you have one unheard message. Hi I was calling current the influencer marketing platform but I think I just got redirected to a bunch of people listening to a podcast well anyways I was calling current because I was told they could help get my brand set up on TikTok shop and even build out an affiliate program of content creators promoting my brand and even have those content creators go live streams and promote my product there. Wow I could really use current. I also heard that the brands they work with are making millions in sales. I guess I'll just go to their website at current.tech. Say goodbye to your credit card rewards, greedy corporate mega stores led by Walmart and Target are pushing for a long Congress to take away your hard-earned cash back and travel points to line their pockets. The Durban Marshall credit card bill would enact harmful credit card routing mandates that would end credit card rewards as we know it. If you love your credit card rewards tell your lawmakers hands-off my rewards tell them to oppose the Durban Marshall credit card bill. to drinking bros presented by go spend dot com sit back relax it grab a fucking drink yeah welcome to drinking bros kids we got a couple of our favorites on the program here today got Marty Skovalen junior and Joe Kent here. Anthony which order do you put him in? Who's your favorite? I don't do favorites. Really? No I do. I do with my kids I do with my family members and I do it with guests. And right now it's Joe Kent I'm going to be honest with you. Marty yes I've known you for years but Joe is much better looking. If I had to pick between Joe and I I would also pick Joe. So we're on the same page there. Yeah pop on over to Joe here. Pop Joe up on screen versus Marty. Joe where yeah you got to talk for me that'll it'll cut through here. There it is. Thanks for coming back. Absolutely there it is. So now you've seen both of them on screen obviously Joe that's why you're the favorites. I always judge my favorites on if I had to fuck another dude in this life. It's it's obviously going to be you like Marty's not going to be a fun one to wake up next to. We're off to we're off to start here. Well welcome to drink a bus. You know the story here. Obviously you remember Joe Kent's on the program. You ran for Congress. Was it two years ago? Well I never stops. I'm running again. So yeah ran started in 21 and then fell just a little bit short in 22. So right back on the campaign trail. Yeah so we were following it. True story here. I was actually talking about you last week. We had Tulsi Gabbard on the show. We've had a ton of politicians over the years and one of our listeners at the Range Day event was like out of all the candidates you've had on the show. Who do you think could actually make a difference in the world and change what's happening in our current political system. And I was like man if I'm being real there was a guy named Joe Kent and when you were on the show a couple years ago when you were running last time. Everything that you said your look everything about you and the way you speak to people. You seem like the politician like a guy who could be president. My wife just left the room and I was like stay with this guy. This guy looks like he could be president United States one day. You ran on the right things in my opinion. What happened in that last election and how close was it. Sounds really close and in the general it was less than a percentage point about 2600 votes. We had to do a recount and all that type of stuff. So I ran against a 12 year incumbent in the primary who was backed by millions of dollars from the Republican establishment beat her which is pretty challenging to do. And then we had a pretty fractured Republican party. We have really late primaries here. I wish we had primaries like you guys in Texas that are kind of early in March. So once the primary was over we had a lot of unfortunately hard hard hard to heal feelings at the end of the primary. So the party was very divided. The Democrats were smart. They sat back. They watched the Republican bloodbath and then they nailed me with six million dollars when I was flat broke in negative ads. But despite that we still only fell short by about 2600 votes. So once the recount was over we just announced the campaign all over again. Awesome. And then for this year how's it looking? Do you get pre polls already? We're about seven months out for the election. You're still looking pretty good. I mean this is the top seat to flip. President Trump won our district in 16 and in 20 by about four or five points. My opponent ran basically as a moderate. But now that she actually has a record she had the luxury last time of saying pretty much whatever she wanted because she didn't have a record. But now it's just been in Congress for almost two years. Her record is pretty much identical to Nancy Pelosi and AOC. So we're really just focusing on on the abundance of bad votes that she's taken in terms of inflation, the open border, protection of our kids, war, all that type of stuff she's horrible on. So highlighting her record and I think we'll be in a good spot. But we're you know working hard, pounding on doors and doing town halls. Speaking of war, you've done some war. A little bit. I have. Marty has. Ross was in the Olive Garden. I saw. Yeah. Four tours of Italy in the Olive Garden. It's a different kind of war. But you know, I look, I've got man and cottie shells stuck inside of me and I've said this multiple times and I've never been able to get them out. If you see closeups of his toenails, there's still red sauce underneath them. Sure is. From stomping out all those to me. In any way, it seems like there is a and we all know about the uni party. I don't want to beat a dead horse here. But this is the since the the early 2000s. This is the biggest push I've seen from Neocon and leftists to get us into some fucking wars. Like all weekend the press was like, Oh, look in. They're shooting. The Russians are shooting rays at us now giving us AIDS or whatever the fuck's like, shut the fuck up, man. Nobody believes the shit. You know what I mean? But how do you read that? I know the Trump side is I to be honest, I think his foreign policy in some regards is very sophisticated, like the Abraham Accords, for example, and I think in other regards, it is extremely naive in the sense that we haven't made a massive economic push to reestablish the supply chain for our microprocessors through South America and Central America, instead of like cobalt and lithium in those places, production up the the coast and stuff like that, more like a Monroe Doctrine thing. Now, I know you're something of an anti intervention list to say to I guess to some degree. So what is it? What's going on? Aside from just the obvious money, like I know a lot of people need to buy summer homes and shit. So they're waiting for this Raytheon money to come in. But aside from just that, what the fuck is going on in DC right now? I don't get it. I mean, when you see I posted this the other day, when Republicans and Democrats work together, Americans typically lose, right? 1% whenever you hear Washington DC say we've got a bipartisan solution. That's time to check your wallet and then be prepared for us to get involved in a war somewhere probably in a country that you've never heard of. So there's the bipartisan consensus right now. Unfortunately, the good news is we're kind of moving the needle with the Republican caucus. If you look at just two years ago, when this all started, the majority of Republicans in the House supported us just giving a blank check to Ukraine. Now, we've got House Republicans that are fighting to prevent the bills from even going on the floor. So I think we're in a better spot there. But look, I mean, at the most basic level, everybody in Washington DC benefits from there being war, especially a war like Ukraine, where they're fighting this trench warfare, more of a conventional type of fight because that allows the defense contractors to sell 155 shells artillery pieces, aircraft, those types of things. And then that money goes right back into the coffers of the congressmen and senators who support that. But then I think you have a much deeper seated national security, blob deep state, whatever you want to call it, the unelected bureaucrats in Washington DC. I think you've got a lethal combination of old cold warriors who knew the Russia threat really, really well. The global war and terror kind of distract them a little bit from that. But now, they sort of feel like they're bad because Putin plays such a good, you know, evil guy to turn your ire on. But then you've also got this desire from a lot of folks like the Victorian Newlands and the Kagan's that want us to continue to push NATO up onto the border to provoke a confrontation with Russia. And a lot of that goes back in the sense of structure from the military industrial complex. But I think a lot of these people truly believe that we need to be spreading our version of democracy through the barrel of a gun, despite the fact that that's like never ever worked before. And then if you look at the ramifications, they've just been absolutely catastrophic, not just for the Ukrainian people. I mean, Ukraine's lost by a generation of very young men, if not even more. But then also the fact that Russia and China are now aligned, because we through this massive sanctions package at Russia, we're seeing de-dollarization throughout the entire world. So I think we've really bitten off more than we can chew in terms of our debt, in terms of depleting our military industrial base. But then also in terms of what this is doing right now to the dollar, we're playing right into China's hands. Yeah, 100%. And it's becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Marty, you do a lot of you write a lot, you do a lot of research, you're usually pretty up to speed on things that are going on in the world. Do you think that propaganda is just more obvious now or that it's actually increased? Because I'm not sure if it's always been like this. I know social media allows for quite a bit more daily programming and shit, but it seems like we're in a whole different world now. I think that the people responsible for pushing propaganda, I think there's the same amount of those people around today as there were in generations past when we look at it. But I think that the opportunities to use propaganda as a tool are much more numerous than they've ever been. Because of the fact of, hey, before all you had to work with was books, newspapers, magazines, traditional print media, and then evolved into it. Well, now we've got radio we can work with, now we've got TV we can work with. And now we've added this entirely new dimension of social media. And it's not like there's just one platform. There's multiple different platforms just in the United States. Never mind, you know, there's different platforms that are specific to China, specific to Russia, places like that. So I think that yes, from like a strictly a volume perspective, there's more propaganda today than at any other point in human history. But I think that the people pulling the strings or you pulling the levers to use propaganda to you know, arrive at their desire to end state. I think there's the same amount of them as their hasn't been if that makes sense. Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you listen to, well, actually there's a good book on this. It's called the attention merchants. I don't know if you've ever read it before. It's by Tim Wu. I've mentioned him on the show quite a few times, actually. But he basically tracks how early 20th century politicians in America kind of took their game plan on on propagandizing the public with like the same stuff Trump does sometimes, like the clever names like, Oh, fucking lion Hillary or whatever the fuck you said. Crooked Joe Biden, sleepy Chuck side. Yeah, everybody. Yeah. But they took that stuff from snake oil sales been in the late 19th century, right? And they turned it into two political advertising. And then Madison Avenue actually took it from early 20th century politicians and turned it into actual advertising, right? So you're right. I definitely agree with you. It's not new. I don't think the volume is definitely different. But that's, you know, just math, right? There's more people and there's more avenues. Yeah. And you just think too, like if you were a, you know, I feel like propaganda, you at least on the international stage used to be primarily a tool for the most powerful nations on earth. Now you've got nations that are you could be in sub-Saharan Africa and find your place on the world stage, because of the tools that are available to people now. And Joe could probably talk a lot more about that than I could. But like, there's a certain amount of democratization of propaganda as a tool that's happened because of, you know, the technological advances we've had over the past 20 years. Yeah, Joe, you got any thoughts on that? Yeah, for sure. If you have an internet connection or even just a smartphone of decent reception, you can play on that stage. I mean, I think another thing, especially pertaining to the Russia, Ukraine amount of propaganda, we're seeing out of that, that conflict and how we're being told that if we don't blindly support that, then we must be secret Putin's stooges. I think a lot of that just really highlights how, you know, it's cliche to say that we're highly polarized. But I do think that there's been this massive merger between social media and the government and a lot of the intelligence agencies. And because of the Twitter files, we actually got to see a lot of that in real time. We got to see behind the scenes what a lot of us already thought was going on. But I think it's just much more brazen now. And because the environment, and especially in an election year with people like Trump and Biden is so highly polarized, you now have people that I think are willing to not look at any kind of objective evidence and just say, well, my team is supporting this one thing. So therefore, I'm going to support it. And the media is also very good at saying, hey, if you question this narrative, in particular, when it comes to war, we will label you as a Putin propagandist of Putin's stooges. And you know, that has a decent amount of effect on people, especially if they hear it over and over again. Some people will become inoculated to it. But for folks who don't live in this space every single day, it's still a very powerful tool. And the media has a way of making coordinated attacks against people, you know, through articles or just labeling someone an election, or Putin's stooges in a way that, you know, if there was just traditional newspapers before, I think it was a little bit harder to do. Yeah, I mean, the the rapidity at which the message travels depends on a lot of things. But one of the primary things that depends on is like second, third order modality. So like word of mouth, for example, right? Word of mouth used to be somebody watched or somebody showed up to my event and heard me say something about the other guy or the other country or whatever it is, or they saw it in the newspaper, they saw it on the broadcast news. And they told three or four other people. Now you have hundreds, if not thousands of quote unquote influencers on the internet, some of whom are not even real people, right? Like there's there's a lot of them remember that blonde chick that was allegedly a Biden staffer from last year that got exposed to not even be a real fucking person. So but there's hundreds or thousands of these people who have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers who can fucking amplify these messages, ad nauseam, essentially to a massive audience, right? So, you know, where this is a whole new fucking ball game now. And I like part of me understands why the government would want to put the kibosh on that bullshit, right? Because it is dangerous that people that there's so much of bullshit propaganda out there. But you can't control that. Like you'll never be able to control the voice. It's never worked in all of human history. Anybody like every revolution is based on some leader, politician, or otherwise, going after dissenting voices and failing at it. Almost every revolution in the history of human beings, like even ours, John Adams gets after the Boston massacre gets those guys off and of murder charges. And then the crowd decides to bring all court cases back to England anyways, right? And then that plus the taxation, they were like, fuck you, right? We're not doing that. It's I don't understand how once again, we think we're going to do something that's been historically ineffective. And it's well, this time it's going to work, right? And how do you convince people, Joe, like for you running right now, how do you convince people that your difference? And it's not going to be the same shit that we've had for the last, you know, 100 years or whatever? Because that's that's probably got to be one of the most difficult parts, right? It's challenging. I mean, unfortunately, elections, like I lost by less than a percentage point and a lot of that comes down to who's going to get the most money, who can get the most clicks and the most eyeballs. Because unfortunately, there's still a lot of folks, especially in close races, that they're going to kind of go off the last ad or the most repetitive ad they've heard, which is usually fear monitoring against the other person, as opposed to saying what your platform is. So I do get the sense, though, that a lot of people, especially folks who might lean a little bit more conservative, whatever you want to call it, that understand there is a unit party. I think a lot of them are looking for alternative outlets to get their media from. And so whether they're gravitating more towards X now that it's a little bit freer, they look at podcasts, or especially I was impressed in my last election that as we got down to crunch time, especially in the primary, when people had five Republicans, including a 12 year incumbent to choose from, there was a lot of people who were just like, man, I'm sick of listening to the media. I want to come listen to you talk. And I have questions I want to ask you, because these are just folks who were done with hearing from the media. But that probably is my biggest obstacle, to be honest with you. We have to raise the money in order to be able to punch through the mainstream media. I mean, I've already got the New York Times and the HuffPost and all these guys coming after me, which I wear as a badge of honor. However, it is still something that we really have to push back against hard and it's easy to get drowned out if you don't have the money to compete. And even if you do have the money to compete as a conservative, you're definitely at a disadvantage because the mainstream media is going to swarm attack you once you actually present a threat to them. Absolutely. And you know, we'll go back to some of these comforting phrases that Dan was alluding to earlier, because what Trump does is you're 100% correct. All these phrases were from the 1800s, either from politicians that were running and it, you know, they still had the press back then. It was just very limited. But it was a catchy, you know, title, at least in the article. "Make America Great Again" was actually used by Ronald Reagan in '79 when he was running against Carter. That's when he first started it, headed into '80 there. And everybody thinks it's, no, oh, it's MAGA. No, that was a phrase that Reagan used on all those, his campaign buttons and all that other stuff. Do you have a fun, flirty phrase that you're going out with here? Like, can't stop me now? Or, I mean, what do you workshop in here that we can kind of get behind? I might need to steal that one, man. I might need to crowdsource a catchy phrase. So like, as far as a phrase or like a buzzword, I honestly really don't have one. I try and go out and just be as authentic as I possibly can with people. But again, in soundbite world, you're right that doesn't work out as well. Trump did a very good job with the catchy phrases, but then I think Trump also did a good job of saying things that were provocative enough that the media would actually cover what he said. And then it sort of had the boomerang effect on the media where they're like, oh, we thought that we were going to be able to crucify this guy based on what he said. But that