NEVER Make These Social Media Platform Mistakes in 2024 | Sam Brown Part 2 DSH #931

Speaking of final table, you play a lot of poker or at the Sludu Poké Tour right now.

I just started playing to prep for this since college.

I got together with a couple of buddies last week and kind of knocked the rust off.

I've got three kids

that are 13, 11, and 9.

So the other night, I was like, you know what, I'm going to teach the kids to play too.

So instead of playing with chips, we played with MMs, but we had a great time.

All right, guys, Sam Brown is back and post-election now.

How are you doing?

Yeah.

Good, good.

Yeah.

We're on to another mission.

Yeah, another race in the books.

And you went through your Senate race as well.

Yeah, yeah.

It was, look, I mean, you learn a lot.

I've never felt so energized about a mission as I did, you know, in the last couple of years.

Met so many great people.

But the big thing that came out of this election cycle is We got President Trump in the White House.

Republicans control Congress.

And so we're about to enter, I believe, a new era of American greatness.

I'm really pumped to see it.

Obviously disappointed.

I'm not going to be a part of it from the Senate standpoint,

but I know that this administration is going to do incredible things.

And the American people are going to be, you know, they're going to be on the winning side of this.

I love it.

Your race was neck and neck, man.

It was.

I remember refreshing my screen.

You'd be in the lead one hour and then she'd take the lead.

It was back and forth.

You must have been very emotional during that process, right?

You know,

I really wasn't.

And like, I mean, I attribute a lot of that to just, you know, some of my experiences in life.

I mean, when I

getting blown up in Afghanistan was, you know, was a tragic thing and very painful.

But that was a three-year recovery.

And I think born out of that was a patience.

And then the life I've lived after that, just seeing the good that can come out of hardship, the blessings out of suffering,

gives me something to be hopeful for.

And it's bigger than me.

And so this is just a journey.

So to see the ups and downs, the back and forth, and the final result, no, it wasn't, honestly, it wasn't emotional.

I just, I'm excited for

what's next, whether it was going to be that as a senator or, you know,

whatever is next on the mission.

Back to the drawing board.

Do you plan on running again, Wendell?

You know, I don't know.

It's, you know, so much of it

is kind of a timing thing.

And I think a lot of, you know, what happens in my future is going to depend on what I do next.

Did you have a backup plan?

No.

You were all in?

I was all in.

I love that.

All in.

On the final table, all in.

That's respect right there.

Yeah.

Speaking of final table, you play a lot of poker.

We're at the celebrity poker right now.

So, no,

I just started playing to prep for this since college.

I haven't played.

Wow.

And

so I got together with a couple of buddies last week and and we played a little bit, kind of knocked the rust off.

And then I've got I've got three kids

that are 13, 11, and nine.

So, the other night I was like, you know, I'm gonna teach the kids to play too.

So, so instead of playing with chips, we played with MMs, but we had a great time.

What a good influence, yeah.

Well, I mean, living in Nevada, we're known for casinos, so they're gonna get exposed to it one way or another.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, might as well make it a fun family thing.

Yeah, who won that game?

Uh, my oldest son, oh, yeah, nice, So he's got some good gambling skills.

Yeah,

he's a good bluffer, too.

Yeah.

You taught him?

He's just natural.

He's a performer.

I love that, man.

Yeah, I love how big you are in family.

That's important to me.

It is.

I don't have kids yet, but I look at people like you and people with families, and I get inspired.

So thank you for that.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

I mean, I wouldn't be doing what I was doing.

without my family having poured into me, given me purpose and direction, my parents.

And then I feel that same obligation as a parent.

Like I, I want my kids to have a meaningful and purposeful life.

And I actually just had this conversation with my son literally earlier this week.

And I was just like, you know, son, you're 13.

Like these next five years, believe it or not, I mean, 13 and 18 have such a huge impact on who you become as an adult.

Wow.

Like it's time to start shifting gears.

and stop being a child and enjoying childish things all the time.

Like the sacrifice you make to do things that maybe are not as fun,

instead of reading comics all the time, to read something educational,

to work out when you don't want to work out, you know, to hone a skill, those things, these next five years are going to separate, you know, your future potential from

your reality.

Yeah.

And,

you know, that's something that my parents pushed on me.

And look, look where I am today.

You know, like I have an opportunity to impact people's lives.

You already have.

Right.

Yeah, no, that's incredible.

You're having these conversations with your kid at 13 because I feel like parents are afraid to have these conversations with their kids.

Yeah.

You know, and then these kids have no sense of purpose or direction and they go to college and they're lost.

Yeah.

No, look, we're human beings are purposeful creatures.

You know, you see people that don't have purpose, they're lost.

