Donut Operator

Say hi to Eli. He's racially ambiguous. Brandon, his hair is fucking fabulous. Donut, a dark joke disposition. And there's a fat electrician. Welcome to Unsubscribe.

It's like Waco, something like that. It's like, I know the story of fucking Waco. I know what happened. But yeah, we watched Wendigoon do it.

Oh, God. Poor Matt. I'm the one that fucking doxes him as I do all my friends. You did do that one time. I did do that one time.

yeah okay i think i remember that yeah i remember like i don't think you're supposed to show his face yeah it's like the second or third time i came out to hang out with matt i was i was filming his dog and i was doing my vlog thing he taught me what he taught me to do that he helped you vlog things make sure you get your friend's phone number yeah his dog had the oh i didn't know his phone number on his collar whoops

And so he was like, hey, Cody. Matt calls me. He's like, hey, Cody, did you dox my phone number? Because he had people calling him. Oh, no. I was like, dude, I'm so sorry. I did not mean to do that.

There was like two people in the comments that picked up on it.

Yeah, we're in Salt Lake City and I paid the dude way too much money, the DJ, to do the Sardaukar chant from Dune. In a club? Yeah, in a club.

Yeah, I totally know. Me and Eli are looking at each other just like, I have no idea what they're fucking saying right now, man.

Yeah, exactly. It seems so easy in theory. Yeah. So if you guys are unfamiliar, Bunker Branding basically does the merch for every single one of us.

we will bring them t-shirt ideas and they're just like no we can't print that we can't print that for every comealicious shirt you get two tickets into matt's raffle right yeah let's go clip it

What's our new one? We have silly geese on there. Cyclists don't go to heaven. Cyclists don't go to heaven.

Yeah.

That's a good one. We already have the art for it. There was the other one. All cyclists go to hell.

You haven't competed, period. Also, if you're in the fucking lane that thousands, like a vehicle that weighs thousands of pounds should be in, you shouldn't be there.

Fuck you. They don't go to heaven, dude. That's all I'm saying. Play Jeremy Clarkson's part right here. He hates me. My favorite time was watching fucking 10 cyclists run a stop sign and pulling them over and giving every single one of them a fucking ticket for running a stop sign. And that's why you're a hero. Yeah.

You don't belong here, dude.

We ran a silly geese shirt there for a minute.

Bernie can be that way a little bit. Let's talk about the fucking boutiques in downtown Bernie. Oh, my God.

Yes. Going in and out.

From a person who has a business in downtown Bernie.

Trust me, no one's buying shit. Yeah. A lot of foot traffic there. Yeah.

You're just, like, right off Main Street, too. It's really close, yeah. But you know it's, like, it's for fun, right? It's like... Yeah, like, like, 5-0 skate shop. That's for fun. Yeah. Because I always wanted to have a skate shop. It's not making me any fucking money. It's breaking even every single month. I will tell you guys that, honestly.

But walking down Bernie, like one time I just decided to walk like, like just, just down the main street, there were like 27 fucking boutiques and they're selling this. Like you were saying the same shit, just like Amazon shit. Yeah.

There's literally the same. Yeah.

business cards white card wrangler name phone number email that's it white do you have my it's the cover letter yeah it's it's quite the town i mean i love it it's nice and safe for our kids but it's a great place to raise kids yeah absolutely yeah the the fucking the one bar that we go to sometimes i've got the card oh the upstairs one yeah yeah we'll just go up there yeah

They sought me at the dealership that one time. The Ferrari dealership right there. Did I ever tell you about that one? No. I had just gotten back from Key West. I had driven a Ferrari around like an exotic car dealership. This is you and Chuck, right? Yeah, me and Chuck Liddell. We went to a car dealership down in Key West. That is where Key West is. I didn't hear that part.

I was like, oh, did he put that? I'm also retarded. They were really cool about it and they gave me and Chuck a yellow Ferrari to drive around Key West for the weekend. We were super grateful for it. We drove it around. I get back here to San Antonio and I go to that dealership right next to the

Right off the highway. Next right off the highway. The Brazilian place, the state house. I was thinking about, I like Ferraris a lot. I went in there and I was walking around and every single person in their office, they would look at me and go, I'm like, dude, I'm seriously looking at Ferraris right now.

Every single person would look at me and go, mm. Hey, you didn't get help for like 30 minutes or an hour? I didn't get help at all. Oh, that's crazy. I was wearing a t-shirt and a backwards hat. And I was like, hey, I just want to check out this car right here. And every single one of them, mm.

It's a hard one. You know, stereotypes exist for a reason, I guess. Only hot takes here.

Those are the Dell 700s by Turtle Beach. Do you mean the ones that have an 80-hour battery life with quick charge?

I don't want to. The thing I hate about Texas is these . They're horrible. But the food is really good. That's the one thing I have to say about them.

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I was talking to you about that. It's like eventually when I leave my YouTube channel, because I have 1,020 videos now on my main channel. It's like, what do you do when you just retire? You just give that to your kiddo?

Yeah, it's kind of funny. That's great. Because we're the first generation of YouTubers, people to do this type of stuff.

I think the Goldie that you were talking about, that was the first time I brought John out. Yeah. Goldie was a long time ago. We destroyed that years ago. That was fun, man. My son had such a good time. He shot the fuck out of that. Did it light a fire? Didn't you do it around a circle?

What is fat files at right now?

Oh no, it's a whole new channel. It's like Papa Meat. When Meat Cannon decided to get away from Meat Cannon doing his normal animation stuff and he started doing Papa Meat. And it's so fucking hilarious just watching any of the stuff he does. We all love your videos. And then when you started doing just not military stuff, you're still bringing your personality in there.

And it's so fucking good, dude.

At the time we started, I was rolling up with a Raptor. Brandon's rolling up with a Raptor. You're rolling up with your fucking dope-ass car. It's like a bunch of really nice cars.

Jenna, molest that mic. Yeah, get in there, girl.

They thought for sure I was a drunk. You just have to prove yourself first. We showed them the podcast house and was like, look, we're all veterans. This is what we do. Because even our guests coming through the house, just big tattooed fucking dudes.

Now they love us. Yeah, shows walking through the front yard like, no, I just manage them. I just do. Hard wrangler. Yeah.

You got your own.

It was crazy. It was insane, yeah. If you guys don't know what we're talking about, it was the...

I've seen it for years, bud.

Yeah. Every, every fucking, every, every single, what do I have? We talked about it earlier. I had 1,022 cop videos. Now, anytime the cop does something slightly wrong, even, even it doesn't fucking matter if they were wrong or right.

Brandon did the McDonald's video about that. You shot me in my car? Yeah. Yeah, we did a whole... That's like one of the only videos I have where we did a skit and it was with you. That was really funny.

Yeah, because that whole video, I'm like, you fucking idiot cop. You dumb piece of shit. Like, what the fuck were you doing? No, but I'm a bad guy. I'm with the fucking biggest UA guy on the planet making fun of this cop. But no, I'm a bootlicker. That's the internet.

Hi everyone, welcome to the Unsubscribe podcast. I'm joined today by Eli DoubleTap. Fat Electrician, Clint from Bunker Branding, Jenna from Demolition Ranch Lore, you may have seen her, and Brandon Herrera, myself, Donut Operator. Thank you for being here. This is Doug. Hi, welcome, guys.

Yeah.

We've heard from the shoe that we've been doing. People are like, can you make an extra wide shoe? As you're saying, you've got to get the molds for that. Mold for $22,000. Just anyone.

We wish we could help you all. We fucking wish we could print this much. You're a small part of the community. They're a large part of the community. Okay.

Because you're having to constantly eat all day. I can't eat that much. If you're getting that big, then how much do you have to eat? You're on a bulking diet. It's the laws of thermodynamics. Period.

Sometimes there are big people who just fucking can't help it because they're big people. J-Wolf. But he's also like 7'3". Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He can't help that. He was fucking 7'3", and he's just fucking 400 pounds.

He goes. Oh, no. Dude, they almost took over a racism app.

They tried to fucking take over my Instagram racist app, dude.

Brandon's going to hurt you.

I would hold back against Brandon. If I had to fight Brandon, I would hold back. Because you think he's weaker than you? Because I love Brandon. I'm just trying to start a feud right now.

yeah there we go that's what i want it would just be hard to train against you guys because i would i would seriously hold back like i wouldn't want to yeah you feel like you never go full force yeah yeah okay never go full force yeah then we come here we're just oh i'll grab you another white claw cody since i have to fight you next week

Did you see nothing? Oh, I accidentally opened it. No, not like that. I'm not going to fight you. You saw the fucking void, buddy. What's the void like? Black.

Shortly before that, we had done the beer mile. This was like three years ago, right? Yeah.

athletic you are how fast could you run a mile and you're like peak so the fastest i've ever done a mile is like 6 30 ish but you can continue that yeah i mean he's a big guy like going back a little bit he won the bernie beer mile which is you know your quarter mile chug a beer quarter mile chugging yeah for a mile and he fucking blew it out of the water yeah so Turns out I found my sport.

Like, I practiced with you guys that one day when the old lady came and kicked us out.

I remember that story.

It was a whole thing. Yeah, she came out there and she was fucking screaming at us.

craft brewery beers or like bush lights no like we were practicing for it ladies screamed at us we went back to matt's house we did it again yeah we did two that morning yeah and yeah so when he actually did the thing there was it was craft brewery beers right yeah it wasn't just because we were slamming like cores yeah it was just like cores like water beer basically yeah yeah and

It's nuts. What I'm pulling from this is when you die, there's just darkness. Yes, that's all I saw.

The MRF is the 21-15-9, right? No, it's a run.

It changed the history of mankind.

they also shake your hand very shittily yeah anytime you meet a doctor they gotta keep their hands soft and nice right it's anybody like but but if someone's like that if you do that handshake you should be humanized oh my I don't know, but they fucking do surgery on our hearts, I guess.

I was like, I'm sorry. Anastasia's crazy. Yeah, Nick, you just had surgery recently, right? Yeah. Your pec?

What was going under for you?

Yeah. How many surgeries have you had, Nick?

Yeah. One. I have my wisdom teeth removed. Four or five.

Her Adam's apple is bigger than mine. Yeah.

They just went in there and took it out.

Oh yeah. Holy shit.

So you said you guys have been together for 18 years now? Yeah.

I almost said I'm the oldest. I know Eli's got me.

Yeah, dude. It's, it's, it's hard teaching your kids, especially growing up. Like, like our kids are growing up just being around all this awesome shit.

Yeah. You guys don't understand how freaking cool all this stuff is that we're doing.

Perspective is big. Dude, you and I are on the same path right now. Like, dude, because I just took him to Shaw Show for the first time.

He did really good. It was like, dude. You have no idea what you're experiencing right now. Your world rocks. Right. He's close in age, right?

I grew up in a fucking trailer. Right, yeah.

Isn't that funny? That's where we come up from in this podcast. I always get shit. They're like, you got money. You can buy a truck. You can do this and this and this. You don't understand. Everyone at this podcast, every one of my friends, we all grew up very shitty.

Yeah, that was awesome hearing the first time when I went in the recruiter's office how much I'm going to be making. Dude, I get $3,000 a month. Are you? Really? I can do that? G life. And then you got fucking shot.

I'm going to stand over his bedside and be like, I need some fucking milk. Please give me some milk. In my house.

Nick, I want milk.

Connor was like, hey, we need hot dogs right now. All right, buddy.

Because raw onions are the f***ing devil, dude.

Yeah, he's alive. He came down for a moment.

Which one was your last drink? There he is. There he is. You're fucking raw onions, you fucking crazy bitch.