actually resonates with a lot of people. That's something that I think only Trump can uniquely view himself. I've seen other people try to replicate it. It's just not the same thing. So for me, I try and go a little bit more content heavy with, you know, here's who I am. Here's what I stand for. But yeah, if anybody's got any ideas for catchy phrases, management, let me have them. Kent stop won't stop. I'm just saying, I don't know that when you was a ditty. Yeah, we can't do it. Sorry. Diddy's going through some legal issues. He's involved in some things. Yeah, ting it, man. Can't buy me love. I mean, there's a lot we could do with this here. Maybe throw in. Is it Clark? Is that your middle name? It's Clay. But where everybody thinks it's Clark? So sometimes I just don't correct. Change it. You kind of look like Superman. I would go Kent, you know, Clark Kent, obviously, for that one. But you have the good looks so you could pull it off. And that's fun. What I'm surprised at is in the middle of an election, which we hope you will win. And we're anticipating a victory out of you here in November, that you and Marty had the time to write a book. I've talked about this ad nauseam on this show. Writing a book is a fucking massive, massive uphill climb the entire time until it's out. The day that it's out is the day that you can celebrate when they can't print anymore, can't make any edits to the audiobook, all that other stuff. And this one is about your wife, which is even more important. Tell us about send me the incredible true story of a mother at war that's coming out here on May 7th. Hey, since a book about my late wife, Shannon Kent, who was killed in Syria, fighting ISIS in 2019 as she was killed with three other Americans conducting special operations. And so after she was killed, I wanted the opportunity to tell her story for a couple of different reasons. Mostly, I really wanted there to be a way for my sons. They were one in three when she was killed. And so they never really fully got to know their mom. And I wanted there to be a way for them to understand who she was, why she served, and for them to have something that they could kind of consume on their own beyond just the stories and all that that me and our family share with them. So that was the first reason. But then Shannon had a pretty exceptional career. She was a woman in special operations way before women were technically allowed in special operations. She never, you know, would tell you that herself when she was alive. She always kind of felt like she was, you know, just sort of there doing her job very humble. But I wanted to share her story because I think it's something that's important to document, but then also to tell the story of a lot of other women who fought and served alongside of us who haven't really gotten their chance to tell their story yet. So yeah, after that, I, you know, linked up with Marty, thanks to Black Rifle. And we, I wrote the parts about our family and Shannon has relationships. And then Marty did the deep dive, the investigative journalism on Shannon's entire lives, really. Marty, having written a biography myself, I know it's extremely difficult because often you have to ask the subject matter about essentially the worst day of his entire life. How hard was that for you as a writer to sit down and do those interviews with your friends, but asking about his wife that's to see, knowing how important this book is going to be to his kids? Well, I'll go all the way back to when we were first working on the article. And I, you know, Joe and I, Evan connected Joe and I, and I came down for Shannon's memorial at the Naval Academy and met with Joe for the first time at he and Shannon's house. And I was fully expecting to walk in knowing like, Hey, this is a grieving, you know, gold star husband who just lost his wife. I was kind of expecting the worst walking in there. But to Joe's credit, he, and I don't know how you do this, Joe, and how you were able to do it from the get-go, but very mission focused on, I'm here to tell Shannon's story and, and do that right. And there's almost like there was no time for me to focus on my emotions, but we need to make sure we get Shannon's story correct. And that, so that was right from the get-go with the article. So every time I've talked to Joe, it's always been like, I've always felt very comfortable with, Hey man, can you tell me about this or can you tell me about that? Or can you clarify this and not having to worry about maybe ruining the rest of Joe's day? And if I have Joe, you haven't let on that I did or anything like that, you know, he's been great to work with on that front. And there's even been a few times where I've said like, Hey, I'm sorry that I'm talking about you and your wife like your characters, but you are, as far as it pertains to this book, you know, and we have to approach it that way. So Joe is kind of in a category of his own, as far as I'm concerned, my experience in working on the parts of the book that I did. Very easy to work with everybody else. I mean, there were some really tough conversations. There were some things where I got off the phone or off the Zoom call and kind of had to take a breather for a second there because I knew I probably just ruined this person's day or brought up some really painful memories. And it's not easy to do, but also you like you said, Ross, it's not easy writing a book, you don't sign up to do that thinking it's going to be an easy thing. But in Shannon's particular case, it's worth every bit of effort that we put into it because it is an important story. Absolutely. It's just incredibly difficult to tell. And I remember sitting with Marcus LaTrell after the first time he was on drinking bros way back in the day, we were hanging out afterwards having dinner. And I was asking him about his life because he does a bunch of speaking engagements, you know, obviously as does Joe. And I said with that, you know, obviously you're compensated for it. But is it difficult reliving the worst day of your life over and over and over again? And he goes, that's the hardest part about all of this. And he goes, I understand that people want to hear the story. So I know what it is, but I'm reliving that day, you know, 200 days out of the year or how many speaking engagements you have throughout the year. And with you, Joe, I've got to imagine it's similar. Obviously, you guys have the book coming out on May 7th, but you know, a movie was based on your wife as well. What's that been like? Because now this has been years that your wife has been talked about. Is that a happy or a sad thing for you? I'm going to make some emotions. There hasn't been a movie directly made about her. She's a character. She's a reference in a few different movies. Hopefully the book goes well and it'll eventually become a movie. But no, you're right. It's a weird thing. Sometimes it's a happy memory. Sometimes it's painful memory. It's always kind of a cocktail of emotions for lack of a better term, kind of an emotional roller coaster. And you know, I don't talk about Shannon as much on the campaign trail anymore because I think a lot of people are familiar with me and they know my backstory. But people will ask me, like, why did, you know, how did you get involved in politics? And that inevitably leads me to talking about Shannon and, you know, how she was killed. And so that's, yeah, I mean, it's hard because I'm, you know, I'm proud of her. We've got a lot of happy memories that we discuss in the book. But at the same time, I 100% agree with what Marcus said. You do have to rehash the worst days, you know, of your life. And you have to do it justice too. Because I think as a, as a guy who's in the military for a while, I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing things. But at the same time, when I when I discuss it, I want to do it the proper justice. So they can definitely take a toll. It can definitely kind of drain you as much as I try to show that publicly. It can be pretty taxing. Yeah. And you know, going back to the movie element of this, I'm assuming they didn't reach out for you for life rights or any of that stuff. It's just kind of known in the community that that is your wife who's being portrayed in all of this stuff. Did you see the movies? Not no, which one you mean? What was the one in a God blessings? Well, there's a series called lioness. Yeah, that is. Yes. So that one, no. That one, I don't think anyone reached out to me on that one. The what's the show called? This is us. Yes. Folks that put that together, there's one character who's a female human intelligence operator. And they talked to me about her and they loosely based it on on Shannon. But I didn't like doing kind of technical consulting. They they kind of asked me permission to say that, hey, this is this person, this character is based off of Shannon. And I said, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, that's so hopefully we actually get to, you know, do a movie where send me is depicted on the big screen. So that'd be a great way to share it. That's what I that's what I hope too, because you know, you see her, it's alluding to her in these other series and things like that. It would be awesome if it was his own standalone biographies. So that was out into the world. And especially today with Hollywood, I mean, a female driven military movie would be a massive success. Well, it's like, this woman lived the life that Hollywood has been trying to tell a story about, but has failed repeatedly at telling, but she lived the actual goddamn life, you know what I mean? I mean, it's the the stuff that this woman did is incredible, frankly. And a lot of people in the community, like reference here is one of, if not the greatest assets in the war on terrorism. Like we're talking about hundreds of shitheads deleted from the planet because of this woman's efforts, right? Yeah. And you know, what we get instead are like female rehashes of old classic movies, right? Or like completely retarded, ghostbusters, unrealistic nonsense, female ghostbusters, you know what I mean? It's like these, this is the shit that irritates me about the shallowness of the modern feminist movement, right? Because it's not about actual