, oh no, he, he can do, he can do a lot more for me as governor, president. And it didn't hurt my feelings that he came back to be the, the governor of Florida.

[B]

Well, it's a good consolation.

[A]

It's a good constellation and we are

[B]

so lucky to have him here. He has made a huge difference. One person makes a difference here.

[A]

Just continue talking about politics just for a second. We'll, we'll go into the, your, your story. Florida, because every, every state has, has different regulations as far as how terms for their governors. So Florida has the two consecutive.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Four year terms.

[B]

Two four year terms. That's correct.

[A]

And as I understand it, you can take a term off and then you can come back or it's just two and done.

[B]

You have two terms. That's what we have in the state of Florida. And ultimately, as much as I would love to have Governor DeSantis here, you know, he's got to term out and then he can, I think, come back. Right. But in the end, he's got those four year gap, right? A four year gap. And I think the best we can do is to have someone who's worked under his administration, someone who's helped him lead on issues and ultimately someone who wants to keep pushing the ball forward and winning as a state. You know, where we come from, man, losing sucks. We expect to win. That's the mindset every day.

[A]

I, I do think you have that as an advantage. Ron DeSantis is, is wildly popular here in Florida and, and good reason. And you've seen behind the curtain and you've seen what it's what it's taken to get to this point and you're able to continue to take that ball and run with it. And so if we don't, if we don't want to miss a step here in Florida, why, why, why, why would you switch horses?

[B]

Yeah. Why mess with the good? But you know what's fascinating? Look at the world around us, man. The world's becoming so incredibly complex. The pressure's up. Having people who understand what matters, what we have to lead on and how we can, we can prepare our state is so unique. You know, you look at people who are elected as governor, I'm the end of one like me as a lieutenant governor and as a governor's candidate and God willing, as the next governor of Florida to have someone from our background step in and lead. But guys, there are, there are gaps in safety, security, keeping our people safe, that we can delve into and do so much more. Those are things that I look forward to really conquering and trying to solve now, but more importantly, over the next eight years.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. The, with, with your background, which again, we'll get into your, your special forces background. I don't think people realize they. Florida's always looked at as a tourist spot, a happy spot, because we really haven't just been lucky. You don't get this lucky. There's a reason why it continues to be a tourism spot, but with today's climate, if you're a heavy tourism spot, you're also a big target for terrorists. 100% safety and security for the citizens of Florida is, is something that's, that's, that's on the ballot every day if you're not vigilant and looking for it. And there are other people who don't understand that threat until it's too late.

[B]

Well, everything starts with safety. When communities feel safe, families come here, they build extended families, they bring in other friends, it builds out. You bring in good businesses, you, you build a great economy, and it all reciprocates from there. But if we lose safety, people aren't going to, they're not going to grow, they're not going to be, you know, at their optimal levels. Right. They're not going to accelerate where our state can be. We have a $1.8 trillion economy with the 14th largest economy on the, in the world, on the planet. That's shocking. But soon, by 2030, will be the 10th largest economy in the world, marching towards a $3 trillion economy. That's a huge number. Right. We have to have people who understand safety, but also how to win, how to lead and draw people together as a team. You know, this is a team game.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And winning should be the expectation. Politics isn't always the most efficient method. I would love to have a little more common sense and a lot more business sense as we do things.

[A]

Yeah, I'm glad you said that because I, I, I even talk about it like this, the other side, because I'm talking about the, a political side, but by no means am I talking about, I think we lose the focus that we're talking about other Americans 100%. And it's, it's easy to say that without explaining what you mean by that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I'm, I'm really tired of not being on the same team and just blindly voting behind a blue box or a red box rather than the, the, the topics and the things that this person stands for. We have to stop that.

[B]

Look, we're the American people. Our founding fathers were very resolute in their word choice and their approach. We're a republic for a reason. The minority and the majority are protected from each other, but they're both protected from the government. When we work together to solve problems, when we bring ourselves together as the American people. Let's use one of the things Reagan said, right? If we agree on 80% of the issues, you're not a 20% enemy, you're an ally, you're an 80% friend. I think we can agree on 85% of the things. Let's focus on that and continue to win. We are the American people. It benefits our enemies internationally. When we pick each other apart, I expect to win. We should get out of bed expecting to be great and win.

[A]

Well, you, you already had me with your background, obviously, but I'm, I'm, I'm biased as a fellow Green Beret. Appreciate that, but, but you start quoting Reagan, right, you're just doubling down now.

[B]

You can't just go wrong there. I mean, he's a dude.

[A]

Well, let's talk about how you got here, how you got into politics. Ye. And, and your cre. Your career of service started with the military. How'd that start?

[B]

Well, it did. Now I'm going to take just a quick step back. I actually grew up in complete poverty. I was born to a 16 year old kid. I was adopted by my grandparents. We lost our farm in the 80s. Just the economy was, was bad after the Carter years and the drought was killing farms and, you know, it changed everything. So I didn't have a silver spoon and I learned how to work and hunt and figure things out for myself. And I'm so grateful for that upbringing. But it also taught me something. If you don't fight for what you have, you can lose it. And that stayed with me throughout the rest of my life. When I joined the military, I'm not going to say my recruiters were dishonest. I expected to be an intel guy was a lot more like James Bond than what I, what I actually learned and saw. But you know, I say it all the time, man. God's plan is so much bigger than ours. It truly is. If you had told me that I would be there talking to commanders and leaders and, you know, just these amazing thought leaders across the world at a young age, as an army private, even I would have laughed at you. But it taught me strategy, operations, and it taught me the impact of good leadership strategically on the ground. But it also showed me the bad, because I saw good leaders and bad. And, brother, I learned from both. And as often happens in the army, you get volunteer, either volunteer. You're voluntold if you have success. So I was volun told to keep doing more, and eventually I loved it because of the kinetic aspect of it. Yeah, you know, sweat off your brow, man. You show success.

[A]

I. I tell people all the time, you, you will learn more from bad leaders than you do good leaders. And the truth is, most of the good leaders that you worked for, you didn't even realize how great they were until years later after working for a bad leader. And you look back and like, man, those. Those guys were actually really good leaders.

[B]

That is exactly it. But the bad ones, they stuck out, right?

[A]

Yeah. It's emotional. It's you. You say, I will. I will never be like that. I will never do what that guy did. And for. For whatever reason, there's. It's just. It's a. It's much more ingraining into your psyche than. For whatever reason than. Than the positive. I just don't remember a whole lot of a good leader doing something good and then me saying, oh, I want to replicate, you know, that type of goodness. I mean, it's. It's there, just not on the level of the negativity, how much it sears you.

[B]

Oh, 100%. Many of the best lessons in life I learned were the hard ones that I often learn face first. Right. I mean, sometimes you got to bleed a little bit in training. Right? Right. It just happens, you know, when I was an intel guy, you know, I met my wife along the way, and pre 9 11, I was living in the UK, working this crazy joint assignment, and went to BNOC, of all things. You know, my E6 school to get promoted and went to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, met my wife. We ran off to Vegas and got married after two months of dating. True story. She was a counter intel agent. And we're still married to this day. We have two boys together, Gabe and Colt. They're the reason we do what we do.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And back then, we didn't have cell phones. We couldn't communicate, you know, we just didn't have the same connectedness, you know, digitally. So it was hard to. Hard to make that work. I was living in Europe, she was in D.C. this is all pre 9, 11.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then finally the army came together and said, hey, we're going to move both of you to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Of course you're going to double down on cost. That's the most DOD thing you can do, right? Why wouldn't they? But again, man, I'm so glad that that was the plan.

[A]

You. You were intel, she was counterintel. Just the yin and yang.

[B]

Just.

[A]

How about that for the balance of life, right?

[B]

You have no idea.

[A]

But you're not getting anything by her.

[B]

No. You gotta feel bad for our kids now, right?

[A]

Or your kids, really.

[B]

You're gonna be strong in the Collins household, man.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, finally I got to Fort Bragg. It went to the 82nd. She went to seventh group go work in a kind of a special little sell within that group, as often happens with CI people. Right?

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And I went to the first of the 325. Went to jump school in September of 2001. Pretty momentous.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Ended up being in jump school for 9, 11, the 10th. I jumped out of a plane and smashed into the dirt really hard and didn't die. I was really excited about that because that landing sucked. And I was ecstatic that I got up, expected to jump twice the next day. And we didn't jump, obviously. I didn't even know the towers had been hit until hours after because they flew us around. They couldn't land. They didn't know what to do.

[A]

You were in the air.

[B]

We were in the air, getting ready to jump. And they were like, no, unhook. Put it on the chute. And we're all like, what are we doing? Right? Like, this is crazy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they just kept flying and flying and flying. We know now they just couldn't get clearance, Right? So when they landed, they turned off the plane and they set us in the hot sun in Georgia on a Runway. So it's a sweat factory, right? Everyone's just dying. We're dehydrated. It's hours. You shouldn't leave kids in a car. You shouldn't leave paratroopers in a plane, it turns out, either. And finally they got us outside the plane because we needed airflow and parked us on the tarmac, which is really not any better.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And then they brought the cattle cars, got us back, and they wheeled out. Remember those old black and white TVs from when you were a kid.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

Wheel them in your classroom. That's how we found out about the towers. They wheeled them out on the rocks over in Benning and we're watching this. It's just. How do you believe that? Right. That's crazy.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Know, my wife lived in D.C. she worked around the military district of Washington, the Pentagon, other places, depending on what was required. And I couldn't get a hold of her. So we're trying to hunt each other down to make sure she's good.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you know, we knew the world was changing right then.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It was a sure thing.

[A]

Did you know at the time that the, the Pentagon had been hit as well?

[B]

We saw that at the tail end of this. And then my wife filled me in more when we talked about what she could. Yeah, it was just crazy, man. But we knew the world was going to change. We knew war was coming. And like many, we thought we had to rush and get out there and this is going to be a quick bang bang. Right. And it's just crazy how different it is.