Hitler versus Hitler. It's like a Mortal Kombat screen. I think I told you guys about hanging out with that fucking dude that ran counter-ops in Argentina. Yeah. Place you can't go? Yeah, there's just places you can't go, but there's a lot of towns in Argentina where there are very blue-eyed, tall, blonde people. Wonder why. There are some cemeteries you just can't go to.

I'm down for it.

150 years later. Yeah. Just like Confederate flags everywhere in Brazil. That's insane.

I'm here to discover. I'm going to fight a bunch of confederates.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, man. Oh, boy. Fuck. Me and Eli are like, oh, man, Nick's trying to fuck Brandon again.

Eli, you're in the corner. Are you going to stop him? No, I'm not stopping him, dude.

I mean, something we've always appreciated about Demo is that he's the most wholesome out of all of us.

Him and Scott, man.

Oh, he's just like us. Dude, we literally learned how to run and gun. Like, with cameras, with actual firearms. Oh, shit. I forgot. The fanny pack camera shit? Oh, yeah, the ones that Demo and I carried around for a while.

Nick, fat electrician. Clint from Bunker Branding. Jenna from, what are we doing now?

Diversity Hires. One of our favorite people who works with Demo Matt. And worked with Demo Matt.

Jesus, fuck. Brandon Herrera, myself, Donut Operator. Thank you for joining us. We're going to be on the Unsubscribe After Show on Patreon.

Dude, I learned how to vlog from Matt. Like, because he carried his little fanny, his little fucking pouch around on his hip with a little point and shoot camera. And so I started doing that. And that's how I got my channel to like 600,000 subscribers, my vlog channel.

why you guys started seeing the donut fever dreams yeah the fever dreams right hey i learned all that from him just like hey you know people just kind of want to see what your daily life is and i started doing the same thing and yeah i got to almost 600 000 subscribers now because of yeah because of carrying my little camera around on my hip yeah he was the one that for his direction he was the easiest person to give direction because again he's done

Because you're... You're coming from Hollywood. You're coming from like Corridor Digital, like them having massive fucking camera equipment.

30 people on set.

Debs! Debs!

Duty to retreat.

You have a duty to retreat. You have to try and retreat even if it's available, including in your own home.

Yeah, give up the ground. Give up the ship as the flag.

Hey, you ain't got no ground.

Wait. Give me that crown. Hey, yo, bro, give me that crown real quick.

This is the most disturbing thing. I did it for the lulz, and... Stayed for the disappointment. Wait, what happened? When I put on the fake boobies.

I did look like Bob from Fight Club. Bob had bitch tits.

You sit. Yeah, I had a power nap. Yeah, you did.

I love you, Rich. Stop apologizing to me.

I'm glad.

What an idiot. No.

Fire him!

Kevin Brittingham, kurze Antwort, Runde zuerst.

Ein 200-Pound-was auch immer.

Ich frage nur, weil es fühlt sich so an, als wären es nicht viele Unternehmen oder Leute im Rundentwicklungsbereich.

Yeah, the expanded looks fucking crazy. We have 5, 5, 6, 300 blackout, and 8, that's 8, 6.

Also, um es klar zu machen, hast du die Boombox um 8.6 entwickelt? Ja. Okay.

Wenn du in eine andere Waffenfirma gehst. Kein Druck, aber dein Boss schaut.

Etwa 90. Er hat gesagt, als du dich aufgetreten bist und einen Kaffee gemacht hast, du Idiot. Wenn du nach Südafrika gekommen bist, sind deine Unternehmen in den USA? Oder wenn du in Südafrika bist, was machst du da?

Jesus fucking Christ. Yes. A coolant line burst, it cost me $10 and I parking lot at auto zone to fix it i had a coolant line burst in my volkswagen it cost six hundred dollars in two weeks to fix it yeah that's ridiculous you just even though we like we're on two radically fucking different scales with what we're doing

I saw you getting out of it today. Brendan rolled up in a diamond-encrusted Tesla today.

Du sagst immer Afrika.

Der Boombox? Ja, der Boombox. Also für jemanden, der es nicht weiß, was ist der Boombox?

Ich glaube nicht, dass du das glaubst. Das ist ein Video. Wie kann ein 80-Pounder-Mann 200 Pounder tragen? Ich meine, schau an die Anten.

Es ist Nummer zwei, wenn du Moskäden zählst. Oh ja, definitiv. Malaria. Moskäden sind Nummer eins, und dann Hippos, und dann Crocs.

Jamie, hol dir ein Video von einem Chimpanzee. Oh, ein haarloser Chimpanzee.

Die Europäer zeigen sich auf und drehen Läufe auf der Karte. This is no South Africa.

Ich würde so schnell sterben. Er isst es, kalt zu sein. Er isst es, kalt zu sein.

I'm joined today by Eli Doubletap, Mr. Kevin Burningham, Brandon Herrera, and myself, Donut Operator, also known as King Trout. It's like I can still hear his voice.

Buffalo Leute, die Leute durch Tafeln holen, auf dem Boden stompen, es war ein ganzes fucking Ding. Die Bills Mafia ist wild. Die Bills Mafia.

It's only 1,200 people. I smoke cigarettes. That was my whole thing.

That's what we were... He took advantage of it.

Du holst deine Zigarette raus und bist bereit. Ich spielte die ganze Zeit. Oh ja. In dem einen Raum, wo ich die fucking Weichklauen auf der Bühne spielte. Auf dem perfekten Comedy-Beat. Ja, das war auf Grundlage.

It was an accident. You were really upset with yourself? No, no. I don't give a shit. I'll never see these ever again in my life. Even if you do, love you. Just get after it.

I'm still paid at the end of the day. Unsubscribe Podcast is on par with Dave Chappelle.

The Pepperbox exclusive video, which you can see coming up well before this episode of the unsubscribed podcast is available. Sorry, I'm spitting everywhere. There's a zen in my lip. Not a potato chip. Not a potato chip. ...where we show off the gifts we received on the unsubscribed live tour. I may or may not have gotten a portrait of myself. Hand drawn. Hand drawn.

Where I am an officer of some sort. I think it's a super sport. A super sport officer wearing a uniform designed by... Who designed the uniforms? I believe it was Hugo Boss.

I believe it was designed... Ja, es wäre ein Mensch gewesen. Es ist wie ein High-Five, aber mit einem 45 Grad Angle. Ja, wie ein uber Mensch, wenn du willst. Indiener? Thank you for watching the unsubscribed podcast. As always, I'm joined by Eli DoubleTap. I am here with Kevin Brittingham, Brandon Herrera, and myself, Donut Operator, or King Trout, whoever you ask.

Es ist eine gute Frage. Und was passiert ist, 300 Blackout. Wir wurden gefragt.

Oh mein Gott!

Was lustig ist, es ist vermischt. Es ist vermischt mit echten Fotos, was wirklich schlecht ist.

Those are good. Cool.

Holy shit!

That's why back in.

It's over, Anakin. I have the high ground.

Keine Scheiße.

Thank you, Catherine.

I know this much.

And then it was Drillworks on every side.

Fuck.

Mr. Clint Noisy. No, you get the Windex. No, no lemon patch.

Mhm.

You just, like, save the world. Start taking the teeth back. Okay.

Hallo, mein Name ist John mit A10. Ich habe nicht gesehen, dass dieser Podcast in diese Richtung geht, wenn ich ehrlich bin. Ich möchte in den Bett mit den Indienern gehen und jetzt auf eine Radio.

Es ist ein bisschen anders.

Oh, okay.

You deborahed me and Brandon. In like T-minus two months, you fucking brownies.

Es wird alles gut sein.

Also bist du gut außerhalb von Danger Close.

The most expedited thing. Well, unless you owe them money.

Es ist lustig.

Oh, that feels way better. Thank God it's my right arm that I use for everything.

So last year that might have happened, where I'd met a National Guard First Sergeant.

Asshole. No first person is going to question you. Hey, where's your gift bag? No first person, you call. It's going to be like, you shitbag. Who, who, big? Who, Clint? It'll be like, mother fucker. Where's your gift bag? Oh, I threw it away, man. Why? Why are you asking? I don't know. Left it a while ago.

Homes deeper.

A border guard guy.

All the military people are dying.

Oh, shit. The poorest heist of valor of ever.

How much did he tell you? Right now you look like my ex-wife trying to give me a blowjob.

I'm so good. It peaked.

It was just like this and he was like, stop!

At least Obama didn't give it to me. Eli, hold on. We haven't asked this yet.

Cody, close that beautiful episode out before we do the after show.

Let's fucking go!

Say hi to Eli. Hi. He's racially ambiguous. Brandon, his hair is fucking fabulous. Donut, a dog joke disposition. And there's a fat electrician. Welcome to Unsubscribe.

And stuff like that.

Okay. I forgot.

The first time I learned about the ATF, I did a show called Narcos. He played Pablo.

Ozzy stuck the Mars freaking rover.

What? I know the ice cream story. I don't know the chocolate cake.

That's shocking to me. What did you guys film to have the reigning episode? What did you guys do the first time?

You guys see any of those fucking shots at SHOT Show at all?

Oh, yeah.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Unsubscribe Podcast. I'm joined today by Eli Doubletap, Fat Electrician, AJ Buckley, Tyler Gray, Brandon Herrera, myself, Donut Operator. Thank you so much for being here. We just drank a lot before this. No, never.

No shit.

It's the good horse gum. I can't wait to make my new rap group, Guns and Cums.

Yep. Really? Oh, shit.

Yeah, we totally didn't just film the demo leaving episode right before this. Drink six beers and do a shot about it.

Dude, I can't wait to make my new rap group, Guns N' Cum.

AJ and Tyler, what are you guys doing in town, man?

There's a little line like, steak patting.

We're like 30 seconds in.

Oh, I'm- like, my heart's going. Oh my god. Rich? Where's my heart going? That's- that's- Oh god, it's still here! Dude, that's sealed. It's in my white cloth. Oh.

The eyes of terror. Yes.

Oh, you did pick us up in it. And play Miley Cyrus in the USA.

That's a funny explanation.

So. That big bomb just sitting in the middle of the road, especially at that age.

How was your view at that time? What was your understanding at that age of what's going on? You understood there was a war going on, but was it just like, we're civilians, we're scared, we're just trying to get out of the war?

Yes, of course. Amazing stories. Brandon has given us a brief glimpses of your history and it is phenomenal. And I think that's where we start is you were, where were you when you were a kid? Where did you grow up at?

What is the Black Forest?

A town inside a forest, or is it just a city?

Gorgeous.

Yeah, boars do.

You're pushing your mom, so you're trying to, you're motivating her to do.

Our listeners get a 7-day free trial and 50% off their first month.

You're senior.

They get shot at, it's terrifying.

A little Jew colony. Yes.

At eight years old, you have no concept for what's going on.

You're just seeing stuff thrown out one day.

He slid in the DMs. She would have hated us. Yeah.

What movie did he take you to?

Head over to surfshark.com slash unsubscribe and use code unsub10 to get an additional four months of Surfshark VPN.

So this is you're going from France back to Germany during this time? Because they said they wanted to adopt you, right?

First generation, it's teaching English.

You had, Brandon told the story during war that you went, there was a bomb, you were supposed to go into a different shelter and then it got bombed or someone was saying, come in. Oh, like a house. Yeah. Come in the house. But then you didn't go in the house and then something happened to the house. Oh, the back of my house got bombed.

Because you were at six years old at this time?

A good economy.

And then what time did you separate from your parents? Eight or nine is when they separated you from and moved you to France from your parents?

It was a Volkswagen. Parade.

But still at eight, that's wild.

Oh, so he was told, hey, you have to do that. Now, when he surrendered for the town, you said, right?

So they were just, that would be terrifying. So it's just like go across the river on a boat and then just hope they don't shoot you? Yeah. Yeah. That's wild.

You saved up.