women. And as a matter of fact, it's mostly about men now who are pretending to be women, frankly. Yeah. But like, it's it's not about actual women anymore. It's not about real human beings and elevating their stories, people who've done incredible things. Now it's just like a fucking fantasy world. Like no, there's subject matter to draw from here. What are you thinking? By, to be honest, it drives me nuts. And I guess a lot of people now know something, if not a lot about Shannon's story. But you mentioned it, Joe, before she's the she was the first in the modern age to do something like this. Like maybe there's examples before, I don't really know. But in the GWOT, there's there wasn't anything like this prior to Shannon, right? Yeah, there may have been some women here and there when Shannon like kind of came up and really put her teeth, women technically were not allowed to be on the front lines. But if you served over there, the front lines were pretty much everywhere. And Shannon initially deployed because she was an Arabic linguist and a signals intelligence person. But she really was invited to go work down at the ground level, in particular with special operations and SEAL teams, because she could speak the language really well. And she was very proficient at her craft. And that was kind of, I think, the theme of the early years, the Global War on Terror, where we were trying to operationalize intelligence, we were trying to move at the speed of the battlefield. And if you had linguistic abilities or you got the ability to enhance our ability to run down bad guys and kill them, then we didn't really care who you were. We brought you in and made you part of the team. So when Shannon was included in all this, it wasn't because the Navy SEALs and special operations were like, well, I guess we got to include women. So whichever woman can run the fastest and do the most pullups, I guess we'll take, it was like, hey, this person who happens to be a woman speaks Arabic, she can get information out of Iraqis. She's competent enough for us to take on missions. And that gave her a role there. So I think she was in that small cadre of women who I think really earned their spot before other women were given, really even just the opportunity to even try out for the team. Yeah. And then for you, Joe, I mean, you obviously weren't side by side with her throughout all of her career there. How do you get the true story about some of this stuff? Or was she able to tell you as this was going on? So I knew the high parts. We had met briefly in 2007. I actually went to a briefing that she was giving on where some bad guys were. We talk about that in the book, but we met for 10 minutes. And I didn't see her again for many years until we ended up in the same, the same unit. But I mean, Shannon and I really bonded our common experiences in the war, just deploying with so much of, you know, our lives. So I kind of do the high parts, but that's really when Marty came in and kid hundreds of hours of interviews. And I always, at this point, I always forget that Marty didn't actually know Shannon because he's gotten back and done so many interviews. So Marty did the deep dive, did the Foyas, really got some unique access because of his background. So I actually, in the parts of the book that Marty wrote, I actually learned a good deal about specifically what Shannon was doing. Wow. And Marty, for you, I would have to imagine, you know, having gone through this with the DoD and everything else, trying to clear all this information because of all the crazy shit she did had to have been incredibly difficult. Who else did you sit down an interview to confirm some of these stories? So to just talk a little bit about the process there, interviewed over 40 different people, went through every document I could get my hands on, also relied on Joe and I's background in a lot of the same corners that Shannon was in. I like to cite one specific example of Shannon is, there's a picture of Shannon literally standing outside of my room in Baghdad, like the shoe that I was in, like literally standing right outside, I can see my room in the background. Like, so I don't know that I ever crossed paths with her. I'm certain that I didn't know her. I mean, did we cross each other's paths in the, you know, in the defect or something at some point? Like maybe I wouldn't have known it. But it really was just trying to reconstruct as much as we possibly could to tell her true. But yeah, I mean, when you're talking about somebody's life who most of their professional life is still very highly classified, we had to try to pick out, well, what are the aspects of her job that we can talk about, be genuine to her story and what she did and the impact that she did without betraying the trust of the special operations community, without putting anybody that she worked with that's still out doing the hard work in any sort of danger. I mean, that's a difficult thing. And you look at, hey, when we first started working on this book, it was like, we signed the book deal and then like a month later, COVID and all that stuff kicked off. So all of a sudden, like, I wasn't able to travel in those early days there to go do interviews, you know, a lot of these people that Shane and associate with, they're not too keen to talk to any reporter, never mind over Zoom or a phone call or something. So it was kind of difficult there. And there were various stages of this, you know, I'll give you guys the exclusive on this. There's that one point in this where I called Jones, like, hey, dude, if you need to, like, move on to somebody else or something, like, I totally get it because I was hitting wall after wall and felt like I wasn't doing her story justice. We eventually broke through that. And I can't thank Joe enough for continuing to believe in me and being able to tell this story. But like, yeah, it wasn't easy. When you've got somebody who you never knew in real life, whose husband only knew the last, you know, you know, at least firsthand experience was the last seven years of her life. And then her family, because of her work, didn't know this entire, like, nobody knew all of Shannon. So how do you, and then so much of her life is, was and is classified. How do you write a book about that? What you see in this book is our best effort at, at overcoming those obstacles. Yeah, because, you know, even filing for like, FOIA requests and all that other stuff, it's time consuming. It's not overnight. It takes forever. And then trying to go through the DoD is a fucking goddamn nightmare that is endless. And, and then trying to decide what you can write, what's got to be redacted and all that other stuff. What was the breakthrough for you personally as a writer that you were able to get to the other side of this and say, Okay, now I know how to put this all together and get this out into the world and, and tell an honest true story about this American hero. I frankly just had a couple of lucky breaks where one person wouldn't talk to me, but I would look them up, find their social media profile, find their mutual friends, try to reach out to those mutual friends, try to knock on an outdoors to where somebody would answer. Um, ended up finding enough of the right people that were willing to talk and explain some of that stuff to me and fill in some of the gaps there, because there were entire deployments where I didn't have a single point of contact for, until very late in the process until two, two years into writing the book, where I was like, Oh, finally, I've got somebody that can talk about her third deployment, you know, and we just need to fill in those gaps there. You know, the family parts of it are somewhat easy because that's again, Joe can speak to that her parents, um, the, the au pair that Joe and Shannon had that is now actually part of the, the Kent family, right, Joe? Um, like they were all, that was sort of the easy part, right? Like as far as like getting those people to talk and tell all the great stories about Shannon, but a lot of these guys who are, and you also consider the fact that not just the COVID stuff that was an initial bump, but also, uh, most of her career was spent in NSW. Well, again, you look back what happened right around the time that we started working on this, but you know, all the Eddie Gallagher stuff and, um, a bunch of different things that happened in NSW that made them as an organization sort of clamp down. And if you were a seal anything, currently serving or veteran, you kind of knew like, Hey, I need to keep my mouth shut for a while and lay low. And that includes even talking about a close friend that gave her life for the country because I just, you know, they got to put food on the table for their kids too. And, uh, you know, there were careers being threatened, uh, over talking to the media, uh, for, for a period there, for sure. Yeah. Um, I imagine it must have been interesting, um, to talk to people who, to you, were strangers and maybe Joe can, uh, it has experienced this as well. Joe, you, these people were strangers, but you have this, um, connectivity because of Shannon and the operations that she did. And I guess more so the person, the person rather that she was, like, you think of someone work life. That's certainly true. But typically speaking, if you go far enough into it, you'll find, uh, overarching principles that guide both of those things, right? Uh, kind of reminds me of, we were soldiers when the guy asked, uh, I think it was, uh, that, that dick from American Pie, asked Mel Gibson what he thought about being a soldier and a father. He said something to the effect of, I would like to think that one, doing one makes me better at the other, right? Um, and it, I imagine a lot of those conversations must have brought you back to the same general idea, which is who Shannon was as a human being. Uh, and it seems to be, to have been defined by a singular thing and that's service. And that's why you named the book send me, right? Obviously a reference to Isaiah six, eight, uh, uh, you know, so I heard the voice of the Lord saying, who, who shall I send who will go for us? And then I said, here I am, send me, right? Now that it's obvious that that applies to warfare on behalf of