Jocko Podcast 362: Service and Spreading Aloha Worldwide w/ Tulsi Gabbard

2022-12-01T03:00:01Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles @tulsigabbard Tulsi Gabbard (born April 12, 1981) is an American politician, United States Army Reserve officer and political commentator who served as the U.S. representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021. Gabbard was the first Hindu member of Congress and also the first Samoan-American voting member of Congress. She was a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election,[2][3] before leaving the party and becoming an independent in October 2022.

AI summary of episode

But to me, this is like really the thing is like people are like, oh, you know, I always laugh at the comments that are like, Oh, I hate what you say, or you're so ignorant, or you're terrible, all of these different things like dude, unfollow. And, you know, I don't know what the recent numbers, but I feel like Twitter, you might know this echo, but Twitter, I think is like, compared to the old, you're the tech guy, but it's something like, like less than 5% of Americans are on Twitter. But, you know, looking at the dangerous combination of what we've seen over the last few years, especially of people in power who don't believe in the Constitution, who openly question things like the First Amendment and right to free speech coupled with, oh, by the way, they control and are politicizing agencies like the Department of Justice and the FBI and Department of Homeland Security sickening the domestic newly formed domestic terror unit of the Department of Homeland Security on parents, like protesting at board of education meetings, because they're like, well, we don't agree with what you guys are trying to teach our young kids at school. And I've been hearing from a lot of people, people I know, a lot of people I don't know, in person on social media, people just saying like, like in a really serious and heavy kind of way, thank you for bringing voice to the things that I've been feeling and frustrated with. And so, you know, where people like, you know, like the guy in the, you know, the coffee shop in Greensboro, he's like, Oh my God, why don't you leave a different kind of, oh, okay, go listen. I, um, you know, I, I don't know, I could probably think of a number of reasons why it, uh, it escalated so quickly there where, you know, it got to a point where even as I was, you know, being very outspoken on different issues beforehand, I think certain powers that be maybe didn't think that, oh, well, you know, she's just saying her piece. And you, you can go down that path of these broad categorizations, whether it's based on party politics or race, ethnicity, religion, any of these boxes that, that they like to put us in and use as wedges to drive us apart, rather than again, focus like, all right, let's just go below the surface and recognize that, you know, all people from Hawaii are not the same or, you know, whatever the fill in the blank is, we get into dangerous territory when we judge each other just based on, you know, the superficial or the label that is attached to us. And one thing that, that I've heard from different hosts of different shows, and even some of the, you know, like the executives at Fox is like, Tulsa, we really like having you on because we never know what you're going to say. And a lot of parents being like, hold on a second, you know, my kid was out of school for two years and you want us to just forgive and forget as my kids trying to, you know, play catch up or, just whatever, you know, again, like I've, families who could not go and see a loved one in the hospital before they died. Now, now people who celebrated her one day, and the very next day, once she was like, no, I've made the biggest mistake of my life, completely shunning her calling her names, giving her death threats online, doctors who had cared for her one day the next day, once she had made this decision, not returning phone calls or telling her like, you know, she's still having serious medical issues based on the the mastectomy she had, that she can't figure out what to do with the doctors like, oh, just put some Vaseline on there. Like we're going to both like UFC or we're going to both like guitar, like there's going to be something there. You know, I always feel like all this stuff that we're talking about is like a separate world that I'm actually not that, I don't get fully engaged in that world because I actually have a bunch of businesses and like things going on. You look at the most one of the most egregious examples is where politicians will take money in their campaign and either live in the gray space of like, Oh, well, you know, and there are examples of this like, I'm going to use campaign money to pay for my spouse's salary because my spouse is helping out on the campaign, or I'm going to use, you know, $100,000 to pay for childcare because by paying for childcare, then I can go out and work on my campaign. I think they recognize too, kind of the difference between the, you know, the fast fashion, just buying like the cheap stuff, use it a few times and throw it away versus the conscious choice that I think a lot of people are starting to make is like, okay, I might pay a few more dollars, but I will take pride in knowing that in Origins case, from the cotton that's grown to the final hands that are putting those jeans in a bag, these were American hands that, and hard work and sweat that went into creating this. But, you know, none of us as people are, are monoliths, none of us are just walking around as like, oh, you know, this, these labels are attached to me, therefore I am that and it assuming that in our society has the negative effect of, of not encouraging that critical thinking, that independent thought, that healthy skepticism of like, all right, when I read this story or I hear this view, where are they coming from? Like, so like, every once in a great while, every once in a great while, like when I finished day zero of aerosol school in Hawaii, I was like, heck, I'm going to give me some donuts. Because originally, they thought, okay, well, big tech, you know, like, they, they're not going to be, to be an arbiter and a curator of information, they're just going to be, you know, an online platform, whereas the New York Times does curate, you know, what letters to the editor they choose to publish or the articles they choose to publish. It's not like been inching, like that it's like by hundreds of percent increasing to the point where, and I've talked with teachers who say like, yeah, of all the kids in my class, there's maybe two who don't consider themselves LGBTQ something. I mentioned parents going and, you know, protesting like, no, you know what, I don't want my seven year old kid being given books to read at school about like, well, tell me what your sexuality is or tell me what your gender identity is. One of these mainstream media, I don't know if it's the New York Times, New York, or one of these had an op-ed recently published where they're just like, oh, people should just forgive people like Dr. Fauci for being wrong because, hey, nobody really knew what was going on. So when you're in the military, you can do a much better job of taking people and like getting people the right mindset that's going to be beneficial for the country and for whatever country we're going into as opposed to if you're not in the military and you're sitting on the outside saying, well, it should be like this. And it was by the time, probably, probably two months into a six month deployment, I had to hold my nose and drink it like it was just shot at tequila, just like, oh, it made me want maybe we're thrown up and that kind of that kind of gave me like the kind of PTSD banana PTSD you're talking about. You know, from a leadership perspective, you have to be honest with people about what you know and what you don't know and what's like your best guess and what, and look, it never inspires confidence, right? It wasn't out of like this altruism of like blockchain technology and cryptocurrency and you know, all of, you know, for people who are, are big advocates of that and the opportunity they see for that in the world of technology, that was not his, did not appear to be his motivation. And I just like, I was just, you know, over the years, people are like, Oh, you know, who's your publicist? Biggles, you know, if you really love, I forget what it was, but it's something like, you know, if you really love the teams, you're going to eat this cottage cheese and like they're spooning it to his mouth. And so that's why you're talking about the the Overton window and you and you look at like, okay, well, you take people having open minds and like, okay, well, I can consider, you know, someone else's perspective, even if I don't agree with it, which is how things should be in general. Some of the things you're talking about earlier because for me, I actually know, you can get audio books and, you know, e-books and all that, but I'm one of those people who, like if I'm taking notes and getting ready for a TV interview, I'll look at what's on the computer and then I actually sit there and actually write it down. And by the way, that hard work, these are people that have mortgages that are learning like we got kids, I shouldn't call them kids, but you know, people that are 23 years old, 22 years old, that now have a skill that they have a career now, whether it's running a loom, whether it's running a press, whatever skill they're getting, they're getting a skill that they can now have a, they have a real job, they have a career, they have a life. In that podcast episode that I put out, there are actual videos from Boston Children's Hospital as one example of unfortunately, many where they're literally saying as soon as your child is capable of expressing themselves, you'll see signs of them, you know, deciding what their gender identity is, like before they can even use words and speak any kind of language that you look at like gestures and you look at all these different things. We all know the better leader says, Hey, you know, I'm never conducting operation like this before Tulsi, I know you have, how do you think we should do it?

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocko podcast number 362 with echo Charles and me.
[00:00:03] Jocko willing. Good evening echo. Good evening.
[00:00:06] So I was an officer candidate school.
[00:00:09] 1998. It's a form of military indoctrination. I was already in the military. I had already
[00:00:16] been indoctrinated in the military. So as I was going through it, I could kind of
[00:00:21] I was a little bit more detached. You know, I could see a little bit more,
[00:00:24] had a little bit more experience. And there's all kinds of procedures and protocols that you
[00:00:29] have to follow when you're going to officer candidate school. You got to you got to fold your
[00:00:34] underwear into a five inch by five inch square for a locker inspection. You've got to they come
[00:00:40] and measure it with a steel ruler, the drill instructors, Marine Corps drill instructors,
[00:00:44] they have a they have like their own personal, you know, some somebody has a possession that
[00:00:49] you can see it kind of has a certain level of pride to it. They would have these steel rulers
[00:00:53] and slap it down on that thing. And they're going to measure your handkerchief and your t-shirts and
[00:00:59] all this stuff. And it's about attention to detail, which is cool about protocols, learning protocols,
[00:01:05] and inspecting each other. So as a team, so you might check my locker and we're trying to help
[00:01:10] each other out. But one thing that always stuck stuck with me on the protocol level was the belt
[00:01:15] buckle that you had. So you could issue this belt buckle. And this belt buckle when you could
[00:01:20] issued it, it's shiny gold. And it's it's shiny gold. It's probably brass, actually. But then there's
[00:01:28] a clear enamel coat on it. And what that means is you can buy this thing. And it won't just tarnish
[00:01:35] because it's got this really strong, clear enamel coat on it's very thin. But that's what keeps it
[00:01:42] from tarnishing. But you can still get fingerprints on the enamel. So you could have a belt buckle
[00:01:48] that has like a fingerprint on it or a smudge on it. So you would wipe them off you, you kind of like
[00:01:53] wipe down your your belt buckle. Now here's the thing. At some point, this had evolved to where
[00:02:02] you would take your belt buckle that had this enamel on it. And you would polish it
[00:02:08] until the enamel was gone. And so now it could tarnish. So you remove the protective layer
[00:02:15] so that it could tarnish. So something that started as a good idea, which is you buff the
[00:02:19] belt buckle so there's no fingerprints on it escalated over time to where you were polishing this
[00:02:26] thing until all the enamel was removed. And now it would tarnish more easily. And it's actually
[00:02:32] hard to take care of now. So this this thing that started with good intent, oh, you're going to
[00:02:38] make sure there's no fingerprints on it turned into craziness. And people, no one knows where it
[00:02:45] started. Like no one knows when it got stupid. And no one knows we ended up when we ended up
[00:02:52] at Officer Candidate School making people do something stupid, but we did it. And this can
[00:02:58] happen with anything. Now there's a there's a similar term in or I shouldn't say in a similar
[00:03:05] situation, there's a term in political discourse called the Overton window. The Overton window,
[00:03:11] which was this is originated this term was originated by a guy that was named Joseph
[00:03:15] Overton, who is a political scientist and like a libertarian type dude. And he actually died
[00:03:24] flying an ultralight at age 43. But this idea of the Overton window is that there's a there's a
[00:03:31] window in the acceptance of ideas. So ideas go through a transition. So let's say there's an
[00:03:40] idea out there, it starts off when the idea first comes to light, it's totally unthinkable,
[00:03:46] totally unthinkable, meaning totally unacceptable. And then it actually, as people talk about it
[00:03:53] more and it becomes more familiar, it goes from being unthinkable, or totally unacceptable,
[00:03:59] to just radical. Like so you're not saying, Oh, that's unacceptable. You just saying, Oh,
[00:04:03] that's that's pretty radical. And then eventually it moves to being like a fringe idea. But now
[00:04:09] it's moving into the acceptable category. Then eventually it becomes acceptable. And then it
[00:04:16] becomes sensible. And then it becomes popular. And then it eventually becomes policy.
[00:04:22] And there's a bunch of things that kind of we've watched go through this evolution. I mean tattoos,
[00:04:28] right tattoos years ago tattoos were kind of unacceptable in normal society. It was like bikers.
[00:04:38] Bikers had tattoos and and convicts had tattoos. It wasn't normal. Now the tattoos are basically
[00:04:46] totally acceptable. Long hair for men, which I don't support. But but hey, but long hair for men
[00:04:56] in the 1940s totally unacceptable. In the 1950s and 60s, it was in the 50s, it was like radical.
[00:05:04] In the 60s, it was like kind of normal. Now it's just acceptable. So as people push the envelope
[00:05:17] with behavior, the Overton window expands and things become more acceptable and norms change
[00:05:22] over time. And it's also true that as one part of the Overton window opens another part closes. So
[00:05:30] if you are firing someone because they had a tattoo or you fired someone because they had
[00:05:35] long hair, now that would be unacceptable. The guy had long hair, you can't just fire someone
[00:05:40] because they have long hair that would be unacceptable now. So what am I talking about?
[00:05:46] How do these two things relate the belt buckle in the Overton window? Well,
[00:05:51] it certainly seems to me that as we look at the way society is evolving today,
[00:05:58] the Overton window of what's acceptable has expanded and moved so much that
[00:06:10] it might not make sense anymore. What some things that are now not only acceptable, but now sort
[00:06:17] of getting pushed, you wonder if they're if they make sense and maybe they could actually even be
[00:06:21] harmful. And I think if we if we as people aren't careful, we can kind of slowly drift around inside
[00:06:34] that Overton window from the positive of having an open mind to to an extreme to where there's no
[00:06:44] more guardrails. There's no more framework and there's no more baseline of what's acceptable
[00:06:48] and what's isn't. So a friend of mine, it seems to me has been trying to maintain some kind of
[00:06:58] sanity, some kind of rationality to the expansion of the Overton window to apply some baseline to
[00:07:05] the world. And I think it's been a pretty good fight for her. I think she's just getting warmed up.
[00:07:11] She's a former congresswoman. She's a former presidential candidate. She's an army officer.
[00:07:16] Iraq war veteran, podcaster, surfer, martial artist and Hawaiian. She's been on this podcast before
[00:07:26] episode 272. Her name is Tulsi Gabbard. And it's an honor to have her back with us tonight. Tulsi
[00:07:32] Gabbard. Aloha. How's it going? There's been a lot of there's been a lot going on in your world.
[00:07:41] Yeah. It's been crazy. It's been kind of crazy to watch when you came on this podcast for the first
[00:07:46] time. You were a democratic. I don't know if you were running for president. Were you running for
[00:07:53] president at the time? I think if I'm not mistaken, this was in late 2020. I don't know. I should
[00:08:01] have checked the dates. And so I think the if I'm not mistaken, I think the presidential campaign
[00:08:08] was finished at that point in time. And we were talking about how it went. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
[00:08:13] it's it's always interesting to me because I have some of my friends are dope smoke dope smoking
[00:08:19] hippies. Some of them are right wing conservative fundamentalist Christians and everything in
[00:08:25] between. And when you came on my podcast, you know, some of the the first time you came on the
[00:08:31] some of my super conservative friends were like, yo, why are you giving her a platform? I was like,
[00:08:37] oh, because she's cool and I like her. And then some of my dope smoking hippie friends were like,
[00:08:42] hell, yeah, that's what we're talking about. So you, you know, you you had sort of a,
[00:08:50] I think you had a reputation or an image, I think. And you more than that, I think you just get
[00:08:55] categorized, right? You were a Democrat at the time, which I know you aren't. Yeah. So what
[00:09:02] happened, man? What happened? Let's just talk about that. So you left the Democratic Party.
[00:09:06] Yeah. Well, first of all, just say, for as long as I've been in politics, people who like to put
[00:09:15] other humans in categories have always had trouble putting me in a category, just because I've always
[00:09:21] been a very independent minded person. So, you know, I first ran for office in 2002 in Hawaii.
[00:09:28] I was 21 years old, very passionate about environmental issues and protecting the beauty
[00:09:32] of our home in Hawaii, the water, oceans, and, and that was my motivation to run for a state house.
[00:09:39] And, you know, prior to that point, I had no, like familial political affiliation. There was no,
[00:09:46] like, you know, my daddy and granddaddy were Democrats. So I have to be a Democrat. My parents
[00:09:50] were very like, Hey, you, you go make your own decisions, figure out, you know, what, what is
[00:09:56] your foundational principles? And so at that time, I really had to look because I had, you know,
[00:10:03] filed a piece of paper saying I'm running for office and there was a box to check like, okay,
[00:10:06] fine, what party are you going to run under? And so I started looking at kind of the origins of,
[00:10:12] in Hawaii, the Democratic Party, Hawaii had been under the rule of a few very wealthy Republicans
[00:10:20] since it became a territory of the United States and then later through statehood.
[00:10:24] And the shift towards Democratic politics in Hawaii came about because
[00:10:30] of plantation workers, people who were being treated like crap, like in, in in humane conditions,
[00:10:38] being paid pennies for working super long hours. It was, it was basically like glorified slave labor.
[00:10:46] And so it was the Democratic Party and the ILWU that came in and was like, no, this is not okay.
[00:10:51] And, and so it was the party that in our history in Hawaii was the Big 10 inclusive party. It was
[00:10:57] the party for the people. It was the party that stood up against those few very wealthy people
[00:11:03] in power and said, no, you can't just abuse people like this. It was the party that stood for
[00:11:09] civil liberties and individual freedom and choice like, Hey, whatever your personal choice is,
[00:11:13] whether it's free speech or freedom of religion or whatever it is, like, live and let live,
[00:11:18] we can disagree without being disagreeable. And so I looked at the party in Hawaii and I looked
[00:11:22] at leaders like JFK and Dr. Martin Luther King and I was drawn to the Democratic Party for those
[00:11:28] reasons because again, and my, as I looked at Hawaii as like these super rich Republican dudes
[00:11:33] have been abusing their power to fill their pockets at the expense of the wellbeing of the people.
[00:11:40] And so fast forward, I left the Democrat Party because all of those things that I just talked
[00:11:47] about are gone. The leaders of today's Democratic Party don't believe in really individual freedom,
[00:11:56] basically what it comes down to. And you look at that freedom of choice, freedom of speech,
[00:12:01] freedom of religion, and you know, there's a lot of other issues that I could get into. But
[00:12:08] ultimately, how do you have a political party that's in power that doesn't believe in freedom and is
[00:12:17] actively taking action to undermine our constitution and Bill of Rights? And that was really what was
[00:12:23] at the crux of Y-Left, the Democrat Party. Was there a straw that broke the camel's back?
[00:12:31] There wasn't one single moment, but it was really over the last like few years, two,
[00:12:37] three years seeing this increasing, like quickly escalating towards policies coming from our
[00:12:49] government that really frankly, we're becoming increasingly authoritarian. And so, you know,
[00:12:54] it caused me to kind of spend time reflecting and being introspective like, wait, hold on a second.
[00:13:00] And people saying like, how can you still be, how can you call yourself a Democrat? And I was
[00:13:04] obviously, like I said, I've always been an independent minded person. I've been critical
[00:13:09] of people in power, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, and also complimentary when I felt
[00:13:16] like they did things that were good for the country. But, you know, looking at the dangerous
[00:13:23] combination of what we've seen over the last few years, especially of people in power who don't
[00:13:30] believe in the Constitution, who openly question things like the First Amendment and right to
[00:13:34] free speech coupled with, oh, by the way, they control and are politicizing agencies like
[00:13:40] the Department of Justice and the FBI and Department of Homeland Security sickening the
[00:13:46] domestic newly formed domestic terror unit of the Department of Homeland Security on parents,
[00:13:51] like protesting at board of education meetings, because they're like, well, we don't agree with
[00:13:55] what you guys are trying to teach our young kids at school. And to see that playing out before our
[00:14:02] eyes and this culture of fear, where if you speak out against this stuff and call it for what it is,
[00:14:11] you are immediately labeled anti authority and also therefore coming from our government
[00:14:19] an extremist and a potential threat, a potential domestic threat. And so that's why you're talking
[00:14:25] about the the Overton window and you and you look at like, okay, well, you take people having open
[00:14:30] minds and like, okay, well, I can consider, you know, someone else's perspective, even if I don't
[00:14:33] agree with it, which is how things should be in general. And then you take it to that next level
[00:14:39] where you're saying, well, there are no guardrails anymore. And this is what's so dangerous is when
[00:14:43] you have, again, people are entitled to their own opinions. But when you have people in positions
[00:14:49] of power in this country, who deny the existence of objective truth as they are, then where is,
[00:14:58] like, where's the floor? Where's the guardrails? Where's the ceiling? How do you measure anything?