That would be wild if you've never seen it. You're like, what the fuck? Tell that to Netflix. So what age was it when you decided to move? You moved at 18 to America, but what made you to decide to do that?

Yeah. Gotcha. So both. And did he bring you stateside together? Did you move to America together?

I take my nine-year-old to the bus because I don't think he can make it. And that's two blocks away.

Omar was an attractive young lady.

CQ is when you're on guard. CQ, you're on duty.

I'm taken. Hung up. I know that was Eric. That German accent I know from anywhere.

I have a child.

Her excuse is, I was a teaser. I love it.

He was very cheerless. I'm like, And then you moved back to the United States after that? How long did you live in Germany?

You're not texting anyone. It's a snail mail. It's literally like, I'm here. That's it. I'll wait.

This is 1940-ish or?

Oh, you're good, girl. You're good.

Anything. Thank you. Look at this baby nap machine.

How about that? One of the 25 on that half of the country. That would be so crazy because if you've never seen that.

Good news.

Yeah, that's tropical heat. That's that humid, humid, humid.

Ship it? Like, transported?

Okay, yeah, transported to Germany.

Because this is underground. This is no light. It's just pitch black if that door is closed.

This old chubby Brandon. He's a little fat kid.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wait, no, that's Brandon.

I can't believe I almost got shade for that. You did not leave a memory.

It feels so weird being on this side. I usually sit there every time.

And he just snuck in in the middle of the night? And thankfully, was it the smell that woke you up?

But you look great for your age. That would have been terrifying, especially when you're 8 to 10 years old at that time.

And you'd go down there. So it was the evening. So during the day you would be up and then going home.

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Like, Brandon, you dumbass. God, you're so stupid. Just hold on. Cody, he is fucked.

So get 20% off plus free shipping using code on some at manscaped.com. The summer sun is to stay, so trust Manscaped to keep those pubes at bay.

I would love to talk to this guy. Yeah.

Yeah, people.

Dude, I know.

Oh, 100%. They're like, what was that? Shh.

What?

Iraq.

and come jokes live at c-pack e4 mafia's back undefeated and the last thing that goes through your head before you die i was just really disappointed i was like i'm dead they're twist off this is gonna be like a biblical tale we cut mark in half we share him i call this a dick no don't cut him that way eli say hi to eli

I mean, name. He was just saying. Introduce yourself. Oh, sorry. Come on.

Sorry. Yeah. Random seal just showed up. Mark. Mark. Nice to meet you, Mark. He said not to say my last name. But everybody's name is Mark. So my last name shortened is Coach. So that's what people know me as, Coach.

Yeah, Mark, what are you writing your book, dude? Yeah, that ain't ever going to happen.

Yeah, it's like you almost have to create a writing, get through buds these days, you know. It's an elective. Oh my god. That's part of Hell Week.

Knuckle dragon. You're struggling with a haiku. Knuckle dragon frog man here. No, that ain't going to happen.

At least I knew what it was.

That's back using vacuum tubes and shit.

Mark.

What's up down there?

My background. Well, sure.

Navy SEALs, this is one thing that's like, you didn't know what they were. Nobody knew what a SEAL was in 1984. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't out there.

Yeah, nobody knew what the hell was going on.

Go ahead. It goes back, the Tudor company and Frogmen go back way back, right? So one of our guys, we were looking for a squadron watch, and he had a connection through his father, who was a watchmaker or whatever. I don't know the whole story on that, but... So they made a deal with Tudor, and they made squadron watches for us. And mine says it's in gold because I was gold squadron.

The red guys are in red. The blue guys are in blue. Silver and silver.

You're like, fuck. Yeah, it's still a little different. There's something else that's, I don't know.

There's probably, oh, these with the gold one on it? Yeah, with the gold Pelagos? With the gold Pelagos, there's probably 100, 150, maybe. Yeah, ever. Maybe.

It goes even worse than that because the serial number on this one, It's attached to my name. So if this shows up on the black market some or gray market Tudor will be like what the hell cuz I can't sell it Okay, give it away you so you're not allowed to sell it period. Nope. Oh, no shit. No, I can't sell this That's kind of cool.

I mean, some guns. Do you have a unique thing that you can't give away? Can't give it away? I suppose my kids could inherit it and whatever, but I'll probably just, you know, will it back to the team and give it to, you know, another guy.

Yeah, if you don't live in California.

Yeah, we can say the number now. When I was there, you didn't say the number.

Yeah, he was like two years after me he showed up. I think he was Green Team 97 or 98. Oh, Green Team 95. Yeah, dude.

And I think I'm aging better than him anyway.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got to do that in BUDS, actually. We were obstacle loading. And so you've got obstacles. We're doing the whole UDT thing where you, you know, put bombs on underwater obstacles. And, you know, we still do it because it's... Yeah, like, for example, Russian pipelines and things. Well, I'm not going to expand on that. That's crazy.

No, but I got down there, and you've got to tie in your explosives to the trunk line so they all go up at the same time. And I'm down there tying the knot, and there's all this surge. And I'm holding on, thinking that you start chicken necking you. And then I just didn't have to breathe anymore. I'm like, wow, that's kind of cool. And it's like everything is relaxed.

And I'm like, wait, something's wrong here. But now your brain is starting to shut down. So I was like, what's wrong? I'm not sure. Holy crap. So I'm sitting there thinking about it. And I blew some bubbles. And they went up, so I kicked up. And the next thing I know, I was... on the surface, I passed out on the way up, but I was buoyant.

Oh, I was a latchkey kid, uh, you know, uh, Pismo beach, California, you know, aware of that place. Uh, it's a really nice town now back in the seventies. It was, it was kind of much smaller. We grew up poor up, you know, in a bunk house, you know, me and my four brothers. And, um, you know,

just goofing off and running around, jumping off of things and just doing stupid , you know, climbing the hill and sliding down on fucking cardboard and just... Be a boy. I'm just amazed that my brothers and I made it out of childhood with sight in both eyes and all our fingers attached.

Well, I mean, I joined the Navy.

Yeah, I joined the Navy because I just, both my folks were high school teachers and like, you're going to go to college. Of course, we don't have any money, but you're going to go to college. So I'm like, well, I'll figure it out. So I joined the Navy to get money for college. Had no idea, you know, what the hell I was doing. I get to boot camp, and it's so fucking easy. It was just stupid easy.

I'm like, what the hell?

84 boot camp, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's easy.

So I just, I was like, what else you got? I'm like, well, I got this UDT SEAL thing. I'm like, what the hell's that? Well, I get to jump out airplanes, shoot things, and blow shit up. I'm like, cool, sign me up. So I was just doing it for the challenge, basically, and I didn't really know what a SEAL was until I was one. I was like, wow, that's what we do.

Pardon my ignorance, but how long had the SEAL program been around before that? 62 is when they started it up.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, you know, I mean what the hell I mean, well, yeah I was what 19, you know, it was 21 went through buds. So Yeah, I was you know, you're young and dumb and just figuring shit out How many years did it take you started at your like what seal team?

Yeah, so I start off at seal team 5 and I was there for five years. Did four deployments in five years. And this is pre-war. I was just getting after it. I wanted to be out there if something happened. I wanted to get in a fight. And that didn't... Well, I mean, I had a couple shaves, close calls. But I worked for Ronald Reagan. So, you know... Jesus Christ.

Well, there's a little more to it, but yeah. There's always a little more to it. Still don't want to, you know.

Oh, worst day at Bud's. Yeah. I would have been probably Wednesday or Thursday night when all my toenails fell off. Jesus. Yeah. Well, so the breakout is on Sunday night.

Yeah. They turned black. Jesus Christ.

Well, I lost my socks the first night, okay, at the Steel Pier. And I didn't get a new pair of socks until Wednesday. And so when I pulled off my socks on, I think it was Thursday, toenails came with them. Well, not all of them. I had to pull a couple off. They were hanging. Oh, yeah, that's not too bad.

That was a long time ago, man. I mean, what the hell? I only had two more days left. It's like, you know. The fuck else can you do? Yeah. I mean, Jesus.

Well, and then the same time we have these health and, you know, they look and make sure you're not, you know, nursing anything or that you got, you know, open sores or whatever. So you strip down naked and they, you know, look you over. And I had this huge blister. They're twist off.

Yeah, that's my new gig. I'm the director. New gig? How new? I moved there in October. From? From San Diego to Tennessee. What were you doing in San Diego? Well, for the last 13 years, I was a contract buds instructor teaching firearms, weapons.

He was like, yeah, it was like 1,000. 5,000 a week is what we were shooting at Damn Neck pretty much. And that was pretty much year round. 5,000 a night? A week. A week. A week. Oh, oh, oh. That makes it better. What the fuck? Yeah, we can't hear you down here. Sorry. 5,000 a week.

Oh, yeah. They tested us once, and then we asked what the results were, and they're like, I think we need to recalibrate the machines. So they just, yeah. They just gave you chemo? Yeah. I used to have a really thick head of hair.

I don't know.

What do we know, Mark? What do we know? I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing until I'm done. You know, the hell. What was your favorite platform?

The one I was most excited to start training with was the MP5, just because it was the coolest thing going. And we did for years. That was any self-respecting counter-terrorist unit in the world after Princess Gate happened. With H&K up front and center, that's what you had. So that was probably the most fun. But honestly, M4.

You know, the shorty version of the M4, that's like the most practical thing. It's more effective. You know, MP5s get out to 50, maybe 100 yards. And yeah. When did you get out? I retired in 2010.

That was just kind of starting to come in. Oh, geez. We were looking at it when I was at Warcom in like 06, 05. They were, you know, trying to figure out. They were doing the 6.8 SPC, you know, thing. Oh, it's whatever. Kevin's a friend. Kevin. Owner of Q. 300 blackout dude that created that.

300 blackout is an awesome freaking round. But it's specifically for a short gun. And to be subsonic. Because 5.56 subsonic sucks. Yeah. And it's stupid. You know what I mean? Shooting a .22 at somebody at that point, right?

It is out of a 22 inch or a 20 inch tube.

But as you cut that barrel down, it gets, it goes a little slower and then it doesn't yaw as fast. Plus they put a tighter twist to make it more accurate. The original has a one in 12. So that thing's barely stable. So as soon as it hit flesh, it turns over and it does just amazing things to flesh.

He scared me.

Oh, being a solter on gold team was that was like, that's the pinnacle. You know, we get We did three months in Afghanistan with a second group over there, and we're still trying to figure things out. Going after Elvis sightings is where we started calling him because, hey, he might be here and whatever. Elvis wasn't in the building.

And even if I speak louder into this thing, you're not going to hear anymore.

Yeah, just looking for the man. And he wasn't around.

I mean, we were still going in hot, you know, still going, you know, as if something was there, even on, you know, you don't know it's a dry target until you check it out. And the last mission, I got injured. They advertised, TF-160 advertised a 20-foot fast rope. I'm like, cool.

And I was like the last guy out and I'm looking down and there's, it's 110 foot fast rope and there's maybe 10 feet of it on the deck. I was like, well, that's a little more, but because it was, they advertised a short one, I had my little shooter gloves on, I didn't have my fast rope gloves on. So I went zipping down that thing. As I'm looking out, I was like the last guy off the plane.

I'm looking around, I go, this doesn't look like the pictures, you know? And we were on the wrong target. Anyway, so I zip down there and I hit. And you kind of push the rope away and go to grab your gun. And I step back when I did that. Well, I thought I was in the middle of this building. I was actually, my heels were on the edge. And when I step back, I step back into nothing.

Yeah, you know, on nods, and just, so I fall back, and the last thing that goes through your head before you die, I was just really disappointed. I was like, fuck, I'm dead, as I fell, you know? And then I start hitting you, boom, boom, boom, and then you stop falling, you know, you come to a stop, and you're like, fuck, I'm not dead.