your country, but, you know, I, I think that, that idea of a personal sacrifice and service is something that defines good human beings, no matter what role they're in, right? And I, I assume that you saw a lot of overlap in her personality from the strangers you spoke to about her military operations and the stories you heard from her family. Yeah, I thought you definitely, I mean, overlap. That's a big reason why I wanted to, you know, write the book and then have the two perspectives, my firsthand and Marty doing the investigative background. Um, because something that's hard for me, uh, is like, how do you reconcile, you know, the life that we lived and having a family at the same time and to, to both of us, the two really intersected and overlapped. I mean, the reason why we were serving our country is because we loved it. Yeah, we professionally loved our jobs as well, but especially as we were discussing like what I was going to do after the military and what Shannon was going to do going on this last deployment, we knew that we had some off rams and we, we could, our lives could have gone a different direction, but at the same time we, we both had this feeling that, Hey, if someone's going to go forward for our country and have to make these sacrifices and potentially give their lives, like why not us? We have all the skills. Why would we send other people forward to go do that if we're not going to do it ourselves? Um, and so that's something that I want to convey, you know, back to, especially our sons, uh, as they, as they read the book and as they get older and mature. How much of the book, um, when you guys were finished, Joe, did you go back and read that you didn't know about your own wife? Yeah. Good deal, honestly. Um, so especially some of her early deployments, like I, Jen, I knew the high points. I knew like the years that she was roughly in Iraq and I was in Iraq a lot. Um, so I kind of knew what was going on, big picture, but as far as the details, you know, I mean, I think when veterans talk, we just have a general way of saying like, Hey, were you at this base and like, yeah, I remember that one year was kind of crazy. We didn't get into the details. So I didn't know a lot of the specifics that, that Marty uncovered. That's why a lot of times, like I said, I, I forget that Marty did not actually know Shannon. Um, so yeah, especially her, her early life high school college and then her first couple deployments, a lot, I'd say probably 75, 80% of that was new. No shit. How wild is that? Um, after all this happens, to read a book about your wife and not know 75% of her life, essentially. Yeah. Nice. I mean, most people don't ever have to, luckily most people don't ever have to go back and attempt to be this accurate with someone's life and they don't have to go and do, you know, FOIA requests and interview different witnesses and stuff like that. Um, but when someone's gone, it is a kind of a very nice thing to have, especially for my sons, because if they just had to go based off what, what I knew and what our families know, like Marty pointed out, there wouldn't be a big gap there because so much of what she did was secret and Shannon was very, very humble. I mean, she did not talk about what she did professionally. Um, so her parents, my parents, a lot of folks, just sort of thought that, yeah, she speaks Arabic. So maybe she translates some stuff at the embassy. They had no idea what she was doing. So it's, it's been really, um, a blessing in disguise to have this actually, you know, documented in a way that, you know, my sons can really get to know their mom in a way that I think a lot of children don't get to know their parents. And for you, Marty, as a writer, how much of it do you think you didn't get because you couldn't get past certain classified documents or perhaps you couldn't pull the right interview? Well, I, uh, I think that there will be at least the potential for a more complete story to be told about Shannon in 25 to 50 years. Um, you look at how long it took for somebody like Virginia Hall's life, who was an OSS operative in World War II. Um, we briefly mentioned her in, in the book. It was 50 plus years before you really found out what Virginia Hall was doing. And I think Shannon is going to be mentioned in the same breath as people like Virginia Hall. Um, and, uh, you know, if I get it my way, it'll be people like Virginia Hall are mentioned in the same breath as Shannon Ken. Um, but I think that there is a lot on there. Um, just as some broad strokes here, when we talked about her job, we chose to focus on her linguistic abilities as well as her human intelligence collection abilities, because those are things that you can talk about in some level of detail without being hung up by, um, uh, OPSEC or or persec. Everything that she was doing on the tech side, the signals intelligence side, the cyber side. That, I mean, that was a, when you look at it, like percentage wise of what her job was, that was a massive part of her job that is just completely omitted from the book. So I don't know if I could assign a percentage of, like what percentage of her life isn't in this book. I don't know, but it's a lot. I mean, there's a lot there that that we just, we, we, not only could we not, would we not get it past the, um, pre-publication review? I don't think there's, um, even when I was doing interviews, even off the record stuff, those are close hold secrets. You know, you're not even going to talk about that stuff off the record, right? Like, yeah, so there's just, those were areas we just chose to completely avoid. Um, some day, some down, uh, some day down the road, I hope somebody is able to tackle that. Well, those stories don't get told unless somebody advocates, right? I mean, it just, it never happens because the goddamn government's never going to do it for sure. Um, like, I, it reminds me of, you, you mentioned, uh, one, one character hall, but, uh, like, how many people know who Hedy Lamara is, she was actually in Hollywood. Not one mother fucker has ever even tried to make a movie about her story, about how she wrote down, uh, the, uh, uh, uh, the basic programming logic for frequency hopping radios on the back of a cocktail napkin, right? In a fucking bar somewhere and changed warfare forever, right? Like before that, we were using DR8 reels, like cables and shit like that. And, uh, we were using static open channels to talk to each other. We, so we had to use like the Germans had enigma, we had certain kinds of encryption systems that were okay, but they were easily breakable. That's where that when talker story came from, if you remember that, um, because they had broken all of our codes. Um, and then all of a sudden this woman who was a fucking actress, uh, just like, Oh, you know what? I know math and writes it down in the back of a cocktail napkin. Nobody's ever made like there have been some kind of shitty documentaries about it, but nobody's ever made like a biopic about it. 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If you want to fix the way you perform look and feel without all the risk of big pharma, synthetic bullshit, go to bioproteintech.com. Use that promo code drinking bros for $30 off your first order. Dan and I have been using it for about six months. All you do is pop a vial underneath your tongue right before 9/9. You feel a little sting to it and you know that it's working. They don't talk about how great your skin is on it, but my skin is really improved using this over the last six months. Super big fan of these guys and love what they do. Yeah. And when you said 25 to 50 years, Marty, is that the anticipated dates of getting some of this stuff declassified? I think you just typically look at anything that's at a top secret level. I think the minimum waiting period is 25 years. Joe, are you able to speak to that more? I remember from the standard training you have to do every year, but I think 25 to 50 is generally right. I mean, the signals, intelligent stuff that she was doing with the NSA is super technical and pretty close hold. I mean, we made our best effort to really focus on the things that were unique about her career because the technical aspect is interesting, but it wasn't as unique as Shannon being on the ground level. And so a lot of that I think has already been declassified. So we focused heavily on that. And it's also for people who are really interested in, you know, special operations and the global war on terror. I don't think the story has really been told yet on how we hunt down humans. You always hear about, Hey, what happens when we run these guys down and we go put a charge in the door, we, you know, blow in the door and kill everybody, that story gets told over and over again, because that's the big sexy stuff. But how we actually meticulously hunt humans really hasn't been talked about before, how we go out there and have to blend in amongst the populations and put these guys in time and space and how we get this information in particular from human sources using linguistic abilities. That hasn't been told. So I think we focused really heavily on that. And the scenes that we create and we recreate in particular, which I think people will find pretty interesting. How old are your children right now? They are seven and nine. At what age do you think, and maybe you've already determined it, that you'll be able to give this to them and say, here's who your mom is. I'm just guessing just based on really their reading ability, I think probably around 11 or 12, they're both pretty good readers. They both like to read. But as far as them being able to actually absorb it, I would assume somewhere 11 to 12, maybe 13ish. And then I know they're going to have more questions that come up from there. They're going to do their own research, which is good, which is why one of the big reasons why I wrote the book. But yeah, it's crazy to say now because they were so young when she was killed, but it's coming up really soon here where they're going to have that book and they're going to have questions for me, which I both dread and look forward to all the same time. Yeah, that's why I asked my son's turning 10 on Thursday in the books that he's reading. Yeah, he's able to completely