[00:15:02] Well, it's like, okay, well, whatever's true is whatever they say is true. But then what happens
[00:15:08] when when they're gone and the next person or group of people come in or the next party and then
[00:15:13] what if they don't agree with what that group says is true or false? And so and then you couple
[00:15:20] that with the fear factor and cancel culture and and people literally seeing what happens to people
[00:15:24] like me, where you you just say like, hey, well, this is what's happening. And it's crazy. It's
[00:15:30] insane. And then I get called all kinds of names and all kinds of stuff, all kinds of attacks.
[00:15:36] And so no wonder so many people are afraid to do the equivalent of like, yeah, obviously,
[00:15:42] the emperor has no clothes, like we can all see it. And there's a lot of concern about what's
[00:15:46] happening. But so few people feel like they have the ability to speak up without being worried
[00:15:51] about losing their job or being shunned by friends or family members or being like that crazy person.
[00:16:01] And so this is this is kind of one thing that's been that's been interesting and
[00:16:05] and hope inspiring is is, you know, I put out this this kind of long and in depth statement
[00:16:10] talking about some of these very specific examples of what's wrong with today's Democrat party.
[00:16:16] And I've been hearing from a lot of people, people I know, a lot of people I don't know,
[00:16:21] in person on social media, people just saying like, like in a really serious and heavy kind of way,
[00:16:28] thank you for bringing voice to the things that I've been feeling and frustrated with. And but,
[00:16:33] you know, haven't been able to give voice to. And so my hope is that, you know, the more we speak
[00:16:41] up, the more people feel as though they can speak up. And yeah, how do we protect people?
[00:16:48] How do we protect our freedoms that are under attack by exercising them?
[00:16:52] Yeah, I was, you know, I was like to like cover a book on this podcast. Yeah. What when you were
[00:16:58] coming on, I said, I was thinking about covering the book Rules for Radicals by Saul Linsky.
[00:17:05] This is a book, you know, this is a guy that this is a book that Hillary Clinton wrote her
[00:17:10] thesis on when she graduated from college. But there's some of those rules. One of the one of
[00:17:17] the rules is hold them to their own rules, right? And that's what you're talking about when you say,
[00:17:24] hey, this is America, we have an open mind. And so you go, okay, cool, then you have to accept
[00:17:28] everything. Right? That's like one of those things. You can't say anything negative about
[00:17:32] anybody anytime, or you're, you're not following your own rules. You're something phobic, right?
[00:17:39] Everything is something phobic. You just add whatever it is at the beginning of it. Yeah.
[00:17:43] And another one of the rules that he talks about is the power of ridicule. So when you just go on
[00:17:50] an obliterating attack on a person, it's overwhelming for them and it works and it's worked a lot
[00:17:57] to shut people down and shut them up. And that's, you can see some of these the way that these
[00:18:06] rules are implemented. And that's another thing. You know, as I talk about that,
[00:18:09] that belt buckle thing, and you don't know where it came from. And there's a bunch of things like
[00:18:14] that in the middle. There's a bunch of traditions. You go, why do we, this is stupid? Why are we
[00:18:16] doing this? And you, and people don't really know where it came from. And I think some of the things
[00:18:22] that are going on with society right now, if you start to pull the thread on where it actually
[00:18:28] initiated, a lot of it did initiate in like the radicals, the communists in the 60s that were
[00:18:35] trying to make their impact. And I honestly don't think a lot of people that are fully on that,
[00:18:43] on board with that program know where it came from today. They're just doing what they kind of
[00:18:47] learned. Because that was, you know, a big goal was to take over the universities, which obviously
[00:18:53] they did a pretty good job, pretty good job taking over the universities. What is it? The
[00:18:57] universities vote 99, something like 99% democratic in universities. That's obviously,
[00:19:03] you're not going to get a very balanced education if that's what you're going through.
[00:19:07] And then the scary thing is, and this is another thing we've talked about a bit on this podcast,
[00:19:12] and is the, just the complete plasticity of people's brains and how people, you get into
[00:19:25] an echo chamber or you get, you start following and listening to certain things.
[00:19:29] It's going to take over your mind. And that's really, really scary. And, you know, I've been
[00:19:36] saying lately, like, everyone's getting brainwashed. I'm getting brainwashed right now. Like, that's
[00:19:41] what's happening. If you're watching, if you're listening, if you're opening your mind and letting
[00:19:45] other things in there, you're gaining brainwashed. And that's what's happening to everybody all the
[00:19:49] time. That's what, I mean, it's sort of like, it's a combination of brainwashing and learning,
[00:19:53] right? If you're learning, you're kind of getting brainwashed. You're bringing in new ideas.
[00:19:57] But then you see people that are learning ideas that aren't, essentially, they're not good.
[00:20:06] They're not healthy. And it's very, very disturbing. And especially nowadays, where
[00:20:13] that brainwashing is in your pocket. And at any moment, you can pull it out and you can,
[00:20:18] you can get brainwashed at any moment. And it's really, really scary. And especially, you know,
[00:20:26] the, the moldability of children. Yeah. 14 year olds, 12 year olds, 19 years old.
[00:20:34] You know, it's like when I joined the military, you're going to get brainwashed to some level.
[00:20:39] I got in trouble when I went to boot camp. Well, actually, I actually, I didn't get in
[00:20:45] trouble because they didn't know who said it. They, we had to fill out a form like about how
[00:20:51] boot camp was going, but it was anonymous. And they wrote something like, you know, what do you
[00:20:55] think of the program so far? And I wrote, the brainwashing has been very effective. That's what
[00:21:00] I wrote. How old are you at the time? 19, 18 or 19. And, you know, it's because I had a very
[00:21:10] rebellious mind, you know, because I was like, what was I brainwashed by? I was brainwashed
[00:21:14] before I joined the military by hardcore music and punk rock and like anti authoritarianism.
[00:21:20] And so for me, they were trying to hit me with that stuff. And I kind of had some good resistance
[00:21:24] to it. So I kind of like, oh, they're trying to brainwash me. And then I kind of made a joke
[00:21:28] about it. The brainwashing has been, you know, effective thus far, which that's what they're
[00:21:32] trying to do. They're trying to get you to like change your brain a little bit and think in a
[00:21:36] different way. And, and, but at least I think, I think I always had that rebellious streak in me
[00:21:43] that always questions everything. And to this day, when I see something online, I'm like, oh,
[00:21:48] what's their angle? Yeah, what's the angle over there? Because there's, everyone's got an angle.
[00:21:52] Everyone does. Which is, which is disturbing. And so this is what's happening now with kids.
[00:22:00] And you can see it. And it's sad. Yeah, it's so sad to see. I listened to a podcast that you did
[00:22:07] on your podcast, which is called the Tulsi Cabaret show with, was it called D transitioning?
[00:22:13] Yeah, with Chloe Cole. That was horrifying. Exactly. It was absolutely horrifying. Give us
[00:22:20] a quick brief on her. So Chloe Cole, and I'm glad you mentioned that because it's a perfect example
[00:22:26] of what you're talking about here. She grew up in here in California. She was a tomboy as a kid
[00:22:33] growing up. Love playing video games, love hanging out with her brothers. And at 11 years old, she
[00:22:40] got a smartphone. Started an Instagram account. She was a tomboy, didn't have many female friends,
[00:22:48] didn't really fit in much at school. So was looking for some kind of companionship friendship,
[00:22:55] sense of belonging online. And the algorithms on Instagram specifically, she talks about
[00:23:03] immediately started feeding her posts and accounts of young girls and women who had,
[00:23:14] who are identifying as boys or men who were trans or talking about how much happier they were by
[00:23:21] doing so and all of this. And then she had people around her who were telling her, well, like,
[00:23:26] if you're not happy as you are, then you're obviously a boy stuck in a girl's body.
[00:23:32] I'm going to just be, she's 11, she's 11, 11 years old. Her name is Chloe. At 12 years old,
[00:23:41] she told her parents, she wrote them a long letter. And the gist of it was, I am a boy,
[00:23:48] and I want you to call me Leo. I encourage you to listen to the story in her voice as she tells it
[00:23:56] because it is heartbreaking and so powerful. You watch it on YouTube, you just look into her eyes.
[00:24:04] She's 18 now. And so, but the summary is she starts taking puberty blockers
[00:24:14] when she's like 12, 13 years old. And she was very certain about what she wanted to do.
[00:24:22] Her parents were naturally pretty confused and not knowing what to do to best care for and love
[00:24:28] their daughter. And so they went out and started looking for health professionals to like, hey,
[00:24:34] just like educate us, talk us through this. What are the, you know, potential medical and health
[00:24:40] ramifications of our daughter taking these puberty blockers? And with the exception of one
[00:24:46] endocrinologist who told them like, hey, this, we don't know what the negative consequences might be,
[00:24:53] both in the short term and the long term to this, because there's just, you know, it's not been
[00:24:56] studied very well. There's no long history of cases that we can point you to say, well, here's
[00:25:02] what you can expect based on fact and science. And so this endocrinologist was saying like,
[00:25:09] I would encourage you to think very seriously before doing this because it could end up badly,
[00:25:13] essentially. I forget what the name, I think it was a gender specialist was what they were called,
[00:25:20] who were helping guide her through this. Every other medical professional that she went to see
[00:25:26] basically urged her and encouraged her to move forward with this. And ultimately told
[00:25:32] her parents who were expressing some concern and reservations, you have a choice between
[00:25:41] having a live son or a dead daughter. And Chloe says that up until that, like at that point,
[00:25:50] she had never once had a suicidal thought enter her mind. So this, this warning and essentially
[00:25:57] this threat that these medical professionals are giving to this young girl's parents, a live son
[00:26:05] or a dead daughter, you decide was based on nothing according to Chloe's medical history.
[00:26:13] Fast forward, she ends up getting a double mastectomy when she's 15 years old to continue
[00:26:22] this transition. She talks about how they call it top surgery to try to, you know, soften what
[00:26:31] it really is. And was after she got that surgery that she had a realization, I think she was 16
[00:26:37] at the time that she would know she would never be able to breastfeed her child ever. She, that
[00:26:44] had been taken away from her because of this, this decision. And you know, she talks about how she
[00:26:50] was asked at different points along this path from when she was 12 through 15, like, okay, well,
[00:26:57] here's all these medical disclosures. And, you know, you might not be able to have kids, this could
[00:27:02] affect your fertility. And at 12 years old, she's like, man, I don't want kids. Like, how does a
[00:27:07] 12 year old girl make that decision? And then again, at 15 before the surgery, like, okay, well,
[00:27:12] you might not be able to do this or have kids or breastfeed. And, you know, again, children not
[00:27:18] being equipped to make these decisions at 16, she experienced incredible regret and realized she'd
[00:27:25] make the biggest mistake of her life. And then began to walk down that path of quote unquote,
[00:27:31] detransitioning. And she talks about what that meant and practical terms in her conversations
[00:27:38] with her parents and friends and family being completely shunned by this group of, you know,
[00:27:42] people who are pushing this, this trans and gender ideology. Now, now people who celebrated her one
[00:27:50] day, and the very next day, once she was like, no, I've made the biggest mistake of my life,
[00:27:54] completely shunning her calling her names, giving her death threats online, doctors who had cared
[00:28:00] for her one day the next day, once she had made this decision, not returning phone calls or telling
[00:28:05] her like, you know, she's still having serious medical issues based on the the mastectomy she had,
[00:28:12] that she can't figure out what to do with the doctors like, oh, just put some Vaseline on there.
[00:28:18] And, and ultimately, these doctors are not providing her with the kind of care that she needs or
[00:28:23] being responsive at all. So she she's actually filed a lawsuit against these doctors and Kaiser that
[00:28:32] she dealt with along the way, which is so brave of her to do. She's so incredibly courageous to be
[00:28:38] doing what she's doing and speaking out and actively encouraging others to do the same so that people
[00:28:42] are able to be better informed. But that that social contagion that she talks really clearly about
[00:28:50] of the algorithms having such a heavy influence on her as a young girl, to ultimately bring her to
[00:28:57] make this decision, along with other other things as well. But the lack of, I guess, I guess this
[00:29:08] phenomenon in our society right now, where there's no open conversation about this that she could
[00:29:14] turn to that her family could turn to to say to get a differing perspective or differing view
[00:29:20] to where doctors feel afraid to say anything about it. I talked to a friend of mine who's an ER
[00:29:24] doc actually in California. And he said, Tulsi, I would say this off the record, but there are a
[00:29:31] lot of kids who are coming into the ER who are experiencing suicidal thoughts or deep depression
[00:29:39] or other medical issues because of this transition of people who are similarly like Chloe Cole
[00:29:46] regretting these decisions that they've made as kids. And but nobody's talking about it.
[00:29:52] You know, even from from the very top of of, you know, where he works, it was just like all of a
[00:29:56] sudden, okay, hey, guys, we're doing this now. And by the way, it's a very profitable venture
[00:30:05] knowing that not only the initial treatments, but you're basically once once somebody comes and
[00:30:09] tells you they want to do this, you're talking about years of follow on care and drugs and all
[00:30:14] and so on and so forth. But there was no conversation about this at all, because it's not allowed.
[00:30:21] If you even raise a question and say, Hey, is this really the best thing? Like, are kids really
[00:30:25] equipped to make this decision when they're 11 or 12 years old? You're immediately labeled a
[00:30:30] transphobe. And how dare you not care for your kids. In that podcast episode that I put out,
[00:30:36] there are actual videos from Boston Children's Hospital as one example of unfortunately, many
[00:30:41] where they're literally saying as soon as your child is capable of expressing themselves,
[00:30:46] you'll see signs of them, you know, deciding what their gender identity is, like before they can
[00:30:53] even use words and speak any kind of language that you look at like gestures and you look at all
[00:30:59] these different things. And you just you see how dangerous this is when critical thinking is like,
[00:31:05] it's discouraged. Asking questions is discouraged having differing points of view
[00:31:11] is discouraged. And I think even using the word discouraged is putting it lightly. People get
[00:31:16] banned on social media, get their accounts, you know, suspended indefinitely for
[00:31:23] asking questions or saying, Hey, this is not appropriate for kids. Again, then you add on the
[00:31:29] layer of government. And this is where things get so dangerous is that, you know, Chloe mentions
[00:31:36] that she knows people personally who parents who've had their kids taken away from them,
[00:31:43] simply because they refuse to call them by a name or pronoun different than the one they were given
[00:31:51] at birth by child protective services by the government. And this is this is the very real
[00:32:00] consequence of people just being willing to go along. And maybe it's like, I don't know,
[00:32:11] this doesn't seem right, but at least it's not happening to me or my kids or my family. So I'm
[00:32:14] just going to put my head in the, you know, in the sand and not pay attention. But there's,
[00:32:21] there's so many different factors you start looking at. I mentioned parents going and,
[00:32:25] you know, protesting like, no, you know what, I don't want my seven year old kid being given books
[00:32:31] to read at school about like, well, tell me what your sexuality is or tell me what your gender
[00:32:36] identity is. I didn't, you know, I heard parents talk about this stuff and I thought, gosh, you
[00:32:41] know, this is really concerning. And then I met with with a bunch of parents in Virginia who've
[00:32:46] been on the group called parents defending education have been kind of on the front lines of this
[00:32:51] fight nationally. And they brought a stack of books and showed me and there was one in particular
[00:32:57] that it, it was a graphic novel for middle schoolers. And I had never seen such sexually
[00:33:07] graphic images ever in my life. And this is something that's being given to kids to help them,
[00:33:14] you know, figure out, you know, what their sexuality is. And it's, it's really disturbing
[00:33:22] that we live in a society today where this open marketplace of ideas is not allowed to occur.
[00:33:31] And it's not allowed to occur because we have people in power who are using the lovers of
[00:33:36] government, working with people in the media and in big tech to control speech and to influence
[00:33:49] our society. So when I was a kid, let's say you are going to get crazy and really rebel,
[00:34:00] you'd grow your hair out, right? And wear a jean jacket or whatever, you know what I mean? Like,
[00:34:05] you're listening to Metallica and you're going to go through your Metallica phase and back then
[00:34:09] Metallica was not the same Metallica that it is now. I mean, back then Metallica was kind of
[00:34:14] fringe radical, right? And so you were going to grow your hair out and you were making all
[00:34:18] kinds of dumb decisions. I mean, let's face it, when you're that young, you're making just bad
[00:34:25] decisions left and right. And so thankfully, your decisions aren't permanent. When, when,
[00:34:30] when I was a kid, our decisions weren't permanent. Maybe, maybe you get some tattoos that you're
[00:34:36] going to want to wear, you know, a shirt or something when you get older, you're hopefully
[00:34:39] didn't jump straight into the neck tattoos or again, Overton window on face tattoos and neck
[00:34:44] tattoos. I mean, they're, they're becoming more and more mainstream right now. But back in the day,
[00:34:49] you weren't going to be doing that kind of thing when you were certainly not 11, 12, 13.
[00:34:55] And then you think about the Norwood, your parents let you. Yeah, well, there's another piece of
[00:35:00] this. Like at some point saying shut up to people became bad, right? When I was a kid, you tell
[00:35:10] people that your parents would tell you to shut up, your teacher would tell you to shut up,
[00:35:13] you would tell your friends to shut up when you were doing something, if you were saying
[00:35:16] something stupid, somebody like, Hey, shut up. And at some point that became like a bad word.
[00:35:22] Do your kids say shut up, Echo Charles? Not to me specifically, but yeah, they say that.
[00:35:26] Okay. But if they said it to you, be offensive. There'd be consequences. Which I agree with.
[00:35:31] I agree with, you know, you don't want to expect a kid, but would you tell your kids to shut up?
[00:35:36] I can't remember, but I'm not against the word shut up at all. Okay. I probably don't say shut
[00:35:43] up enough. And I don't think America does right now. Because sometimes, you know, when I was a
[00:35:49] kid, it's like, I'd have some stupid idea. I might have shut up. Like, okay, you got to stop sometimes.
[00:35:55] When we realize how multiple these kids are, and gullible they are, I mean, this is when, when you
[00:36:00] see like the interviews or read interviews, I got a book I haven't done on the podcast yet, but
[00:36:05] it's Nazis. Yeah. The young Nazi kids, they were 100%. They didn't know anything else. They didn't
[00:36:11] know anything else, at least a lot of them. And same thing with the Kamikaze pilots that are
[00:36:16] 19 years old. They didn't know anything else. And sure there's, I shouldn't, I want to group
[00:36:22] them all together because some of them definitely were like, Hey, wait a second, I'm not so sure
[00:36:26] about this. But then they got in those planes and drove them into our, our vessels, our ships,
[00:36:33] because they were just totally brainwashed, totally brainwashed. And we, that's how moldable
[00:36:40] kids are. And so when you take a freaking 11 year old girl, and you start down this path,
[00:36:47] and that's all she's hearing. And that's all the support you're getting. Because look, being a
[00:36:50] kid, you know, when I wrote my, when I wrote my first kids book, one of the things I had to put
[00:36:57] in perspective was that, you know, I was still in, when I was in the military, my kids were growing
[00:37:02] up. Part of my mind would be like, what are these kids talking about? Like nothing matters. This is
[00:37:07] Oh, you know, you know, Billy called me, whatever called me a jerk. And I'm like, so what? Right?
[00:37:15] I'm like, Hey, I'm going to Iraq. What are you kidding me? I got buddies at five face down in
[00:37:21] the mud so you could be called a jerk by your friend is freedom of speech. You know what I mean?
[00:37:24] Like that's how detached you get. You forget that when you're a kid, that's your whole world.