And then you got to figure out, all right, what the f*** is going on here? And there's this animal in this pen made of sticks that's like going nuts. I'm like, this cow's going to come out here and stomp me to death. So no time to wait for the backboard. So I did a quick systems check.

Yeah.

It turned out they were goats. Holy shit, thank God. Thank God it's an American. Yeah. I got my shit back together. My back was hurt and my leg was f***ed up. My nods tried to poke my eyes out. But I had clear eye pro underneath. That's the only reason I've got eyes to see you with right now. Because it would have just knocked me out. So I pick myself up and I can't move real good.

My back's f***ed up. pinching me but uh you know one of the guys told me later uh they when they saw me go off the edge they looked down when i hit my uh camelback it was full of water it burst so they see me laying there in a spreading pool of black liquid going well okay coach is dead how the we got this building yeah

jesus so i got my comms back on i'm like oh yeah i'm not dead uh and i just kind of found a place where i could see them on the roof and kind of de-conflict how far was the drop uh it was two stories i hit the the top of the second story or uh off the off the second story i hit the edge of the um first story the top of the animal pen as i hit and kind of spun me around and

landed me in the uh in the yard there's no depth perception like oh yeah i mean it wouldn't matter to that point i mean i stepped backwards into nothing but so frogman luck right if i'd gone off two sides it was i would have landed on the on the next deck down where i fell was two and then that side over there was a hundred feet before it would have touched anything so i really would have been dead uh had it been just 90 degrees off

It might have. You've got body armor on, you've got a helmet. I crash-tested the helmet. That's a word? Yeah. And then I had this big meatball on my shin, a big hematoma that came up. So when the sun came up, they medevaced me and one other guy who fell off another roof. It was a shit show.

Yeah. Yeah, but he fell on the one story and just fell on his back. Yeah.

I finished out, yeah. And then, you know, in the morning, Hilo came in and, you know, I couldn't do, you know, dynamic clearance, obviously, but I found a useful job, you know, watching a... Pulling security. Yeah.

10 and 2. I'm good. I'm good. Yeah. I got you. Because I told him I can't move. I'm just going to stand here. Because I wasn't really mobile at that point. Professional mag dumper.

Yeah, yeah, watch out. I own this, right? Yeah, so they medevaced me and went to the hospital, and they kept me for a couple of days, and they wanted to operate. And I was like, we're going home in a couple of days. Fuck this. I'll just wait until I get home. And so I got surgery. When everybody else went home, We landed and I went to the hospital to get my leg worked on. Jesus.

And then my shoulder was jacked up. I couldn't... It was just impinged because, you know, in the fall, whatever, slap tear and some other stuff. And... When we got back, we found out we're going to be the guys that invade Iraq. I'm like, I'm not going under the knife now. I ain't missing that. So they shot me with the... Cortisone? Yeah, Cortisone. Yeah, whatever, Cortisone.

And it was like, it didn't hurt. I just couldn't get my arm higher than this. And then they shot that, and I was like...

it's not supposed to do that but i can do it anyways so we trained up for a couple of months and they gave me another shot on the way uh you know out and said that's the two you get when you get home we got to do surgery so that was the um you know so i got to go you know invade iraq which was cool

Those loose change guys got something there, huh?

do you have like two minutes I know you're super busy he came in like fucking took us on a whole tour and everything it's just rad because did you get to watch that switch too from like full war where I guarantee they were like here do whatever you want and you're like the longer you're in a situation just it's like you know the frog in the boiling water right it's like the ROEs change just a little bit and they creep up on you and next thing you know you can't do shit unless you're calling up you know hey can I shoot this guy that he shot at me you know

And then the bad guys, they learn this stuff. You know, they take a couple shots, they drop their gun, and, you know, they're standing in a field. You can't shoot them.

Yeah, well, when we did the Jessica Lynch raid. You were on that, too? Yeah. Yeah.

No, he'd been around for a little while. But, you know, this was 2003. So, yeah, he'd been around for a few years. But, yeah. Yeah, what they did is they basically changed the ROEs for Anazaria.

So all these guys that were running around thinking that they were good to go, all of a sudden the snipers along the river just were smoking military-age males like it was, you know, first day of hunting season. Because these guys had no idea. Like, oh, yeah, I'm too far away. I can't, you know, ha, ha, ha. And then, you know. Ha, ha, ha.

All right. I know one guy got 30. Really? Oh, yeah. It's like they didn't get on the phone and talk to each other. Oh, man. Yeah. Keep your head down. Smoking them. So that caused... They had a little fight there at the bridge. And so when we went in, we coordinated the assault that the Marines were doing on the bridge with our takedown of the hospital. And we found the... There was like...

300 of the Saddam Fidein jackasses that were using the basement of that hospital as their... That's where they planned everything. They knew it wouldn't get bombed because it's a hospital. So they were in the basement doing all that shit. And they went to go fight the Marines at the bridge. And we came in. No one was home. And, you know, went. We landed. Did a little run around.

I mean, we had some intel on the place.

There was supposedly a million of them, a million Iranian helmets there, you know, all baked into the monument. The two f***ing weird sabers? Yeah. They were both Saddam's hand, apparently, or I don't know.

Well... That tracks.

Well, and so I wasn't on this, but our guys hit either Uday or Kuse's house, and he had a big, big video collection, right? And he had this one shelf that was like favorites, and one of his favorite movie was Navy Seals, baby, with Charlie Sheen. Really? Yeah. I got a picture of Rosie holding up going, you know.

I'm sure there wasn't any alcohol involved. That is the definition of... Zero.

I don't know what that is, dude. He used to be a prime minister or something.

Yeah.

I'm watching it. I've seen it comes in. It looks like it's making a good landing, and all of a sudden it just kind of flips. I mean, it looks like it's going a little fast. Maybe. In my unexpert opinion.

His hair is so nice.

What are we at? No idea. I want to say 11.29, 11.30. 15 minutes? Yeah, sure. It's too easy, dog. Too easy. Dude, this is...

Yeah.

Freedom thing?

Crazy concept. The country was kind of built on it. I don't know, it's just... You know, is that political?

Yeah, what they drank, though. I've seen that bill, yeah.

Blair Witch Project.

No, no, no. Punchbowl. Yeah, punchbowl. Yeah, punchbowl.

I would quit. Do a piece of it every like hour as you go along.

I'm formally accepting. Oh, beautiful. I'll be there.

Where can we find you, Mr. Mark? Yeah, I'm in Smith & Wesson now. I'm the director of the academy, but I got to build it first. So maybe next year. Yo, hit us up. Oh, hell yeah.

Both. I might yell. I don't know.

War, man. Like, war can happen. Nuclear weapons are less disastrous than socialism.

How's it going, enemy? Yeah. No, but it's true. It's true. The odds of you being quoted correctly in context are absolute nil. And so, yeah, it was a big lesson for me, though, that it's like, look, social media is a powerful tool to be able to talk directly to people on what you mean, why you mean it. And what's crazy is that I probably have, compared to my colleagues at this point,

Thousands of hours of like me saying exactly what I think. And so it's almost like they don't even bother trying to clip it now because there's just so much. Brandon, you look like a man that loves the stonks.

It'd be weirder if you weren't. Wow! What are you talking about? What a cool, fun fact.

Well, now I'm waiting for him to break into a five-minute explanation of my life. Funny enough, Nick Freitas. Today we're talking about... I'll tell you what I'm going to talk about.

I think the whole reason I'm here is I contacted you on Instagram and I sent him a message. I said, dude, if we could get just a couple of yours with a few less F-bombs, I would use it for my homeschool curriculum. Do you have another channel for that, right?

That could be good. I'm just telling you right now. The first video I ever saw of yours was talking about the naval strikes against Iran.

Well, the schools are giving the kids communist propaganda. I don't see why they shouldn't get American one. This is true.

Exactly.

All the other ones just wouldn't exist.

Oh, yeah. That was one of our primary reasons for homeschooling is I wanted my kids to have a healthy disdain for Karl Marx and mission accomplished. Nice. They love Jesus and hate Marx. Like, yes. That's parenting W. That's my favorite.

All right.

1994 to early 2000s. We were there at the same time. Yeah. Wow.

Oh, no, not math. I hate math. It was a fiery passion. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, yeah. Math or excuse me, history, theology, philosophy. Like, I like that stuff. And again, it's a lot of it's more like the practical component. But no, that math was the thing that my wife and I both like subbed out to like the co-op. It was as soon as one. And here was the other thing, too.

Like, I remember my oldest daughter. She's like sophomore year of high school. And she's doing algebra too. And she is hating life. And I totally get this because I hated algebra too. It's freaking stop putting letters in my freaking math. I hated it. You're going to need it one day. No, no, no. She's sitting in there. She's just so stressed out.

I finally looked at her and I'm like, sweetheart, what do you want to do? And she starts to listen off. Well, you know, dad, I'm thinking about these various things. I'm like, you know what? None of those require algebra too. So you know what? This is done now. And you're a sophomore in high school. We're going to now direct your curriculum toward the things you want to do.

And we always told our kids like right off the bat, a couple of things was one. I don't owe you a college education. You want to go to college, you get a good opportunity. I'm not saying I won't help, but I don't owe you that. And you're not going to have that attitude. And there's two things. Dreams are a wonderful thing, but they don't feed you. I said, so you've got to do one of two things.

You've either got to find a dream that feeds you or you've got to find a career that allows you to pursue your dream. But your dreams are yours. They're nobody else's. They're not the government's responsibility. They're not my responsibility. They're not society's responsibility. They're yours.

Apparently there's some, yeah. But, you know, so they had that mindset. And it was great because you could just adjust curriculum on the fly. You could do things. And, yeah, I mean –

OK, so homeschool co-op is generally what happens is you get a bunch of parents together and they realize that, OK, hey, like so, for instance, the kids at our homeschool co-op for a while, they got taught civics by me because I was a legislator. So I'm the one going in there and teaching them about like American government and civics and how it actually works.

And they were not getting the schoolhouse rock version because the real version is like, I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill, but I pissed off someone on appropriations. And so now I'm going to get sent to a subcommittee where I'm going to die. Like they got the real version of it. But that's what it was.

But that's what it was is you had different parents with different like either educational backgrounds or life experience and they would come in and they would just, they would teach stuff they were passionate about. Today we are teaching math, okay? Everyone get out here. It was, yeah. Hey, look, I cheered the US math team when we won. Doesn't matter that we're all trying to use it.

The point is, right? We import the best of everything, baby. All right. So.

So anyways, parents will sign up and you say, okay, I want this class. I want that class. Like in ours, it was one day a week. And they would come in. It was $25 per month for your kid to come in. And I taught economics. I taught civics and I taught like Christian apologetics. And so you come in, that's what we did. And then the rest of the week, you know, they're with their parents.

So that's like one model of a co-op. Some do two days a week, whatever. But that's the nice part is it's free market. Like I would tell the parents, I'm like, look, this, in fact, when I was teaching him apologetics, which was largely debate, I said, I'm gonna tell you right now, there's going to be days where your kids might come home in tears.

Because I'm going to play the antagonist and they're going to have to defend what they believe and they're going to have to do so much. Yeah, but you didn't have to hit them. Well, you know what? Look, how hard is it to make a correct sandwich? Anyway, the point is... The point is, so they would get in and debate. But here's the funny part is because it's not a government school model.

Parents are coming in and I'm like, look, you don't got to take my class, but this is how I teach it. This is the curriculum. This is what I do. And parents would be like, can we watch? Like it wasn't, they weren't like, oh, my poor baby. They were like, can we watch you?