[A]

It's so funny you talk about that because, you know, so, so many of my, my counterparts and, and the good guys that were in during that time who. I know it's a weird thing to say, but who wanted to rush to war. But it was out of patriotism, it was out of good intent. We saw 3,000 innocent Americans get murdered at work for no reason other than just being Americans. And we wanted to do something about it.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And we just wanted to be a part of it because it felt like if you weren't a part of it, there would have been no closure to that part of your life. And yeah, you're right. We were all in a hurry to get there thinking that this. We're gonna miss it if, if we don't get there. Little did we know we, we were gonna take the, the brunt of it for, for years, years to come.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like I said, you know, if you want to make God laugh, tell me your plans.

[B]

You know, you're not joking.

[A]

God must, God must think I'm a comedian at, at this point because my, my plans are always so far off of me doing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At that point. Did. Was that. Was that your deciding moment to go to SF to the next level?

[B]

Actually it was just coming back. So when I got back from jump school.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Went down to the 325 and I got put forward to MacDill Air Force Base to go work with a Joint Interagency Task Force and some intel cells. And I didn't even know what that meant, to be honest with you. It's a lot of acronyms. And I saw Green Berets, I saw Special Missions Unit guys, and I saw three letter agencies working together. And I said, whatever that is.

[A]

All right?

[B]

That's what I want to do when I grow up. Right. Like I figured out that, that question

[A]

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[B]

That's right.

[A]

In 72 hours or less.

[B]

They're incredible.

[A]

That's who you call 100. And. And you were part of that unit. And they were. And if, and if America's going to war, they're.

[B]

We're there.

[A]

They're. They're, they're going too.

[B]

You know what was interesting is I was an intel guy and I did not have an intel guy's mindset. I was a square pagan around, right? Like I was a 400 pt score guy. The next highest was usually about 280. And I'm looking around and I am the only person like me in the room and I'm wondering what am I doing? And when I saw just that mindset, I was like, holy cow, man. I found people who I get. And whatever it is, I don't even know what the process is yet. I'm Gonna figure it out. I'm gonna go there. Right. When I came back, I had a couple weeks. I went to SFAs immediately after that. I didn't train up. I didn't do anything. I just had the mindset that if you're gonna drag me behind a truck for two weeks, three weeks, whatever it is, I don't care. I'm not quitting. You're gonna have to kill me, and I'm gonna make it. That was the mindset. I got picked up to be an 18 Delta. That was not my first choice. Robo Charlie Echo Delta. And they were looking for volunteers, like medics to go to the Bravo course. It's like, oh, I got it right. No, no, your scores are really good. And. Right. If you want to be a Green Beret, son, you're going to be a medic.

[A]

Oh, that's my nightmare. I mean, it really would have been. I mean, don't get me wrong, if it's that or nothing. Hey, whatever it takes to be a Green Beret. Yeah, but that was. That's. That's exactly how my card looked as well. Yeah, it's got a. It's got a punch in the gut a little bit.

[B]

It was. It was because I was a little senior. Right. I was coming in. I was an E6.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You got a short term. And I want to be out there and get as much team time as I could. And after I got into it, I knew that I was going to run up against a hard line here.

[A]

Yeah. The second part of that is I. It's. If it's not the. It's in the running the 18 Delta course. Really? From. From start to the finish, before. Before you get to go on a team. It's almost two years. It's gonna be one of the longest courses of. In all the military.

[B]

Right. Well. And back then, you went through this really long process. You waited for language school. You did all that. I wanted to. I was in such a hurry. I learned Spanish while I was in the Q course. Enough to get rated out. Yeah. So I could skip language school and get, you know, language certified.

[A]

What years were you in the Q course?

[B]

I showed up there in 03, left in 05.

[A]

We were in the Q course the exact same time.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah, we were the exact same time.

[B]

When did you go to selection?

[A]

End of 02.

[B]

End of 02. November. Were you in the ice storm class where trees were falling on people?

[A]

No, I wasn't on. And that was my class. But it's got to be. I'm telling you, I. I bet it was close. It was close to that. Don't believe it was November. I'll find. I'll find out for you. We're.

[B]

Yeah, I bet we're right there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Probably buttered up against each other. Crazy.

[A]

Yeah. When this is done, we're smoking cigars in the. The garage. We'll. We'll. We'll for sure drop some of the. The same names we're in the Q course with.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

But the. I want to talk about the. I don't think we've ever had an 18 delta on. On the show. And I want to highlight what's different between a Special Forces medic, Navy SEAL medics go. Go through our, you know, the short side. The Ranger medics go through our medical training, but the SF medics stay a little bit longer. Can. Can you. You go down the. The road of, of an SF medic?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

What makes them the best? Because they are 100%.

[B]

If you have trauma, that's the guy you want.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Right there.

[A]

That's not biased. That's. That's another one of those things. It's almost. It's. It is basically un. Un. Have to edit this out because can't think of the word not. Thank you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's one of those things that's uncontested in the special operation world that 18 Deltas are the best medics in the world.

[B]

100%. It's an advanced trauma practitioner is really what it is. You are trained to deal with the most gnarly of gnarly issues and figure it out on the. On the fly. So you show up there, you've got to learn anatomy, physiology, the microbiology side, then the pharmacology side of how you treat people. All of those early on, like every week, there's a test. So you fail and you get a retry. You fail to retry, you're bounced, right? Like, you may get a recycle, you may become a Bravo. You may go back to the regular army, depending on where you're at. Right. There's a lot of. A lot of. A lot of stake here. And you go through that. Then you're doing advanced trauma runs where you're working on, you know, simulators and on people trying to understand how to treat them with really the most devastating injuries. Multiple gunshots, blast, things like that. Then you're working evacuation and, you know, nine lines, how you communicate while you're managing this. And then you look at the pharmacology side, how you treat them for Pain, antibiotics, all of that from just the short course side of this. You're working with Rangers and Navy Seals, Air Force PJs at the time came through there, and of course, our Green Berets. But then when you graduate that everybody else goes off and you go into the sfms, Special Forces medical sergeant side, where you do gas and drip anesthesia, you do surgical skills, you do veterinary skills, dental skills. You know, it's amazing the things you deal with. And I'll be danged If I wasn't that 18 Delta, going through the course, like, why am I learning about how to birth a baby? I am not doing that.

[A]

No.

[B]

You know who got to do that? This guy. 100% right. Like, why wouldn't I?

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

And you dealt with all of these bizarre things. You'd show up in countries and you would treat whole. Hundreds of people at a time. You know, you're the primary care provider. They haven't seen anybody ever. And you're the N of 1. Why are we pulling teeth or working on teeth? Because people show up and their teeth look like pieces of steak, and you've got to deal with that. And if you bring that about and you can solve those pain points, oh, my God, man. It opens doors for the team in our nation, in those communities.

[A]

It sure does. I mean, I just. I'll never forget being on oda. I made a couple trips down to South America as well. Afghanistan, Iraq, even, you know, Syria, and being on an ODA out in the middle of nowhere because we, we don't. We don't operate with a large number of people or, or close to a large battalion anyway. It's just you. It's you and your 11 friends out in the hinterlands and you run across. I think one of the coolest things, really of. Of all things is, is the, the veterinarian side. Yeah. Because these people have. That's. That's their lifeline. Like, it's hard for. It really is. It's almost hard for the American listener to. To understand how rural and almost back in time some of these places we go to are. And if. And if they're. And if their livestock isn't healthy and dying, then they will die. That's how they eat. And a Special Forces medic can come in and. And just. And really just make everything better. One guy come in here and make everything better. Now they love us.

[B]

That's it, man. It's all about rapport, right. With the locals. And I remember going into South America and you're treating Whatever they have there. These are very unhealthy animals. They've never been inoculated. They're very sick. They're malnourished. The water they're drinking is disgusting.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you're just making small improvements, like a simple act of filtering water to give them something that doesn't have chunks floating in it of Lord knows what. That's. That's a. That's a big improvement. Right. Giving them immunizations, helping keep that herd healthy, critical. But then we show up in places like Afghanistan. We had horses, man. We had 25 head of horse. We're riding those jokers into combat. But I was the only one. Maybe we had two people, I guess, total, that really had experience riding horses. The rest of it was like, you're gonna figure this stuff out because we're riding these things, and we're gonna have to put this together. Yeah. But the horses were unhealthy. They needed help. Hooves were a mess. You learn how to float teeth, do hoof maintenance. I'm out there doing this in the middle of Afghanistan, things I never imagined I would do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. Yeah. Grateful for those opportunities.

[A]

They don't put that on the SF brochure, do they?

[B]

No, they did not. For sure. It's. It should be.

[A]

It should be. It should be. The, you know, talk about the. The SF medic course just a little bit longer, because all of us went through it, you know, through selection and phase two, sut together, and then we branched off to our Moss. The US that were Bravos, Charlie's and Echoes. We all had a fairly good time. It sucks to say that to you, because you didn't.

[B]

No, we had a fair.

[A]

We had a fairly good time. And your. Your friends that went to the Delta course, you literally just lost them. You lost them for, like, eight months every weekend. Hey, even during the weekday. You want to go to dinner? No, I can. I'm studying.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And. And this is. And this goes on at first, like. Okay, the beginning of the course was. Everyone's. Beginning of the course starts out with a lot of information. Three months later, hey, it's Friday night. You want to go to dinner? No, I'm studying for eight months. And this is not an exaggeration.

[B]

And that's the Malcolm side.

[A]

That's right. Every short course side, every single one of them, you basically lose as friends for months, because if they're not studying every night, you'll lose.

[B]

You'll fail.

[A]

Yeah. There's no way to pass. It's insane.