absorb and understand all of it and ask thoughtful questions. And I've thought to myself, well, your oldest has got to be right around that age. So, yeah, and they're curious. Even mine will look up things on the internet because I don't let them listen to the drinking bros or watch any of the movies I've ever done, to be honest with you, because they're all disgusting and I'm a horrible person. But he'll go out and find them on his own and find a picture somewhere and be like, hey, dad, how do you know, post Malone or Donald Trump or something like that? And then you'll have to tell him from the show, but he's never been able to see it or watch it. Whereas this is a different story. It's a biography about their life. And I wondered what age they're prepared to read that. Yeah, I mean, considering they're tragically, they already know how it ends. And that's probably the heaviest part of the book. But the rest of it is very, I mean, I'd say it's very age appropriate as long as the kid can read it on their own. It's fine. But yeah, so I think probably around 10 or around 11, they're going to be reading this and probably asking me questions about it or able to retell her story on their own, which again, that's another big reason why I really wanted to actually write the book and then document this all. But yeah, it's it's coming up here soon. Yeah, and that's it's truthfully one of my favorite parts of writing is leaving a story behind for years and years and years, because it's not just your kids. It'll be their kids as well wanting to know about their grandmother and everything else. And then boom, here it is. It's very rare that somebody gets a biography about their life done and done so well here. Marty, have you talked to Joe's kids at all? I mean, I've met them. I, you know, Joe and I living on an opposite coast, it's not easy for me to be around. Obviously, you know, I met them initially when I came out for the memorial. And then once more, I came out to Joe's place. I think he was a couple years ago now, but for some stuff for the book. So I've met them, but no, I don't, you know, they never returned my texts. I don't know why, Joe. Sometimes we're from them as long as possible. Yeah, you have to. But the reason I asked Marty is, you know, as as they're heading into this age, one would think as an author, you would go back and say, Hey, do you remember your mom? Can you tell me anything about her? Because it's it's one of those things where when a parent dies so young, you do wonder if they remember their mom or their dad or anything like that. And that's what I'm curious about. I guess just because I'm a father now of three. And I think back to when my kids were that age, I don't know that they remember me at all. It's it's strange to ask. But yeah, you know, they were one in three, as Joe said, when she died. So I don't I don't expect that they'll have a lot of firsthand memories. But one of the most, I think powerful parts of the book is when Joe talks about reading to his boys and in some of the things that they bring up about their mom. And I don't want to spoil it or anything like that. But you know, people read it, I want them to get the full impact of that particular part of the book without me spoiling it on a podcast. But I know that they definitely Joe and Heather have done such an amazing job from what I can see of including and making sure Shannon is a big part of their life. But also, you know, I'm I've got two young daughters myself. And the second one, literally, our middle name is after Shannon and both of them have grown up now that they're both young three and nine. They've you know, the last five years, they've grown up with dad's working on a book dad's working out like what's this about. And so even my daughters know quite a bit about Shannon and Kent at this point, just because this is what dad has been working on for as long as they can remember. So it's I think it's definitely going to be something. And again, too, like they're both Joe's got two boys. I've got two daughters. And this is who I want them to be, you know, their role model. Like role model number one is Shannon Kent for my daughters. Everything that she did and represents is what I want my daughters to aspire to be. Yeah, I wonder about that from both your perspectives, actually, because I wonder how I wonder how you'd balance the honor of her service and sacrifice with the bad side of American foreign policy, right? What we've done negatively to our country, the pointlessness of the Iraq war, the pull out in Afghanistan, the continued bullshit that we're doing, because I can see two boys who are who see their mother as a war hero or two little girls who are her namesake, right, wanted to dedicate themselves to some kind of service, similar to that as well. But from from my perspective, personally, I would never I would probably discourage any kids I had from joining the US military at this point, because of the way that it's being leveraged in an unethical way, in my opinion. So like, how do you I guess have you thought about that at all? And then what's your plan to deal with it as it comes because, you know, teenage boys start to think about that kind of shit. Yeah, I mean, I've thought about it and I've talked about it and spoken publicly about it quite a bit. I mean, the books in me is a political. It's really just a biography about about Shannon's life, which most people now that I'm kind of a public political person, they don't believe it. But it truly is, there's not there's no politics in it whatsoever. But Shannon was killed a month after Trump gave the order for our troops to be pulled out of Syria the first time. So I mean, that entire backstory and the way that it tragically culminated, it's highly political. And it still is to this day. I mean, we've got troops right now because of what happened, you know, 24 hours ago in Syria, we got troops in Syria and Iraq and Jordan that could be under fire right now. And they should have been out of there a very, very long time ago. But I agree with you. I mean, I look, I have the struggle myself and I've had it really for the last couple years. Like, do I tell my kids to go in the military? I mean, my oldest already has decided that he wants to be a Marine Corps sniper. Shannon's younger brother just retired from the Marines from Marsok. So he that's like, and when I was his age, I had my mind made up that I wanted to be a commando of some sort too. So it's literally in his DNA. That's a big reason why I want to be in the political sphere so that we can fix these issues. So we're not sending our military off to go fight and die in pointless wars. But I agree, I know I'm torn to I mean, the book is really for them to get to know their mom, but there is a lot of, you know, my politics. And I talk about it all the time too, because I think it plays such a huge factor in American politics, whether you're interested in foreign policy or not. But I agree with you. And it's a it's a horrible place to be. And because if you were to ask me, you know, five, six years ago, a decade ago, I would encourage any young person to go into the military. Whereas now, I honestly, I say this, and I genuinely mean that people ask me, like, what's the hardest question you get in the campaign trail? Is it, you know, about abortion? Is it about you Donald Trump or any of that stuff? It's not. It's when a young person comes up to me and says, I've wanted to be in the military all my life. What should I do? And that's hard because I feel torn between two worlds of like a guy who had a really positive experience in the military, but then also a part of me that understands the more mature level, the way that that's really been abused by our political class for their game. Yeah, there's something to be said about. Well, a couple of things. The legacy recruits are gone now, right? Because they're like you said, maybe five years ago is accurate, maybe 50 to 20 is is more accurate. But there was a time when adult veterans would have actively encouraged their children to join them like walk them down to the recruiting station even like, Hey, you're not fucking living in my house at 19, but you're done. So you can get a job or you join the military. That's kind of how it used to be. And it's not anymore. Right. And like, I get calls from people like consultants and shit in DC all the time asking about this stuff about the quote unquote recruiting crisis. I don't think we have a recruiting crisis. You have a messaging problem, right? Yeah, because you've lied to these motherfuckers, you sent them to war for 25 years. And when they got home, you told them, good luck, right? And all this stuff's like, you can you can convince 17 to 19 year olds to do stuff. But when they're 45 year old dad is like, no, then it's over. Yeah, like it's pretty much over at that point. So I don't think there's a recruiting crisis. I think there's a trust crisis. And it's and it's a good it's a good thing that there's a trust crisis because they don't deserve our trust. Right. Now, the solution to that's not to abandon the country. It's to get those motherfuckers out of there so we can trust our system again and apply this natural aggression that we have in a positive way again for the betterment of our country and humanity and shit like that. Yeah, it's like, it seems like a pretty simple concept to me. But, you know, at this point behind the scenes, they're talking about a draft in 2026. I'm not sure if you're tracking on this, but the army is getting ready to activate the IRR and bring up like tens of thousands of people because they're worried about having to institute a draft. Really? Are you privy to that, Joe? I mean, I know probably what Dan is just reading the news. I've seen that they're also considering bringing back retirees, which as a retiree, I'm like, okay, that's going to be interesting when they send me this letter. But look, I mean, years ago, when Biden came in and he really forced the COVID mandate, but then also the extremist stand down where they said, Hey, I think if you had a Gadsden flag on your Facebook profile, you might be an extremist, we're going to suspend your security clearance. When they started doing all this between that and what took place