[00:37:29] Yeah. School is your whole world. The bully is your whole world. And, and so what happens
[00:37:37] when these kids get a world put around them, that only has one point of view and it's pushing in
[00:37:43] one direction, it's no surprise at all that they end up believing what they're hearing from everybody
[00:37:51] and everyone's so supportive. And that affirmation and the, I mean, it has, and there's no mistake
[00:38:00] for the radical increase in numbers of, of young kids who are now saying, well, you know, I'm trans
[00:38:07] or I'm, you know, anywhere on the spectrum of the LGBTQ stuff. It's not like been inching, like
[00:38:15] that it's like by hundreds of percent increasing to the point where, and I've talked with teachers
[00:38:20] who say like, yeah, of all the kids in my class, there's maybe two who don't consider themselves
[00:38:25] LGBTQ something. And so it's kind of become like an Abigail Shrier writes about this and her books
[00:38:33] about how kids are being influenced by this. You know, it's peer pressure. It's what's like,
[00:38:39] are you cool? Are you boring or all this other stuff? And I'm over here like, bring back Metallico.
[00:38:46] Let's bang heads and grow on there. That seems like a lot safer of a thing. You know, the other
[00:38:50] piece that you mentioned that is really disturbing. So you can't ask questions about this. So I, you
[00:38:58] know, I obviously work with a lot of companies talk about leadership. And one of the things I
[00:39:01] talk about when it comes to leadership is I should, if you've got, if you're working, if Tulsi, if
[00:39:06] you're working for me and I present a plan and you ask questions, I should be totally open to
[00:39:12] answering your questions. Your questions, hopefully are challenging to me and they make me really
[00:39:18] think through my idea and they pressure test my idea and I'm happy to answer them. And the minute I
[00:39:23] say, shut up Tulsi, I don't hear more questions, just do what I say. I just lost the argument. I
[00:39:29] just lost leadership capital because it means I couldn't actually articulate why we're going to do
[00:39:35] something a certain way. And it also means that I couldn't open my mind enough to say, Tulsi's got
[00:39:40] a good point. I should incorporate that into the plan or maybe adjust my plan or maybe abandon my
[00:39:44] plan because Tulsi has a really good thought process about this that I didn't think of. But
[00:39:49] the minute I say, you know what, just be quiet, no more questions, you do what I say. Exactly.
[00:39:55] That means there's something wrong. It exposes your weakness. Right. So if you have a question
[00:40:01] for me and my answer is you're transphobic, that's not a great answer. No. That's not a great answer.
[00:40:09] And look, could it be true? Could I be a person that I'm scared of transphobic people? Sure. Well,
[00:40:14] let me think through it then. What am I scared of? Okay, let's have a conversation about that.
[00:40:18] So, but instead, just to be like, no, I don't want to hear any more of your questions.
[00:40:22] This is a problem and it doesn't lead to a situation where we make progress and where we
[00:40:30] can actually agree upon anything. That's right. So how's the leadership, the governmental leadership,
[00:40:37] when you talk about the governmental leadership, kind of helping push this type of agenda? What
[00:40:43] does that look like? Well, it's exactly what you're talking about. The choice to ridicule, discredit,
[00:40:51] smear, and censor through partners in Big Tech, Google, Facebook, all of that, rather than actually
[00:41:00] have a conversation based on substance that's having this fear, this self-censoring effect
[00:41:11] on people where they're too afraid to even ask questions. They're too afraid to state their
[00:41:15] own views or opinions or even their own experiences on this. Have you had Kristen Beck on your podcast?
[00:41:23] I have not. I think I heard her talking on Rogan, but Kristen Beck has had similar experiences,
[00:41:31] even as a trans adult person saying, well, I don't know, like, this is really dangerous for kids.
[00:41:37] Like, this is a decision. If people want to make this decision as adults, this is a free country
[00:41:42] and you have the freedom to do that and live with whatever the outcomes of that decision may be.
[00:41:48] But for this to be happening to kids, and Beck has received extremely negative consequences,
[00:41:53] both on social media and in society, because of stating that fact,
[00:42:01] the government is pushing this under the guise of something they call gender affirming care,
[00:42:08] which sounds like something everyone should be for, right? We want to care for and respect each
[00:42:13] other just as people, but what they're doing is actually abuse of kids. Chloe Cole's story is not
[00:42:25] a rare case. There are many others, both documented, but also those that haven't been reported of kids
[00:42:34] who have gone through or going through exactly what she's been through. She started in Oregon,
[00:42:38] started an organization to be able to reach out to and help provide support to other kids who've
[00:42:42] gone through the path that she has walked down. The government factor is they're saying that if
[00:42:52] you as parents don't provide gender affirming care, then child protective services may come in and
[00:42:59] intervene in order to ensure that your child receives that care elsewhere. They are using this
[00:43:09] gender affirming care when it comes to federal funding. So for schools, for example, who the
[00:43:16] government says refuse to provide this quote unquote gender affirming care, which may come in the
[00:43:21] form of like, okay, not allowing boys to go into the girls locker room, boys who say, well, you
[00:43:32] know, I identify as a girl. If a publicly funded school does not allow that to happen, the federal
[00:43:40] government says, okay, we are not going to provide you with federal funding for what they call free
[00:43:47] and reduced lunch for kids who are at a certain low level in the poverty scale, get free and
[00:43:54] reduced lunch at schools. The government says if your school does not provide this gender affirming
[00:43:59] care by allowing boys to go into the girls locker room, boys who say they're a girl,
[00:44:04] then we're going to take that money away from you. Who hurts? Who's harmed in that scenario,
[00:44:10] which is actually happening. It's kids who are hungry who can't afford to buy their own lunch
[00:44:15] at school. And so, I mean, there's so many examples of this where their hypocrisy is just playing out
[00:44:21] literally in real time. Their hypocrisy of saying, well, hey, this year, 2022 is the 50th anniversary
[00:44:27] of the enactment of Title IX. The law that was put in place literally out of a recognition of the
[00:44:35] biological difference between the male and female sex and to make sure that there was a level playing
[00:44:41] field because kids like your daughter back in the day, they didn't have the opportunity to get on a
[00:44:48] girl's wrestling team because they didn't exist in schools and with most sports. It was like,
[00:44:53] okay, well, there's boy sports and there's girls cheerleading. That was kind of, you know, or like
[00:44:57] my mom, she had water ballet and my mom's pretty athletic, but her options were pretty limited
[00:45:02] as a kid growing up in East Grand Rapids in Michigan. So, Title IX 50 years later has created
[00:45:10] huge opportunities for girls and women in sports, which then leaves opportunities in different
[00:45:15] professions and so on in their life. On this anniversary, 50th anniversary of Title IX, now
[00:45:21] the government in this administration is trying to, or they are actually redefining Title IX in
[00:45:28] the law, not by passing an amendment through Congress, but instead back during it through a
[00:45:34] rule change to now include this gender identity, which basically says like anybody who says they
[00:45:40] are a woman can be a woman at any given point in time and therefore by doing so, erasing,
[00:45:50] doing two things, erasing women as a group in society because now you could, if you, if you
[00:45:58] wake up tomorrow, you're like, yeah, I'm a woman. All right. Well, the government says now you are,
[00:46:03] you are, you are the same protected class as a biological woman as, as me. Um, but, but the
[00:46:10] deeper kind of underlying danger goes back to where we started is this change is our government
[00:46:15] saying there is no such thing as objective truth. There is no such thing as biology. There is no
[00:46:21] such thing as this biological difference between a male and female. And if we, as a society, except
[00:46:27] this premise, then where are the boundaries? There, there literally are no boundaries. And
[00:46:34] where does this lead? I mean, I've talked about this before. You would think that kids are the
[00:46:40] one place where everyone in our society can agree. Like we have to, kids are the most vulnerable.
[00:46:46] We have to protect our kids. Well, now there, it has, it is starting to become acceptable
[00:46:51] to use this term minor attracted person, which is a pedophile. It's a pedophile. And yet you have
[00:46:59] teachers. That's the overton window expanding. Exactly. Exactly. That's what I'm talking about.
[00:47:04] And so people are like, Oh yeah, you know, we should just like let people be, they want to be in
[00:47:08] kids and this and that. Like, okay, so if you deny that shut up comes in, right? You should be like,
[00:47:14] Hey, no, shut up. You're not allowed to say that. Sure. We're there. Yeah, exactly. Seriously. And
[00:47:19] then you have people who are teachers in a position to care for our kids on social media. Like, yeah,
[00:47:26] I'm a minor attracted person. And this is how I feel when I'm standing in front of the classroom
[00:47:31] and using this very sexually explicit language. And parents are giving their children over to
[00:47:37] these people for, for more hours, waking hours of the day, probably then they spend time,
[00:47:43] they're able to spend time with their kids. And if you're, you become a bigot, if you're like,
[00:47:49] uh, yeah, no, this is not okay. This normalization of pedophilia is exactly what's happening right now.
[00:47:56] How does it happen? Where does it start going back to restart? Like, well, you look at each,
[00:48:02] you know, how this overton window is opening and pushing you not just to respect someone's
[00:48:07] different choices, but to openly accept and champion these things that are literally insane
[00:48:14] and are causing direct harm to our kids. And, and again, this is where the societal shift
[00:48:22] and change, this cancel culture, this, this fear mongering, pushing self-censorship coupled with
[00:48:28] the power of government, both directly and indirectly through big tech is, is, has put us in a very
[00:48:35] dangerous place in our society. How much did you see with big tech, uh, collusion with the government?
[00:48:44] When you were in the government? Um, quite a bit, especially when I ran for president.
[00:48:53] I, um, you know, I, I don't know, I could probably think of a number of reasons why it, uh,
[00:49:03] it escalated so quickly there where, you know, it got to a point where even as I was, you know,
[00:49:09] being very outspoken on different issues beforehand, I think certain powers that be maybe
[00:49:14] didn't think that, oh, well, you know, she's just saying her piece. She's over here on the sidelines,
[00:49:18] but, you know, running for president provides a certain platform. And, um, and it was, I mean,
[00:49:25] the, the first kind of eye-opening experience to me was when, uh, we had the very first presidential
[00:49:31] debate in the Democratic primaries. It was in 2019. Uh, you know, most people in the country
[00:49:37] didn't know who I was and never heard of me before. And my hope was, all right, cool. There'll be
[00:49:42] millions of people watching. And I think there were north of 20 million people who tuned into
[00:49:46] that first debate, maybe a little off, but ballpark. And, um, my hope is I'll be able to introduce
[00:49:53] myself, let people know why I'm offering to serve as president and commander in chief. And then,
[00:49:57] you know, they'll go online and say, okay, cool. I want to learn more. We set up all of our Google
[00:50:02] AdSense accounts in the hopes that they would do so and that I would be able to have my,
[00:50:06] my website there, uh, ahead of whatever stuff Google chose to push on people. I was the most
[00:50:15] searched candidate of the night after that debate, which we had hoped would be the case.
[00:50:20] And, uh, all of a sudden our, our Google ad account was suspended with no explanation,
[00:50:27] no notice, no message, like literally nothing, just crickets. And so our team immediately
[00:50:32] obviously started to reach out like, Hey, what's going on here? We set this up according to all
[00:50:36] the rules and da da da. We tested it beforehand. Everything was good. What happened? No response.
[00:50:42] And this went on for a period of time. And then all of a sudden we, we, we still never got a
[00:50:48] response. Then all of a sudden the account was, was, uh, the suspension was taken off the account.
[00:50:52] And that was the first like glaring example directly that I felt.
[00:50:58] What part of your mind was like, Oh dang, that, that's too bad. I can't believe this weird thing
[00:51:02] happened. And what part of your mind was like these bastards, these bastards, I went straight there,
[00:51:07] I went straight there because it was, it was, were you suspect already going into it? Did you,
[00:51:13] or is that just like a total eye opener? No, I mean, I had, you know, the, the, um, influence and
[00:51:20] impact of these big tech companies and social media was already pretty clear, you know, how
[00:51:25] their algorithms were trying to push certain kinds of information to invoke a certain response
[00:51:30] from their, from their users. I think things were becoming more and more clear just broadly at that
[00:51:34] point, uh, which is why when that happened, uh, it was way too much of a coincidence to just be a
[00:51:43] coincidence. Um, I, I ultimately filed a lawsuit against Google because of this to, to make the
[00:51:50] point and to make the statement that they shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. People need to
[00:51:55] know how much power a monopoly like Google has on directly influencing interfering in our
[00:52:03] elections. And that, that if they can do this to a sitting member of Congress running for the
[00:52:08] highest office in the land, making it so that they are manipulating and, and dictating what
[00:52:15] information people see when they type in, who is Tulsi Gabbard, they can do it to anyone for any reason.
[00:52:21] Uh, you know, whether you're running for mayor or dog catcher or whatever it might be,
[00:52:29] that this private corporation gets to determine what we as voters know and see and hear about a
[00:52:39] person. And that, that became increasingly clear throughout my entire campaign, how, um, you know,
[00:52:45] the, the power elite, as I call them, or the permanent Washington, that these are made up of
[00:52:51] some of the most powerful people in politics, the most powerful people in corporate media and the
[00:52:55] most powerful people in big tech are interfering in our elections by dictating who voters are
[00:53:02] exposed to and what they are exposed to about certain people who are, are running for office.
[00:53:06] They decide what, what the narrative, what the narrative is. And so to say, and this is, this
[00:53:14] is the thing, of course, they don't talk about when they talk about, you know, influence and
[00:53:18] interference in our democracy and our elections, but it is the biggest and most impactful thing
[00:53:23] that is influencing voters. Um, and, and there've been recent cases that have come forward about
[00:53:30] Google, for example, like in just in this past election, there was a report that was done
[00:53:35] showing that, you know, political emails from candidates going into Gmail accounts, which
[00:53:41] most people have favored sending these, uh, favored, uh, progressive or Democrat candidates
[00:53:48] or Democrat messaging to, to funnel those emails into your inbox. Whereas, uh, conservative or
[00:53:56] Republican political emails were more than 50% of the time end up in your spam box. So, you know,
[00:54:06] there, there are a lot of different examples of this, but it's a dangerous, dangerous thing.
[00:54:13] That is now going unchecked. There's no check and balance on that. And then you look at, well,
[00:54:19] okay, well, so what are the political leanings of these big tech companies and Facebook has,
[00:54:24] has obviously they've been in the news a lot about this as well. You know, they, they, they
[00:54:29] have a specific political slant, but to me, whether the political slant is to the left or to the right,
[00:54:37] or if it's Democrat versus Republican, if, if we don't number one, if we're not informed about it,
[00:54:43] not calling it out and not pushing our lawmakers to say, Hey, you know, this is this, we have to
[00:54:49] call it for what it is. They're directly trying to influence, um, influence our elections. We have
[00:54:55] to be willing to do it whoever is, you know, whatever their political slant is. The point is
[00:55:00] like freedom of speech is freedom of speech. We have to be willing to protect that freedom of
[00:55:04] speech, no matter, um, whether we like it or not, or whether we agree with that, that speech or not.
[00:55:11] I guess the live experiments going on right now with, with Twitter, right? With Elon. Yes.
[00:55:16] And what he's doing and he's bringing back all these people that were banned, including Donald
[00:55:23] Trump, he just brought back Donald Trump. I don't think Donald Trump has gone on and gone back to
[00:55:27] Twitter yet. And apparently he has some kind of commitment to the other, to the truth, which is
[00:55:35] another social media platform, truth, media, truth, truth, truth, social. Yeah. So, but Elon's
[00:55:43] let everybody on, except for Alex Jones, Alex Jones, he did not let our echo, you're laughing at
[00:55:49] that. Finally got to react that echo. Yeah. Nay, Alex Jones. Yes, that's funny to me, but I don't
[00:55:58] know. Okay. He's going through a lot of legal, legal situations right now. Yeah. What is he,
[00:56:04] he's owes billions of dollars currently, right? Billions of dollars to the parents of the Sandy
[00:56:10] Hook massacre. Uh, but so other than Alex Jones, it looks like, it looks like Elon and Twitter is
[00:56:17] just going wide open. Yeah. I think it's literally other than Alex Jones. What's interesting to me
[00:56:22] about that is the people who are publicizing that they're leaving because now, you know, as Elon
[00:56:29] said, he's a free speech absolutist. Which can you say that if you don't bring Alex Jones back on?
[00:56:34] I don't know. Can you? Is that, is that an absolutist? Technically, that's not absolute.
[00:56:38] Okay. So he's almost an absolute. I saw the other day that CBS news,
[00:56:46] what is it? They, they like, oh, we're leaving Twitter. And then I, was it like a day or two?
[00:56:51] And then they came back. They came back. You know, Fox news left Twitter for a long time.
[00:56:56] Is that right? They left, they left Twitter for, for months and months and months,
[00:57:00] they left Twitter and they stayed off. And I forget what brought them back on, but,
[00:57:05] but you, so you have this experiment kind of with Elon Musk right now, opening up Twitter.
[00:57:10] And I guess we'll see what happens. And I mean, the whole thing, it's just such drama. And that's
[00:57:16] one thing that's interesting. You know, I always feel like all this stuff that we're talking about
[00:57:21] is like a separate world that I'm actually not that, I don't get fully engaged in that world
[00:57:28] because I actually have a bunch of businesses and like things going on. And I feel like that's
[00:57:34] more normal. And if you're not careful, you think that this world that we're talking about,
[00:57:39] the world of social media, the world of Twitter, the world of Facebook, the world of Instagram,
[00:57:44] if you're not careful, you think that's real. And you have to remember that it's not real.
[00:57:48] And that it's just a, it's just a virtual world that's not real, but there's people that live
[00:57:54] and die in that world. And they, and that world drives them crazy. By the way, I got asked that,
[00:57:59] I got asked that on a podcast interview a little while ago, you know, well, how do you feel when
[00:58:05] people make bad comments about you on Twitter or on, and I said, Hey, I recommend you don't really
[00:58:11] get concerned about those things because it's a bot. It's a bot or it's a person that's just
[00:58:16] looking, it's a troll or a bot. That's pretty much what you're, how many, what percentage of
[00:58:20] negative comments are coming from a person that is making a negative comment because their goal
[00:58:25] is to help influence you and move you in a better direction and see their perspective. The chances
[00:58:29] is very few. It's a bot or it's a troll. So how are you getting spun up about this stuff? I was in
[00:58:35] Greensboro, North Carolina a few days ago, stopped in a little shop on the side of the road. And
[00:58:41] this guy comes up to me and he's like, Oh my God, are you Tulsi freaking Gabbard? It's like, Yeah.
[00:58:50] It's like, what are you doing here? There's nothing in Greensboro. It's like, Oh, you know,
[00:58:54] I'm here for this event. I'll be speaking at later on. And he's like, you know what,
[00:58:58] if I was on Twitter right now, I would be putting out a tweet saying how much I don't like Tulsi
[00:59:04] Gabbard, but now you're standing right in front of him and I can't freaking say that. Like, you're
[00:59:09] a real person. And you know, I ended up talking to him for about five minutes or so. And he's like,
[00:59:14] I got to take a picture. I was like, all right, if you posted on Twitter, you better like be
[00:59:18] true to your word here, buddy, and not, not start talking shit about me. But it was just funny,
[00:59:22] the interaction, which is exactly that. Like in real life, very rarely, I've actually had it
[00:59:30] happen a couple of times where people will come up and say the kinds of harsh, you know,
[00:59:33] mean criticisms that they say on Twitter, maybe all the time. But by and large, most people,
[00:59:39] they wouldn't have that kind of interaction with someone in real life.
[00:59:43] What was the guy's beef with you? Or what do you suspect? I don't know, you know, it was interesting
[00:59:48] because he was, because after he said that, he's like, all right, can I just ask you one question?