[B]

Well, and you know we had to go do rotations. So you do one on the. On the short side for trauma.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Hard. But when you do your long course side and you're working surgical skills and anesthesia and dental and everything else, you're being treated like a practitioner.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You better know what you're talking about. You're filling out notes, you're writing this, you're treating patients, you're prognosticating and doing a differential diagnosis. There's a lot on your plate. And then you come back and you got to wrap this thing up and graduate. And, oh, by the way, you better be healthy enough to go to Robin Sage, because it's coming.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

That was always the problem with medics, you know?

[A]

Yeah. Oh, tell them about the. I forgot. I'm so glad you brought that up. Tell them about the. Like, the. The residencies or. Not residency.

[B]

What's.

[A]

What's the word?

[B]

Yeah, the rotations.

[A]

Rotations.

[B]

Yeah. So our first rotation in the short course side, you do trauma centric. You're working in a, you know, a level one, a really dynamic er. You do rotations in with fire, on the ambulances, with fire crews. So you can really be at the point of injury more so. So you can go out there and test your skills where people's lives matter. You know, the. The premise is this. I don't want the first time you deal with something critical where there's a life hanging in the balance. To be in combat. When you got to deal with this, and it's someone who, you know, who you've swept with in training, you got to have that mindset, learn how to compartmentalize that and just internalize that, because when people are hurt, they cry for their mom, they cry for a medic. And you better have your stuff put together and be able to deal with whatever you're dealing with, because their life depends on you.

[A]

Yeah. I'm as one. When I heard that our Special Forces medics that were in training were going and doing those things. That was one of the first. One of the first things. Early on training, I was like, man, how Special Forces is that? Our guys are gonna go do that. They're going, like I said, to major centers and major cities across America to ensure that the first time they work on someone is on the battlefield and that they're ready for it.

[B]

We were going to New York City, Jack, Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa. Real ER centers. Right. And then the second one, you went to an Indian reservation or you went to a military base.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

In our military Base, you actually got great training because you had an extended scope because of the agreements there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So we would be in basic training in places like Fort Sill, and you're. You're seeing everything. You're dealing with dental, you're filling teeth, potentially you're pulling teeth, you're dealing with all of that. It's overwhelming. And you realize what you're going to have to deal with when you show up out there. And, you know, while I didn't want to be a medic, it really paid off. It did. As much as I didn't want those skills. You know, when I got shot and I figured out what to do and what we had to do, I had to do surgery on myself in the middle of nowhere. Thank God we had skill sets and I had the conviction to go ahead and step forward and do what I had to do. But, you know, it was definitely a tough road to get through there. Great people. Brilliant, brilliant people when they graduated there. A little quirky, though. Sometimes.

[A]

Sometimes, yeah. It's more times than not, you line up an oda, it only takes you a few minutes to pick out the medic. You usually. But for real. But there's. But there's always exceptions to that rule. Clearly, you were. You were one of them. And. And there. There are others like you, but it's like they're exceptions to the rule. When. When you got out of the Q course, obviously you got assigned a seventh group because you tested out in Spanish.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

The. What was. What. What was your first ODA that you went to?

[B]

I went to 732, and then I went to 734. So first battalion and loved it. Came in, got centered. I was the senior medic right away on a team I had hoped I would have a chance to learn, but they were like, yeah, no, sorry, dude, we're just automatics. You better get ready. Deployed to South America a few times and, you know, it was. It was interesting. You're out there training people, doing fid, you know, by, with, and through. Pretty cool. But then little things would pop up and you get pulled away as a medic to do this.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Pulled away as a split team to do that, and you really saw the complexities. But love my time there, but I really want to focus just to go back a little bit. Before I even got into my team, my first job was to bury one of my best friends in the Q course. He had been killed in Afghanistan. And Leroy was a good man. We had hit it off because we were going through the Q course in the early phase together. And he was dual military. I was dual military. That's an anomaly there, right? You're dealing with so much. And he came back, and I bumped into him just on Fort Bragg. I think we're at the. At the shop at, you know, honestly grabbing something to run to the next thing. And he let me know he was in town for a little bit. We gave each other a hug. He'd just gotten his wife pregnant and flew back to Afghanistan the next day and got killed at the tail end of that trip. And my first job was to go bury one of my very best friends. You show up in Arlington and you're sitting there, it all hits so real. As a medic, people's lives hang in the balance. That responsibility is on you. Don't be found wanting. Don't fail your teammates. And nobody failed him. He died because of an explosion. Nobody could save him. And it breaks my heart.

[A]

What was his name?

[B]

Leroy. Leroy Alexander.

[A]

Leroy Alexander.

[B]

He was a good man. And you're talking to a woman who's pregnant. She's an officer in the military, and she has a whole career. And you know that his kids, his twins will never know who he was. They'll know of him. Yeah, it will keep his spirit and his memory alive. But, brother, it just hits hard. None of us really, I think, expected how much those moments would define who we were, how many times we're going to have to do things like that. And it frames everything up. You go with a little bit more conviction and focus simply because of that issue. And it just. It's tough. Those are the things that matter the most.

[A]

It's. It's hard to almost look back and think that. That those times aren't. Aren't here anymore. Because it just seems like that was our reality for so long. We. We trained in a wartime army. We were in that wartime army for almost, you know, two decades. It was all we knew. And getting. It's gonna sound a little odd, but I don't. I don't know a better way to frame it. I. Of course, we hated any. Any. Any American. Bloodshed is a horrible thing.

[B]

But.

[A]

But what it did to us is allowed us to live in reality that this isn't a game we're playing. That's right. And we're not. You know, we're not. We're not here to practice. And it allowed one of the. One of the. Of almost everything. Of any. Any bad thing that happens, there's something good that can come from it. And the good that came from that was one of the most, I do believe, one of the most capable militaries in the world that people are seeing now from the Maduro raid, Iran's finding out what America is made of. And that came from all those lessons learned and how serious we had to take that job because of what was going on for during that time frame.

[B]

100%. It takes heat and pressure. Temper steel. Right, Right. You go through these things. But the reciprocal benefit to our nation is we have war fighters. We have people who are senior leaders now who cut their teeth early on in new war for two decades. We have war fighters and it matters.

[A]

It was a little bit odd to me because when I went to combat for my first time in 05,

[B]

other

[A]

guys had already been to combat before me. So in a weird way, I never got to experience true combat for the first time as a team, if, if that makes sense. So there are teams in 01, 02 and even some teams in 03. The whole team is experiencing combat for the first time and they're, they're figuring it out. And just like we talked about, they figured things out by doing it wrong and then. And then had to figure out the right way to do it. I was, I was lucky enough to really never have to deal with the pressure or the stress of figuring it out for the first time. I showed up to a team that's done it, done it a few times, and we just continued to hone it and hone it and hone it from there. And you know, 10 years into there, we were just like you said we were. We're just a well machine.

[B]

That's right. You know, when I showed up, I was a senior medic right away. I had to learn the hard way on some things most certainly, and ended up going to 7, 3, 4 before we deployed. I deployed the team forward as the team sergeant. I was the number two and, and the senior medic. That's a hard balance because of just the, the duality of those roles. When we showed up there, our team sergeant left and left me in charge of the team for the rotation. So my real first trip into combat, now I'm in charge.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I'm making decisions and I'm just figuring shit out. I didn't sleep a lot. A lot of rippings in my life. Right. No joke. But we figured it out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We went right back to the basics. Seven, eight, man. Train, plan, train, execute. Right. That's it. That's what we did in that time. I did get shot that's completely overrated. I don't recommend anybody doing that at home. But yeah, you talk about how we frame it up. I got to do surgery on myself and I say I got to because I saved my arm. You know, I had compartment syndrome forming, it was really bad. And myself, our junior medic, and a couple of guys in the team, we saved my arm. I went back, had a bunch more surgeries, was back on the firebase 30 days later, refused to, to evacuate. But up till that point, you know, when I got shot, man, I didn't even know that I'd been hit. My heart rate was up so high. There were people popping rounds at us, there were RPGs flying and you name it, right? It was like a bad G.I. joe cartoon, right. It was the first real knockdown, drag out fight we'd been in. And I got hit by a ricochet in the arm. I lost about a liter of blood. I threw a tourniquet on it, tightened it up, and it went back on the gun because that's what you do, right? Change it to a pressure dressing. And eventually we went through there, wrapped it up, and the pain was getting pretty real. At that point I realized I had sprung a leak and some things were bad and we had other people injured.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So then I had to go be a medic and we treated them. I waved off evacuation, put them on the, on the Hilo. I figured I'd go out on the next one the next day, right? No big deal. There wasn't another helicopter because the pass clouded over. So now I'm stuck and I have all these things happening. Ended up doing the surgery on ourselves and on myself, my, my team and I. And what do you do, right? You just deal with what you got. And came back to the fire base 30 days later, continued on. And honestly, it was like a Tuesday, right? That was just the expectation. This is what we do. That's the business.

[A]

Was it a, was, was it a convoy that got ambushed?

[B]

It was, it was a movement to ambush. Remember those, you know, drive around, get shot at, kill all them.

[A]

Yeah, well, you know, when it's when you're dealing with a, a counterinsurgency or, or you're dealing with the insurgency, it's not very special operation of us, you know, to, to just drive around and, and be a target because we really want to be offensive because we're, we're smaller in numbers, but at some point that if you have to get them to show themselves, that was exactly that. And that is a hard decision that men have to make.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And we did it. I didn't realize how great the men were around me at the time.

[B]

It's incredible.

[A]

If you've ever been to any of my tactical training classes, then you know how adamant I am about the use of white light and the importance of a quality high powered tactical light. That's why I use cloud defensive tac lights. You can't hit what you can't see and neither can the bad guys. Clearly identify your target and simultaneously overwhelm his vision with hundreds and even thousands of lumens. Get serious about defending yourself and your family. Go to clouddefensive.com and use promo code tier one to get 30% off your order. That's right, 30%. You won't find a better light than this, and you won't find a better deal than this.