with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, I knew guys that were, you know, over the 10 year mark that we're at the 15 year mark, the 20 year mark, we'll probably would have stayed in until they got kicked out that we're like, I'm done. And when you saw that retention crisis take place, right after that was the recruiting crisis. But at the same time, you've got Joe Biden, who wants to get us involved in a potentially a major land war in Europe, wants to get us involved in another war in the Middle East, potentially the Pacific, it's like those two things don't make any sense, you can't gut your military and then try and start a war on every single corner of the globe and then think that you're not going to have the draft. It's foreign, I think to our generation, because we've never had a draft, we fought our nation's longest war literally if an all volunteer force. So I think we're about to come head on with a very, very unfortunate and unpleasant reality. And you know what, at this point, if we had to at least, I wouldn't want us to draft people and send them off to war. But if we had to start calling up people and saying, well, now we're going to draft you into the military, that might make more people care about why we're going to war. Well, yeah, you know, the Constitution doesn't authorize a standing army anyways, Joe, it authorizes a Navy to protect our transportation and shipping. The end, right? Yeah, I mean, it's like, there was a very, I've talked about this a million times on this show. There's a very good reason not to have a standing army. And it's because of the Powell Doctrine, right? Like you need to be able to have to go to war, you should have the will of the public, right? You should have a clear and defined end state as well. Like, and we haven't had any of that shit. So as a matter of fact, the president, no matter who they are, keeps sending troops into combat without even asking Congress for it, right? So I mean, we're like, we're like two layers deep at this bullshit at a minimum. There should not be a, there should be a Navy and probably a Marine Corps element, I guess, if you want to call it that whether it's, it doesn't matter what you call it. Their job is to fucking be on ships and muse and shit and rapidly deploy to places that should they need to, right? To protect our transportation and shipping. But if you were to reside with Congress, because Congress is the closest representative body to the American people. However, you get Congress, just Republicans and Democrats alike that will just sign the checks that let the president send us off the war. And that's been taking place for pretty much our entire adult lives. And that's really got to get rein back in. People don't realize how much that affects their daily lives. I hope we don't have to have the draft to wake them up. But at the same time, like our foreign policy and the way that we've given the executive branch a blank check to do this, like they're going to run head on into each other very soon. And I talked to Jared about this too. The other problem with, with recruitment in the military is there's almost a hero problem is what I like to call it. You don't have anybody really to look up to. You know, for females, like Shannon, this is a great story. This is somebody that you should push to the forefront and encourage young women who want to join the military to be like her and give somebody to look up to. But instead, we're getting dudes who are now girls in the Biden administration. And you see more of them on a daily basis to the point where I had to ask you the other day, who is that person wearing the debt doubts, the health and human services, dude? Yeah. And but that's who most people, you know, civilian like me, thinks is in the military where I had to ask Dan live on air. I was like, wait a minute, that person never served. Why are they wearing all that shit in every goddamn photo with the president everywhere you go? That's not somebody you would aspire to look up to and say, yeah, I want to join the military and be like that, dude. Yeah, like, it matters who our heroes are in culture, right? It's the it's the basis to form of aspirational marketing, I guess, because you can sit a kid down and tell him why it's wrong to steal and hate people because they're immutable characteristics are why it's a good thing to serve your community, take care of people and such. It's another thing entirely to see a human being that actually does it and be like, you know what? I'm going to I'm going to make a choice to be like that person, right? So you you you see the person in their life and what you glean from it are the principles that they live by and that becomes your North Star, right? But when when the heroes in culture are people who turn the camera around on themselves, right? And it's all about me, me, me, then we get a culture of it's all about me. That's just how it works, right? Yeah. So I mean, we've we've dug this hole for ourselves. And but the good news is, and I tell I say this all the time too, I don't like all this doom and gloom shit. Any problem you create, you can fucking fix, because if you had the power to create it, you have the power to fix it. And how you fix that is by doing stuff like this, elevating people who actually are good human beings, instead of retards on the internet, you know, who are just like going for dope being hits from attention and shit like that. And then make it make the point that this is the kind of person we need. So you got to go be this person, right? Like Shannon's gone now, we need the next Shannon. That's how it fucking works, right? Next man up, this is something that athletes talk about. It's something that we train for in the military all the time. Know the guy know the job of the dude above and below you. That's just part of it, right? So this is this is the solution to all of this. The the ills of modern western culture lie solely in that, in who we decide to put on a pedestal and who we don't, right? Yeah. And with you, Joe, you know, running for for Congress, I actually want to see you in there to see what you can do to see if you can make a difference. Again, we've had a ton of politicians on this show. And I genuinely believe in you because we need that element as well. And you've got to have somebody besides Dan Crenshaw in there, who's going to represent the military in a positive way for Congress. I don't know if you've had any conversations with him or reached out to him or vice versa or how that works. But do you guys chats behind the scenes other guys who are in the military who are in Congress? Like Marcus Littrell, for example, you ever chat with him? So yeah, I've actually I've met Marcus's older brother who's I can ever be older, younger, but he's in Congress. I've met him a couple of times Morgan Littrell Morgan. Yes. You like Crain, another great he's he's a freshman this year, but former seal. He's just doing phenomenal things in Congress. If you look at his voting record, you'll get the stances he's taken, especially on fiscal responsibility. He actually put the measure on the floor, him and Matt Gates, Annapalina Luna, and Corey Mills to get our troops out of Iraq and Syria, Libya and Yemen earlier this year and actually had those had that bill gone through and not gotten killed off by the unit party. We wouldn't have lost those three soldiers just a couple of months ago, defending the tribe border region of Iraq, Syria and Jordan. So yeah, I talked to quite a few of those guys. We are starting to get more, I think, global warranty vets that are that are in Congress, in particular, this last freshman class, I had some had some really good ones. The folks I just mentioned, they're all veterans. And I think that they're by and large doing the right thing in Congress and just saying, Hey, we don't really care what the unit party wants. We're going to go represent our constituents. But then they have a really powerful and impactful voice when it comes to how and why our country uses force. Yeah, and there's others as well. Tim Shee up in Montana is another guy who's running for office right now that is you know, he I'd like to fuck with him and call him a politician. And he always like, no, no, no, all right, we'll see. But yeah, there's there are good people. And look, I don't I don't necessarily think that loading up Congress with veterans specifically is the right call because you get a Dan Crenshaw here and they're right. Yeah, but he's a total piece of shit. I forget who the there was there was a guess a few weeks ago. And you said, I feel like you should have had to have served if you're going to make the decision to send other people's kids to war. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, like, but service doesn't just mean the military, right? Like you should have to. I to me, to me, it's something that goes on in high school. This is a much this is kind of a an aside, I guess, but like right now, the public education system tries to for the first time in their lives teach children a new language at 13 or 14 years old. Yeah, how difficult that is to learn a new language when you're a fucking teenager. Yeah, it's it's fucking stupid. Move that shit back to first grade, right? First through third grade, and they where they can actually learn the language and then make the requirement for high school instead of two full fucking years, four semesters of a foreign language, public service to your community, right? Now these people know what it means to sacrifice. They know the essentials, the secret of life that it's not about you that every meaningful thing you do in life will be in the service of other people. And then you're not so ready to throw lives away because of your fucking wallet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, my, my, my rule of thumb is if your answer to every single crisis throughout the world is to send in the troops or to leave the troops there forever, then I'm going to need you to go ahead and serve and serve like in the infantry as an enlisted dude. There's plenty of guys out there who don't have any, any background in service to I think have pretty pragmatic takes and they understand just pattern recognition that look the last 20 years of war