[00:59:52] I was like, yeah, like my ride's waiting outside. I don't have a lot of time, but
[00:59:56] he's like, you know, you, you say a lot of things that are pretty critical to democratic party. And
[01:00:01] I agree with a lot of those things, but why are you still a Democrat? I'm like, Oh, I'm not.
[01:00:05] He's like, Oh, you're not. It's like, no, go listen to episode one of my podcast. And there's 29
[01:00:12] minutes of me telling you exactly why I left the Democrat party. But then that was it. And then he's
[01:00:18] like, Oh my gosh, like, okay, I'm going to go and listen to that. But, and then he asked if he
[01:00:22] could take a picture. And then as I was walking out, there were people sitting next to him,
[01:00:25] was like, is that, is that Tulsi guy? I was like, yeah, anyways, it was just funny.
[01:00:30] Because I don't know that he knew exactly what his beef was. But for whatever reason,
[01:00:38] he was not positively disposed towards me. But then after four minutes of a conversation,
[01:00:45] and just recognizing like, Hey, yeah, I'm a real person. You're a real person. And maybe we don't
[01:00:52] agree on everything. Probably don't disagree on some things. Cool. That's fine. But, you know,
[01:00:58] street each other with respect. Yeah. And what's scary about that is someone that's just like,
[01:01:03] I don't, I don't like you. And I have beef with you and files on Twitter. I'd be talking smack.
[01:01:07] Yeah. And the main reason is because that you've been labeled as a Democrat. And so they're not
[01:01:12] a Democrat. So therefore they must hate you. Right. And that's the horrible thing, right?
[01:01:16] Because, you know, someone can be anything. And if you have an open mind and listen to what they
[01:01:22] have to say, you know, well, they got some good points there. And that really doesn't make any
[01:01:24] sense to me right now. But let's hear what their perspective is. And that's a good way to,
[01:01:30] a good way to like, survive and live with other human beings in the world. Yeah. Listen to what
[01:01:37] they have to say, maybe try and see their perspective a little bit, which it just seems like is very
[01:01:42] limited, especially in the, in the world of social media. Yeah. And this, this goes to, you know,
[01:01:49] one of the, this is something that I talked about in my statement about why I left the Democrat
[01:01:55] party is how divided our country has become largely because of those, those, you know, well,
[01:02:03] if you are white, therefore you are this. If you are black, therefore you are that.
[01:02:09] And, and how the Democratic party has completely gone against Dr. King's dream of this, you know,
[01:02:18] that his kids would one day grow up in a society where we're judged based on our character,
[01:02:21] not the color of our skin. Well, now even in our, our schools, elementary schools, they want our
[01:02:27] kids to be taught that if you're white, you're privileged. If you are a person of color, then
[01:02:33] you are the oppressed or you are the victim and dividing us based on the color of our skin and
[01:02:40] racializing everything in our society. If something happens, well, obviously it's because of race,
[01:02:46] obviously it's because of the color of your skin. And you, you can go down that path of these broad
[01:02:52] categorizations, whether it's based on party politics or race, ethnicity, religion,
[01:03:00] any of these boxes that, that they like to put us in and use as wedges to drive us apart,
[01:03:08] rather than again, focus like, all right, let's just go below the surface and recognize that,
[01:03:12] you know, all people from Hawaii are not the same or, you know, whatever the fill in the blank is,
[01:03:23] we get into dangerous territory when we judge each other just based on, you know, the superficial
[01:03:29] or the label that is attached to us. And I've been on the receiving end of this constantly,
[01:03:35] because I've never fit into any one of those specific boxes. And, you know, friends of mine
[01:03:41] say, well, that, that hurts you politically because then you don't have like that natural support base.
[01:03:47] But, you know, none of us as people are, are monoliths, none of us are just walking around as
[01:03:52] like, oh, you know, this, these labels are attached to me, therefore I am that and it assuming that
[01:03:59] in our society has the negative effect of, of not encouraging that critical thinking, that independent
[01:04:06] thought, that healthy skepticism of like, all right, when I read this story or I hear this view,
[01:04:13] where are they coming from? What's the angle on it? What's, what's, what's their experience?
[01:04:17] Maybe that's informed that that may be different from my own. And what can I learn from it?
[01:04:21] You know, or what, maybe I end up disagreeing with it. And, but I've thought through here are the
[01:04:26] reasons why not just because like, oh, that person is in this category or this group, therefore
[01:04:32] I must disagree, I must be opposed. And, and that's a, it has the opposite effect of
[01:04:41] I think the foundation of this country, which is we are all Americans out of many, there are one.
[01:04:47] And this kind of individual thought and freedom of expression was celebrated at one time in this
[01:04:53] country. And now worse than not being celebrated, there are punitive effects and consequences
[01:05:00] to that freedom of expression, to where it becomes freedom of expression, you know, for those in power,
[01:05:06] freedom of expression is only celebrated if they agree with it.
[01:05:08] Imagine the being the adversary of America, like you're China right now, and you're just sitting
[01:05:15] there watching this unfold. And there's no better way to destroy your adversary than to have them
[01:05:21] destroy themselves. And so it's no, it's no surprise when, you know, the, the, the Russian
[01:05:28] bought farms were setting up these, these pro, these counter protests and protests in the same
[01:05:34] neighborhoods and, and, and really just doing all they could to divide America. And that's why
[01:05:42] where I always try and keep that top of mind for myself when, when I get put into a scenario
[01:05:50] where someone's trying to, you know, frame me up mentally, frame me up mentally. I'm always thinking
[01:05:58] to myself, okay, well, hold on a second. Don't get me wrong. I'm always thinking to myself,
[01:06:02] okay, well, hold on a second. Don't get framed up mentally. Listen to what someone else has to
[01:06:07] say. See what their perspective is. And remember that they're American and I'm an American.
[01:06:10] Because if I'm an American and you're American, cool, we got all kinds of things in common,
[01:06:15] all kinds of things in common. I think I said this on this podcast before, unless you're an actual
[01:06:21] ISIS member, I, I, I, we're going to find some common ground. Like we're going to both like
[01:06:28] UFC or we're going to both like guitar, like there's going to be something there. Yeah. We're
[01:06:33] going to both like Led Zeppelin or whatever. There's going to be something there where we go,
[01:06:38] okay, cool. I'm, I'm down. You know, only listen to Led Zeppelin. Cool. What's your favorite album?
[01:06:42] Like, let's go. But it's really easy to just focus on, oh, you like this and I don't like that.
[01:06:50] Therefore, you're my enemy and we should fight, which is really, really freaking lame. Yeah.
[01:06:56] It's really lame. And that's where we get framed up all day. Day long and social media is the
[01:07:01] amplifier of that, that we've never seen before. Truly. Never seen before. I think it would clean
[01:07:06] up a lot on Twitter if you were only allowed to be you. You're only allowed to have your name.
[01:07:10] Yeah. I agree with that. You can hide behind. Isn't that kind of what Facebook does? Facebook
[01:07:15] does that, right? Can you be on Facebook and be like, you know, alpha 29474 and make a bunch of
[01:07:22] comments? Echo Charles expert. That's not a yes or no question. You kind of can't, you could probably
[01:07:28] get away with it to a degree. Yeah. Yeah. False name or yeah. Yeah. Cause I see people with that
[01:07:34] on Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With the something other than their real name. Yes.
[01:07:39] So maybe if you're going to make, which is like the catfishing, right? Like they put up,
[01:07:43] they find like pictures of, well, that depends if they're trying to misrepresent their identity.
[01:07:48] That's true. But to take advantage of someone else. Yeah. You know, that's like an alias,
[01:07:53] nickname, you know, that kind of, I see that for sure. But I, I don't think Facebook is like
[01:07:59] openly permissive about it. I think it's like they try to make you have your real name. It seems
[01:08:04] like it seems to me when I look at Facebook comments, they're people. Yes. Twitter comments.
[01:08:10] Maybe not so much. No, no, no, no, no, no. YouTube fully not. And the divisiveness people.
[01:08:18] This is another thing that I find interesting is people talk about it's never been more divisive
[01:08:23] than it is now. And I get it. We want to make headlines, but man, we had a literal civil war
[01:08:29] where 650,000 people died, 650,000 people died. Right. And even in the late 60s, early 70s,
[01:08:37] there was crazy, crazy civil unrest. And there was, you know, the Sibonese liberation army and the
[01:08:45] black liberation army and the black Panthers and the weather underground. And these were groups
[01:08:51] that were killing. Like there was like something like 35 police officers that were assassinated.
[01:08:57] There was bombings. Bombings happened so much in those days that it was, it almost didn't even
[01:09:03] make the headline of the news. I mean, if there's a, if someone puts a bomb off today in America,
[01:09:08] that's going to be in the front of every news story, every news corporation there is.
[01:09:13] Back in the late 60s, early 70s, that stuff was just happening. They were just blowing stuff up.
[01:09:17] So it's not as bad. It's not the worst it's ever been. But it certainly seems that way when you
[01:09:23] go on social media and you start paying attention to that mayhem. Yeah, it's true. And, you know,
[01:09:30] I don't know what the recent numbers, but I feel like Twitter, you might know this echo,
[01:09:36] but Twitter, I think is like, compared to the old, you're the tech guy, but it's something like,
[01:09:45] like less than 5% of Americans are on Twitter. It's something, it's a really, I was just
[01:09:50] surprisingly low number. But you look at, it is known as the place for people in politics and the
[01:09:59] media. And so when you look at the outsized influence, you know, like a tweet can make a news story.
[01:10:07] It's not representative of, you know, the vast majority of Americans in this country.
[01:10:13] But it has an outsized effect. It does have an outsized effect. And I think that is safe to
[01:10:18] say it's not the, it's, most people aren't spending, I had this conversation with Ben Shapiro.
[01:10:23] You know, he was talking about all this stuff and I said, Hey, Ben, you're at ground zero
[01:10:27] for like political controversy in mayhem. And most people in America are just like
[01:10:32] working their job, going to their kids jiu-jitsu tournament, wrestling tournament,
[01:10:36] piano recital. That's what most people are doing. Now, if you want to open up that app and just get,
[01:10:42] let it creep into your brain, it's going to get in there for sure. Yeah.
[01:10:47] I had to take during, when I was running for president, my husband, like he doesn't like
[01:10:51] politics and he's not a guy, he's not a social media guy at all. But he was starting to look at
[01:10:59] Twitter a lot. And it got to the point where it was like actually caught like first of all, he's
[01:11:04] like, who is this person? Where are they? Where do they live? But, but I remember like we're sitting
[01:11:11] in like an Olive Garden for dinner, probably in New Hampshire somewhere. And he was, it was,
[01:11:15] he was glued to his phone and I could like almost palpably feel his blood pressure rising. And,
[01:11:22] you know, his, his like stress and anxiety and anger and just all of these emotions. And
[01:11:26] there was a few times I literally had to physically pull his phone from his hand. And then he
[01:11:31] ultimately just deleted the app because, you know, this is not a world that he lives in. I've been
[01:11:36] used to all kinds of attacks for a really long time. But it has, yeah, I mean, for, for, you can
[01:11:46] understand that for people who don't aren't accustomed to that sort of thing, it can have a
[01:11:51] really, really negative emotional impact. Oh yeah. We had one of my buddies, Micah Fink,
[01:11:58] who runs an awesome organization helping vets. But he said something when he was on the podcast
[01:12:04] about like, you are giving the energy to the thing that's eating you. So like your husband just
[01:12:10] going, Oh, you know what? I've had enough of this delete. Yeah. That and one of our friends, Jack
[01:12:15] Daniel, Jack Daniel Hill just went on like a retreat into the mountains. And I was like, Oh,
[01:12:22] how was it? You know, just talking to him. And the first thing he goes, it was four days, no phone,
[01:12:28] no watch, didn't even know what time it was. And he said, when he got back, he said, it was such a
[01:12:33] good like dopamine reset because you realize what that phone does to you, like how it makes you feel.
[01:12:41] And you know, it's like, I talk about fasting from food. And one of the best things you get
[01:12:44] from a food fast is it recalibrates your hunger, right? Like you think like it's been two hours,
[01:12:50] dude, I'm starving. You're an idiot, right? And then you get done with like a fast, a three day
[01:12:58] fast. And you're like, I'm not even close to hungry. I'm fine. And so the dopamine hit on the phone
[01:13:04] is the same thing. Like you take a break from that thing. And you go, Oh, this thing is running my
[01:13:10] brain. Yeah, it's got it's got ownership of my brain. You can't let that happen. Yeah. And you
[01:13:15] don't even realize it. Yeah, that documentary social dilemma was very eyeopening in how intentional,
[01:13:22] completely intentional. Like they're looking for that exact effect. Oh, completely like the smallest,
[01:13:29] littlest things like opportunity for exploitation, left, right and center and it's constant. And it's
[01:13:37] a yeah, I used to wear an Apple watch and I don't anymore specifically because like, I don't need
[01:13:43] that. Oh, constantly, constantly. You know, I tell the weird thing is like on Twitter,
[01:13:48] obviously, and look, I like Twitter. And what I like about Twitter is it's fun, because it's
[01:13:56] basically for my, for lack of a better word, personality, you get to sit there and make
[01:14:02] one liners. Yeah, it's basically just one liners and and it's easier than one liners if you and I
[01:14:07] are talking because if you and I are talking, I have to do a one liner on the spot. I have one
[01:14:11] second thing about it. I got to do it. Yeah, with Twitter, I can take seven minutes to think of a
[01:14:16] really good one line, right? So of course, you're going to win. Of course, you're going to sound
[01:14:19] you're going to sound funny or whatever. And it's a fun thing to do. But man, sometimes I'll like
[01:14:24] read someone that's putting something on Twitter. And you can see that they're putting some little
[01:14:31] fraction of their of their soul into it. Maybe that's a strong word, but they're putting at least
[01:14:35] some level of effort of like, Hey, I want to make this point, people have to hear this. What I'm
[01:14:40] about to say is going to have impact. And I'm thinking, I'm sorry, man, but like, if you're
[01:14:45] looking to change the world, you shouldn't be trying to change the world on Twitter. You should
[01:14:49] be trying to change the world through some other things, start a business, grow a company, go out
[01:14:52] and talk to people and communicate with them in a broad long term format. But but to sit there and
[01:14:58] be like, All right, this is the thread. This is the thread that's really going to change things
[01:15:03] up. This is the one. So I think that's a little bit sketchy. And you have to watch out for that.
[01:15:09] And and again, I also think that Twitter, originally as a method of communication, when I
[01:15:15] originally got on it, Tim Ferriss, he says to me, Oh, no, it's a really good way to like,
[01:15:19] talk to people and communicate with them. And you can get a bunch of information. I was like,
[01:15:22] Oh, I guess that sounds cool. And at some point, Twitter went from a way to communicate with a
[01:15:27] bunch of people and have them communicate back to you and people you don't know, and it's all good.
[01:15:29] And we can all it went from that sort of a positive communication. And I still think I feel I still
[01:15:35] feel that way about it. Like I'll go on have all kinds of positive, really good interactions
[01:15:39] with people. I'm probably the only person that's just on there trying to have a positive interaction.
[01:15:45] Even when people say negative stuff to me on Twitter, I always say, Oh, that's a cool perspective.
[01:15:49] Thank you. Like, well, that makes sense. I never thought of it that way. And let me keep an open
[01:15:54] mind here. Instead of just going on the attack. But yeah, people got to watch out for that one.
[01:15:59] Yeah. So my approach is a little different than yours. I am and you know, the, you know, social
[01:16:08] media strategists may have have some, some constructive feedback here, but I do try to be
[01:16:14] pretty intentional about things that I put out on social media at real large, but Twitter limitation
[01:16:20] of space, I put, I put some thought into the statements that I'm making in the hope that it
[01:16:25] will have an impact, at least causing people to ask a question or maybe stop and think about
[01:16:30] whatever the topic is that I'm commenting on and using it as a platform to help inform and engage
[01:16:37] on, on the issues, issues of the day. It's challenging because it's so short. But to me,
[01:16:44] all of these different platforms, yes, there's, there's positives and negatives to them. So I want
[01:16:48] to try to, I do, I want to be very intentional about what I am putting out responses, you know,
[01:16:56] cross, cross the spectrum. But to me, this is like really the thing is like people are like, oh,
[01:17:02] you know, I always laugh at the comments that are like, Oh, I hate what you say, or you're so ignorant,
[01:17:08] or you're terrible, all of these different things like dude, unfollow. It's as simple as that. Or
[01:17:14] you should not be allowed to speak and da da da da da da unfollow. And that's, that's where like,
[01:17:20] you see how again, people in government and people in positions of power, like, well, we need to ban
[01:17:26] hate speech, we need to ban misinformation and disinformation. Who gets to decide what that is?
[01:17:33] You know, your, you know, what echo might think is hate speech, maybe different from what you
[01:17:38] might consider hate speech, what's offensive to him might be different than what's offensive to you.
[01:17:42] You know, Missy, we saw this through the COVID pandemic, right? One day, Dr. Fauci says, oh,
[01:17:47] masks are useless, don't go buy them. Then the next day is like, well, actually, everybody really has
[01:17:52] to wear a mask. Like, okay, so who gets to say what is misinformation and disinformation and what
[01:17:57] should be banned versus not banned. The postmortem on the COVID is very crazy to look at. Yeah,
[01:18:06] it's a great case study for what we're talking about. The last time you were here, the last time
[01:18:09] you were here, you did do a podcast, but you were in town and Echo and I were here and you just
[01:18:14] were like, hey, I'm in town, swing by. And so you were here. Echo and I were like, way beyond COVID.
[01:18:22] I guess we were just like not wearing masks, not doing anything. You were here, you were still,
[01:18:28] you were still in Congress. You were here, you had two masks on. We ended up having,
[01:18:33] I had enough, having to send you the horrible text of like, hey, I'm really sorry, but both Echo
[01:18:39] and I have COVID after you left. But what you, when you look back, what do you think of that whole
[01:18:46] gig, that whole COVID thing? Like it was mayhem. It was, it was mayhem and a lot of it was caused by
[01:18:55] a lot of, I mean, look, I mean, Fauci was lying about masks because he didn't want people to go
[01:19:02] buy masks because he felt like there wasn't enough masks for healthcare professionals.
[01:19:08] And I think at different points, you know, you saw how you're not allowed to go to church,
[01:19:14] not allowed to go to a funeral, not allowed to have a wedding. You're not allowed to gather with
[01:19:19] friends in your house, not allowed to have birthday parties, but-
[01:19:22] You go to Home Depot, Walmart and McDonald's.
[01:19:25] Home Depot, Walmart, McDonald's, or 50,000 people in a Black Lives Matter, March, shoulder to shoulder.
[01:19:32] Social distancing, six feet apart, like, yeah, no. And just the direct statements that these so-called
[01:19:39] healthcare professionals made during that time was like, oh, well, you know, the cause is worthy.
[01:19:45] So therefore, it outweighs the risk of COVID. But your kids are not allowed to go to school.
[01:19:51] My whole perspective on this is individual choice. And so for me, like, I travel a lot,
[01:19:59] I do a lot. I don't want to get sick. I was wearing masks on planes before COVID happened
[01:20:03] because I can't afford to have days out where I can't do what I need to do, whether that was in
[01:20:09] Congress or now. You know, I have people in my family who have compromised immune systems.
[01:20:14] So generally, I am more careful than your average person because I can't afford to get sick.
[01:20:21] But it comes down to the idea of individual choice was thrown out the window. And we saw
[01:20:29] how people in power were claiming to act in the best interest of quote, unquote, public health.
[01:20:36] But it really got to a point where this was about compliance or face the consequences. It became
[01:20:43] about power. And that's the dangerous thing as we look back at what happened.
[01:20:48] How much did government trust decay because of COVID?
[01:20:53] How much did government trust what?
[01:20:54] Decay.
[01:20:55] What do you mean?
[01:20:56] I mean, people that maybe before COVID would be like, oh, you know, government's saying something.