Can I watch? And that's good parenting too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the great part about it was is that, I mean, and we had to, again, the students loved it because it was, it wasn't no participation trophies, right? You show up with a good argument, you win. You show up with a bad argument, I make you feel bad about yourself, right?

And then I teach you how to make a better argument so you can feel good about yourself, right? Because winning is great and losing sucks. You learn from losing. You do. Mm-hmm. You do. And it's not like we were being cruel.

We weren't being cruel. But that was the sort of thing. So a parent would sign up. They'd pay their tuition. And you'd teach. And they'd go home. And they'd help. But that's what it was. It was great. And so I didn't have to worry about parents coming in. I'm like, well, Mr. Freitas, I'm really concerned about why I told you what this was. If you don't like it, your kid doesn't have to be here.

But I never had a problem.

Yeah. Holy crap.

You've got a lot of Muslim Brotherhood and Hama.

No, but that's true. Like, you can adjust your curriculum based off of your students' interests and what works, and it's awesome.

Yes.

Stopbox! Stopbox. Well, yeah, our public school system, and I call it a government school system because that's what it is. Yep. The thing I like to tell people because people always look at me like, well, you know, I said, look, do you like state-run media? Do you think we should have state-run media? No, of course not. I'm like, okay, now do the same for education.

You don't like state-run media because it's the government controlling the flow of information to its citizenry and not being able to hold it accountable. What do you think happens with government-run education?

Yeah. I remember still taking, like, typing. I remember playing Oregon Trail when it first came out on the old Apple.

Dysentery. Every time.

So it started off that I came across the Ken Burns Civil War documentary when I was like 11 and just became obsessed, dude. Oh, I did the reenacting. I was like, this is awesome. I'm going to go play with black powder and bayonets.

Oh, God. It's so much fun, man. It is absolute blast. And then going out to – moving from – I don't know if you know this. California, not a lot of Civil War history, it turns out. But Virginia, like you can't walk five feet without running into another historical marker. Like I have the district that has the largest cavalry battle in the Western Hemisphere, Brandy Station. And so like I just –

Yeah, so that was the entry point. And then it went into American Revolutionary War history. Then, uh, the old world at war documentary series was just awesome. And then, uh, got into more of the ancient history as well. So like Roman, uh, history, Alexander, Persia.

Like I love Roman history because I'm a dude, but, um, But now it's starting to move into Holy Roman Empire and the whole deal. So I love it all.

Proportional means something else in American vernacular. I got a proportion for you.

I did for a while.

Yeah, no, it's, No, that was great. And then again, you got me interested in history I never would have thought I was interested in, like the history of Waffle House. I just thought it was the most delicious breakfast at 2 o'clock in the morning in Fort Bragg.

colluding with fema yeah so a good buddy of mine a good buddy of mine is like number three at fema and i saw the video i'm like hey cameron is this he's like dude yeah he's a former seal and he's kind of running the place now and like great dude so your video has made it to the upper echelons of fema nick's gonna disappear yeah

Confederate cocaine water. This is true. By the way, speaking of cocaine, I've been enjoying one of these echelons. I didn't realize that the active ingredient was meth.

Freedom. That's why I drink it. It's too cool for Canada.

In all fairness, though, given the Canadians' history with war crimes, I don't need them committing war crimes even faster than they normally do.

You know what I mean?

I had a buddy of mine, Jason Ballard. He actually represents the area with Virginia Tech. But he was trying to make it. We have really, really strict ABC alcohol laws in Virginia.

No, it sucks. I carried a bill once to get rid of ABC. That didn't go very far. You just want to start off at D or what? Jason Ballard actually shows up to a subcommittee meeting with Moonshine for a bill that was making it legal to make so much of your own Moonshine for your own consumption.

And, uh, and, and he's a, I think he's a Lieutenant Colonel in the guard, but, uh, I was like, that was the best subcommittee testimony I've ever seen.

I don't, Ooh, I don't think so. I don't think possession of a still is a crime.

Okay.

We have a, uh, we have a distillery in Culpeper, Virginia. And one of the things about Culpeper is we have the first Gadsden flag. The liberty or death Gadsden flag. So we have a distillery there called Belmont. And you go in there and great people. I remember talking to him like, hey, man, how long have you been moonshining? He goes, legally for 25 years now.

They still have a Prohibition-era copper still at Belmont Distillery in Culpeper, Virginia.

Yeah. Do you remember watching the movie? Do you ever see the movie Lawless? I think that's, yeah. That was Franklin County, Virginia. In fact, my seatmate in the General Assembly represents Franklin. No shit. And so we did this thing for a while called the Hall Crawl.

So when we had crossover, which was when all the House bills got to go to the Senate, Senate bills go to the House, I started doing this thing where it was, okay, each office had to bring a drink. like there was representative of their district and an, and a, like a appetizer.

And so I did smoked old fashions with bacon and I brought in a girl, like I made bacon in the general assembly building and he brought in moonshine. I was like, Oh yeah, that's Franklin baby. That is Franklin. And so he had an assortment of moonshine. And by the way, none of this actually happened. This is theoretically.

So Mr. Nick, you, you flew in from, I've learned from Virginia. Yeah. So I live in a cold pepper, Virginia, which is about 70 miles outside of DC. So it's like close enough for the airport, but outside of blast radius, which is what I was going for. So perfect. Yeah. I said, they're kind of quasi hoping, but you get front seat tickets. Yeah. Like, Oh no, that's horrible.

I just announced I'm not running for reelection so I can give you all the dirt now.

It was all legal. It was all legal and perfectly number 73.

crazy idea this is only making a mass appeal to us actually gives you adhd all right now watch did you have it before you do now it's that water that's water this is water this is water i grabbed a water bottle nice try the rice tribe yeah wait a minute although okay are any of you old enough to remember when they're a time before bottled water No.

I remember when there was... It was a crazy concept when it first came out. I remember when I first saw bottled water coming out. What idiot is going to buy bottled water?

We can sell you bottled water.

What are the notes? This is not like, I'm not, I don't notes of, I don't like it. No, you're not. Okay.

I was just going to say, well, I changed the entire plate. That's great. This is the winery. I'm getting notes of this sucks. This is a bourbon aged this size. Wow. Did you guys ever watch Parks and Rec? Yeah. Where Aubrey Plaza's character is like signing up to be a sommelier and she's like, oh, I had notes of like, you know, Raven's foot. Making words. That's me at the winery.

He's like, I don't know.

And all of our country's problems are solved. Wait, honey, give me five more minutes.

Through the cameraman. It was crazy. Yeah. Cameraman's fine because obviously.

It's not guarded right now. It's still the only things worth saving.

These are the little ones. I'm like, why are we buying all this heavy ceramic crap? What the fuck?

Can you imagine how terrifying that would be? You kicking a door, flashbang the room. You shut up. There's some guy covered in gummy bears shooting you.

Carbo, the company that makes the gummy bears. I'll never – when I was still in the 82nd, we had a commander that he wanted to do – he wanted to demonstrate to all the guys like kind of the ballistics impact of everything that – basically, what can you hide behind? And so he did like sandbags. He did concrete walls. He did like reinforced concrete walls, wood, like everything.

Everything you can kind of imagine, just shot stuff through all of it, like your flak vest. And it was crazy how – Well, first of all, it ruined any movie you've ever seen because now whenever they're like, oh, I'm going to hide behind this car. The fuck you are. I hope it's the engine block because I got bad news, Hoss. But yeah, sandbags were the things that really held up the best.

I mean, and it makes sense when you start to understand ballistics, but gummy bears. Wow. Who knew?

No, I mean, but they can also absorb. I mean, they can, I mean, that's the whole concept with the sandbags is like they're absorbing it instead of just like rigid. It's like water. If you froze the gummy bear, it'd probably go through them a lot faster.

I've seen jaws. I know it works. Yeah.

That's the only way we were able to... That's the part that blows my mind.

Uh,

It's like a blender. I got to be honest. I am imagining you like standing like at CVS to go pick up something and looking at this big ass gummy bear going, we should shoot those.

No, no, no.

No, no, that's exactly what happened. My drill sergeant just looked at me and said, you son, you son are a warrior. Yeah, like, no, that's not at all how it happened.

Yeah, same. We should ask Sean Ryan. He would know.

That scares me more. It probably tastes better. Who was the guy that was like 600, 6,000 calories? It's not enough. That's not enough. It needs stuff.

Five pound gummy bear in Vancouver airport over 12,000 calories. That's on Reddit though. Who knows? I don't trust anything on Reddit.

there was actually a lot of people making it through 18 x-ray at the height of the war because even though one of our principles is you can't mass produce soft apparently they wanted to test that during the height of the war period but no no i was um I went to infantry basic training, then airborne, then 82nd Airborne Division.

Well, they don't want them productive. They want them fat.

Like 90% of the entire Canadian population.

I think it's 90% of the entire Canadian population lives like maybe- 60 miles from the US border.

It's cool to be a little hippie when you've got a Kevlar of dare in the world. Yeah, when Trump kept talking about, like, we're going to make Canada the 51st state, I'm like, I'll take Alberta. I'll take Manitoba. But I don't want Quebec. Canada doesn't want Quebec.

No.

I want the Texas of Canada.

I was actually going to get out at the 82nd because it was peacetime army. What year was that? That was 90 – well, 2001 is when I reenlisted. So the crazy part was I looked at my wife, and I had reenlisted. I was in the 82nd Airborne, 2nd of the 325th.

I just, I think it's ironic. I think it's ironic. I like, I like, I like getting lectured. I like getting lectured on oppression by people that are driving around vehicles that require, you know, a 14 year old to be dumping into an artisanal mine and, you know, fricking DRC to grab their stuff for it.

Okay, so alternative theory. I do think that there's some people that are just ignorant and scared of it. I think there's other people that they want the issue. They don't want green energy. They want communism. And that's why they oppose nuclear, because nuclear would be the cleanest, most efficient, most effective, cheapest long-term, there's no question.

You start looking at things like small modular reactors and stuff like that, there's no question that's the future. But then, gosh, what do you do if you can't sell centralized planning of the economy because we're saving the globe?

Well, it's like the number of the number of oil petroleum based products that you need to actually keep that thing in operation. Yeah. That doesn't grease itself.

In Virginia, they passed the Clean Economy Act. which basically gives them an excuse to clear-cut forests and carve up farmland to put up industrial solar fields. But then they have the offshore wind piece. And the reason why they can get this through, because all of a sudden we have the big energy companies going in like, oh, yeah, we'd love to do the offshore wind. Why?

I had, um, I just graduated ranger school and I came back and I said, all right, it's time to reenlist, but I'm going to go over to first battalion because they were going to Kosovo. And that was the closest thing to a war going on. And so, um, I got it all approved because, you know, when your first enlistment, they let you go kind of anywhere.

Because they're guaranteed 10% profit on construction. Anybody want to guess on how expensive it is to build offshore wind off of Virginia Beach? Uncomple.

And then my Sergeant major brings me and he goes, you're not going one battalion over. Sorry, major, what are you talking about? He's like, we've sent you to all these schools and stuff like that. You're not going one battalion. I don't care what you do, but you're not going one battalion over. So I was pissed. I came home and told my wife, Tina. I was like, babe, I'm getting out.

literal acts of god to bring that thing to its fucking knees and it still turned out pretty okay yeah even then it's not like all of japan like chernobyl chernobyl was communism chernobyl was communism like this is what happens when you put commies in charge of anything to be fair japan had some nuclear resistance built in

Like, here's what I challenge people to do. Look at a picture of Hiroshima in 1945 and Detroit in 1945 and Hiroshima today and Detroit today. And what do you end up learning? Like, Nuclear weapons are less disastrous than socialism. That's what you end up learning.