[B]

Just knowing that you're gonna get in a vehicle, get loaded up, kitted up, and go drive around to get shot at, knowing that.

[A]

Incredible.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Just amazing, people.

[A]

It's hard to fathom. It is until you look back. What fire base were you guys at?

[B]

Anaconda.

[A]

I. I thought you write Anaconda where you're talking about horses.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Middle of nowhere. Right. Like you're by yourself. You are as austere as it gets. You know, you got shash bar right there. And it was crazy.

[A]

But also. And that's. That should. That's still there in an rc. South, just. Just north of Kandahar.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But it's a beautiful area.

[B]

Oh. And Afghanistan's gorgeous parts of it.

[A]

One of my teammates once said, Afghan be a beautiful place if it wasn't for all the Afghans. I don't know.

[B]

They put it a little differently. Right, Right.

[A]

It's. It's a harsh comet, but it's not.

[B]

It was. It was crazy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, so many stories. Right. And probably not good for a podcast, but you know what was surreal is you'd be out there on mission and you'd come out and you'd see like almond trees and groves of beautiful plants, and then all heck would break loose, all hell would break loose, and there's rounds flying and what do you do? It's just a duality of living in a country like that. Right?

[A]

Absolutely. And it was unlike Iraq, which, which was pretty normal as far, like, terrain wise throughout the country. It was fairly consistent.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Afghanistan was crazy. You get up there in the, in the, in the mountains of the northeast, big trees, huge mountains, snow, miserable. You get down to the south, you can you know, there's very desert like atmosphere, just moon dust that, that the convoys kick up. Watching the, watching the 50 Cal Gunners get out looking like a sugar cookie. Just almost, almost every train you can think of and everything in between there, Afghanistan had. And I remember waking up either pulling security on the side of a mountain or in a truck and either watching the sunset or watching the sun rise, thinking, this is. If I didn't know I was in combat right now, this, this would be beautiful.

[B]

It is, yeah. If you just stop people from shooting at you, it's gonna blow you up. It'd be great. But, you know, once we got back to the firebase, it was, you know, mission, mission, mission just rolling out. We had like a 95% troops in contact rate. Yeah, it was just ridiculous.

[A]

Yeah, that was, that was a hot, that was a hot time. And you guys were in a hot spot.

[B]

We were, you know, we were there really. The first time they tried to overrun a fire base, Firebase Anaconda. So we were literally dropping bombs just outside our walls, shooting people who were trying to climb up the walls. It was bizarre. You know, I bounced off the rooftop, ended up breaking some bones in my T spine, blowing out most of my lower back. And you get up and you fight. Right. My leg wasn't ripped off, I was peppered with shrapnel. But big whoop, right? And you do what you got to do. I had no idea how bad I'd hurt myself. None whatsoever. And you know, as we talked about, most SF guys have a little bit of a big dumb animal in them somewhere.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

But we're realistically, I make jokes about that, but you're trained to compartmentalize. And as a medic, it's even more so that way. You are trained to compartmentalize emotion, focus on what the task at hand is. And I wasn't going to let my people get injured or die while I could still get up and fight. So you get up and you do what you got to do. Don't cry about it, man, just get up and fight. So that's what we did. Months later we came back and, you know, everything started to shift. My leg was a little wonky. I didn't anticipate it would cost me my leg a few years later because of what happened that day. But, you know, I knew something was wrong. Splitting headache, back pain and people trying to kill you. So you deal with whatever the most extreme issue is, people trying to kill you.

[A]

Between, of course, now, now it's happened twice here, between getting Shot. And this incident, it is absolutely crazy. What adrenaline will. Will cover up 100 it. What noises. It'll. It'll cover up what pain. It'll cover up.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And. And what? But it's weird. It's almost what it partially what it dulls on your senses. And there's other things that it enhances.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

When it comes to focus. And, you know, I've had guys, you know, talk about it just seem like it was going in slow motion at the time and I could really focus in and seeing what was going on. Adrenaline, it's a funny thing.

[B]

I had no idea what was going on in here. I can tell you everything out there. Right. My focus was completely external. You know, when every little thing can matter and it can take your life or those of the people around you, it all matters. Everything's in play. You know, I remember every step, every piece of the road, everything you do, you're listening and listening for chatter, watching things. Because you never knew where it was going to come from, but you knew it was coming.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that was the guarantee. So, yeah, I mean, you just. You got up and did what you had to do. You know, we finished out that rotation. Very effective. Did very well as a team. And I came back and I went to a selection on pretty short notice and, you know, needed to go back again. Didn't move quite fast enough. But my leg was doing weird stuff like I'd be going forward, my leg would go left, and you'd fall down mountains or you fall up mountains sometimes too, which was even worse. Right. Because then you went down the mountain anyway to a degree.

[A]

Right now you got to redo that.

[B]

Yeah. That was not awesome.

[A]

At least when you fall down a mountain, you're at least. You're at least gaining ground. Yeah.

[B]

I'm watching time. And, you know, it's. What's funny is I didn't even think that something was wrong. I mean, honestly, I was so focused on, I've got to be faster. I'm not training hard enough. Eat cleaner, do more. It's a me issue. What can I do to fix me? It never even dawned on me that I was injured to such a degree that I wasn't going to get anywhere near 100% again. Not for quite a while.

[A]

That is. That is one thing I think people try to figure out and. And they never will with high performers, that just because you can't separate it, you cannot separate it. High performers will always be their. Their biggest critic. They will be the hardest on themselves. And almost, Almost to a detriment. They're the same guys who, who won't take a break when they should. And I've been at very high performing units that have tried to figure out, because you want to keep those guys around for as long as possible, yet they're doing it to themselves. So how do you stop them from doing it? And the answer is, you can't.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

You cannot keep a true high performer from running himself from the ground. And if you could, then he would cease to be a high performer.

[B]

Something changes, right? But you've got to have those people. Those are the difference makers. They move the bubble. And it's just crazy. I came back and ended up going to SWIC after a selection because that's just the way of things, right? Get a couple rotations, especially as a medic, they needed instructors.

[A]

That's got. How, how is that for you? Because it, it's really on opposite ends of the spectrum. For real, you're. You're looking to go to a tier one unit at a, you know, selection. That's. That, that's, that's what your hope is. And you end up going to SWIC to be a trainer. And someone has to, but it's on opposite sides of the spectrum, 100%.

[B]

Look, man, I was not okay with it. I wasn't ready. I wanted to go back to group or I wanted to go to the special missions unit, the tier one. And I was not excited. So I decided I'm gonna go anyway. And I know this is gonna upset the apple cart, not good for my career, but that is what I need to do. I'm drawn. I want to do more. Just like I, I wasn't content being an intel guy. I wanted to do more. So I went to selection and I didn't care how it was going to happen. Yeah, whatever I had to do, I was going to put my way through this. And I went there, went to selection and again did much better, but my leg was much worse. So literally all the things compounding falling up the mountain, down the mountain, over and over and over, you just can't keep pace.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it's hard to haul, you know, long distances with a rucksack when you can't control where your leg's going. I was taping my ankle and all kinds of things just to keep my leg from dragging. Yeah. And you know, it is what it is. Again, maybe I should have taken a knee and thought about what was going on, but I was so fixated on the goal on the task at hand, doing what I needed to do, the mission at hand, that it wasn't, wasn't going to fail.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, it's just a mindset. Even though I didn't make it the second time, I had an opportunity to go there and got picked up to go be a medic and loved the opportunities there. I did that.

[A]

That says a lot because they, they have, they have their own selection course so they can go pull medics from. But you, you were there at the other selection course and the medic happened to me. Your background.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they liked you enough to be like, you know what, don't go anywhere just yet. We, we, we still want you in the building.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

That's. It's got to be pretty cool.

[B]

Well, it was. And honestly, when you show up there and our physical therapist was the one who finally put things together like, what is wrong with your leg? I had no reflexes in my knee. I had three inches of atrophy. My calf was just like mushroom. My hamstring wasn't firing. And of course. And I couldn't figure out why it was broken. Right. So they flew me off to Walter Reed to go all out my back and put some bubble gum and duct tape in there. Right. And fix things and. Yeah, I know that sounds very medicy. Right.

[A]

Right. But you sure you were a medic?

[B]

Pretty sure. And you know, I got back to the unit and you get ready to focus on the next task. Everything's a no fail mission. Right. You don't drop it. So you come back, you don't whine, you don't complain. You just figure it out, move on to the next thing. I was focused on getting ready to go through and, you know, do my job. And if I had an opportunity to go back to selection down the road, I would. And you take those opportunities as they come, but I was going to work hard to make sure that happened.

[A]

At, at what point did they look at your injuries and they knew something was very wrong and they're like, hey, we're, we're going to have to take some drastic measures here.

[B]

Yeah. So I went through this and it had gotten pretty bad. I was in a brace up to my hip. The pain was through the roof. At some point. I now know this will sound medicky. I had ischemic pain and neuro, Neurovascular pain.

[A]

There it is.

[B]

Yeah, there's big words. Right. And it was just compounding. But you know, you compartmentalize that, you lock that out and you focus on what has to happen. But between the brace I was in and all of those things, eventually leadership was like, look, man, your legs are wreck. You're in a brace up to your hip. It's obvious there's a problem. We see what's going on. You're not going to be able to keep this up. For your own sake, your own welfare, you got to figure this out. You're going to have to retire. Medically, I was livid. I'm not retiring. I want to serve. I want to continue to serve. And thank God, you know, the Mayo Clinic came in on this and they figured out what the problem was. Years after all of this, after I'm operational and doing all these things for so many years, they put the pieces together that I had vascular compromise. I had lymphatic damage, no function below the knee. I had delayed reflexes, and my leg had been rotting off my body by the time we got here. The hair had fallen out, the toenails had fallen out. I had pinion edema an inch thick. I couldn't move my foot and it just drug behind me. Remember Mr. Deeds, the movie?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's a lot like that. Yeah. He could poke it and I couldn't feel it, but I had this just eruption of pain all the time. Burning, pulsating, explosions of pain that would take your breath away. And I'm ignoring it. I'm just doing what I have to do.