[01:21:00] It's, you know, it's the government decaying trust in the government. Yeah, exactly.
[01:21:05] I think I think that that lack of trust went up dramatically. Because, you know, God, what was it?
[01:21:13] One of these mainstream media, I don't know if it's the New York Times, New York, or one of these
[01:21:18] had an op-ed recently published where they're just like, oh, people should just forgive
[01:21:22] people like Dr. Fauci for being wrong because, hey, nobody really knew what was going on.
[01:21:29] And a lot of parents being like, hold on a second, you know, my kid was out of school for two years
[01:21:34] and you want us to just forgive and forget as my kids trying to, you know, play catch up or,
[01:21:40] just whatever, you know, again, like I've, families who could not go and see a loved one
[01:21:47] in the hospital before they died. There's not a whole lot of forgive and forget, I think,
[01:21:53] going on by people who really, really were, you know, small business owners who were forced out
[01:21:57] of business. And there's just so many different examples. You know, from a leadership perspective,
[01:22:03] you have to be honest with people about what you know and what you don't know and what's like
[01:22:09] your best guess and what, and look, it never inspires confidence, right? If we're in combat
[01:22:14] and I say, hey, Tulsi, I guess you should move to that next building, right? Like,
[01:22:22] that doesn't inspire the kind of confidence that people want to hear. But if you and I are working
[01:22:25] together and you know that, listen, all leadership decisions are a guess, they really are. You're
[01:22:31] not making any leadership decisions that I know 100 or very few. Let me rephrase that. Very few
[01:22:37] leadership decisions that you make as a human being in a leadership position, you know 100%
[01:22:41] what's going to happen. And if you did, then who cares, right? If I know 100%, oh, I know 100%
[01:22:46] if we make this investment, we will 100%, that's not even a decision, right? That's just a smart
[01:22:50] move that you're going to make. If I knew on the battlefield 100%, if you take down this building,
[01:22:54] we're going to get the flank on the enemy and not lose anybody. Great. That's not a,
[01:22:59] that's just a move, right? But when it comes to making decisions, you got to recognize number one
[01:23:06] that, hey, this is a guess that I'm making right now based on the information that I have. And
[01:23:10] when more information comes out, I'm probably going to have to make adjustments to what I said
[01:23:14] 15 minutes ago, 15 days ago, 15 weeks ago or whatever. And yet it seemed like people's egos
[01:23:21] were so fragile that they just dug in and just, even when it made no sense anymore. Even when it
[01:23:27] made, after they had the freaking Super Bowl in Los Angeles with how many people were there at
[01:23:32] Coach Charles? I don't know. 80,000 or something like this. And they're all in there. And then
[01:23:38] in LA at that time, I had gone to LA for something. It was full on, I'm like, everyone's wearing a
[01:23:45] mask. And then they had the Super Bowl and no one's wearing a mask. And then they go back and
[01:23:51] it didn't make sense. And no one said, Hey, you know what? What we thought a month ago, two months
[01:23:55] ago, whatever, we've adjusted what we were thinking because we might have been wrong about that. And
[01:24:01] here's what we're thinking now. This is our best guess. This is how we're going to move forward.
[01:24:05] None of that happened. It was freaking ridiculous. And the crazy thing is, as someone who has,
[01:24:12] especially in the military, but in politics, been exposed to good leaders and bad leaders,
[01:24:18] what I would hope for from someone in a leadership position is just that honesty and transparency.
[01:24:25] Say, Hey, here's the decision that we made based on the information that we had.
[01:24:29] We have new information. And so here is the guidance or here's the direction
[01:24:33] that we're headed. Like that would engender more trust and more respect to those in positions of
[01:24:41] power and leadership rather than exactly what you're saying we saw where they were more concerned
[01:24:47] about not admitting like, Hey, we got that one a little wrong. We're going to adjust and kind of
[01:24:54] course correct. They're more concerned about that than they were about actually doing what was right
[01:24:59] and what was best and not concerned for the consequences, more concerned for themselves
[01:25:03] and how people might perceive them. Yeah. And that's what's weird. Everybody knows.
[01:25:10] Everybody knows. I asked hundreds of people this question when I talk about leadership,
[01:25:14] like if I go to you and I say, Hey, Tulsi, I'm not really sure how to conduct this mission.
[01:25:19] What do you think we should do? Yeah. Everybody knows that that's a better attitude
[01:25:24] and better leadership than if I'm not really sure how to conduct an operation. I say, All right,
[01:25:28] Tulsi, here's how we're doing it. And this is what we're going to do because I said so.
[01:25:33] Everybody knows that the first leader that asked for input and has an open mind,
[01:25:37] everybody knows that leader is more respected. Everybody knows that. And yet when we're in
[01:25:42] the leadership position, we decide to think, You know what? Everyone's going to think I'm,
[01:25:45] I don't know what I'm doing. If I ask Tulsi what her opinion is, it's freaking totally ridiculous.
[01:25:50] And it's totally wrong. And yet it's our ego, our ego so strong that it overpowers our
[01:25:57] actual knowledge of what good leadership is. We all know the better leader says, Hey,
[01:26:02] you know, I'm never conducting operation like this before Tulsi, I know you have,
[01:26:05] how do you think we should do it? Everybody knows that that's better leadership than
[01:26:09] Tulsi's got a bunch of experience in this type of operation. I've never done it before, but
[01:26:13] I don't want to look bad. So I'm going to dictate how we're doing it. Everybody knows that that's
[01:26:16] bad. Yeah. And yet our ego pushes us to do that. It's, it's ridiculous. That's how strong the ego
[01:26:20] is. One of my favorite series of all times is band of brothers. And it was something that
[01:26:28] I first learned about as an E. I'd just gotten into the army national guard. We did our annual
[01:26:33] training at Fort Indian town gap in Pennsylvania. And I had happened to pick up the book band of
[01:26:38] brothers by Dick Winters. As we were out there was reading it was on the plane going back to
[01:26:44] Hawaii when I finished it in the very back of the book, it says, you know, Dick Winters has
[01:26:49] now retired and is residing in Fort Indian town gap. Pennsylvania house like, Oh my God,
[01:26:53] I would have loved to go knock on that guy's door. That would have been incredible. But
[01:26:57] I've watched that series so many times in OCS. We actually had, we watched episode by episode,
[01:27:02] we had to write essays on each episode talking about leadership lessons. And for those who've
[01:27:08] seen it, the captain sobel character who was Ross from friends, he is that guy. He is that guy who
[01:27:15] was totally driven by ego did not care about what was right or drawing from experience or anything
[01:27:21] else. He was right to a fault and his soldiers suffered and they lacked any respect for him,
[01:27:28] like blatantly saluted the rank solely. But that was it, like following him into combat terrified
[01:27:35] them. And they talked about this and raised this through their chain of command versus Dick Winters,
[01:27:40] the guy who really represented and embodied those, those, the, the characteristics of servant
[01:27:47] leadership and humility and, you know, drawing on the strengths of his NCOs and his men to be
[01:27:53] able to make sure that they were taking care of each other and accomplishing the mission.
[01:27:57] Yeah. At Escalon front, we do that. We, we actually take chunks of band of brothers and talk about
[01:28:03] it. And again, everybody knows that captain sobel is hated. And everybody knows that when you
[01:28:10] come, when you try and demand respect from people, it doesn't work. Everybody knows that. And yet
[01:28:14] people freaking do it. Escalon front, my leadership company wouldn't exist if this stuff, if people
[01:28:19] could just, just kind of execute on what they know. Yeah. But that ego is so strong that it just
[01:28:26] overpowers the ability to listen to what other people have to say. It overpowers the people,
[01:28:32] the ability to allow themselves to be influenced by what other people are saying. They think of
[01:28:37] that as weakness. If you say, Hey, Nako, I think we should attack this target from the north instead
[01:28:41] of from the west. And in my mind, I think, wait a second, I'm going to look weak if I accept
[01:28:46] Tulsi's input right now. So no, right. Our ego just drives us. And this is again,
[01:28:53] I think this is one of the major issues that we see in America is that a lot of times people think,
[01:29:01] I'm going to look weak if I do this, I'm going to look bad, or I don't want to submit.
[01:29:06] I don't want to subordinate my ego. I don't want, I don't want Tulsi to be the one that had the good
[01:29:11] idea. So I'm not going to use her idea. I'd rather just fail. It's in a crazy, it happens in business
[01:29:17] a lot where I come up with the idea, my idea is not working, but it was my idea. So I'm just going
[01:29:21] to lose. I'm going to go bankrupt. And people think, no, no one would do that. Oh, yes, they will.
[01:29:28] And they do. And the extreme example is combat. There's plenty of historical examples where people
[01:29:35] where people have gotten their troops killed and in some cases gotten themselves killed
[01:29:42] because they just didn't want to, they didn't want to say, you know what, I was wrong about this word.
[01:29:45] We shouldn't attack. We shouldn't do a frontal assault right now. We should actually take a step
[01:29:50] back, maybe retreat a little bit and come and attack a different day. There's plenty of examples
[01:29:54] in history where people die because their ego gets in the way. So it happens in business. And if it
[01:29:59] can happen in, in business and people can bankrupt a company, it can happen in battle and people
[01:30:03] can get people killed. It will certainly happen all day on Twitter where people say, I would
[01:30:08] rather just perish than, than admit that, oh, that's a good point. I didn't think through that.
[01:30:13] And obviously it happens in politics every single day. And I think the interesting thing about that
[01:30:19] is these are decisions that are made out of fear. Their motivation is fear ultimately is
[01:30:25] themselves looking stupid or silly or not getting the credit or whatever it is. And I, I could
[01:30:30] the examples day and night, I could tell you in politics how people who are elected into these
[01:30:36] positions of leadership are really followers who are looking to react to certain situations,
[01:30:44] what will put me in the best light, you know, how can I take advantage of this to further myself
[01:30:49] or make those decisions based on fear, fear of like, Hey, I don't want to stand out from the
[01:30:55] crowd. I don't want to get this criticism. I don't want to be ostracized by this group or that group.
[01:31:00] Or what if these people don't like me or what if, you know, I don't get the credit for this. And,
[01:31:06] and that was, you know, one of the first days that I had as a new member of Congress in Washington,
[01:31:13] you know, the message from Democratic Party leadership was like, Hey, you, you need to make
[01:31:19] sure that, that we as a party get the credit for what you're doing. So if there's a bill with a
[01:31:24] good idea that one of your Republican colleagues puts forward and they want you to join them on it,
[01:31:29] don't do it because you'll make them look good. Just take their idea and you introduce the bill
[01:31:33] so that you and therefore the Democrats get credit for it. And then, and only then will we advance
[01:31:40] that idea because if it's the other guys and now, you know, we'll just let that bill die silently
[01:31:44] in the night. And, and, you know, if, if this were just, you know, I don't know, running for
[01:31:54] class president in high school, that'd be one thing. But then you take this example and you
[01:31:59] look at people who are making decisions based on our foreign policy and where and when our men
[01:32:04] and women are sent into combat and not being willing to say, Hey, we got that one wrong or,
[01:32:11] Hey, we need to relook at how we're thinking about this problem set and ask the question,
[01:32:16] how does this best serve the interests of the United States, our national security,
[01:32:19] the interest of the American people, instead of like, I got to look tough, I got to be strong,
[01:32:24] I got to pound my chest. And the, the unfortunate, and this is why I talk a lot about how the most
[01:32:31] important responsibility the president has is to serve as commander in chief and the danger of
[01:32:35] having a weak minded person in that position who does not understand the seriousness of that job
[01:32:42] is they feel they have to prove their strength and what better way to prove that strength
[01:32:48] than to say, Hey, I'm going to go drop some bombs. I'm going to go send in, you know, our, our meanest,
[01:32:54] baddest fighters to go into a certain situation or start a war, insert ourselves into a conflict
[01:32:59] without actually saying, Hey, maybe exercising restraint in the situation is actually the,
[01:33:06] not only the right move, but it's the power move. It's the move that actually serves the
[01:33:11] interest of our country. And that's, that's the dangerous consequence of exactly what you're
[01:33:16] talking about of ego and, and leaders making decisions based on emotion and fear, rather
[01:33:22] than actual assessment of, all right, what are we looking at? What are the consequences of course
[01:33:26] of action, a, b, c, and d? And what exactly are we trying to accomplish?
[01:33:32] It's freaking depressing. Is there any, is there any freaking light at the end of the tunnel
[01:33:38] for our government? Yes. What is it? Us. The light, the light at the end of the tunnel is
[01:33:47] people who are frustrated by the status quo, people who are concerned for what kind of future
[01:33:54] that we want to leave behind for our kids, what kind of country you want them to grow up in?
[01:34:02] Be, when I say be the change, it's, it's recognized the vision that our founders had for this country
[01:34:08] that, you know, literally escaping control and being governed by a monarchy where the people
[01:34:16] had no say to forming this country based on the foundation of a self governed people.
[01:34:22] And what, what does that actually mean? What does that look like? It's we, the people, fulfilling
[01:34:27] our responsibility in selecting leaders who truly are a government of the people by the people and
[01:34:33] for the people. There's a lot of different ways that any one of us can get involved and, and, and
[01:34:37] be a part of that. But the basic, the bare minimum is cast your vote and do a little bit of work,
[01:34:45] just a little bit to make sure that the votes that you're casting are based on, you know,
[01:34:50] informed, you know, figure out, figure out what you, what you want. And this is not to say, you
[01:34:58] know, you'll hear in politics like, Oh, one side only wants to get their side out to vote and hopes
[01:35:03] everybody else stays home. The more we have this open marketplace of ideas, the more we exercise
[01:35:09] our rights and freedoms and make sure that our voices are heard, then we have the kind of robust
[01:35:14] democracy that, that our founders envisioned. Again, back to the depressing viewpoint over
[01:35:20] from Jaco is the game that gets played as far as the whole political system, the game that's getting
[01:35:29] played is not conducive to people, Hey, okay, this is what I'm thinking right now. And this is what
[01:35:37] my beliefs are, and I'm going to go out and vote. And therefore, if a bunch of people are thinking
[01:35:41] like me, then we'll probably do okay. The game that's being played is like it's all about how
[01:35:46] much money can you put into advertising and how much how many people can you get to vote? And
[01:35:51] what methodology is there for voting? I mean, some of the voting things are crazy. Some of the things
[01:35:56] that happen with with voting and the way voting takes place. So it seems like the game that the
[01:36:05] politicians are playing, there's, you know, the, that the people are just sort of pawns that are
[01:36:14] yep, here's what we're going to do to get the pawns to vote this way. And here's what the, we'll
[01:36:19] get the result that we want. All of that is absolutely true. And knowing that that is true
[01:36:26] and knowing that that's the case is so important for us to know as voters what we're being subjected
[01:36:31] to and why and is exactly to try to manipulate us to vote in the way that one side or the other
[01:36:37] wants us to. And knowing that, then we can take a step back and again, encourage that critical
[01:36:44] thinking, encourage that as you're getting information, whether it's on a television ad or
[01:36:49] a social media post or a news article, exercise your own discernment and pause for a minute,
[01:36:57] think about, okay, well, what, what is their bias? What are they, what do they want me to think? Or
[01:37:03] how do they want me to react to this? There are, there's some apps out there. I know there's,
[01:37:08] there's a bunch, there's one that I have on my phone called Allsides. And it's an app that will
[01:37:13] present kind of the news headlines of the day. And it'll say, well, this new source is left
[01:37:19] leaning, this one is neutral, this one is right leaning. And it's not foolproof by any means,
[01:37:23] but there, there's some quick ways to kind of look out there and get a little bit of an idea of
[01:37:28] what direction or angle or bias a certain media source has taken so that you know, okay, well,
[01:37:35] if I read this, then okay, well, that's, that's kind of the outcome they want me to have. But
[01:37:39] being aware of that, I think is the first step. There are a lot of other policy changes that,
[01:37:44] that I think need to take place to address some of the problems that we're talking about. But
[01:37:48] that can only happen when we throw out leaders who are abusing their power and actually start to get
[01:37:55] real leaders into office who, who will take us in, in the right direction.
[01:38:01] When you say policy changes to address some of the things that have happened, what, like,
[01:38:05] what do you mean?
[01:38:07] I mean, the big tech, I think is, is a, is a huge one that as long as politicians are in the
[01:38:12] pockets and getting money from the Googles and meddas of the world, we're not going to see those
[01:38:18] kinds of changes take place. We hear a lot, I've heard a lot from both Democrats and Republicans
[01:38:23] about, oh, you know, big tech monopolies are such a big problem. It's like, yeah, okay, so
[01:38:28] what are you doing about it? And when you look at it, like, they're not, they're not doing
[01:38:33] anything about it. Actually, there's a, you know, a healthy debate and conversation needs to be
[01:38:38] had about how do you, you know, what role does government play in regulating these, these monopolies?
[01:38:46] I think first, you know, there's section 230 within the US code provides big tech, essentially,
[01:38:56] with the legal immunity that a publisher like the New York Times does not have. Because originally,
[01:39:02] they thought, okay, well, big tech, you know, like, they, they're not going to be, to be an
[01:39:07] arbiter and a curator of information, they're just going to be, you know, an online platform,
[01:39:12] whereas the New York Times does curate, you know, what letters to the editor they choose to publish
[01:39:16] or the articles they choose to publish. But in reality, in an application, these big tech
[01:39:22] monopolies are exactly, they're curating very, very carefully every single thing that we see.
[01:39:29] And yet they are not being held legally liable in the same way that a publisher would. So that's,
[01:39:35] that's kind of basic number one of like, okay, how should they be treated? Some say they should
[01:39:39] be treated as utility, much like the phone company where, you know, the phone company doesn't control
[01:39:45] who calls who or the content of any conversation. They are just a platform for us to be able to
[01:39:52] communicate and talk to each other. So I think, I think this big tech obviously does not want to
[01:39:59] lose that legal immunity. If they are a free speech platform, then be a free speech platform.
[01:40:06] If they're a platform that says, well, we're only going to push these certain viewpoints,
[01:40:10] then people know that and we'll know that going in. That's, that's a, that's an important place
[01:40:17] to start to make it so that these monopolies, I have been a big fan of breaking up big tech,
[01:40:25] breaking up a big tech using existing provisions within the law that
[01:40:32] like standard antitrust type. Exactly.
[01:40:35] To, to avoid exactly what we are seeing now, where you can say, oh, well, you know, you can use duck
[01:40:40] dot go instead of Google, but you're not going to get the same kind of effect and reach of being
[01:40:47] able to get as much information as you would because Google has a monopoly.
[01:40:51] I think there are different approaches to this, but recognizing the problem and how they're directly
[01:40:58] interfering in our elections. As one major example, we talked about Chloe Cole. There are other
[01:41:06] situations that like the Biden, the Hunter Biden laptop. Exactly. That's a great example.
[01:41:11] Is that not crazy? It's insane. It's insane. How, how, you know, for, for people who don't know,
[01:41:19] it was like just weeks before the general election in 2020, hugely consequential election.
[01:41:27] You have this discovery of a laptop that Hunter Biden left at a computer store.
[01:41:33] And then you have, I think it was at 50 or 51, either current or retired senior
[01:41:41] intelligence officials like people who headed the CIA coming out with a blanket statement saying
[01:41:47] that the contents of this laptop should not be released because it could be disinformation
[01:41:51] from Russia trying to influence the outcome of our election. And then, I don't know,
[01:41:58] was it the FBI who told Facebook not to? Yeah, I told Facebook to expect Russian propaganda in the,
[01:42:04] in the near future. Right. And then that kind of got put in with it. And Mark Zuckerberg on
[01:42:12] Rogan's podcast said, he, he said he didn't do what Twitter did was Twitter just, would just
[01:42:17] deleted any of those tweets that were pointing people in that direction. Facebook just downplayed
[01:42:23] it or deescalated its, its growth. So no one really saw it, which, which is essentially the same thing.