Like, screw this. She goes, well, what are we going to do? I said, my dad was LAPD. I'm like, I'm going to go LAPD. And she goes, baby, we haven't saved up any money. This wasn't part of the plan. Why don't we do one more enlistment because they'll let you go wherever you want. I said, okay, you want to go to Italy or Hawaii? She goes, Hawaii. get to Hawaii four months later, 9-11.

Yeah.

You've been able to visit it for a long time. Like Ground Zero. The other thing, too, and this is the part where I get in fights with people about this, because it's like, yeah, look, I don't like civilian casualties. I don't like when innocent people die. But I also understand. Hot takes only. But I also understand.

I also understand that if you look at the projected casualty list for invading the Japanese main islands, and if you look at what the Japanese plan was for defending the main islands, they were going to give bamboo spears to 14-year-old girls. They were ready to fight to death. You don't. Billions of casualties. We talked about it on the podcast.

1.2 million.

What's the worst that can happen? I know what I'm doing for the next 10 years. And that's when I, so I volunteered for SF out of the 25th and yeah, went to first group.

It happened a couple times. There was that one guy on some isolated island. He still speaks to graduates of Japanese... I don't know what their military academy or their officer corps school is, but talking about loyalty and Bushido. Look, I was willing to put up with a lot more rules of engagement

When I was in, now that my son's going through infantry basic training and I do a reevaluation of a lot of the stupid stuff that we've gotten into, I'm a lot more, no, just drop the bomb.

So I didn't push the military with my kids. Because you love them? Oh, God. But no, my son, I thought he was going to go. He likes welding. Again, another cool thing about it. homeschooling. We did a blacksmithing class and he fell in love with it. So we had a little forge and stuff like that. It was awesome. So you could teach them practical skills. Yes.

And he was like, I want to learn how to weld. I want to do this other stuff. So I figured like, okay, if he's going to go in the military, he's probably going to go into a field that's going to put him in that range. Yeah. And then he's like, yeah, dad, I want to go infantry. I want to go airborne. And then he was talking about the 18 x-ray side.

I was like, hey, bud, why don't, how about you do RASP, right? Like ranger assessment. How about you do that? I said, it's a four-year enlistment, not a six-year enlistment. I said, if you want to go to selection, they can't stop you. You can go to selection. It's one of the few things that military you can go to if you want to go to it and they can't stop you. And he was okay.

So, yeah, he's an infantry basic. He'll go to airborne after that. He'll go to raspberry after that. And he put the hand up before the election. And, yeah, his mother and I both were like – he's like, Dad, I prayed about it. This is where I feel like I'm being led to go. I'm like, all right, son, you got to do what you got to do, right? You're a man. But I was definitely –

yeah it is it is a different thing like i i won't when he was sitting there at 30th ag waiting to go off to infantry basic at sand hill and he sends us the picture of i see the freightest name tape on him

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, um, yeah.

Well, the funny part is we got, we got the first call when he actually got to basic and, um, and he's, you know, his, his mom's there and I'm there and, uh, he's describing what's going on and she's like, Oh, are you okay? And I'm like, Hey, Sucks, doesn't it? But I will say this.

There is something that will give you a great sense of pride when your son is going through this and he's like, you can tell by his voice and how he's describing it that, yeah, it sucks, but he's into it. And it's like...

I think, well, and there's something to, like, I really believe this for, I mean, always exceptions to rules, but young men in general. Young men in general need to do hard stuff. They need to do challenging stuff. They need to overcome it. Men thrive when we have responsibilities. Men thrive when we have responsibilities.

I mean, no, I mean the nice thing about, like you said, it was beautiful, but the nice thing about Hawaii was coming from the 82nd where they did stupid stuff just to do stupid stuff. You go to Hawaii and you'd have commanders out there like, all right, we're going to a four day field problem, but we just got the wave report back. So I think we've accomplished everything we need to.

And we absolutely suffer and become the worst versions of ourselves when we don't. Yeah.

you get complacent as fuck oh yeah well when when uh luke was like seven we were watching have you seen that movie uh what's it called freaking with uh hugh jackman um it's the one with the robots no no it's the one with the robots real steel real steel yeah so it's like it's like rocky but with robots right and so i'm watching it i got my two daughters my wife and my son and he's just sitting there watching this thing thinks it's awesome right and i look over at teen and he's seven

six or seven. I look over at Tina. I'm like, Hey babe, you know what the Agoge is? She goes, what's the Agoge? I said, the Agoge is where the Spartans sent their kids off to. It was like their first stage of kind of like warrior training to be a, like a hoplite.

Forget about it. I said, do you know how old they were? And she goes, No. Like I'm asking my wife, do you know how old the Spartans of the kids? Like, no, honey. I'm like seven. She's like, why are you telling me this? I'm like, watch. I'm like, Hey buddy, come over here. Come on. Like we're watching the address. So we're, we're doing this.

And it was the first time I ever like pop, not hard, but enough to like shake him up. And he just goes, ah, and he like comes out and he's like, you know, fighting the whole deal we're doing. He's having a blast. And Tina looks at me and she goes.

what just happened to my little boy i'm like oh no no he's not yours anymore he belongs to me now and i will say this he still loves his mama like nothing else but yeah that was that was the there's a certain point where dad's gotta dad's gotta take over a testosterone yeah yeah and like you were saying earlier when they don't oh yeah that's when you have catastrophic yeah life trajectory yeah

Yeah.

I, again, I mean, I, I'll tell you what, like I got married at 19, went in the military, got married at 19. One of the best decisions I ever made. Um, but that whole idea of having responsibilities early on and challenges and things you had to go through and in an environment where nobody cared if it sucked, nobody cared if it was hard, nobody cared about your feelings.

Nobody cared about any of that. That was hugely developmental. And I look at a lot of challenges that I think young men are facing right now, and I can't help but thinking to myself, yeah, it's like, you know, we, this is, I was actually listening to somebody. He was, he was talking about, he had, he had talked, actually it was Dennis Prager. It was Dennis Prager.

And you'd come in and have a four day weekend. Like it was a different world. Yeah.

He was talking about, he was giving a, he was giving a speech and he was talking to World War II vets. And he said, World War II vets he used, they focused a lot because they grew up through the Great Depression and they went into World War II. And they were talking about giving their kids the things they never had. And he said, you know, I had this moment where I was talking to him.

I said, I get it. But as you're giving them the things they never had, please remember to give them the things you did. The resilience, the challenges, the no sense of entitlement. And we see what happens when you give everything handed to you, you don't become better for it.

Pretty cool.

Yeah. Right. That's a great way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. Spoiler. That's true. Yeah. You sons of. Yeah, it's true. Well, and you can see it too. Cause when you raise your kids that way and they see other kids and the way they behave, they look at them. They're like with you going. the hell's up with that.

We used to always point out the kid, like screaming in the store. Like, what would I do to you if you did that? Oh dad, you'd crush me.

Don't shake your head.

That's what you look at and be like, it takes a village, right?

No, I went over to, uh, so I went through the Q course, uh, became an 18 Bravo, which is a weapon Sergeant. And then, uh, did two tours in Iraq, one in oh six and one in oh eight.

We're going to learn how to get back on that horse.

Uh, so my, uh, my son and I, we did Brazilian jujitsu and boxing for a little while and whatnot. And it was, it was great. I wish we would have started a lot earlier. Um, and then I got to travel in so much, but I I'm trying to get back into it. Cause I thought it was one, it was one of the best workouts ever.

No, no, no. As a delegate, not, not a lot. I mean, some, some within, uh, but a lot of it's flying around the country and doing other things associated with that. But, um, but no, I, I need to get back to it because one it's,

So, yeah, well, 9-11 happened and I hung out for a little while and then I decided I want to go to the Q course because that had to be a conversation with my wife as well, because she was like, oh, three years in Hawaii. I'm like, or a year. That's also. And then we get to go back to your favorite place in the world, Fayetteville, North Carolina. Oh, yeah. Wow.

Well, it's the guys that believe that, well, if I ever really had to, I would just see red and then get your ass kicked.

Yeah. And then light. And then you wake up. Your family is mine now. Like, fuck. We're getting back. That's the other thing, too. Again, with my kid, I remember when he started doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu and boxing, the confidence level with everything, not just with that, but the confidence level with everything goes up significantly.

There's two and four. Yeah. I got mine. There's 22, 19 and 17. Oh, there you're about to be an empty nest. That's, that's blowing my mind, man. That is blowing my, cause for, for, you know, my, my daughter got married at 21 and, And and then she left, you know, at 20, you know, and then eight months later, my son left. And, you know, now my daughter's about to graduate high school.

And my wife and I are looking at each other like, oh, my gosh, because we weren't just used to having our kids around all the time, which we love our kids, but like all their friends and the whole deal. And then all of a sudden. And I mean, it's exciting for Tina because we're going to this next area of life and we like each other. Like my wife's hot. Like I like spending time with her.

That helps considerably. It's named three things. She's hot.

You didn't wait for the count.

All the rooms in the house could get back into play, right? It's like looking outside. Is my youngest daughter off to work? All right, baby. The kitchen is now in play.

I mean, you born and raised there, right?

I'm going to ruin this place. My kid will say this, but like, really dad? Like, Hey, it's nice to know that mom and dad like each other.

Still, yeah, still am, yeah. I'm in the Virginia House of Delegates, the oldest continuously legislative body in the Western Hemisphere.

Not seeking re-election. Yeah, 10 years is enough.

Oh, yeah. And it feels longer than it was sometimes.

Well, and that's one of the things that whenever people ask me now about like, oh, I'm thinking of running for office. The first question I always ask is, what are you willing to lose your seat over? If you can't tell me what you're willing to lose your seat over, the answer is nothing.

And you will compromise in order to keep your seat because you'll convince yourself that you can't get anything done if you can't get reelected. And that's the slippery slope. If you can't list off right now the things where I would take that vote, lose my seat, and smile about it, I don't want you anywhere near elected office. But some people, not all, I serve with some really good people.

Um, but there's a lot of people, they get their identity. Um, they get their identity from serving in public office. And I'm like, dude, my identity, I get my identity in Christ. Then I get it and being like a husband to my wife, a father to my children, you know, a vet, you know, whatever. But I mean, it's look, I, I, Speaking of history earlier, right?

Like, I represent James Madison's district. Oh, that's great. Right? In a legislative body that tracks its history all the way to the House of Burgesses, which means we've been in operation for over 400 years. There is something truly cool about that. And believe me, the first time I walked in the Virginia House of Delegates, it was...

No. Well, when I was going through the Q course, we bought our first house. And my wife took my daughter and went home while I was going through phase two or something. And somebody broke into my house, lived there for three days, used my car to fence all of my stuff. And then I had to leave like for a day of the Q course. And they were like, you get one day. And I had to go back, like fix it all.

I remember they escorted me in, said, you know, delegate elect, wait here. I'm going to go find the other people because I was a military guy. So, of course, it was like 30 minutes early. And I remember sitting there. It was just quiet. And I'm sitting in that chamber going, there's got to be a mistake, man. There's got to be a mistake. The imposter syndrome kicks in. Oh, yeah. Big time. Big time.

It goes away quickly when you meet your colleagues. But anyway –

I did not. I didn't have that kind of ball. But, um, but yeah, no, it was, I looked at it, it was, you know, 10 years and, um, and there's still stuff I want to do. And, you know, obviously the things I believe in and there's a lot of ways to fight for it. It doesn't have to be politics because I think that the cultural component is what's the part that is most in dire right now. But, um,

But I think it's good to just pick a time where it's like, look, find somebody that you think will do a good job, find a good replacement, and then bow out and let them take a crack at it. I think politics is better when we don't have a bunch of people that are trying to do it for 30 or 40 years.

i i will one of the things about the other thing too that about a state legislature is that with the exception of four states all of your state legislatures are part-time i mean you still got full-time constituent services requirements and whatnot but in virginia you get paid 17 600 a year to be a delegate it's not supposed to be a full-time salary you go down you have 60 days in even years you have 45 days in odd years you go through 2 000 bills in that period

And that's it, you're done, go back to your district. That's where you live, that's where you work, get a real job.