[A]

And what year is this?

[B]

That's. Oh, seven. I left group 09. I got to the unit. So this is 14.

[A]

And the. The original injury was an 07. Correct. Seven years later.

[B]

Yeah, this has been.

[A]

This has been slowly happening, getting worse

[B]

and worse and worse. And. Yeah, I mean, I was a. I never had to really worry about the physicality of the job. I could just do it right until I didn't have it. And then you got to start using other skill sets. Right. So again, God's plan is bigger than ours, man. It forced me to learn things. And honestly, it forced me to fail. It did. It forced me to deal with not getting to do things that I wanted to and having to get help and accepted at.

[A]

Well, at. At this time where you're being treated at, they're probably pros at. At. At telling people bad news.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you. Do you remember. Do you remember how they told you did. And did you think when they told you that, were you prepared at all for that being a possibility or did it hit you by surprise? How'd that. How'd that go?

[B]

About complete Surprise. They brought me and my wife in. In retrospect, I should have put the pieces together, right? Like. But I wasn't focused on that, man. It was a task at hand.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now, I didn't see myself as that broken even still, it's crazy. And they told me, look, you're done. You're gonna have to medically retire. And they let me stick around to figure this out with a Mayo Clinic. Otherwise it was gonna be medically retired. And I would have been at 17, 18 years of service at that point. And January of 2014, they cut my

[A]

leg off, knee down.

[B]

I've got a, I've got a knee. I've got a little nub below the knee.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yep. And I honestly, going in, I didn't know whether I was going to have any through the knee, what was going to happen. There was no guarantees. All I knew is I was a ceiling guy, not a floor guy. I want to live life on my terms. If I can't do what I want to do and I can't live that well, then I want to be as active and aggressive and be a good dad. I want to chase my kids. I want to be the best I can be as a dad and a husband, and I want to re qualify if I can. That was my mindset going into this, but there was no guarantees.

[A]

It may be an odd question because. But it's really subjective to you and what your thought process was on this. Was the rehab harder? Was it better or worse than you had thought?

[B]

I didn't even care.

[A]

Didn't even care.

[B]

Whatever has to be done. So when I got there and we got to Walter Reed, I didn't care what the price was. Yeah, I was putting it in. I was the first one in. You know, I was there for six months. I went from showing up as a one legged guy. I refused to use a wheelchair. I use crutches.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I refused to be in a wheelchair. It was just a mindset thing. I want to move my own power. And showed up there, did physical therapy. I, I ran a, a 5K, 10K, I think was three months in. Then we did a triathlon.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Not long after that, it was like three months and I'm just pushing myself. By the time I left there, I was doing a half marathon and I got the four brag. And I was like, look, man, I'm going to re qualify. There was no method for me to do that. At 18 years of service, I was too senior for the continuation and active duty or co ed program.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I had to be found 110% fit for duty as a Green Beret, which meant I had to be qualified to do every single thing with one leg.

[A]

Okay. Tell me one thing that surprised you. That you're like, wow, that's really hard to do with one leg.

[B]

Fast roping was interesting. Not going to lie the first time. 20ft, man. Whatever. You can use hands, right? 40ft.

[A]

Oh, you have to. You have to. They make you L out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So they. Yeah.

[B]

Without ankle flexion, I had to work on ways to use my other foot to break on a metal tube.

[A]

You're right.

[B]

So I had to manufacture, and thank God there's a so shop at the unit. Right? And I can make things right. That's what we did. We just manufactured stuff, and pretty soon it worked. I had to have a way to catch the rope right there. So I manufactured little ridges for the rope to lie so I could break with my foot. Seems logical, right? I didn't realize it was a big deal. The other thing is, when you jump out of an airplane with a leg that comes off, okay, sometimes it will come off. Never even thought about this. I'm fat, dumb, and happy, right? I'm falling. I got a little bit of a turn, right? And like, okay, I'll just adjust my arm. I'm there. We're good. And then I feel my leg go eat. Like, it's like the. You remember the cartoon? The Lion King with hyenas. Make that like, ooh, Mufasa.

[A]

Right?

[B]

This is what I'm feeling. Like, my whole spine's tingling. Like, oh, my God. God, my leg is going to fall off.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This is all that's going on. So I'm at, like, 10,000ft, and it happens every thousand feet or so. My leg just goes a little bit more, and I'm like, oh, my God. My whole life is flashing in front of my eyes. Not because I'm going to die, because I think my leg is going to go through someone's window, right? Or their roof, and it doesn't matter. I could cure cancer and bring world peace. I'll be the dude whose leg fell off someone's house. Like, that's all I'm thinking about.

[A]

Right? Who'd have thought you had the w cord your leg to you?

[B]

That's exactly what I did. That was the takeaway, Right?

[A]

Right.

[B]

I ran it up my pant leg and tied to my riggers belt. After this, I was like, I ain't going anywhere.

[A]

I. For some, because I. I'd been shot too.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There were things that I just didn't realize. I got shot in the right hand. So as being right handed. It's just something stupid. Brushing your teeth. No one's ever tried to brush their teeth with their left hand. Why would you.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Uh, it's just. It's just the most. One. Most awkward things.

[B]

It is.

[A]

You'll do. So I knew there would be a couple unique things that you wouldn't know about it until you go through it. And there's always those was like, why would you know that until you went through it?

[B]

100.

[A]

Just like dummy courting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You're like.

[B]

You know, the funny thing is, thank God I'd never tied those stupid little, like, strings at the bottom of your pant legs. I don't know why I tied them that day. I tied them. That's all that was. Holding my leg down. It was flopping underneath my leg as I'm coming in. So now I'm in final. Like, I'm coming in to land and like, how am I gonna do this? I can't run.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

My leg's not gonna magically go on. I can't yard dart this thing because my hip's probably gonna break right. Or dislocate. So the best I could come up with was to pull up into the canopy and slide on my hip as I hit the ground.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like, that's it. That's. That's our pee in the pace plan.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That's my only choice.

[A]

Like, tough, tough decisions that have to be made here on the fly.

[B]

And we're moving very quick. Right. Gravity's working.

[A]

So.

[B]

Man, it was. It was crazy. But it worked mainly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Either the insult to the injury.

[A]

My.

[B]

My foot came up and kicked me in the junk. I was landing, like, apropos. Right. That's the thing.

[A]

Yeah. It seems about right. Actually.

[B]

It was perfect. Yes.

[A]

You got to sit there on the ground. But actually that checks out. It was perfect. Why wouldn't it?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You were pretty long in the tooth. Your military career going through all this.

[B]

I was. Yeah.

[A]

Like I said, by the time you're getting back into recertifying, if you will, to. To be a Green Beret, you're 18.

[B]

Yep. 18 years.

[A]

18 years in service. Was. Was your mentality to get to the finish line at 20 to. To show that, hey, like, you're not going to cut me short or did. What was your mentality for the rest

[B]

of it was I'm going to requalify.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And period. And then I'm gonna go do what I have to do. The one promise I made people and myself was when it got to the point where I was having to put so much mindset and focus into staying with the team.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And being physically capable. It's time to hand it up.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like, don't be the weak link. Right. Don't be that guy. Yeah. That was my promise to everybody. And when I hit, you know, five years after all of this, I was at the Q course. I was running the 18 delta committee. It was a little surreal. And it's a one legged first sergeant. Right. Closing this thing out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you know, it was fitting. It just felt right. I was really putting in undue effort and I thought I was making more of a difference for the guys than I ever would. When you get injured like this, you kind of lose your window. Also being on a different side of the army in a smu. Right.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You don't really move parallel to your peers in regular sf.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And leaving that to go back out into the open one Lord Almighty. Was that difficult? Just not having my, my training done by their standards. Like they made me do my online training before they let me do pt. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm going to the physical therapist now. I'm not doing that. I've done it. Figure it out. And we agreed to disagree, but that was the mindset. Right.

[A]

It's. It's really on the. This could be a 30 to 45 minute episode part. Part of this, of this episode is it really doesn't happen on the infantry side. Going to an smu. The one you say infantry usually refers to Rangers or anyone of the 11 series, but there are several instances where going to an SMU and it would blow people's minds that it's actually detrimental. Detrimental is a strong word, but it definitely slows you. It can slow your career down. On the 18 series side, it's not.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

It's not what you would think. Like, oh, you're, you're at a tier one unit now. Promote now get this, get that. It's. It's unfortunate. I don't know if there's any fix to it, but. But the job's worth it. So. And anyone who goes over there didn't go to get promoted. They didn't go.

[B]

I knew that was part of the deal right here.

[A]

But it would surprise people to, to hear or realize that there's actually some negative things that can happen to your career as an 18 series soldier.

[B]

Well, and you got to go with your eyes wide open. And they told me about that when I got to the unit. Right. Like, hey, that's just what it is. Right?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Okay, got it. I'm glad to be here. But it was that next ridgeline. Right. Just keep testing yourself.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And when I, when I hung up the military career, I still wanted to be physical. I got to do the Warrior Games a couple of times, get into adaptive athletics. I got to do the Invictus Games. That was pretty awesome. I ran a bike across America 3,000 miles in 50 days. That was crazy. I shouldn't have done those in concert with the Warrior Games in really route planning. The only route we could do in that time, the time hack wise was to go across the southern part of the US in the summer.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You do not want to go through Texas and Arizona on a bicycle and on foot. 60 plus miles a day in June. That was not good.