[01:42:29] Yeah. And that's like, you can't, that seems totally insane that that happened. Well, you think
[01:42:36] about why, why, why did they do this? It was because they were concerned. Oh yeah. That the
[01:42:43] information on the laptop would cause people to not vote for Joe Biden and instead vote for Donald
[01:42:49] Trump. Not a single one of those. I forget what news outlet it was, but they went back once the,
[01:42:58] obviously the election was over and the information on the laptop had been released,
[01:43:03] had gone back to any of those senior intelligence or all of them actually, they reached out to all
[01:43:08] of them to say, Hey, now that you know what you know, do you regret making the statement that
[01:43:13] you made blaming Russia on this? Uh, and many of them didn't respond to the question. Those that
[01:43:20] did not a single one of them said, I regret it or I was wrong. Not a single one of them. Most of
[01:43:26] them saying, well, I stand by my statement. This is, this is such an egregious, I mean, this has to,
[01:43:34] this has to be called out for, for what it is. This is people in, in major positions of power
[01:43:41] and influence, essentially stealing our democracy, stealing our right as voters, voters to have all
[01:43:47] the information available to us before making this hugely consequential, consequential decision on
[01:43:51] who our president should be. But yet this is the problem, right? This is the game that you're
[01:43:56] talking about. This is the problem is like no one's holding these people to account. No one's
[01:43:59] holding their feet to the fire. No one's demanding like, Hey, you know, you, you have completely
[01:44:05] discredited yourself if you're not willing to say, Hey, I was wrong. Yeah, that's like one of the
[01:44:10] solowlinsky again, one of the rules and he's got a whole section that's not just one of his rules.
[01:44:15] He's got a whole section on the rules of the means to an end. And it's basically, if you're
[01:44:20] going to, you do whatever it takes, you do whatever it takes to get to what you want. And that's why
[01:44:25] people, you know, in that situation, they go, No, I don't, I don't regret my statement because
[01:44:30] it's a means to an end. And they got what they wanted, which was to get a bunch of people not
[01:44:36] to see information that may affect the way that they vote. And that is such a dangerous, dangerous
[01:44:42] mindset, dangerous mindset where again, it's, it's so short-sighted because you know that that's
[01:44:49] true. And I've talked to people personally who have said like, you know, there's they will do
[01:44:55] anything and everything to pretend to prevent Donald Trump from getting elected president.
[01:44:59] And he's not, he is, he is, he's very hated by, by a bunch of people.
[01:45:04] Hated as it lightly, lightly.
[01:45:05] There's a level of hatred that's just, it's blinding.
[01:45:09] It's blinding, right?
[01:45:10] It's blinding. And that's how short-sighted that mentality is. So, you know, means to an end,
[01:45:16] use whatever means available and necessary to prevent that specific outcome. Turn the tables
[01:45:22] around. What about when you're on the other end of that stick and you have the opposing side saying,
[01:45:29] hey, now it's your side that we believe is the most dangerous thing for America.
[01:45:35] We're willing to do whatever it takes to stop you or whoever your advocate or whatever,
[01:45:39] whatever the case may be. That is such a dangerous mentality to have. And there are examples
[01:45:46] throughout history of authoritarian dictators who themselves believe like, I am the righteous one.
[01:45:54] I am the savior. And I'm willing to do whatever it takes because only I know what's best for the
[01:46:01] people. Are you tracking the FTX meltdown at all? The Bitcoin thing?
[01:46:06] Marginally. I've read kind of the top lines on it.
[01:46:09] But yeah, but look, it's, I don't even know what today is. I think it's the 22nd of November.
[01:46:14] But and so this case is unwinding as we speak. But right now it looks bad because these people
[01:46:23] were, they set up a big Ponzi scheme for all practical purposes. And with money from that
[01:46:29] Ponzi scheme, the, they were the number two donor to the Democratic Party. Right.
[01:46:36] Second only to George Soros. So and, and this guy, the guy that was running it, Sam, whatever,
[01:46:46] he's, he's, he's this big donor. And then they were setting him up. He was the one that was going
[01:46:52] to advise the government on how they should structure regulatory environment around digital
[01:46:59] currency. I mean, this is, this is going to get ugly. But that's the kind of situation where
[01:47:06] you're, you know, on the outside, you, if you're a normal person in America and you're working on
[01:47:11] your farm or you're working in your factory or you're doing construction or whatever it is you're
[01:47:15] doing, you're, you're not thinking that there's just straight doctor evil shit going on where this
[01:47:22] dude's paying to have all these people elected. I mean, you don't think that $100 million has
[01:47:29] an impact on, on the way an election turns out. I mean, that's having a huge impact, a huge impact.
[01:47:37] And so here's this guy and now he's getting, oh yeah, you donated money. So we're going to let
[01:47:41] you set up the regulations around cryptocurrency, which is the business that you're in, which is what,
[01:47:48] and again, I'm not following the case too close. And it's really early and not a lot of it's come
[01:47:52] out. But one of the other crypto dudes, CZ, some guy named CZ, he was like, oh, you're, he, uh,
[01:48:00] Sam was trying to set the gig up for himself. Of course. It wasn't out of like this altruism of
[01:48:07] like blockchain technology and cryptocurrency and you know, all of, you know, for people who are,
[01:48:12] are big advocates of that and the opportunity they see for that in the world of technology,
[01:48:16] that was not his, did not appear to be his motivation. And this dude, CZ was like, oh,
[01:48:22] I see what you're trying to do. And he is the one that kind of caused this whole thing to far,
[01:48:26] fall apart, which now, of course, you think, well, thankfully it fell apart when it did,
[01:48:31] because it was a big house of cards anyways. But as you look at this, like I said, as a normal human
[01:48:35] that lives in America, and you, you don't think that there's Dr. Evil shit going down where people
[01:48:42] are buying elections, you're thinking that things are like, Hey, this is America. And the fact of
[01:48:48] the matter is there is this kind of thing going on. There is this massive amount of influence.
[01:48:52] The big tech really is doing this kind of thing. The, the politicians really are bought. And by the way,
[01:49:00] that company gave money to Republicans as well. They were hedging their bets. They should have
[01:49:05] hedged their bets better with their freaking Bitcoin, by the way, because it ended up causing,
[01:49:09] but they had their bets Republican and Democrat more, much more to the Democrats,
[01:49:13] probably because they thought, Oh, well, Democrats are going to be in power. So we better support
[01:49:17] them right now. And, and so I think that's what's really disturbing. This game is being played.
[01:49:23] The surface of it, you know, we all think it's on the up and up. And as soon as you look below
[01:49:28] the surface, it's dirty. And it's corrupt. And it's disgusting. Yeah. That pay to play. I mean,
[01:49:37] it's, it's a perfect example of the whole pay to play mentality that that is so relevant in Washington.
[01:49:42] I think last time we, I was on your show, we talked a little bit about big pharma.
[01:49:46] Same thing. You look at how is it possible that, that still big pharma has so much power
[01:49:52] and so much influence in Washington, they get sweet deals so that they can make more profits,
[01:49:57] even when you're looking at government purchases of government of healthcare buying,
[01:50:02] buying prescription drugs. They're, I think most people in society recognize that this kind of
[01:50:08] outsize influence is wrong. And it's counter to the public interest. And yet many members of
[01:50:15] Congress are bought off by big pharma and they won't take those votes. They won't take those
[01:50:20] votes that hurt the people who give them their campaign donations and give them their campaign
[01:50:24] checks. Big pharma spends more money on political contributions and lobbying than they do on those
[01:50:33] crazy television ads that we see all the time of like, you know, the happy family frolicking in
[01:50:39] the meadow, promoting whatever the drug may be. Side effects might be suicidal ideations,
[01:50:46] massive diarrhea. And I don't think you can turn on, I don't think you can watch like one commercial
[01:50:53] like segment without seeing at least one prescription drug ad. And you think about the fact
[01:50:58] that how like TV ads are expensive, very expensive. And then you think about, well, gosh, they're
[01:51:04] spending multiple times that amount to influence, to buy influence in our government to protect
[01:51:10] themselves. How does a politician put money in their own pocket from a big pharma?
[01:51:15] I think there's a spectrum there. You know, those who are actually following all the laws
[01:51:24] make it so that those kinds of contributions make it so that they are getting the vast majority of
[01:51:30] the money in their political campaign, which gives them security against any potential challenger
[01:51:37] are coming from these big corporations and lobbyists rather than from voters. So that's kind
[01:51:43] of the first thing if you look at like, Hey, if you're following the letter of the law, even then
[01:51:48] you're protecting your own self interest rather than what's the interest of the people in your
[01:51:52] constituency who are actually the ones who are hiring you. You look at the most one of the most
[01:51:57] egregious examples is where politicians will take money in their campaign and
[01:52:06] either live in the gray space of like, Oh, well, you know, and there are examples of this like,
[01:52:11] I'm going to use campaign money to pay for my spouse's salary because my spouse is helping
[01:52:18] out on the campaign, or I'm going to use, you know, $100,000 to pay for childcare because
[01:52:24] by paying for childcare, then I can go out and work on my campaign. There was somebody that I
[01:52:30] worked with in Congress who used, I mean, he actually got convicted because he was breaking
[01:52:37] the law, but used hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay his rent to pay for dental bills for his
[01:52:44] family to pay for all kinds of personal expenses. And, and, you know, still to this day, he's just
[01:52:51] like, Oh, this is a witch hunt. This is, you know, they're coming after me because they don't like
[01:52:55] what I'm saying. Like, no, dude, you broke the law, you know, but there's, there's a whole spectrum
[01:53:00] there. I think all of which end up in a place where, you know, these are self serving interests
[01:53:05] rather than actually being accountable to, to your voters.
[01:53:10] How do you, because I get asked this, how do you square up the distrust of the government
[01:53:20] with, I'm going to serve in the armed forces? The question I get asked a lot. Yeah. And, and I
[01:53:26] answer it, but how, how do you answer that? You're, you're not active duty, but you're a current
[01:53:31] reservist. You go on active duty on a pretty regular basis. And yet you know the, you know what,
[01:53:37] how the sausage is made in Washington, DC. How do you square those two opposing things that are
[01:53:44] going on? I'm proud to wear the uniform of this country and the American flag. I'm proud to
[01:53:54] do my part in upholding that oath that we take when we enlist in the service. I'm honored to serve
[01:54:03] with great Americans who share that same mission and those ideals. I have, because I'm in the
[01:54:12] reserves and not active duty, I'm in the unique position of also being able to try to effect
[01:54:18] change in the political sense, recognizing we have a civilian led military in trying to lead our
[01:54:25] country in the right direction to where we are honoring that vision that our founders had for
[01:54:33] us, that we were honoring the service and sacrifice being made by our brothers and sisters
[01:54:37] in uniform and their families. And that we are making the best decisions that serve our own
[01:54:43] national security interests and the freedom and prosperity of the American people. When we have
[01:54:53] people in politics who are so compromised by the military industrial complex or one interest or
[01:54:58] another that is not the interests of the country and the American people, obviously those in the
[01:55:05] military are the ones who suffer the consequences when they make self-serving decisions.
[01:55:10] Even as somebody who served in Iraq like you, whether we agree or disagree with those decisions
[01:55:18] that are made by those civilians in leadership, it does not undermine the promise that we make
[01:55:25] to each other and to the Constitution as we continue to fulfill that promise.
[01:55:32] Yeah, obviously for me besides the just freaking awesome job that it is being in the military,
[01:55:42] which I loved being in the military, but when you're in the military, you have an opportunity to
[01:55:49] sort of mitigate the bad decisions that get made and you also get the opportunity to shape the
[01:55:56] military itself. So when you're in the military, you can do a much better job of taking people and
[01:56:03] like getting people the right mindset that's going to be beneficial for the country and for
[01:56:09] whatever country we're going into as opposed to if you're not in the military and you're sitting on
[01:56:14] the outside saying, well, it should be like this. Well, if you're in the military, you can actually
[01:56:18] make some of those things happen and you can do it within the guidelines that are set forth by the
[01:56:23] military, but you can do it in a positive way. So I guess that's how I always tried to square
[01:56:28] myself. It's so true. It's so true. And right now, I'm grateful to I often have the opportunity to go
[01:56:36] and provide in the Army, they call it LPD. It's like leadership professional development
[01:56:40] sessions with either soldiers who are going through training pipelines or those who are out in the
[01:56:46] force for exactly that purpose to hopefully have an impact in helping make sure that we have discerning
[01:56:56] leaders in the military, not just robots who aren't actually thinking through the kind of
[01:57:01] responsibility that they have, regardless of their rank as they're carrying out their task
[01:57:07] and their mission. The other cool thing for you is you being able to explain to leaders in the
[01:57:12] military, hey, this is what it looks like from the governmental side. You should probably go
[01:57:16] brief every military, you know, what's going on with that. Because I mean, even when I was in,
[01:57:21] I would kind of get trying grasp that and try and explain to people, hey, this is what it looks
[01:57:26] like from a political perspective. But for you, that's, that's you have the real experience to
[01:57:31] say, hey, this is why we're getting asked to do this. This is what it looks like. Here's what it
[01:57:35] took to get this decision made. Here's why we need to execute it. Here's what happens if we don't.
[01:57:40] So that's, it's pretty. It is. And, and, you know, I've had the opportunity to work a lot
[01:57:45] within the special operations community, particularly because they are looking for this
[01:57:50] kind of insight. And one thing I've really appreciated, especially in the special operations
[01:57:54] community versus the conventional military, which is not where it's not really encouraged so much,
[01:57:59] but really that problem solving mindset, a little bit of that challenging mindset where,
[01:58:05] you know, being a robot is discouraged. You are actually encouraged and incentivized to be somebody
[01:58:10] who's like, Hey, how can we do this better? Or why is this actually the best way? Or how was this
[01:58:15] decision made, whether you're an NCO or an officer? And I just having that encouraging that critical
[01:58:21] thinking and recognizing again, the impact that you have on people is, is so important. And I
[01:58:26] wish it was something that was more encouraged across the military as a whole.
[01:58:30] What are you right now, a Lieutenant Colonel? Yeah.
[01:58:35] When do you up for Colonel, Full Bird Colonel?
[01:58:40] I think the window opens maybe in about a year or two.
[01:58:47] Yeah, I'm not exactly sure, but we'll see that the results of the command board are supposed to
[01:58:54] come out any day now. And if I have, if I have, I'll find out if I have the privilege of being
[01:59:00] selected to be a battalion commander for a civil affairs reserve battalion.
[01:59:04] What are your chances? Is it like, how hard is it to get selected for that?
[01:59:09] It all depends on in the reserves. It's a little bit different than the active duty where,
[01:59:15] obviously you've got to be able to balance your time with whatever your civilian job or
[01:59:18] profession might be with, with the responsibilities of being a battalion commander.
[01:59:24] So it kind of depends on how many people are opting in or out on any given year.
[01:59:29] But there's a lot more. It is competitive. It is competitive.
[01:59:32] So if you get picked up as a reservist battalion commander,
[01:59:36] how much time do you have to spend active as a battalion commander? Do you have to do more?
[01:59:42] On paper, you have the same minimum requirement of the one weekend a month, two weeks a year.
[01:59:49] But a friend of mine was selected last year. He's a little bit ahead of me.
[01:59:53] And there's a lot of love time, as we say, there's a lot of love time.
[01:59:59] Because in a reserve unit, you rely a lot on your full-time staff, the full-time reservists who are
[02:00:05] running the staff shops, the personnel shop, the operation shop, and supply and everything else.
[02:00:10] And he's going to give me his best practices because he's just like, yeah, he runs his own
[02:00:16] business. It's kind of, and his business is doing very well. He has different projects around the
[02:00:21] world. And he's also a reserve battalion commander. And he's just like, yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot.
[02:00:26] But it's freaking awesome. Yeah. And so other than that, what else you got going on right now?
[02:00:39] What else are we doing? You got the Tulsi Gabbard show, which you finally launched.
[02:00:44] I know. It took forever. You came and talked to Echo and I about that. I think that's why you
[02:00:47] stopped by. You came by to suck our brains on how to do a podcast. And Echo decided to give you
[02:00:55] all of his advice. Yeah. I took notes. We took all of the advice. After that, I ended up getting
[02:01:04] deployed to East Africa and was gone for a while and then came back and just, you know, a lot of
[02:01:09] things happened. But yeah, finally pushed it out. And it's just, you know, I mean, it's such a great
[02:01:16] opportunity and platform to be able to dive into, you know, different issues, different topics,
[02:01:22] have great conversations. And so, you know, where people like, you know, like the guy in the, you
[02:01:29] know, the coffee shop in Greensboro, he's like, Oh my God, why don't you leave a different kind of,
[02:01:32] oh, okay, go listen. This episode one will tell you exactly the answer to what you're looking for.
[02:01:38] How often are you doing the podcast? Come out once a week?
[02:01:40] Once a week, every Tuesday. Push out a new episode every Tuesday.
[02:01:43] And where are you recording them? Wherever? I am for the most part recording at home in Hawaii.
[02:01:51] We got rid of a living room. We lived in a tiny two bedroom place and decided that having a studio
[02:01:56] was more practical than having a living room. Literally, we're like, if we're just sitting
[02:02:02] around on the couch, we're not, we're not using our time very well. So we got rid of the couch and
[02:02:08] my husband's a cinematographer. So he put together a studio. And so I'm sure there will be on the
[02:02:12] road ones at different points, but so far doing them from home. And then what do you have a
[02:02:17] sub stack? Did I see that? Yeah. So just recognize, you know, like my whole approach is there's so
[02:02:23] many different platforms that people get information from. And some people like to listen to podcasts.
[02:02:28] Other people don't like podcasts and they, they would rather watch cable news and other people
[02:02:32] don't like any of that and would rather read. And so for each of the episodes at a minimum for each
[02:02:39] of the podcasts that I'm putting out that I'm talking about a different issue, I jot down
[02:02:44] my notes and put them out on sub stack for people who just want to get a little bit of a summary
[02:02:50] of where I stand on certain things or my thoughts or views on, on a, something that might be
[02:02:56] happening in the news or something like that. And then YouTube, you're on YouTube. We're on
[02:03:01] YouTube on rumble and, and you're, oh yeah, no, you're on rumble rumble. Echo Charles. What's up? Oh,
[02:03:09] we're on rumble. Wait, you think we're on rumble? Cause I know I talked about getting us on rumble.
[02:03:14] Yeah. Oh, I can think of some matter of how many episodes are on rumble. Okay. So we're kind of on
[02:03:19] rumble. Let me double check that for a minute. Okay. I appreciate that one. Circle back.
[02:03:24] He'll say that. And then you're doing some spots on Fox news. You sat in for Tucker, Tucker
[02:03:31] Carlson the other night. Yeah. Second time he hour, he or his team asked for me to, to guest
[02:03:39] host for him when he was off. And that, that man, that's a new experience. I've never done that before
[02:03:46] anywhere else. And, um, hosting an hour, 44 minutes when you count in, you know, commercials
[02:03:54] of live television is definitely a new experience. A different level of like,
[02:04:00] there ain't no room for mistakes. It's a thing. It's a thing that, it's a thing that people have.
[02:04:05] Some people are good at it. Like when you, when you go and you see what the, what the news,
[02:04:12] what are they called? Newscasters, broadcasters. What are they called? Hosts. What are they called?
[02:04:16] Yeah. He would be a host because, you know, he's more on the opinion side of things than like
[02:04:22] your, your Brett bear on Fox is a little bit more of like a news kind of more of a straight news guy.