got us absolutely nothing. What we're hearing right now about you, Fran is absolute insanity and they're voting in the right direction. So it doesn't have to be veterans, but I do think getting more folks in there who were honest about the experiences we had in the war on terror and just like, look, it wasn't successful. We do need to chart a new course. I think that's something we should strive towards. One of the biggest topics that's that's come up here for this selection in particular is obviously immigration. If you were in with this border funding bill that they're trying to jam through with funding for Ukraine as well as Israel, how do you stop that being in Congress is just one guy and what are the conversations you would have to have behind the scenes? Because I think that's what a lot of people are curious about because it seems like besides Trump, nobody else wants to go to war, nobody else wants to fund this shit, but the Republicans we currently have in there are still voting on this shit like Mike Johnson and those guys and they won't give up this funding for these wars. And I don't know why. Well, I mean, I do know why, but just watch these guys are they've been on, you know, two weeks for Easter break. I don't know who gets two weeks for Easter break, but you know, your congressman knew that when they come back next Monday, they are going to have their hair on fire to try and sign off on the Senate bill that was $95 billion of new foreign aid. The majority of which goes to Ukraine, more goes to Israel, Taiwan, and then, you know, a couple more of a billion to keep us deeper deeply involved in the more in the Middle East. That somehow is going to be their number one priority when we literally have critical pieces of infrastructure that are falling into the ocean, you know, like we just had in Maryland recently. So and we have an invasion on our southern border. I mean, we've lost troops defending other countries borders in, you know, just a couple months ago, but we have an invasion on our southern border. To answer your question, Congress has to draw a hard line and say, look, as long as the president is using the funding that we give him to facilitate an invasion on our southern border, we just simply won't fund the government. That's exactly why two weeks ago, when they put forward that monstrosity, that $1.2 trillion omnibus bill, you had the majority of Republicans and not just the freedom caucus. You even had some really middle-of-the-road Republicans who said, I can't do this. I can't continue to fund this. If we're not going to secure the border, I won't fund the government. And that bill, even though Republican leadership put it on the floor, it passed with the majority of Democrats voting for it, not Republicans. So the one little piece of leverage that Congress has, it's the purse strings. And in a case like this, I think they've got to be incredibly draconian and harsh. You just say, like, you know what, until you're ready to shut down the border, we're not even going to come back to Washington, D.C. We're not talking about anything. We most certainly are not talking about sending billions of dollars to foreign countries until that's taken care of. And then after that, it just goes back down to the the individual discipline of doing individual appropriations bills. When they had that speaker fight over who was going to be the speaker, and then got rid of McCarthy, the media said that was all because a bunch of crazy guys want to burn the whole place down. Really, one of their biggest complaints was that we keep doing these massive spending packages, and we're not doing individual bills the way the Constitution dictates. And that's just basic good fiscal policy. So get back to that and prioritize the security of the United States of America. I think it's pretty common sense. Yeah, you know, I don't know how we're going to secure our border when we have to secure the borders of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Egypt, and Oman. You know, yeah, I mean, we look, we've priorities matter. Yeah, sure do. What do we send 480 million over there? Yeah, yeah, for those guys. That's part of that bill anyways. I think the federal government, I think, like, maybe Congress to some degree, but mostly the fucking unelected bureaucrats are terrified of a government shutdown because people are going to see how little they need the federal government in their lives. That's like, it's like, uh, fuck, was it brave new world where they are, let's say equilibrium the movie, because this is a better example, where he doesn't take his fucking soma pill for one day, and he starts seeing how the real world is that that little fucking ray of sunlight into people's lives where they see how useless the federal government is, is the biggest fear of anybody that's a fucking career bureaucrat, I think, because that's their whole livelihood, right, is extracting labor and wealth from the population. And once people see it for like, even a week, even turn it off for a week, right? Where they're like, oh, that didn't change my life at all. Yeah, fuck. Why am I, why is 40% of my money coming out and going to these assholes then? Yeah, and even Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was on the show right before Christmas break, you know, she was talking about shut it down. Like, great, you want to shut the government down? Like, we deserve it. This deserves to be shut down, because these bills are awful, that were jamming through, that $1.2 trillion omnibus bill was at over 1200 pages, less than 48 hours to read, which nobody can do that. Nobody read that. No, no, no one who voted for that, maybe some people in leadership, but the vast majority voted for it, they didn't read it. I mean, it's just a slap in the face of the American people were 35 trillion in debt, the borders open. You're right. I mean, we got to draw a strong line and just if you're not going to further border, if you're not going to defend the country, just shut it down. Yeah, I agree. Listen, gentlemen, it's always a pleasure having you on the show. This is the point in the show we get to the drinking bro of the week, which is someone who has inspired you or helped you become the person you are today. We'll start with you first, Joe. Who would you like to give drinking bro of the week to? Oops, sorry, I was on mute. No, no worries. Yeah, drinking bro of the week, you know, just recently I lost a very good friend of mine, Josh Rosin. He was also a friend of Shannon's. He served in the military for 24 years. It was a green beret, sloiled all over the world, just tragically lost him to cancer, likely from the burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. So Josh and his family, his son's named after me, my son's named after him, and then his wife, Jenny. So those are my drinking bros of the week. Awesome, Marty. I'm going to go with an organization rather than an individual person. My drinking bro of the week is 107 foundation. Similar to what Joe was just talking about with losing a friend to cancer, I think that we are just at the very, very front of a very long problem that we are just now starting to wrap our heads around. And it's if we didn't have folks like 107 foundation, getting people screened, doing the research to inform us on what we're facing. I look back to 2006 and say, "Man, maybe I shouldn't have been sniffing the batteries that I was thrown into the burn pit when I was on those details and stuff, and maybe that bill is going to come do sooner rather than later." And I know I'm not the only person in that situation, and if it weren't for 107 foundation, and there's some other good organizations fighting that fight as well, but they are ones that I particularly want to spotlight and say, "Hey, there's some folks worth supporting and doing really important work on behalf of the veteran population." That's awesome. The book is called Send Me, the incredible true story of a mother at war. It is available for presale right now on Amazon. Kindles out, audiobook is available for presale, and so is hardcover. The book drops on May 7th. I say this all the time on the show. Please keep in mind, when you buy these presales, they count towards first week sales for the New York Times bestseller list, so please pre-order this book now that will help get these guys on the New York Times bestseller list opening week, and it'll also give us a new hero that we desperately need in this world instead of the shit the government is forcing down our throats currently. Thank you for your time today. Both you guys are wonderful individuals. My only thing is, I just, Marty, your face next to his face is going to be rough through a lot of these interviews for the next month, my man. You know? I know, I know. At least Joe is also tall, though, so I don't also have to deal with my other insecurity, which is being like three feet taller than anybody else I'm ever on camera with, so I've got that going for me on this. You're like an albino shrek, you know, because in real life, Marty, there's not many people. It's true, Joe. There's not many people like me or this giant, like people really underestimate how tall Marty is. He's a large man. All right, it's very tall. Yeah. I'm like 6'2", I think Marty's like 6'5". Well, being up in the Pacific Northwest, any chance you think he's Bigfoot? It's going to say, I won't rule it out. Let's just say that. Bigfoot without a picture. He's got, yeah. And you are kind of blurry, too, which is like Bigfoot's character, or his main characteristic is bad. Yeah, I feel like I'm watching the Patterson film every time I talk to you on Zoom, Marty. Come into the studio, all right? We love you guys. We appreciate you being on. Again, the book is called Send Me the Incredible True Story of a Mother at War. Please pre-order this now. Good luck in the upcoming election. We'll be live that night on Drinking Bros as we are for every single election, and we'll be rooting for you. Hopefully you get it done this year, man. 2600 votes. Let's get out there and vote Washington, all right? Absolutely. God damn it. We need more people like you in office. For Anthony, Anthony Holloway, I'm Ross Patterson. This is the Drinking Bros podcast. Good night, everyone. [Music]