[A]

Yeah. We have a, a mutual friend actually that I reached out to before you're coming on. It told, told me about you doing those games. And he was like, yeah. And he literally traveled on a bike. Right. On bike and ran, biked and ran across America. Across America before he came to the, to the games to come compete with me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I was like, that's. It's not a good idea. But it's, but it's, it's an option. It can't, it can be done.

[B]

Sometimes you take the long path. Right.

[A]

But I love it though. I mean you, you could have said no and, and you can joke about it like, well, I just wasn't smart enough to say no. But it, and it's not, it's just being honest. It, it goes really, it goes to the type of man you are. Like, if I can do it, I will do it.

[B]

You got in yourself. You're not pushing the boundaries, man. You're not working hard enough. You're just not. And I didn't, it didn't dawn on me that would hinder my performance. That's not how I think I'm going to give him my all no matter what. If I only got 70% in the tank, then you're going to get 100% of 70%.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Whatever. Right. If my leg falls off, so be it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Then I'm going to hit hard. Right. It's okay.

[A]

You. I love, I love the, the mentality and I hope the listeners get this and I hope the young listeners recognize this and, and apply it. You got, you got one life, man. That's it go, go home. Sliding in head first. Zone 5. Heart rate completely out of breath. Just sending it. You have one life to live. Live a good life and live a fulfilling life. And that's all up to you. 100. You get to make those decisions.

[B]

You do, man. You get one chance at this. Leave it on, on God's planet, right? Leave it on earth here. If you're not trying that hard, dude, what are you leaving there, man? You get one chance to live. Live, right? Yeah, live righteous. Just do that thing. You know, I also got addicted to marathoning. True story. I was trying to set the world record for single leg amputees in a marathon. I have a small competition problem. You know, we're always our worst competition critics, right. Like you talked about. But I want it to be the best. Excellence is a choice. It's repetition. You know, it's.

[A]

You know, I've. I've never said this until you just. Until you just framed it that way. Addiction is, is a choice too. You, you, you chose an addiction. And that word is usually has negative meanings to it, but you can be addicted to positive things just, just as easily.

[B]

Well, and I think that's that mindset, that operator mindset, that warrior focus, dude. I want to be the best. And I'm so. I was driven, right, just to push and push and push and you know, I put it towards something healthy. But I will tell you, it also let me ignore getting my leg jacked up and going through seven years of luma salvage. And you know, at one point I had to do another surgery on my stump because the end of my stump split open because of too much trauma and pressure. All self induced because I kept running. You want to talk about pain? When your bone starts rocking around in a socket made of carbon fiber. It is not awesome.

[A]

No, but, but like, like I said earlier from, you know, separating that from a high performer, you can't. You have to take the. The good with the bad, you know. And if that's the negative part of, of of this life that, that you've chosen to live, it's, that's, it's acceptable. I think it's acceptable. Easy for me to say. You're the one that has to live with it.

[B]

I wouldn't trade a thing, man. I would not trade a thing.

[A]

Part of going across America was also ties into some of the non profit work you, you did after getting on the service. Tell us about that.

[B]

Yeah, so if you had told me I was going to join a non profit, I would have thought it's veteran focused at first, I actually serve people barbecue meals. After hurricanes and wildfires. We launched this breaking bread tour when I ran across America to step into the veteran community for this nonprofit. So literally I was standing up an entire new section while feeding people in disaster. And we went to every hurricane, wildfire, tornado, you name it. We were there over about a seven and a half, eight year span and they're still out doing it today. We could feed up to 100,000 hot meals a day for up to 30 days straight. Our own people, our own power, our own water. And excellence is the expectation. So as I grew in the organization, I got more opportunity to lead and eventually made it to be the COO running the day to day functions of what we do. And we could deploy anywhere in the world, do whatever we were asked to do. We were a problem solving organization first. The answer was yes, we'll figure it out. And you know, during Helena Milton we did 1.65 million meals in roughly 30 days. We had over 30 partners across the state of Florida that we actually put about 1.5, $1.6 million back into the community to have them be the local face and a local problem. We build networks. It's amazing what you can get accomplished. We don't care who gets the credit. And that buy with and through mentality is exactly what worked. Right. People thought that was my creation. I was like, nah man, that's just where I came from.

[A]

You beat me to it. When you start using, you know, phrases and terms like, you know, excellence is the expectation. You know, problem solving is, is, is what we're good at, what we're going to do by, with and through. I just, I, I, I know you came from SF and I know you came from the unit. And anyone that served long enough in that unit will be changed as, as a person. You can't help, you can't help but be changed as a person by that culture and for the better. And it'll be hard to work in any other organization and, and be satisfied because you know what, what's possible. You know what's possible.

[B]

Absolutely. When I left there, went back out to the regular army.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To go through the medical system. Lord almighty. Dude.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Life changing.

[A]

Nothing's efficient anymore.

[B]

So broken.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I was used to clockwork. Everything worked. I could get what I needed to done. I could get 18 hours of work done in 12 hours.

[A]

Right. It'll, it'll ruin you. It'll ruin you.

[B]

But you know, you can push people and what I love. Look at the People who leave that place and the impact they have on the folks around them, you know, it's, it's just incredible. And it's all a mindset. Love my time in sf. I did. I love my time at the unit. But the people were spectacular. Yeah, they were really the difference maker, right? People over hardware every single day. And to see what they could accomplish, whether it was in other units, in life as leaders or in business, in, you know, just creating change, it was amazing because they re established. No, we don't have to do it the dumbest way possible, the hardest way possible. There's a better way and we can fix it right now. So let's do that.

[A]

Right. They'll just, just the attitude of why not?

[B]

Right.

[A]

If you've always done it, why, yes.

[B]

Worst words in the world.

[A]

It really is. After your nonprofit, what made you get into politics? I believe after that you became a state senator for Florida.

[B]

Well, I actually jumped in. It was Afghanistan. And Covid, you know, Covid, man, we saw so much government overreach. We saw the federal government usurp individual freedoms. We saw the breakdown of so many things. And I think you're going to see consequential issues with children on a generational level here. It changed a lot.

[A]

Yeah, I'm afraid of that. I, I, I hope you're not right, but I, but I believe, I believe you are.

[B]

You know, I hope and pray that's, that that doesn't come to fruition, but we've got to prepare and have leaders willing to step in there and make sure that never happens again. But Governor DeSantis, you know, I saw one man lead, one politician in our state stood forward and led by himself and across the country, he had world leaders attacking him, the president attacking him, Congress attacking him, state leaders attacking him. And he stood strong and said, that doesn't make sense. Here's what we're going to do. And he was right.

[A]

He was right. And the irony of those, some of those politicians that attacked him also came down here to Florida and vacationed.

[B]

Sure did.

[A]

At the same time.

[B]

Yep, yep. And it's, it's there.

[A]

You can't make it up. You can't make it up. 100% can't make it up. And, and we were told as, as Floridians, that what our governor was doing was, was dangerous. And that by him basically playing political games by not doing things that the, the science told us to do, but common sense didn't agree with the science. And they said that we were going to have Drastic death numbers here in Florida and consequences because of that. And that just wasn't true. In fact, when you go back and look at the stats, the states that had very strict mask requirements and, and the, and were very strict and stringent about their public distancing policies. And then you had Florida, they actually had the same, almost the same exact rates, death rates and at different times as, as it, as it went across the country.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

There was, there was, there was no, there was no difference except there was a massive difference and the economic impacts that it had and small there were. As a small business owner, I, I, it's hard for me to fathom if I would have dropped my last, my life savings a few years earlier on a business and then had it get absolutely crushed by politicians. They turned Covid into their political football rather than put Americans first.

[B]

Well, they weaponize politics against our people. And to your point, we had a generational shift in business ownership. People lost everything.

[A]

Everything.

[B]

You know what's interesting about state politics is as a state senator, you don't just do that. You get paid like 28,000. They didn't even pay for the gas

[A]

I spent for the year.

[B]

Right. Just to be honest, I drive an F150 and I still work the nonprofit. So we were literally feeding people out there, doing our job in all of these states, trying to feed millions and millions of people during disaster while Covid's ongoing. And in Florida, people are just living their life, man. Businesses are moving here, they're starting fresh. And it's amazing what happened. But, you know, that coupled with what happened in Afghanistan when we turned off the power, turned off the lights and left in the middle of the night, we made the whole world less safe. We made America less safe. And we put operators, Green Berets, people doing their job out there on that ragged edge. We made them less safe because our allies didn't trust us. Like many men, I got calls from people I worked with screaming, crying because their families were being hunted down and killed because they worked beside us. Look, man, I don't want to fight everyone's wars, but I want to protect our people and our way of life 100%. And that's the cost of doing business. And I'm okay with that. But dude, that was not what I signed up for.

[A]

Yeah, I was, I was okay with. I didn't believe we're going to be in Afghanistan.

[B]

Nobody did.

[A]

Indefinitely. There's no reason for that. But how we left was an embarrassment to us at a, on a world Stage. And, and this is. Where does it. It goes. It got something else that got political. I'm just tired of things being political. And I know this. If me or you as enlisted SF guys ever planned a mission that horribly and executed a mission that poorly, we'd have been fired by the time our Blackhawk landed back at base completely. Who. Who was held responsible? Which. Which one of our, which one of our amazing generals were held responsible for the disastrous pull out of Afghanistan?