[02:04:27] When you see what that job, I would not like that job. Yeah. Do you like it? I had a lot more
[02:04:34] fun than I expected to have, to be honest. I, it was, it was certainly a lot of, because, you know,
[02:04:38] you know, his show is on every night and obviously Tucker's been doing this forever and he's,
[02:04:43] he's, you know, good at it. I'd say, I mean, he has the top rated show on Fox news. And so,
[02:04:51] you know, for me going in, I sometimes they have guest hosts who literally just show up and then
[02:04:57] they get given the whatever's going to be on the teleprompter. I'm not, I don't, I wouldn't do that
[02:05:05] for anybody. If I'm reading words on a teleprompter, they're going to be words that I wrote. And so,
[02:05:10] working with his team to write and structure the show, you know, all within the span of like
[02:05:17] a six hour timeframe, it's a lot, it's a lot. And, but it's, look, I mean, I actually did end up having,
[02:05:26] having fun just, just taking advantage of the opportunity to be able to share my own views
[02:05:32] on what's happening and have conversations with people. It is challenging and like, okay, you
[02:05:37] get four minutes to talk to somebody and you got somebody in your ear. Like literally, like I asked
[02:05:42] the first question, the producers like, okay, you have 90 seconds. Like, okay, rap, rap, rap. And I'm
[02:05:48] like, Oh my God, like I would love to either challenge what they're saying or ask another
[02:05:53] follow up or whatever. And it is the weirdest me and my buddy, Leif, who I wrote books with.
[02:05:58] And when his wife worked at Fox News and Jenna Lee. And so I would, when I would go to New York,
[02:06:06] you know, a lot of times I would just stay with them. And so I would kind of see her schedule
[02:06:11] and life. And I was like, Oh my God, it's grueling. It's grueling. I didn't want anything to do with
[02:06:18] that. So even the one hour session one, now I guess you're going to get good. A person would get
[02:06:25] better at it, you know, and you could see that Jenna, she was totally comfortable with it. I mean,
[02:06:28] it's just the way it is. It's just like anything. Yeah. Just like anything else. You're gonna get
[02:06:31] used to it. But that's a, you know, have you ever been on Maria's show? Maria Bartolomou?
[02:06:36] I have. Yeah. That, that I was so impressed with that woman when I've gone on her show, gone on
[02:06:41] her show a number of times. And she's just, she's got to be so smart. Yeah. I would sit there though.
[02:06:48] Because you know, you're watching her beforehand, you're watching her in between. Because like you
[02:06:51] said, in between, they're like, Hey, we got this one. And here's these numbers. And then like,
[02:06:55] boom, the camera goes back on, the red light comes on and she's all just squared away with
[02:06:58] everything she's saying. Yeah. It's pretty, it's a different kind of human. You can tell
[02:07:02] the skill. I guess there's a certain, you know, like Michael Jordan is going to be good at basketball.
[02:07:07] There's a certain type of human being that's going to be good at that job. Yeah. You've got to be,
[02:07:12] I mean, obviously you've got to be very focused and you've got to be able to discern kind of the,
[02:07:18] of all of the, the activity and voice in your ears and everything else that's going on. You got to
[02:07:23] be able to separate kind of the noise from the task at hand and not allow yourself to be shaken
[02:07:31] or distracted by whatever is going on around you. And that's, that's part of it. So are you going
[02:07:38] to do it more? We'll see. They say they, they've been pretty happy with it. And so they're saying
[02:07:45] like, okay, well, we look forward to having you do it more often. We used to catch a lot of crap for
[02:07:50] going on Fox news. Like it was, I, even I have, because I've got, I go on Fox news, I still go
[02:07:58] on Fox news. You know, many times CNN has asked me to be on CNN zero zero zero. Yeah.
[02:08:05] Yeah. Same thing with any other Fox news. MSNBC. MSNBC. They don't ask me to come on and talk to
[02:08:12] them. Yeah. That's, but you, I mean, I guess, the same thing. Yeah. It's the same thing. You know,
[02:08:18] it, it towards the end of my, well, first of all, like throughout the entire time that I was in
[02:08:23] Congress, you know, I, I was asked on all, all three of the different networks over the years,
[02:08:30] the invitations have shifted and changed based on whatever I was advocating for. If like CNN
[02:08:37] wasn't really going after it, then like, Oh, I wonder why I don't hear from this show or that
[02:08:43] show that literally happened to you. Literally. And noticeably, when you first showed up as a
[02:08:48] Congresswoman, you were kind of like a little bit of a kind of a rising star, right? So they say,
[02:08:54] so you were a rising star. Were you just, were they calling you all the time? All the time. And I
[02:08:58] just like, I was just, you know, over the years, people are like, Oh, you know, who's your publicist?
[02:09:05] Who's doing all this? I was like, my phone's just ringing. I don't have a publicist. I have somebody
[02:09:11] who used to be like a communications intern who's answering the phone calls, but it was very, very
[02:09:17] unexpected. And I was just like, okay, like I'll take advantage. Like if it makes sense, then I'll
[02:09:22] take advantage of this platform to be able to say what I want to say. But it was a palpable shift
[02:09:29] over the years as, you know, I would, I would speak out on a certain issue or, you know, I didn't
[02:09:36] support Hillary Clinton in 2016. And that was like, Oh, okay. Well, it was literally considered
[02:09:42] blasphemy and politics. And then again, in, in 2020, when I ran for president,
[02:09:50] it was, you know, I saw this shift just throughout that campaign, where there was already a negative
[02:09:57] bias towards me from the day that I announced my candidacy, because I had a track record of being
[02:10:03] somebody who called it straight and was very outspoken against the foreign policy establishment
[02:10:09] in Washington and their decisions. And that, that progressed throughout the campaign where it got to
[02:10:16] a point where instead of even covering me or instead of mentioning, Hey, this person is a
[02:10:21] candidate for president, they just stopped including my name and articles about Democrats
[02:10:25] running for president completely as though I didn't exist. It was a media blackout at a certain
[02:10:30] point throughout the time. Fox News consistently has been a platform where I've been invited on
[02:10:38] consistently. Did they invite you to talk about issues that you weren't disagreement with them?
[02:10:43] Yeah. Yeah. Over the years. They just didn't care. And they didn't care. And one thing that,
[02:10:47] that I've heard from different hosts of different shows, and even some of the, you know, like the
[02:10:52] executives at Fox is like, Tulsa, we really like having you on because we never know what you're
[02:10:56] going to say. Literally. You are unpredictable. And, and that's why our audience likes you.
[02:11:03] Because you're, you're interesting person. You have something interesting to say that's not just
[02:11:06] like one party's talking points or, you know, whatever the popular thing is of the day. And I
[02:11:13] think that, that says something about media as a whole. But the fact that they, they just say,
[02:11:19] come on and say your piece. I go on and say my piece, whether the host degrees or disagrees,
[02:11:22] maybe that's part of the conversation, but it's not, it's not the deciding factor of, of whether
[02:11:27] they have me on or not. But the other news networks, it was a deciding factor. Oh, absolutely. I mean,
[02:11:32] I, and that's the people on social media like, Oh, how come you're always on Fox News? You know,
[02:11:35] you're letting them take advantage of you and all this other stuff. It's like, no, I'm taking advantage
[02:11:39] of the platform. Number one, because they reach millions of people more than any other cable news
[02:11:44] network. And number two, CNN and MSNBC, they don't, they, they haven't asked me on their air for years
[02:11:51] on any issue. Like Eve, I've reached out once on veterans issues, toxic burn pits, things,
[02:11:55] things that I've worked on in Congress and still really passionate about and trying to advance.
[02:12:01] No interest whatsoever. That's like kind of crazy, isn't it? Yeah, it's very revealing,
[02:12:09] very revealing. So you would reach out to CNN and say, Hey, I would like to talk to you about
[02:12:14] the veterans that have been around these toxic burn pits and now they've got diseases.
[02:12:18] Would you like to do this? I think they'd be like, no,
[02:12:21] the response I got back, and this was the, that was the last time I reached out. The response I
[02:12:25] got back was like, Oh, interesting. Let me check with the producers and then radio silence. Like
[02:12:30] they didn't, they didn't have the balls to come back and say like, yeah, no, thanks. Not interested.
[02:12:34] It was just like no response. Well, you have your own platform now, right? You got the, the podcast,
[02:12:42] the YouTube channel, the, the sub stack thing going on. TulsiGabber.com. You're on there.
[02:12:51] TulsiGabber.com. I'm working on a book right now as well. Two books actually focused on
[02:13:01] While of the Democratic Party and the other book focused on the cost of war.
[02:13:05] Or do you already have a publisher for these? I do. Sweet. And so when are these things coming
[02:13:09] out? Working on the sequencing. But I hope to have one of the books out by, I don't know,
[02:13:18] early next year, spring. What about politics in your future? I don't know. I don't know,
[02:13:25] is the honest answer. It's, I want to be in a position where I can best make a positive impact
[02:13:36] and where I feel I can best serve. I am terribly concerned for all of the reasons that we've talked
[02:13:44] about today about the failure. It's not even a lack of leadership. It's, it's, it's a sincere failure
[02:13:51] of leadership in this country. And if there is a way for me to actually directly impact that
[02:14:04] leadership, then I will pursue that, whether that means I'm running for office or trying to impact
[02:14:13] those who are in office. We'll see. The vehicle is, is less important than the impact to me.
[02:14:25] But you may go back into politics? Sure.
[02:14:28] All right. What is it? Echo? Yes. What do you got? Anything else?
[02:14:36] No, I was going to ask that. You will be running for anything or, you know, thinking about it or
[02:14:40] what? But, you know, we got that answer. We're still surfing, obviously. Yes. Water woman never
[02:14:45] died. But no, water woman is alive as well. A lot lately. A lot. I've been on the road in the last
[02:14:52] two months. I've probably been home, I don't know, two weeks out of that period of time.
[02:14:59] You spend a lot of time campaigning for people too. Yes. Which was, you know, after I announced
[02:15:05] that I was leaving the Democratic Party, becoming an independent, my phone started ringing off the
[02:15:11] hook from people in what, you know, what they call the swing states, the states that can either go
[02:15:16] Democrat or Republican, a lot of close races and people inviting me to come out and help campaign
[02:15:24] for them, recognizing that there are a lot of undecided people, whether they're independents
[02:15:29] or Democrats or Republicans who are frustrated with the current state of affairs and current
[02:15:34] leadership. And so, yeah, I reached out to you mostly. Democrats or Republicans? Republicans.
[02:15:40] Did any Democrats reach out to you? No. If they had, if there were, if there were a Democrat
[02:15:46] running for Congress who was openly calling out the insanity of the Democrat leadership of today
[02:15:54] and taking a strong stand on the things we're talking about, on basic fundamentals of freedom,
[02:16:00] I would have happily gone and campaigned for them. Not a single one reached out. And I've been looking.
[02:16:06] I've been looking for those courageous voices to actually step out. And unfortunately,
[02:16:14] that hasn't been there. And I've heard from some people privately, just and really over the last
[02:16:23] few years who are saying, hey, thank you so much for speaking out on these things. I appreciate
[02:16:29] what you're doing, but also don't tell anyone. And so it's sad, it's unfortunate, but part of
[02:16:36] like the last thing I said in my announcement of leading the Democratic Party is I invite other
[02:16:41] Democrats to join me. Has anyone? Not yet. Not yet. All right. So I guess we should real quick
[02:16:56] talk about supporting this podcast. Of course, you're going to support Tosca's podcast, but if
[02:17:00] you want to support this podcast, you want to support America and you want to support yourself,
[02:17:05] you can. You can do it. We got a bunch of different ways for you to do it. How has your
[02:17:09] energy drink been? Love it. So you immediately went for a mango flavor, which is the,
[02:17:16] I mean, is it safe to say this is more of a Hawaiian vibe? Yeah, especially with the lily
[02:17:20] quay in there. A passion fruit. Okay. So we got a little bit of that going on. You can get this stuff
[02:17:27] from DrFuel.com. You can get it at Wawa. You can get it at Vitamin Shop. You can get it. We're
[02:17:32] in all military commissaries. I've noticed that. I was in the commissary at Kanyoya Marine Corp.
[02:17:39] Week and a half ago, and I almost took a picture. I was like, Hey, we're about to be in the exchanges
[02:17:46] too, which is cool. Cause if you're in the military, you know, the commissaries basically
[02:17:51] families go to commissaries. Like the young enlisted guys, they're not going to the commissary. It
[02:17:56] takes too much time or whatever, but they go to the exchange exchange, you know, they sell gas and
[02:18:00] whatever beer. So now you can get some jockel fuel. You will be able to in the very near future.
[02:18:08] Is there a red taped process to get into like a store? There is. So like, I was at a shop,
[02:18:18] the other, I don't know, Wico or whatever. And they're like, Hey, bring those energy drinks
[02:18:22] we want to sell them or whatever. I can't just be like, Oh, I got something at home and bring them.
[02:18:26] Right. Or can wait, which store was it? Like a local? Yeah. Yeah. San Diego disc.
[02:18:33] Yeah. We just, we dig, we dig a wholesale. So if anybody wants to do wholesale, this is like,
[02:18:38] if you got a store, you got a gym, you got a jiu-jitsu academy, you can go to J F sales
[02:18:45] at jockel fuel.com and email that and you get a wholesale account set up and, and that,
[02:18:49] then you can do it. Okay. So that's more for the store really. Right. Yeah. The
[02:18:54] the, uh, yeah, a little bit, but not really. I mean, when somebody wants to bring something
[02:18:58] into their store, they can just get a wholesale account and set up. Now, if they have a big chain
[02:19:02] store, that's where it run. That's where you run into. And at some point, I got to do some kind
[02:19:06] of a podcast about what it goes on. That'd be interesting because for instance, we're, so
[02:19:14] it's kind of cool. It's kind of complimentary when you start making a dent. All of a sudden,
[02:19:20] the big, the big giant billion dollar corporations realized that you're making a dent and they
[02:19:25] come after you. So for instance, I don't know how much I can say about this, but I'll say a little
[02:19:31] bit, uh, in one particular store that we're in, one of the big companies came in and paid millions
[02:19:38] of dollars, millions of dollars for our slots in, in this particular store and like slots,
[02:19:46] meaning room on the shelf, room on the shelf. Interesting. They said,
[02:19:48] we really don't want Jocko Fuel to be out there. We don't, we see what they're doing.
[02:19:53] We see their growth. We don't like it. We have to go on the offense. And so they paid millions and
[02:19:58] millions of dollars to take our shelf space from us. And, and, and I can't even be mad at the store
[02:20:04] because the store is trying to make profit and they're trying to do what they're doing.
[02:20:08] And they also have to keep a relationship with the big giant companies. Otherwise,
[02:20:12] they won't be able to supply things that those big giant companies put out there. So
[02:20:17] that's what happens. That's the fight we're in right now. It's kind of cool because it means
[02:20:22] you're, you're, you're, you're growing to a point where, and people, the weird thing is people kind
[02:20:27] of all these big companies. And when I say big companies, I'm not men singing. I'm talking about
[02:20:33] the biggest companies there are. They know what we're doing. They're, they're now taking active
[02:20:39] countermeasures to try and shut us down because they know that kind of on a, on a product,
[02:20:45] we, they can't beat us because we held the line. We're making it good for you. We're doing all
[02:20:51] these things that they're not going to do. They would rather sacrifice millions of dollars to
[02:20:56] buy that shelf space than pay, create a better product. So that says a lot about competition.
[02:21:02] That's what we're up against. And cool, like this is it. This is what we're doing. And we're going
[02:21:09] to have some setbacks like that. But the cool thing is the product is better. We know it's
[02:21:16] better. They know it's better. Otherwise they would just go toe to toe, right? It's be like,
[02:21:20] cool, let's do this, but they don't want to do that. Man, there, there are some interesting
[02:21:25] parallels to what we were talking about, about substance versus trying to silence or push out
[02:21:32] anybody who has a counter. Yeah. Same. I mean, you're seeing it play out. Seeing it play out.
[02:21:37] And, but it is crazy. And that's why big corporations with billy, with a B billions of
[02:21:44] dollars, they do their best to destroy the smaller companies that are growing. And that's the way
[02:21:52] it is. And we'll see how it plays out. I can tell you how it's playing out right now. It's playing
[02:21:56] out good because we're going to continue to make the best product. We're going to continue to grow.
[02:22:01] And we, and the cool thing is the demand signal, the demand signal. That's what like in this particular
[02:22:07] store that I'm talking about. And it's a, it's a whole group of stores, but they, they took some
[02:22:13] slots, the big billion dollar corporation took some slots, but the store wouldn't give up all of
[02:22:19] them. They took some, but they said, Hey man, people are in here every day for that dock of fuel.
[02:22:22] We're not giving this up. We're not taking this away from our customers. Yeah. We can't just
[02:22:26] screw over our customers. We can screw them over a little bit, but we can't screw them all the way
[02:22:31] over. So they kept a bunch of, a bunch of our product in the store, but not as much as we wanted,
[02:22:37] but it's fine. It's fine. So if you want to support America and you want to support the growing
[02:22:44] companies, you want to support people that are growing things in America, then jocofuel.com.
[02:22:48] It's the same thing with origin USA, origin USA.com. And by the way, next time you're in North
[02:22:53] Carolina, you got to go to our factory. I know. I've been talking to Pete and I think we, we
[02:22:57] may have something planned in December. We'll see. Good. Origin. I was supposed to go down there.
[02:23:01] I was supposed to go to the North Carolina factory for veterans day. I said, I went to the main
[02:23:04] factory because there was a freaking hurricane hitting North Carolina. So I couldn't go down
[02:23:08] there. But yeah, next time you're down there, it's the same thing. The billion dollar corporations
[02:23:14] see what we're doing. The weird thing is they, they're, they saw what we were doing and like
[02:23:21] before we were even doing very much, they were threatened. And I think it's, I think it's because
[02:23:29] the truth is so threatening. And when you have someone that's like, no, actually, you can't
[02:23:33] build this stuff in America. And when for years they say, you can't do it, you can't do it, you
[02:23:37] can't, they're, they're, they're lying. And so now there's someone saying, oh yeah, look at this
[02:23:42] over here. Look what we're actually doing right now, 100% America. Look, and they, they are scared.
[02:23:48] And so since day one, they've been onto us. The, the, the food companies, they're kind of taking
[02:23:54] notice in the last six months where they're like, oh, shit. The, the clothing companies,
[02:24:02] they've been honest because they're scared because we're doing everything right and they're doing
[02:24:06] everything wrong. And that's just all there is to it. I think they recognize too, kind of the
[02:24:10] difference between the, you know, the fast fashion, just buying like the cheap stuff, use it a few
[02:24:16] times and throw it away versus the conscious choice that I think a lot of people are starting to make
[02:24:21] is like, okay, I might pay a few more dollars, but I will take pride in knowing that in Origins case,
[02:24:29] from the cotton that's grown to the final hands that are putting those jeans in a bag,
[02:24:36] these were American hands that, and hard work and sweat that went into creating this. And I will
[02:24:42] wear this with pride. Yeah. And by the way, that hard work, these are people that have mortgages
[02:24:50] that are learning like we got kids, I shouldn't call them kids, but you know, people that are
[02:24:55] 23 years old, 22 years old, that now have a skill that they have a career now, whether it's running
[02:25:01] a loom, whether it's running a press, whatever skill they're getting, they're getting a skill that
[02:25:07] they can now have a, they have a real job, they have a career, they have a life. So that's what
[02:25:11] you're supporting. Also, environmentally, this is America. Exactly. We treat the environment well.
[02:25:17] Those factories that you're buying from overseas, especially from these companies that claim to be
[02:25:22] environmental companies and they're producing their stuff, why are they producing their stuff
[02:25:25] overseas? Because overseas, they don't have the regulations, they don't have the environmental
[02:25:28] regulations that we have to abide by, which we do gladly because we care about the environment,
[02:25:33] we care about the water, right? Exactly. We care about the nature, we care about animals,
[02:25:37] that's what we do. And so these big companies, they know that we're right and they are so horrified
[02:25:45] that the words getting out, the words getting out that we're here, we're doing it, they're horrified.