They wander, they meander.

They search sometimes in the wrong places for meaning.

Yep.

And

I think the sooner that we can grasp something,

not that it has to be the purpose for the rest of our life, but sometimes one purpose,

you know, like in the case of my election, you know, I ran through the tape.

I didn't win the Senate, but

that experience prepared me for something that's next.

And so, you know, that's one of the mindsets that

I'm trying to transfer to my kids.

Yeah, everything happens for a reason, right?

That's right.

But that purpose is huge.

I mean, they've done a lot of studies on when people retire, how they lose that purpose and they they pass away shortly after wow so you got to be careful with that wow you know i didn't know about that yeah there's a lot of studies on like brain health uh people that retire and they they pass away much quicker than people that keep working right you know right makes a lot of sense well you know and i've talked to obviously like i'm a i'm a military guy and i got medically retired very young.

I was 27 years old.

And I've talked to like professional athletes.

You know, they go play a couple couple of years in the NFL or, you know, Major League Baseball or something, and they retire.

There seems to be about a three-year period when if you're like totally dedicated to something and then all of a sudden that's gone, that, you know, we'll call it your purpose, whether it was military, professional, you know, sports or something else.

If you have a sudden and abrupt sort of shift out of that, there's about a three-year period that

I encourage people to be patient.

Don't feel like you have to force yourself into the next thing

for like a long-term commitment.

Be patient.

Allow yourself to kind of figure out where your next gift is.

And people really take about three years to kind of settle into that.

Wow, that's a long time.

It is a long time.

Yeah, I could see why people, because

not everyone, but a lot of people are impatient these days.

They want that instant gratification.

And social media is to blame for that, I think.

Yeah, it's probably a contributor.

Yeah, good and bad things with social media.

Right.

But I think overall, it's good.

I mean, alternative media played a huge role in this election.

Huge role.

I mean, massive.

I mean, here's, here's an interesting thing.

You know, just kind of personal experience.

I wasn't on Twitter until I ran for Senate.

And now it's X.

So like when I first got on, it was like, you know, the old Twitter.

Yeah.

And then

they actually even kicked me off the platform at one point.

Wow.

It was.

It was a garbage deal.

It was like,

there's a picture of me.

I don't know if you've seen it, but like, it's before I went through a lot of my facial reconstruction.

So I'm very scarred in my face.

I'm in uniform.

I'm saluting a flag.

And it's just kind of, it's just kind of a surreal, like, just sort of iconic photo of me that I didn't realize was being taken of me at the time.

But it's kind of graphic.

And

I think it was around something to do with that.

Oh, okay.

But then Elon buys Twitter, turns it into X.

I get, I probably get,

no joke, 95% or more of my news and information off of X now.

I don't go to like other news aggregating websites nearly as much or other stuff like, because you get it so fast.

You can get more truth.

Like even the community notes, I think, are just a great feature.

Yeah, those are solid.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, like people were calling the election on Twitter before I hit the news.

Right.

You know, they knew it was over.

I went to bed that night.

I didn't know it was over, but it was all over Twitter.

Right.

It's pretty crazy.

And seeing all these cabinet pics on Twitter, you know, it's coming out before they even announce it.

Right.

It's nuts.

It is.

Yeah, Twitter knows a lot.

You got to follow the right pages, but.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think it's a good place to also just kind of get an alternative perspective, too.

You know,

it's not unhealthy to have a mix of, you know, different points of view.

Yeah, well, free speech is, I would say that's the best platform for it.

Right.

Social media platforms.

Because I've had, I just got banned on TikTok today, actually.

Did you really?

Yeah.

For what?

You get like three strike rules.

So it was three videos.

One of them was like titled some cure for cancer

like could this potentially cure cancer yeah it was like a a natural cure for it okay so that was one of them another one was tolsie gabbard came on the show she was talking about the deep state so that got flagged just her her sharing her own perspective on something got your show flagged yeah the deep state and then i don't know what the other one was but yeah certain triggers on these platforms get you banned or shout out

tick tock's been really surprising to me.

I was the first

Republican Senate candidate on TikTok.

Oh, wow.

Because, you know, I mean, there's some, you know, there's some theoretically some controversy around it, right?

But I thought, you know, I'm not running for just a certain segment of Nevadans.

Like, I'm running for everyone.

And some people consume a lot of their information and news off of TikTok.

And so I thought, like, it was, it was appropriate for me to be there.

And it...

My audience has grown the fastest on TikTok out of all the other.

How many followers are you out there?

A little over 40,000, but that's over the course of like five months.

That's impressive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Charlie Kirk, I saw him talking about this on Patrick Red David's show.