[B]

Yeah, it's very frustrating and I think there's a lot of blame from political on down. But the reality is I do put more emphasis on the political side of this because it was an undue pressure of this is over for political purposes. Zero means zero.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I was in Iraq when we closed that down. It was the same exact thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We told them we're going to be back in Iraq 100%. We're back in a year. Whatever is being built out there, it's pretty horrific.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'll be dying if we weren't back in a year. Right. All over again. We knew that you had to leave people in Bagram. We knew that because we'd been there and done that. It didn't take a rocket scientist. Right. It took someone with experience. And those were more than I could bear, bro. I mean, honestly, I couldn't sit on the sideline and complain if I wasn't willing to be part of the solution. I knew nothing about politics. Yeah, I knew the basics, but not how to set up a team. I literally cold called members of Congress, people in D.C. tracked them down, found numbers, and when they stopped being afraid, they realized, you know, to quote Liam Neeson, I had a certain set of skills. Right. And I could probably be useful. They weren't really sure what was going on, but there was something here. I ran for Congress initially, got redistricted out of my seat, or I'd probably still be in Congress. We would have won that by five points based on math and came into the state Senate. I ran against the mayor of Tampa's mother in law on like five days before qualifying. I couldn't have picked the state senator out of a lineup. Dead serious.

[A]

Right. The. And you, you also ended up becoming lieutenant governor and a little bit of a, of an untraditional 100 as well. And so that probably wasn't on your, on your bingo card as well in four years.

[B]

No.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, look, we're all competitive. If you want to do it, do it. Right, right. I passed 55 bills in three years. That's more than most people pass in eight. That's more than most. Some people will pass ever if they do more years. Right. That's just very. I was very focused. I took our main same mindset and applied it to politics. I was the first one in, last one out. Put the hours in to figure this out. You know, I ran constitutional carry, blocked China from buying our land. We codified prayer in sports. We ran energy policy that got rid of some of the nonsense and focused on reliable, safe, affordable energy. Things that made a difference. Economy, education, safety, security. And it worked like an operator. Right. Like a Green Beret, like the people we are. Because that's the expectation. And after three sessions, about three and a half years, I got appointed to be the Lieutenant Governor of Florida. There is not a chance that five years ago I would ever have, you know, dreamed of doing this. I would have laughed at you, maybe said it, some, some different words. Right, right. But man, God puts us where we have to be.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I have dreamed of having politicians with a warrior's mindset, having a spine of steel, and I didn't see those people in enough places. So I decided it's time to get warriors into politics.

[A]

If I remember right, the, at the time the current Lieutenant governor went to take a position at fiu.

[B]

She did, yeah. Jeanette Nunez did good work. She's now the president of at fiu.

[A]

So did.

[B]

Were.

[A]

Were you in talks with. With Ron DeSantis at the time with that? It's a long process.

[B]

Yeah, for sure. We'll leave that. You know, that's, that's between him and the people. And it was a long process.

[A]

Did you think you were going to, did you think you had a good chance of being it?

[B]

I did.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I did. You know, I have a small competition issue. So if you're going to, if you're going to be in the fight, be in the fight.

[A]

Love it.

[B]

And I was in it to win it at that point.

[A]

So for people who don't know, and I never want to act like I know more than I do because sometimes I have to get smart just, just before someone comes on. I didn't know what a Lieutenant governor did, that I'm pretty sure we could go do street interviews and, and most, most people wouldn't. What does a Lieutenant governor do?

[B]

Well, honestly, in Florida, it's up to the, the governor and the Lieutenant Governor to really decide what's going to go on. I am pretty proactive, pretty aggressive in nature. I decided I wanted to be everywhere, do as Much as possible and make a difference. I believe in leadership out there on the ground, seeing people. I think one of the greatest things we can do as a leader is have executive energy. You gotta be at the table, you gotta be there. People want to see you active in the community, leading from their front, communicating. Don't BS them. So say what you mean, mean what you say, and then get things done. It is that simple. And that has been my approach. I have several councils I'm responsible for, from like Cyber Awareness, Cyber Security Council to healthcare innovation. We're doing a tiger team focused on gaps in our safety and security as a state, how we can enhance that and keep our people safer. All things that I'm grateful to be a part of. But in the end, my simple. My focus is simple. Make a difference for the people of Florida. I serve 23 and a half million people, and whether they vote for me, they don't vote for me. I serve them every day. Because to your point, brother, we are the American people. There is no nation like this, no nation I would rather be a part of. I would do anything. If I was asked to serve today, I would do it immediately. I would drop everything to go serve our nation. I believe in it that much. And we expect to lead. That's what we should do.

[A]

Absolutely. And as a proud Floridian, I want Florida to lead that national charge and show what. What state rights and what a state can do when it's not being restricted by. By state government. And Florida showing that 100.

[B]

Look, Governor Ron DeSantis has been a great leader in terms of state policy and state. State rights. And that's got to continue on. Look, we're a republic for a reason. We are. Why I say that is simple. Any federal government able to do everything can take anything. Right? Right. I'm not here for that. I want to have the checks and balances. State leadership matters. Having a governor who's willing to step in there and do the hard right like Governor DeSantis showed and modeled during COVID is incredible. You want people who've been broken and rebuilt, who've come through fighting and gotten things done. The best indicator of future potential is past performance. You want people who have a track record of being successful despite not having everything, whether it was growing up in poverty, whether it was, you know, getting shot, blown up, coming into a race without even knowing anybody politically in the space and figuring it out. I've always been behind the eight ball. And you come out winning because that mindset matters. You got to get the People, you got to go push. But what I expect from this state, you know, if God grants me the opportunity to be the next governor of Florida, we have to protect this nation, brother. We bled for this nation. I expect Florida to lead. It starts right here in Florida. We protect our boundaries, our people, build our economy, make sure our children are taught the right things, they're educated, not indoctrinated, and that we have safety and security at home. But then we got to push this across to other states and we got to have that warrior mindset taken in every other state and push up and shift this nation from within.

[A]

I absolutely think that's what's going to happen. Whether it be some of these things that's being proposed right now, like removing property taxes. Yes, sir, that's being talked about. No one else is even, is even considered that. Thought it could be possible. Watch, watch, watch Florida lead and do that. What hopefully gets voted in at the end of 2026. I believe it looks like it's a possibility.

[B]

So we'll have a special session for that. Okay, so it's going to happen. It didn't happen in regular session.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And frankly, it's probably more efficient to do this in a special session. So we'll get that in there. And you're absolutely right. So homesteaded properties.

[A]

Right, Homesteaded properties.

[B]

Abolish property tax on homesteaded properties. So when you pay off your mortgage, you own your home free and clear of the government. It's your home, your property, your life. You put down roots in that space.

[A]

And watch, watch it. If Florida gets that across the board and shows that, guess what? If you're just responsible with, with the tax money, you can, you can make things happen.

[B]

Math always wins.

[A]

Math always wins. It's simple math. It's just additional traction.

[B]

Brother, I got 10 fingers and five toes. Math always wins.

[A]

And watch other states or at least their, their, their, their residents for sure. Look at Florida and look at their representatives go, why, why can, why can they do that and we can't?

[B]

Why don't you love me like Florida does? Right? That's great. Right? Why can't I have my home free and clear of taxes?

[A]

The, at the end of the day, the governor right now makes, makes the decisions and, but every decision you can, of course, the decisions you make are based off of logic, reason, experience. But, but in the day, what that decision, whether it was a good decision or not, hindsight's 2020 and not everybody sees the eye to eye on everything. Has there ever been something that's that's come up to Tallahassee that you and the governor didn't see eye to eye on.

[B]

Well, I think there's always things I actually want to brag about. Governor DeSantis on this issue.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The very first time that we met him. And this is going to be. You will probably recognize this mindset instantly. Right. We showed up there and we're having a conversation, and I wanted him to know something. Look, I'm never going to be anybody's guy. I'm not gonna do something if I disagree with it. I will tell you to your face that I disagree. I will do that 100%. It's moral, legal, ethical. I'm gonna do the right thing. And if we're off on this and I can't agree with you, that's just how it is. And you're gonna have to be okay. I'm probably with you 99.9% of the times. We agree on almost everything. But should that thing pop, I'm gonna tell it to your face. Now, there were political types who did not love that answer. The governor chuckled. He said that, Jay, that's why I want you like, of course. What an awesome mindset. Right?

[A]

Right. Every. Every good leader wants to hear some. That. That other opinion. That other.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

That other view that he's not thinking of and he may not. Doesn't mean he agrees with you and goes with it, but at least wants to hear it. Who wants to hear just a big echo chamber of everyone telling you that you're making the right decision all the time?

[B]

Group think kills, man. Absolutely. You've got to solve problems and win. Right.

[A]

I say it all the time. We've. We've really focused incorrectly on diversity. The true strength of diversity has never been diversity of skin color or diversity of ethnicity. That really has nothing to do about it. It's diversity of thought because they can have. You can be. You can have five different people in the room from five different. Five different backgrounds, but if they all think the same, you have no diversity in that room.

[B]

You just hit on something that we don't talk about enough. We do in Florida by choice, but we don't talk about it enough across the planet and across our country. Look, man, I don't care what race, creed, color, gender, your sex, your whatever. I don't care. Be a good person, make a difference for people around you and do good things. Right. It's a mindset thing. I believe in this nation. I love this nation. I would die for this nation today. I Would die for our state if I had to today. Why is that? Honored to be the 21st lieutenant governor. Loved being a Green Beret and serving in so many incredible units, being a small, tiny part of that world. But I'm a dad and a husband. We protect and preserve what we have for the next generation. That's right. Stop. That is exactly what we do. And if that means that war has to come in our time, then let war come in my time so peace may come in my sons. That is what we want to see. And you've got to push hard, man, but we are the American people. I didn't ask people their politics. I didn't ask them if they were gay or straight or black or white. I didn't care. We all bled the same. And I would love to see America stop attacking ourselves from within and agree on the things that mattered. And right now, it's tough in the political realm to get that done. But you're seeing signs of where it can go. The simple fact is I'll never compromise on my beliefs. We'll fight for what matters. But I do believe that when people who know what's at stake step forward and lead our state will get along behind those people because they know it. When they see it, they understand leaders who have their best interest in mind. I'm not doing this for the money. I'm not doing this for any other reason than because I love my family, my community, my state, and our country. The same reasons I deployed are the same reasons I serve. Now.