It should be, Congress should be that way.

elected representatives to be the median income of their district yeah yeah that's the salary cap yeah i think you should get i think you should get lodging per damn for staying in dc but that's only enough to like when you're there you don't get it so you're not buying houses in dc and then staying there that's bullshit i want them to have barracks you're a public servant i want this to be service like the military yeah

This is why we can't have nice things. All right, all right. We're going to hold it up. I'll pretend.

I mean, thank God she wasn't home when it happened. But of course she would have probably shot him. Could have saved us a lot of trouble, babe. Thanks a lot. But anyway. Wait, someone broke into your house and fenced? Wait. So they used my car. Not Mexican fencing.

Yeah. Oops.

I, so I'll say this. I do again, not having done a deep dive into the race. Um, and just what I know about it. I do think if you ran again, you win. Um, because I don't think the smear campaigns work the second time around. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, the other thing too is that, and, and from what I understand, it's a, it's a solid red district, right?

So I ran for Congress and it was during COVID. That was fun.

Really? Okay. I didn't know that. House in 2020 against Abigail Spanberger. Okay. And that was a $20 million race. because it was considered one of the top five races in the country because of how close the district was. And I'll tell you right now, you don't want to be in that kind of district. That sucks. Your whole life is going to be fundraising.

When I had to run that race, I hate fundraising with a fiery passion. I despise it. And when I had to run for Congress in order to try to be successful – six hours a day, six days a week, I was on the phone fundraising. Dialing for dollars. Miserable. Absolutely miserable. I always felt so weird about that.

It's like, I, I, yeah, it's tough. It sucks. Um, So here's what I'll say. I mean, I think you'd win. And obviously, I think you'd be an excellent voice in Congress. And God knows we need people, especially in Congress, because my biggest fear right now is I see all these people. We have a program we do called DogeWatch. And we highlight everything Doge has done for the week.

And I have all these people going like, Doge is fine, but why aren't they acting? I'm like, because they're an advisory committee. They don't have any executive authority. They can make recommendations, and the executive branch can do certain things. But the only way any of this lasts –

is if you have legislation, which means you have to have members of Congress willing to actually carry the bills. And the number of people that we have willing to do that is nowhere near what I think most people think it is. And so we definitely need people that are willing to do it. Why is that, Nick? Why do we not have enough people willing to do it? Why are they not willing to do it?

It's still not there. It's still not there, but, but you look at this stuff and here's what it comes down to. You go look at the house, look at the house right now, right? We have the house by what, like five seats. So they're going to look at it from the perspective of how do we maintain the majority?

So they're going to look at everybody in purple districts and they say, we can't do anything that puts people in purple districts in jeopardy. And so now the entire house is going to be subject to whatever those 15 seats need or don't need. And everything is going to be, how do we maintain the majority?

Yes, like yes. And this is the part, this is the one thing that I hold out hope, right? There are so many people. If you look at Trump's approval ratings, there's a ton of people that didn't really like Trump, but voted for him because he wasn't Kamala Harris, who now like him. Why? Because like the guy or hate the guy, he does what he says he's going to do. And people are seeing action.

And if there's one thing that people actually appreciate, especially a wide swath of people that don't necessarily follow politics, but are tired of business as usual, they like somebody that actually says they're going to do something, goes and does it. Not to mention the fact that they've actually done an excellent job with new media and highlighting the absolute waste.

It is really, really hard to have any sympathy for, oh my gosh, I can't believe that poor person at USAID lost their job. You were sending $50 million a year to DEI scholarships in Burma. Burma's a military junta. They're committing atrocities against Karen tribesmen right now.

Right? They have bigger issues. Yes, but is the genocide equitable? That's the part that we're really concerned about.

Exactly. Do you have any trans executioners? If you don't, that's a real gap in your DEI facilitation.

Yeah.

The Department of Interior, well, it gets worse. The Department of the Interior spent all of this money on an internal, so they had an internal contract to develop their own customer satisfaction survey. And then they contracted out to a company to do customer satisfaction surveys. This is the sort of stuff that is going on. And they're like, oh, my gosh, we're cutting this. Yes, good. Cut more.

Somebody asked me once, they're like, well, Nick, what would you cut from the federal government? This will be far quicker if I tell you what I'd keep. You can have defense. Afuera. Afuera. Javier Malay is still my favorite. Like, why do you call these socialist shit? Because they are. But no, but I mean, that's really where we're at right now.

We got too many people that are so concerned about maintaining the majority that they don't do anything with it. And then they lose the majority. And it's like, that's not where people are at right now. Not to mention the fact that it's just cowardly. Eventually you're going to lose anyways, because if that's your mindset, you're never willing to actually provide an alternative.

Yes.

It drives me crazy. We did an interview with Rand Paul. And Rand Paul and Thomas Massey were the two guys to vote no against the continuing resolution. And Trump really went after Massey. And look, I'm a big fan. But I'm like, dude, don't go after Massey. Massey was one of the guys that's fighting this fight when he was the only one doing it. Like, holy hell.

You got to drink both now.

I mean, we need more people in Congress that are actually willing to, again, they're willing to lose their seat in order to accomplish something significant. But then the other side of it is, is look, the, the, The inextricable reality about representative government is you get the government you deserve.

And so a big part of this now, my belief is, is that if you want better politicians, you got to have a better electorate. And you got to have people that actually understand what the government is actually there for. And this is another reason why I usually, look, I trash government-run schools a lot because for the same reason I trash state-run media.

If you want kids to be skeptical of government, right? Not understanding that, yes, some government is necessary and there's legitimate functions of government. But if you want to be skeptical of government, but then you're handing them over to the government for seven to eight hours a day for their education, what do you think they're going to be taught about government?

And I think that's a big problem with what we have right now is they're just absolutely convinced that, of course, the government feeds me. Of course, the government educates me. Of course, the government takes care of me. I just got in this fight last night with somebody. Well, what are you going to personally do? I'm like, I don't know. Sounds like a family issue. Yeah. Well, you can't say that.

That's fucking wild. Yeah, I always joke that I've seen my wife cry four times. We have three kids, and the fourth time was when I told her I was going to have to go back to Fort Bragg. It's not a... No, there's a reason I left.

Like the government's got it. No, that's the reason we're in this problem is because the government assumed you tried to replace dad with a government program. And guess what? It didn't work. It didn't work.

around 25 people i went to high school with and partied with are becoming teachers it's like i've i've seen you do cocaine wait my teachers maybe they didn't fucking know everything oh i would say one of the one of the big regardless of how you raise your kids one of the biggest problems um i see right now is when kids don't see their parents as an educator

And so you'll see kids come home and their parent will say one thing. The teacher will say another thing. The kid will side with the teacher. Why? Because you told them that's your teacher. That's your expert. That's the person that knows things. They've got the college degree in education. What could you possibly know? No, no, no. I am the primary educator for my child.

That doesn't mean I can't utilize resources outside of myself.

Yes. And again, what do we always say in the military? You can delegate authority. You can't delegate responsibility. I am ultimately responsible for the education of my children. Again, I can use outside expertise for subjects I'm not as good on. Fine. But I'm still an educational authority in my child's life. Now, two things. One, okay, that's a big responsibility. Two, I better be worthy of it.

So I better know a little something about this world. I better be able to model for my kids what it means to be a man, what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a father, what it means to be an educator. And yeah, that's going to require some work. But I will tell you this much. If you would ask us when we started homeschooling, we were super intimidated. Oh, my God. Super intimidated.

I'm right out of the military. Tina's like, what the hell? I didn't sign up for this. And we had all these grandiose ideas like our kids are each going to speak three foreign languages and learn a musical instrument and play two sports. They're not Asian. By the end, we're like, do you love Jesus and hate communism? Yeah. Mission accomplished, right? We have done it.

But honestly, I will say this over and over again, and I always get a little bit, you know, the greatest compliment that I can give my wife, especially. It's not one that I give her. It's the one that my kids give her. Because if you ask each one of my kids, they all have different objectives. They all have different professional goals.

But if you ask each one of them, what do they want out of life? One of the first things they'll tell you is I want to get married and I want to have kids. Why? Because my wife created a home for them that they cannot wait to replicate for their own family. That's awesome. What is a better compliment than that for any parent that your kids want to replicate the life you built for them?

And one of the things that we accomplished with this is we didn't get it always right. They didn't always have the same resources that they would have went to some other area. Yeah, they would have had better labs and they would have access to more musical instruments and whatnot. But I gained back thousands of hours with my children through the most formative years of their life.

And now I have a relationship with them that I wouldn't trade for anything.

And look, take aside any, I won't assume the nefarious nature, even though I think some of that is there within the education system. Let's just say everyone's doing their best. It's still a mass production model approach to education. It's mass production. That's what it is. It has to be. Because what is that teacher supposed to do?

Give individualized attention to all 20 students in the classroom? That's an unrealistic expectation. So what it affords you is an individualized model of education. And one of the most important things your kids can learn is that education is not a building you go to.

education takes place education is merely the transference of knowledge hopefully useful knowledge and wisdom to go along with it that's what it is and so now everything whether you're making dinner or where you're doing you know brazilian jiu-jitsu or whether you're doing a math problem because you're teaching your kids how to run a small business like all of that is now education

It's not sit here. This is another thing I think too, especially with young boys. We have all these things that we now classify as learning disabilities, ADD, ADHD. And look, there's clinical definitions of these things and I'm not taking anything away from that. But how many learning disabilities all of a sudden become capabilities in a very, very different circumstance or environment, right?

Yeah, if you're going to put that kid, if you're going to put that rambunctious boy in a chair... and say, sit here, be quiet, listen, and do your stuff. That you don't care about. For six hours a day that you don't care about, oh yeah, his behavior is going to look a whole hell of a lot like a learning disability.

You take that same kid, you put him in a different environment that is far more kinetic, far more interactive, and then all of a sudden, all of the things that inhibited learning in that environment all of a sudden become capabilities and advantages in a different environment. I don't think it's ridiculous to consider that.

And they're finding out what's really fascinating too is they find out things like dyslexia. Yes, dyslexia will make it more difficult for you to potentially read on a flat page. But if you actually put someone in a different environment, because my son had mild dyslexia. Yeah, reading a book, it's difficult. He's got to focus more in order to do it.

Put that kid behind a 3D printer or give him some sort of three-dimensional thing. He can think and see things in a way that I can't put it together the same way. And so, again, yes, it makes this thing more difficult, but it makes this thing way easier. Way more easy.

Crazy. And conscripts.

Print guns, not money. Oh, we're putting that on a shirt. That already is.

Oh, so he had, he had a more difficult time reading and spelling. I give him crap about it still. I'm like, but like, I know it sucks, but you still got to get it right. Else you're going to look like an idiot. Um, but when, whenever it came to, um, anything with construction, anything with, you know, again, we, we went to a homeschool, uh, fair once and they had a blacksmith there.

And he's out there in Forge hammering away, making stuff. And he's like, could we try that? Like, yeah, let's do it. And I figured, because again, I grew up in a schooling model. So I figured we're going to show up. We're going to get a PowerPoint presentation on the history of locksmithing. We get there and homeboy at Platinum Starch Forge goes like, all right, so here's the Forge.

Here's some iPro. Let's go beat some metal. Like, this is awesome. And so, and so we bought a little one and now like my son's out there and it was funny. I was in, I was in session. So I was gone and I, I, I was giving him assignments. I'm like, Hey, I want you to, you know, you're going to develop this. You're going to do your best job developing this, watch this channel on how to do it.