[02:25:50] If you want to help that out, originusa.com, get something that you're going to wear for the next
[02:25:56] 18 years. Exactly. You're going to wear a pair of jeans for 14 years. You're going to wear a pair
[02:26:01] of these boots forever. They might be forever. I mean, how long are you going to live? Maybe you
[02:26:06] live to be 100, right? But you're going to use a jiu-jitsu gi? Get one gi, get two gi's, you can
[02:26:12] use them forever. And by the way, our jiu-jitsu gi, you can wash it in a normal washing machine,
[02:26:16] it doesn't take nine hours to dry out. Like we're in a totally different world. Yeah. Plus it's
[02:26:21] Christmas coming up. Christmas is coming up. Christmas is coming up and the economy, we all
[02:26:27] know the economy needs help. Well, how do you help the economy? When you buy something from origin,
[02:26:32] you're helping the economy here in America. There's a worker that's getting paid, that's earning
[02:26:37] their career, that's paying their rent, paying their mortgage because of that. And then what do
[02:26:42] they do? They take that paycheck and they put it back into America. It's like, that's what we're
[02:26:44] doing. So originusa.com. Yep. Speaking of, speaking of Christmas, sometimes you want to get a shirt
[02:26:53] or something now. People representing, I'm telling you, you want a Discipline Eagles freedom shirt
[02:26:58] or Hatter Hoodie, whatever, go to chocolatestore.com. Yeah. Speaking of which, my youngest daughter
[02:27:05] is wrestling at this time. You know, it's wrestling season. We need some rash guards for her.
[02:27:09] You know, just, I got you. You do kind of make that happen. Yeah. Yeah. We got a few rash guards on
[02:27:14] there. She wants to represent. There you go. On the path. I'll get you a shirt too. All right.
[02:27:18] You don't have one already. Get you a tank top, something like that. Also, short locker. It's
[02:27:23] a subscription scenario where you get a shirt every month. Some good stuff coming out. No free
[02:27:27] dopamine. It's going to be a good one. That one kind of kind of get some traction on that.
[02:27:33] No free dopamine. There's some good ones on there. Good thing too. If you sign up, no matter when
[02:27:37] you sign up, you have access to all the past shirts. Like if you think all you missed out or
[02:27:40] something like that, you got access to that when you sign up. So whatever you need. Chocolatestore.com.
[02:27:45] You know, again, like back in the day when I was a kid, if you had some kind of crazy sort of
[02:27:50] movement in your life that you wanted to make a statement about, just get a t-shirt, bro.
[02:27:58] Put your statement on the t-shirt. Where discipline equals freedom t-shirt. There you go.
[02:28:02] In eight years, if you decide, you know what, I'm not really all about that discipline anymore.
[02:28:06] Cool. You get a different t-shirt. Let's get some donuts. Right? Let's stick with that.
[02:28:11] There's an anti-donut shirt coming out too, by the way. Shirt locker. Wow. That's controversial,
[02:28:16] man. That's highly controversial. Yeah, that was kind of hard to pull off, you know, because like,
[02:28:22] how do you, well, then again, there's a lot of ways to do it, but I think we got it.
[02:28:26] Donuts. Look, again, for me, and I get it, I get that there's two sides to every controversial
[02:28:33] thing in the world, but I just can't support donuts. I can't do it. I can't do it. So let me ask you
[02:28:40] this. Like, so like, every once in a great while, every once in a great while, like when I finished
[02:28:49] day zero of aerosol school in Hawaii, I was like, heck, I'm going to give me some donuts.
[02:28:55] I earned this shit. Once in a great while. Yeah, I get it. What's your once in a great while?
[02:29:03] I meant chocolate chip ice cream and straight, just chocolate chip cookies. All right. And, you know,
[02:29:11] by the way, if you're out there and you're going to send chocolate chip cookies or cookies to
[02:29:16] someone, just send them chocolate chip cookies. Don't send them peanut butter cookies. Definitely
[02:29:20] don't send them oatmeal raising cookies. No, no, no, that's the question. Because oatmeal raising
[02:29:24] cookies, look at first glance, I got chocolate chip cookies. What is the point? What is the point?
[02:29:32] So you might as well eat oatmeal, right? Come on. Come on. There are two kinds. There's two foods
[02:29:40] that I don't like oatmeal and cooked carrots. Just just those are just two things. I'm not
[02:29:48] really picky otherwise, but oatmeal and cooked carrots. I'm not happening. So Ryan Job,
[02:29:52] Taskin and Bruiser God, God bless him. He was killed or he's wounded. Iraq died of wounds. He
[02:30:02] hated cottage cheese. And so the smell of cottage cheese, he would start gagging. And there was a
[02:30:14] time he was getting, let's say, some counseling from his platoon and he was under a kangaroo court,
[02:30:23] right? And they're like, you know, Biggles, his nickname was Biggles. Biggles, you know, if you
[02:30:28] really love, I forget what it was, but it's something like, you know, if you really love the
[02:30:31] teams, you're going to eat this cottage cheese and like they're spooning it to his mouth. And as
[02:30:35] he's go, as it's going to his mouth, he's like, he's just choking it down and throwing up. It was
[02:30:41] freaking hysterical. So yeah, counseling. Yeah, he's getting some character building. You got to
[02:30:47] watch out that. But there's certain foods that do that to some people. Yeah. And apparently it's
[02:30:52] cooked carrots. Yeah, I just don't like them. The thing that I that has that effect, like that
[02:30:57] physical effect is actually just bananas. Like I will throw frozen bananas in my smoothies.
[02:31:04] Banana bread. Great. But I think it was because in basic training, like I, I mean, it was big,
[02:31:13] it was you will eat one banana with every meal. Because of what I would just prevent cramping,
[02:31:20] like, I don't know, whatever it was. And it just it literally got to a point where I was just like,
[02:31:25] like the gag reflex was so I to this day, I don't, I won't eat. That's crazy. Because the banana in
[02:31:31] the milkshake is that's the Tulsi jam or no, frozen frozen. Yeah, totally fine. Yeah, I won't
[02:31:37] actually owe you money on that. Like, yeah, we've been propping up the Tulsi frozen banana.
[02:31:44] It adds just that little bit of cream and I love it. I love it. But it's just like that's the fresh
[02:31:50] there was a I was on deployment. I was on a ship on deployment. There's no war going on. We're
[02:31:55] just trying to get jacked. And there was this, this protein shake that was vanilla. And I was
[02:32:02] drinking it like breakfast, lunch and dinner, trying to put on the game. And it was by the time,
[02:32:10] probably, probably two months into a six month deployment, I had to hold my nose and drink it
[02:32:17] like it was just shot at tequila, just like, oh, it made me want maybe we're thrown up and that
[02:32:22] kind of that kind of gave me like the kind of PTSD banana PTSD you're talking about. It's more the
[02:32:27] association. Yeah, even to this day, vanilla is not one of my favorites just because of that one
[02:32:34] six month period of choking down. You know, when you go on deployment and you have like a,
[02:32:39] like a palette and it's just filled with one flavor, you know, your screw. Totally. Especially
[02:32:44] because on a ship, like the food kind of sucks. If you're not getting good, you got to get your
[02:32:48] protein from somewhere. So there you go. But he, well, he can't technically back to the doughnuts
[02:32:52] thing. He can't advocate even for moderation. I painted myself into a corner with donuts. I
[02:32:58] painted myself into a corner with donuts, probably the one of the few things in the world, other
[02:33:02] than if you're ISIS, we're not going to get along. The other one is like, I can't really decide, hey,
[02:33:08] maybe donuts are okay on this occasion. Even when people have like protein donuts, you know,
[02:33:12] talking about like nutrition solutions, they make protein donuts. I'm sure they're good to go.
[02:33:16] And I'm sure they're, they're, they're like in compliance with the path. But I, I just can't
[02:33:23] do it because it's a moral victory for the doughnut. Yeah, you declared anti doughnut early on too.
[02:33:29] Yeah, I want hard. Yeah. So you cannot just like, like how you, and also, wait, is it my ego though?
[02:33:36] It's just my ego. It's part of the gig for sure. Or is it just, Hey, I'm going to just maintain the
[02:33:40] path here. Oh yeah. That's a good point. I don't know. It's like, but there's that other part too,
[02:33:44] though, just like the alcohol. You know how like, you're like, Hey, I can't advocate for alcohol
[02:33:48] at all. Well, even though we all know that, Hey, most people in moderation, then they're not going
[02:33:54] to have problems. But you start advocating for donuts, alcohol, whatever. Some people are like,
[02:33:58] Hey, chocolate, it's okay. Yeah, they start freaking pounding donuts every week. You know,
[02:34:02] can't do that. Can still, his moderation can be subjective. Exactly. I'll only eat five a week
[02:34:09] instead of today. I ate less today than I did yesterday. So whatever, you know, wait, you're
[02:34:13] vegan, right? Yeah. Now our donuts vegan. Some are. And there is a pop up in Hawaii
[02:34:20] that only opens up for four hours on the weekends and it's first come, first serve. And they usually
[02:34:27] sell out in the first hour vegan donuts. And they are, I will show you pictures afterward. They are
[02:34:33] the most heavenly, luxuriously like, Oh my gosh, you just look at it and it's like a whole meal in
[02:34:42] one donut. It's like, yeah, it's, it's a totally different situation. Where do you get your protein
[02:34:48] from? I take, I drink protein shakes every day. And it's primarily coming from a pea protein source.
[02:34:58] I used to do whey protein, but I long have you been a vegan for probably the last, I don't know,
[02:35:04] for five years, vegetarian my whole life. And then ethical reasons, environmental reasons,
[02:35:10] spiritual reasons, all of the above. Have you had a steak before? No. No, I feel like I want to take
[02:35:19] a dinner. That response is the response that I've gotten most often, especially in the military,
[02:35:23] but it's like, it's not, it's not something I've ever had. So it's like you saying that, I have no
[02:35:30] desire whatsoever. Rogan, I met Rogan for lunch or dinner, whatever one day with some of his friends.
[02:35:38] And they went to, what's the, what's the Brazilian folk of the child? And he didn't really comment
[02:35:47] it on the time, but he mentioned recently in a podcast, he's like, we went there and all she ate
[02:35:53] was salad. How is that even possible? But it's just, it's not something, you know, there's no,
[02:36:00] there's no craving, I guess. That's interesting. You guys just discussed, because you know,
[02:36:05] diet, hotteries, kids, I think exercise might be another one, religion and politics, those are the
[02:36:11] hot button subjects. So we're covering all of them today? Yeah, but this is the one you guys are
[02:36:15] opposed to. That's the thing. But I think, I think this is, this is like a good example though,
[02:36:20] because it's one thing to say, you know, like, Hey, this is my choice for my life and my lifestyle.
[02:36:29] I'm not trying to go around saying every single person in the world has to
[02:36:33] follow my exact life choices in all of those examples. If we hung out more, like if I moved back to
[02:36:39] Hawaii and, and we were hanging out more, would you kind of start to be like, Hey, you know,
[02:36:46] man, why are you eating all that steak? Do you think you would to try and help me?
[02:36:51] Not unless you were saying, Hey, Tulsi, I feel like shit and my body's not functioning. What would
[02:36:57] you advise or what's working for you? But otherwise no, that's kind of good. Because then that's
[02:37:02] what I was thinking too. As you were saying, I was thinking, if you said to me like, Hey,
[02:37:06] I don't feel that good. I feel lethargic. I'd be like, Hey, we're going out for steak.
[02:37:13] All right. What else? Echo Charles. So that's the short lockers. Yep. Stuff like this.
[02:37:19] Yep. Subscribe.
[02:37:21] Jocko Underground.com. This is a platform that we made in case we get kicked off of other platforms
[02:37:29] straight up. That's what's going on. That's the reality of what we face. And so if you go to
[02:37:33] jockounderground.com, you can get on that platform. It costs $8 and 18 cents a month.
[02:37:38] How'd you choose that number? By the way, I've always been curious.
[02:37:44] Is it an area code thing or? No, well, actually put it this way. There was the first reason,
[02:37:49] the primary reason. And then there's like a secondary reason that that shuffled like right in
[02:37:54] there as well. The secondary reason is from the Bible's like current sufferings don't outweigh
[02:37:59] future glory, something like this. And then, but the primary reason was hardcore recondos.
[02:38:06] Yeah. It's HR. It's eighth letter in the 18th, which we've, which we've never divulged until this
[02:38:11] moment. So that's what it is. The hardcore recondos out there. Both of those are pretty powerful
[02:38:17] meanings. And look, if you can't afford that, which I get it's tight times and they're going to get
[02:38:22] tighter, there's a recession. Am I allowed to say there's a recession coming? I think there are a
[02:38:27] lot of economists who would agree with you. If times get too tight and you can't afford it,
[02:38:32] just email email assistance at jockounderground.com. We'll get you hooked up there. You and check out
[02:38:39] Tulsi's sub sub stack. Yep. Where they just Google sub stack. Tulsi, if you go on sub stack and you
[02:38:44] just put in Tulsi or Tulsi Gabbard, it'll pop up there. Almost everything I put up is not behind
[02:38:51] a paywall. Um, if you want to kind of get in on the conversation, I think it's like six bucks a
[02:38:56] month or something. How'd you come up with that number? Six bucks a month? Ah, it's just the
[02:39:00] average of what's out there. I don't have a Bible verse to back it up. Clearly a missed opportunity.
[02:39:07] You know, I just giving you that opportunity. Then YouTube, we got the jocco podcast, YouTube
[02:39:12] channel and origin USA YouTube channel. And then the Tulsi Gabbard show, I think is your YouTube
[02:39:21] channel. Yeah. And subscribe to that. Everywhere you get your podcasts, um, these platforms are
[02:39:27] growing. They're new. And so for people, if you watch or you listen and you like it,
[02:39:32] subscribe, leave a rating and share it with others. That's the plan. Psychological warfare is out
[02:39:38] there. You need that. That jocco influence. Maybe I need some jocco discipline to make a new one of
[02:39:45] those. Yeah. It's been a while. I need to ask me some of those questions. What's good for the goose
[02:39:50] is good. Good for the other guy. Flipside, canvas.com, Dakota Myers company, bunch of books,
[02:39:56] a bunch of a written a bunch of books, only cry for the living by holiday day. Great, great
[02:40:03] Christmas gifts. Oh, I think people are looking. I mean, you know, it's just like, I, you know,
[02:40:09] when I think of gifts that I want to give people, they should be gifts of meaning and substance
[02:40:16] ideally rather than just something that is cheap and can be easily thrown away and become part
[02:40:21] of a landfill somewhere. That's what I think, you know, books are good. These books are, are
[02:40:26] fantastic. Some of the things you're talking about earlier because for me, I actually know,
[02:40:30] you can get audio books and, you know, e-books and all that, but I'm one of those people who,
[02:40:35] like if I'm taking notes and getting ready for a TV interview, I'll look at what's on the computer
[02:40:41] and then I actually sit there and actually write it down. There's something about reading words
[02:40:44] on the page that you can keep going back to. You can highlight, you can kind of bend the
[02:40:48] corner of the page over and know that that's something that you can use and keep going back
[02:40:54] to. Yeah, I am a huge physical books guy and there's definitely some sort of rote memorization
[02:41:04] that happens or absorption that happens when you write stuff down, you highlight it and all that
[02:41:07] stuff. So yeah, you can get all these books for Christmas for somebody and they can really help.
[02:41:14] I'll tell you what, honestly, just get the kids you know, get the kids you know, the Warrior
[02:41:18] Kid books. Yeah. Just to help them with life. It'll help them in so many different ways and
[02:41:23] there's so much, look, we spent the first, I don't know, 40 minutes today talking about all the
[02:41:27] negative influence that there is out there on kids and social media. Don't let them be exposed that
[02:41:33] or if they do get exposed to it, let them have some kind of a grounding and a foundation to think
[02:41:38] through what's going on and get on the right path as a human being. Way the Warrior Kid.
[02:41:42] One, two, three, four, five is coming by the way. Oh damn. Yeah. It's called Letters from Uncle Jake.
[02:41:48] So there you go. Ashland Front Leadership Consultancy. Go to Ashlandfront.com for details
[02:41:53] if you need help inside your organization, whatever organization that is. Let us know.
[02:41:57] We can help you. We have some live events. Orlando, April 3rd through the 5th and Dallas,
[02:42:04] October 18th through the 20th. We've sold out every one of these that we've ever done. So if you
[02:42:08] want to go, get in early. We have an online training, extremeownership.com. It's an online
[02:42:15] platform training in leadership. Leadership is not something you learn in the day. You can't just
[02:42:22] go to Tulsi's Army course on leadership and like, oh, now you're good to go. It's not going to
[02:42:27] happen. No offense to Tulsi, but it takes more than that. You're going to have, it's going to take
[02:42:31] time. So if you, it's like going to the gym, if you want to go to the gym for leadership,
[02:42:35] you want to go to the gym for life, go to extremeownership.com. If you want to help service
[02:42:39] members active and retire, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families,
[02:42:44] check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization.
[02:42:49] If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org and also heroes
[02:42:53] and horses.org where Micah Fink has taken, taken people up into the wilderness so they can find
[02:43:01] themselves on horseback getting into the wilderness. So check that out as well. If you want to connect
[02:43:09] with Tulsi on the interwebs, TulsiGabbard.com on social media, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook.
[02:43:17] She's at TulsiGabbard on YouTube at TulsiGabbard show and she's got her podcast and she's got
[02:43:23] her sub stack that we talked about. So check all that as well. And as far as Echo and I are
[02:43:29] concerned, Echo's at Echo Troll. So I am at Jocko Wink. But listen, the algorithm, just watch out
[02:43:36] for the algorithm because it is definitely looking to grab you and they're looking to brainwash you.
[02:43:42] And if you go into it knowing that they're looking to brainwash you, that's a good step in the right
[02:43:46] direction. Huge. But if you go into it thinking that you're getting smarter because of this,
[02:43:52] that's a bad situation that you're getting yourself into. So just please be careful.
[02:43:56] Be careful with this social media. Use it. Use it for something positive though.
[02:44:02] And only use it for a limited amount of time. All right, please. There you go. Tulsi, any closing
[02:44:08] thoughts for us? God, we covered a lot. It's great to see you guys. Great to be back.
[02:44:17] Yeah, I just to add on to what you just said, you know, don't underestimate the power of your own
[02:44:26] voice. Understand the responsibility that each of us has on the impact that we make in the world
[02:44:32] and know that the choices we make every day can lead to having a positive or negative impact.
[02:44:40] So be an independent thinker, be discerning and be intentional with the choices that you make
[02:44:46] both for yourself and for those around you. Sounds like a plan. Thanks for joining us again.
[02:44:53] Thank you. I'm sure we'll see you again. Thanks for your service in the army. Thanks for your service
[02:44:57] in Congress. Thanks for your service in America. And now I guess thank you for your service to
[02:45:02] the world as you try and help people by spreading Aloha worldwide. And thanks to all of our service
[02:45:13] members around the world in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. Thank you for protecting our
[02:45:18] freedom. The same goes here at home to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics,
[02:45:22] EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders.
[02:45:28] Thanks for what you do on a daily basis to keep us safe here at home. And everyone else out there,
[02:45:38] the world is a crazy place right now and it will drive you crazy if you let it.
[02:45:46] My recommendation is that you remain sane, that you stay balanced, that you don't let bots
[02:45:54] or provocateurs or trolls get into your head. Instead, listen but question what you hear,
[02:46:05] try and understand what's going on and then go do some Jiu-Jitsu.
[02:46:10] And then like Tulsi, go spread some of that Aloha spirit. And until next time, this is Tulsi and
[02:46:17] Echo and Jaco. Out.