[A]

You can't. You can't help but. But listen to you and, and hear, you know, you're. You're passionate about it, which is what I want. It's what I want from my politicians. I want them to be invested emotionally into this because there's a lot at stake. So which. Which is a great segue into my next question. Okay, with that. That being the type of person you are, obviously you just want to talk about things that. That matters. That matters to. To the. The people. The state of Florida. Have you ever been, whether it be in legislation, whether it be at a. At a town hall. Have you ever had this moment where you're here to do good things and you're. Whatever the topic is, you're sitting there telling yourself, I. I can't believe this is what we're talking about right now?

[B]

How long do we have here? Yeah, I could go for hours here.

[A]

That's what I was afraid of. That's what I was afraid of.

[B]

So to feel definitely at many Times I felt like I was a square peg in a round hole. You know, the heathens climbed over the walls, and people look at you like, I'm not really sure what to make of this guy. But you know what? We need to have more of that. We do. We need to have more of that warrior mindset, that warrior ethos. And what I'll ask you is this. Every time that our nation's hit the skids, where things have gotten hard, who's come to the rescue? It's not the politicians or the bureaucrats. It's the working class. The people who create jobs, sign paychecks, and the warriors who step up and lead. Today is no different. The world's complex. I love seeing people from our community, people from the military, step in and lead. Because when you are willing to pay that ultimate price, when you've seen that happen, America hits a little bit different, a little bit harder. Man, I'm never going to forget the conversations I had with moms, wives, children. Never going to forget Leroy and the things I learned on my first real thing as a Green Beret. You apply those every single day. We have to be a nation worthy of that sacrifice. We have to be a state that leads because of that sacrifice. That is what people want to see. It's the head and the heart. I call it the political double tap. Not the normal term, right? But in the end, you can't be full of crap. You got to know how to solve problems, but you got to be someone that people are willing to follow. Would I want this person to lead my children, my family, to make a difference for those around us? And people know it when they see it. Look, I would rather do many things than be in politics, but I am here. I am leading because I love my family enough to take away my most precious commodity, my time to serve our state. Because I know I can solve the problems. I am day one, ready when I step in as the next governor of Florida. I don't have to look for instructions. I have experience as a lieutenant governor, I've led. I wrote many of the laws that we have in place. I've dealt with them. I've been to every county. I've led with sheriffs and mayors and council members and commissioners. And I've seen thousands and thousands and thousands of Floridians across all aspects of this state. They deserve to live the American dream. It starts with safety, security, then goes to education and economy. It's that simple. Those three things unite 90% of the issues.

[A]

You definitely have that going for you. And I'm a man who loves consistency. And it's, if, if you, to, if you were to become the next governor of Florida, you're, you've essentially, it's, you're on a right seat, left seat ride right now. And it's just, you know, same different, different day, different chair, essentially the same job. And I like where we're going right now, and I'd like to continue going down that road 100 and I'm not looking to shame anyone, but I mean, if you don't vote for a Green Beret with one leg, that's already been the Lieutenant Governor. I mean, what are we doing? What are we doing? But that's, that's, that's just, that's just my opinion. You don't appreciate that. You don't, you don't have to shame them into it. That's. Let, let that be Brent Tucker's opinion. You have my vote. Whether it be something you're working on now or something you want to work on as governor. What is one thing or possibly the first thing you want to really get after when you're governor?

[B]

So day one, I'm going to go back to economy, education, safety, security in the community. But it starts with the end of that. When people feel safe, they have great families, great families, build businesses. Businesses build an economy. And it all scales from there. We've got to prepare our men and women in law enforcement for what's to come. Look at the world. Cyber offensive operations are real. Drones are real. We see them being used in all over the planet with payloads and munitions. It's only a matter of time before you start seeing that more and more here in our communities. Our people haven't had the opportunity to train and be prepared on all of those things yet. There's things we have to do. The thing that keeps me up most at night is that there are things emerging that we have to reciprocally train for and prepare our warriors for our law enforcement, our firefighters, our ems, to protect our people. And we have to get those right now. I want to make sure they have those tools. So I have that tiger team that we're working right now to identify gaps. That's very preemptive to understand where we're at, what we can do is, and if we can improve, how do we do it? Fusion. What's old is new again, right? When I joined the army, fusion was a thing. I'm retired. I'm an old gray, gray hair now, right? No hair in my case. And you know, I'M the lieutenant governor of Florida and using our assets from the federal, state and local level efficiently saves taxpayer dollars. That's critical and important. But in the end, we have to have an economy that's aligned to the gaps. So gap analysis is something that I would love to see more of in politics. Let's identify a problem, then develop a solution. Let's not come up with a great plan and try to jackhammer it into corners. Right. It doesn't fix things, solve a problem, but we got to bring in reciprocal businesses. The American dream to me is not predicated on just getting by. When I think about affordability, I don't just want you to have just a little bit more and be okay. I want you to have everything you could dream of. But then I want our kids to have more. We have to put that in place. We have to draw in more businesses. I think energy and transportation, the two primary limitations or amplifications of where we go as a state. You got to move people where they're at. You got to have energy on demand. Right. Energy available. That's small modular micro reactors. I think that's the future of energy in the state right now. That's something we can do and we're working on that already.

[A]

And I do love it as we're very unique as a state that with all the different problems that you can identify, we have a lot of resources to solve almost any problem that, that we could face. We just, we just have to have the, the availability to let people solve them.

[B]

That's right. Well, getting the government out of the way.

[A]

Get government out of the way.

[B]

Right. Man. Let the people do what they do. Deregulate. I would love to go through old statutes and rip out things that make no sense. There are so many laws that need to be removed because they're old, outdated. That's good government. Do less like that. Right.

[A]

The. Yeah, you could, you could start with how difficult it is to sell alcohol here in Florida. But that's, that's. And fairness. That's country wide.

[B]

It is.

[A]

But, but it actually, but it actually, but it actually goes again to old rules. It's a lot of old rules on, on the books that go all the way back to Prohibition. That once, as you know better than anyone, once there's a rule on the book, it's hard to get it off.

[B]

Yeah. Once government has its claws into something, it doesn't really let go easily.

[A]

Last question. If, if you could, if you had a magic wand, there's just one thing you could change About Florida. It's a broad question. One thing you could change about Florida. What would you do?

[B]

Well, aside from the obvious, I would love to have a hurricane wall. Right. To stop hurricanes. That would be great. Insurance rates would come down. Yeah, that'd be a big win. And, you know, I want to remind people that what we've chosen here is purposeful, but leadership matters, that their individual votes matter. Man, I love our president. I love the fact that he understands you have to be a man of action to step into the breach and be bold enough to lead. Damn the torpedoes, step up and do what's necessary. Right. Courage matters. Courage is contagious. Governor Desantis has been there the entire time. It's great to have those assets working together. What? I would challenge people. And, you know, in our party, we even have some divisions. Right. It happens. But in politics, we sit there and scream from the edges, guys, we should expect excellence. We should expect to lead. We should expect our nation to be successful. And you hit on something, it's not the. The diversity of skin tone or gender, ideology or whatever else that makes you strong or as our strengths. It's the fact that we're the American people. We have unique ideas, ideals, and principles that make us who we are. We should be proud of that. And we should be rowing the boat forward on 85% of the issues.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Whereas our country, our state, first. Let's agree on those things. Let's come together more on those subjects. Stop fighting over the nonsense. Let's lead them to things that matter.

[A]

Because regardless of. Of. Of aisle, side of the aisle, everyone wants the same thing. We want a stronger America. We want a better America. We can. We can disagree on how we get there. But if. But if those are our end goals, which. Which they are.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

We just. We just have to have the adult conversation of. Of how we get there.

[B]

You know, just because I disagree with you on a thing doesn't mean I hate you. Right? Right. This isn't a blood sport like that. Right. Like, I still have no issues with 99.9% of the people. Right. Frankly, I just want to make a difference. I want to make an impact. I want my kids to have a better life than I did. That's what we should all want. We're going to disagree. Our Founding Fathers disagreed. I don't agree with my wife on everything. I don't agree with anybody on everything. That's okay. That's success. We just have to keep pushing this thing forward. And as a leader, that's What I want to see, I want to remind people that we should communicate great things. Reagan was called the great communicator, and he refuted that. He said, no, I communicate great things. There's a lot to love in America. There's a lot to love about who we are, what we stand for. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about what's great in Florida, why we're different, why we lead. Your debt as a member, as a citizen of Florida is $227. It's like 1:27,000 nationally, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's good leadership. We've paid off over 50% of our debt. We've maxed out our rainy day plan, our piggy bank, if you will. Right. We're maxed out. We're doing good things. We're pushing on property tax to lead and put money back in people's pockets. That's good leadership. We should all agree on those things and figure out how to make it happen. We get one shot at this. Let's dare to be great and lead from the front.

[A]

I love it. And maybe next time you're down at SpaceX and you run into Elon Musk, maybe you can do something about that hurricane wall.

[B]

Yeah, we'll work on it. Right? I'm sure he's already solving it.

[A]

Well, Jay, I. I can't thank you enough. I know you're a busy man. You have probably three other events to go to, to go alone. Yeah. And. But again, I can't thank you enough. Thank you for what you do. I hope more veterans get into the political scene. I think it would be good for the country, and I'm glad you're doing it. You're putting your money where your mouth is.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

You raised your hand and you're continuing to do it.

[B]

Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Right. That's the mindset. And I agree with you. I want veterans to step up and lead. I do.

[A]

Thank you, sir.

[B]

Appreciate you, brother.

[A]

Good luck on the governor race.

[B]

Thank you.