And my wife calls me up. She's like, baby, I just want you to know it's, it's so great. And it's so inspiring to see Luke just really passionate about something. But when you give him a deadline that causes him to be in the garage pounding steel at two in the morning, that kind of impacts the rest of the family, babe. I'm like, oh, okay, my bad. But no, he was just, why?

Because I didn't tell him to do that. I gave him a deadline and he was passionate about it and he's out there just hammering away. And so, yeah, it was stuff like that. And again, it's not that it was like, oh, well, son, you have difficulty reading. I guess we won't worry about literacy. No, you still gotta learn how to read, man. You still gotta, we still gotta power through this, right?

But yeah, it was just incredible when you put those other opportunities out there and he can do it in a way that I just can't. Like he can see a project and imagine it in his mind and then make it work in a way that if I was doing it, like, I'm gonna be honest,

I was that dad where I was putting together like the girls bicycles on Christmas morning, like, but I'm still that way, but yeah, he could just see it.

We even put them on a car for you.

It's a whole new level of bullying.

Yeah. Yeah. So let me ask you something. Have you ever been any like the really big international military museums? So the two that I've been to that really stand out is one in Paris. I think it's the École Militaire. And then they have the Infilades. That's where Napoleon's tomb is.

What's cool about it is that you've got like the medieval period. So they've got like a full on horse in armor with a mounted knight. So you've got that. And then you go to like the Napoleonic era. They've got like all of the various units within the Grand Army that are like just decked out with authentic uniforms and the whole deal. That's super cool.

But surprisingly, one of the coolest military museums I ever went to was South Korea.

no shit south korea's south korea's military museum is better than anything i've ever seen in the united states as far as a military museum it's like five stories where you go back and they've got like um like you know like what is it he was like a famous uh admiral that like fought the japanese the turtle boats yes yes so they've got all this stuff why is that familiar

There was actually a movie called the Admiral, which is a South Korean movie. It's about like, he literally had 13 ships against like over technically it was 300 Japanese ships, but it was really like 120 like combat ships. But still like he had 13 ships, one turtle ship. What's a turtle ship? I'll show you right now.

It's, like, think of, like, it's a big boat that, like, has an ironclad component on it with, like, spikes, and then it has a cannon.

Oh, dude, the Admiral Master and Commander, I think it's... No, no, that's that one with frickin' what's-his-face, but no, it's called the Admiral. It's, like... South Korean, it's a movie, but this, it is a bad-ass movie. It's awesome. I've seen it like six times. Uh, but you go to their museum and like I said, it is like, it is one of the best war museums I have ever seen.

This is Japan just trying to... No, this is South Korea.

Yeah, yeah. When Japan did their invasions, it was right after the Warring States Periods of China. But you had... Right before the Edo Period. Yeah, yeah. So you had the Shogun Period and whatnot. And I'm trying to remember the guy's name. But anyway, they launched the several invasions of Korea. Yeah. And Yi Sun-shi, I think, is the name of the South Korean admiral. But just epic stories.

Like Yi Sun-shi, the Japanese managed to infiltrate the South Korean court. And the first time Yi Sun-shi saved South Korea from a Japanese invasion, they infiltrated the South Korean court, convinced them that Yi Sun-shi was a traitor. Literally, they tortured him. and retired him. And then the Japanese invaded again, destroyed his South Korean fleet. They brought him back.

He had like 13 ships to work with. He was ordered to abandon the fleet and basically cannibalize his troops to become a part of the South Korean army, or not South Korea, but Korean army, Joseon period. He basically refused to follow the orders. And then with his 13 ships, turned back a 300 ship Japanese invasion fleet. Um, and, and you look at the story of it, it's just, it's just incredible.

California's going to be a great place to move to after the war. That's what I was going to say. Once we can go in and just secure property again. I want to colonize California. That's what it really needs. That's what it needs. It needs some colonization.

Um, the guy eventually died defeating like the third Japanese invasion. Um, and he, he essentially ordered himself to be propped up, um, As he was dying, he was mortally wounded because he didn't want his sailors to lose heart. Won the battle, and then it was like, oh, man, he's dead. That's wild. No, dude. And again, the way they did the Admiral.

I got to tell you, man, the Chinese and the Koreans, they just did some badass war flicks.

So you know that most of the Clint Eastwood movies, most of the cowboy movies are based off of Japanese samurai movies.

Oh, they're awesome.

Oh, dang. I'm going to have to look that up. My son and I will geek out about that.

Oh, yeah. But he's actually a Sith Lord.

Kung Fu. And that's his thing.

I feel like they are just trying to rehabilitate a horrible character.

i don't care i loved him he was hilarious did you i didn't even watch the last star wars like i refused to like i remember watching uh what was it freaking what was the first one that came out under the uh the force the force awakens oh my gosh i watched that i'm like this is the worst retread of a new hope i've ever seen and did you hate that really like phantom menace and stuff

Phantom Menace came out in 1999. I'm almost positive.

That's acceptable.

no i can i can no budget i can appreciate that but it's like we're at a point right now where exist computers do not sorry i will say the kennedy era needs to just be like locked in a box thrown in the ocean and forgotten about for 20 years and then they can rehabilitate it same thing with same thing with freaking rings of power like what they did to tolkien i just want to

and they just took that they just california is my favorite state in the country yeah they're really good at that three second sound oh yeah i'm sure you're familiar oh yeah yeah i've had some real good times yeah with selective editing of of political statements oh god i want to know like what is your two worst ones on that because we didn't know you always hear the level of oh legacy media or yeah hey they they edit shit

No, it'd be fucking stupid. It was almost as bad. It was almost as bad as season eight.

of uh game of thrones where it's like you know what we should do we should take all of our trebuchets and put them way out front where they can be eliminated first and then you know what we should also do we should just take all of our cavalry and just run them headlong into the army of the dead before we fire any of the trebuchets before we fire any of them yeah before we fire don't use your artillery first yeah send the horses it's like you you couldn't like

I remember that particular stopcock movie. Oh, no. Wait, what?

I already told you. How did that nurse outfit show up, honey? Kitchen counter's back. He must have ordered that on Amazon. I know the kitchen counter's back in play.

Well, the first time they did it to me was actually on a Second Amendment issue. Really? Oh, yeah. So right after – this was in 2018. So it was Parkland? Yeah. So Parkland takes place, and I'm on the gun subcommittee in the General Assembly, and this is when the Republicans were in charge of the House – And, um, we just kill, I mean, we had all the pro gun guys on the subcommittee.

That one's for a different kind of charcuterie.

Yeah, sometimes. Anyway, no, I think two things. I mean, how do I get serious now? Well, you know, some of it we already kind of talked about, like the homeschooling and the whole young men thing. I think we're at a point. Just kind of culture in the United States where young men are going to revolt.

There has been this absolute onslaught on what you might call traditional masculinity, what I call biblical masculinity. It's the idea that men are supposed to protect. We're supposed to provide. We're supposed to do these things. And that's the way it's supposed to be.

And but we're at we're at a point right now where I think a lot of young men have just been told that there's something wrong with them and that they're responsible for. I think it's fascinating. They've been simultaneously told that they're stupid, fat, lazy and worthless.

But they've also somehow managed to infiltrate every single social, economic or political institution to uphold the patriarchy. Like, which is it?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. There's something wrong with you. You're bad. And so some of it, my wife and I are both very, very passionate about trying to provide greater – capability or resources with respect to people, the parents that want to take a little bit more control over their kids education.

I think there's a huge market right now for, you know, reinforcing the young men that, yeah, you are supposed to be strong, you're supposed to be competent, you're supposed to do all these things, but it has to be in service to something, right? It can't just be in service to your own like hedonistic pleasures.

It has to be in service to, you know, you know, God, your family, your country, because again, men thrive under responsibility. And when we started really getting into social media, it was funny. I was talking to Tina a while back. And obviously, we talk about politics a lot. And we'll continue to. But I call it, what do I get stopped at the airport for?

And what I've noticed is I don't get stopped at the airport for people saying, I really loved your political hot takes. it's usually your cool gun by TSA.

No, no, it's, it's the stuff that always has the most, the stuff that always has the most meaning to me is when it's usually a young father coming up going, I got, I have a little girl and I've been watching your videos on, on how to be a good girl, dad. And it's, it's really impacted me. And I'm, I'm doing those things you suggest. I'm telling my daughter, I love her. I'm spending time with her.

I'm, You know, or it's something with like, I got a little boy and I'm, and I'm trying to like, you know, help teach him how to be a man or.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Completely just destroy that.

Yeah. Yeah, good. Yeah, no, and it's true. There are very few problems that you see within American society right now that can't be solved by, I think, a good God-fearing dad that's strong, competent, and intelligent. And we need a whole lot more of it. And men need to know that it's not only okay, it's absolutely necessary.

So we just, you know, we listened, we were polite. We listened to testimony, the whole deal, but we were there to protect your gun rights. And so, um, I'm listening to just Democrat after Democrat get up. And if you don't want to do one gun, you know, one gun a month, then you're supporting terrorists because they're trafficking guns and you don't care if kids get shot.

This whole idea that we don't need men in society, okay, until you've got to fight a fire, a war, or police streets, then all of a sudden we're popular again? Screw you. And so the more we can do to kind of build that where we're building strong families, strong young men, strong young women, that's what we're passionate about.

Yeah.

No, yeah. Nick J. Freitas. We made it easy. If you just type in Nick Freitas or anything close, you'll find us on YouTube, Instagram, and everywhere else.

And I mean, just over and over and over again, I just got pissed. And so I got up and I went on like, this is probably the first thing I ever did that went viral on social media, like super viral. And just did a seven-minute diatribe because I was furious. And I take special pride in this speech because I thought I gave a pretty good defense of the Second Amendment.

But then I also caused three of my Democrat colleagues to leave the floor in tears. And the entire Democrat caucus requested a 15-minute recess to gather their composure. And I didn't even realize it was in response to me. Like we all go down into our respective bullpens, right? And the speaker comes in and he goes, so they're pretty mad. I'm like, about what? About what you said? I'm like –

What the hell did I say that was so bad? They've spent the last two weeks calling us terrorists and every other damn thing. And all I said was, you know, this is why we have the second.

OK, I might have also said that I wanted to remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that they were the party of slavery and fought against women's suffrage and put a bunch of Japanese people in internment camps and Jim Crow, not us. Um, that, that part made him mad. Um, it wasn't true. It wasn't false though. Um, really don't like facts. Yeah. No, no.

And so, um, so the press gets up and one of the things I talked about is he said, if you want to talk about crime, then why don't we talk about like father than this or fatherlessness? Why don't we talk? Why don't we go look at the prisons right now and see how many people in there, how many young men are in there that don't have dads in their life. And, um,

So I went into this whole thing and this reporter comes up to me on the floor and I still had no idea that I just set up a, like set off a bomb. And he goes, did you just claim that abortion causes mass shootings? And I looked at him like, how the hell did you come to that conclusion? I said, no, that's not what I said. This is what I was talking about. This is.

And all of a sudden the headline is delegate Freitas suggests that abortion leads to mass shootings. I'm like,

Oh my gosh. And so I looked at this, I'm like, well, I guess I'm going to have to, you can't defend it. I'm going to have to publish the speech on Facebook. Um, and, and just so people know exactly what I said. And the next thing I know, like that, that ended up getting like 70, 80 million views. And, um, and all of a sudden I learned two things, right, right off the bat.

It was one, the press will always screw you. And two, you don't need them. Like the power of social media is like new media is huge right now. And I still fight this battle with other members of the Republican caucus. We're like, well, we need to have a press conference. I'm like, oh, why? So the Washington Post can quote you out of context and make you look like an ass clown. Yeah.