I mean, he used TikTok to really impact people.

Right.

Like he said, everyday people use that app, and he was had janitors come up to him, like electricians, all sorts of people.

I had people stopping me in airports, like in grocery stores, and specifically mention TikTok.

And, you know, to just put it into perspective, I've got a little over like 30,000 people that follow me on Instagram.

Now, mind you, I think that Meta has put, you know, certain kind of

ceilings or throttles on like political candidates.

But I've been on Instagram for years, years, and I barely met like a little over 30,000 people on Instagram.

But like overnight, I've got over 40,000 people on TikTok.

Yeah.

It's crazy that these days to run for any position, you need a social media following.

Right.

Like, I don't think you could win without that these days.

No.

It'd be tough, right?

It would be.

And I think, you know, more and more people are

going to social media to try and find out the truth right too because if you're just getting inundated on tv with ads so much of it's garbage oh yeah and just straight lies i can't watch tv anymore no for real even like a modern like a lot of modern shows and movies like there's programming in those yeah it's crazy like you got to be careful what you show your kids too that's true like do you have a process at your house for that

yeah it's called we don't have a tv

i'm

But do they have phones?

I'm serious.

Social media?

No, no, they don't have social media.

My kids don't have phones.

I mean, every once in a while, I'll let my kids, you know, watch a YouTube something or another on my phone or on a laptop.

But no, they don't have just like unfettered access to anything.

Wow.

We were staying at a hotel recently and they were watching

something.

I think they like logged on to Netflix or something like that.

And

the show was, it was a kids' show, but it was heavily skewing and demonizing

energy companies

and had a very hard environmental sort of message.

And it was basically like

the hero of the show was doing like environ like

eco-terrorism, basically.

What kind of kids' show is this?

That's crazy.

I don't even remember what it was called, but I just remember like walking into the room and like, and kind of watching it for a few minutes and just being being like shocked, initially shocked, and then I really like, this is Netflix in 2024.

I really shouldn't be shocked that

they have these sort of themes on kids' shows.

Well, they're one of, I think they're one of the biggest donors to the Democrats, if I'm not mistaken.

Netflix, Google, and a few of these huge companies.

So obviously they're going to lean towards one way.

Right.

Right.

But I mean, I had to go have a conversation with the kids after the fact.

Like, hey, guys, this is what you just saw.

Here's the political angle on it.

And here's why it's wrong.

Right.

But, you know, how many parents, one, just don't even realize what's happening on the shows or two necessarily have the information to be able to kind of sift through, see the lies or the propaganda, and then kind of unwind that messaging for their kids.

Yeah.

And not a lot of kids have hands-on access with their parents.

Like, you're probably with them a lot, right?

They're sending them to public school.

Do you hope that gets revamped?

Yeah, you know, one of the things that I'm really excited about President Trump's talked about is just a total new reapproach on education.

And, you know, my wife and I kind of in the midst of all the COVID stuff started homeschooling our kids.

Wasn't a long-term plan, but it was kind of like, hey, we got to make sure our kids are not missing continuing to learn.

And our youngest son, frankly, he had, you know, he needed like speech therapy.

And they kept the masks on the kids.

Like, my kid was regressing in his ability to communicate.

Because of the masks?

Because of the masks.

Wow.

So we started to homeschool the kids and think like, hey, when schools go back to normal, we'll put the kids.

But it's just been such a game changer for us that we're continuing that.

But anyway, President Trump is like, he's got some really bold visions on

supporting homeschool families, supporting parents in general, whether it's homeschool or not, just like empowering the parents to be able to have more control and decision making.

in their kids' education.

I think that's what it needs to be.

I love that.

Yeah.

I remember growing up, if you got homeschooled, you were like the weird kid, but now it's definitely like a good trend, I'd imagine.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I mean, people, when they first found out we were homeschooling our kids, they're like, well, I mean, but are your kids, you know, how are they doing socially?

It's like, actually,

my kids are doing incredible.

Yeah.

Because

their behavior is modeled after a lot more adult contact, but we're also in a homeschool co-op with other families.

And so the maturity of the kids and what they see out of the adults in their life is very engaging.

It's very just, you know, respectful.

And, you know, you've got kids that are 10 years old who can carry on a full conversation with adult, look you in the eyes, you know, shake your hand.

Like,

and, and I actually think that in some ways, like the socialization of a homeschool family, if they're around other good families, is going to be better than the socialization of kids who are, you know, around a bunch of other 12 or 13-year-olds, you know, all day long without that same sort of intentional,

you know, kind of just moment by moment, hour by hour, parental or, you know, other kind of adult engagement.

I could see that.

I met your kids at the Trump rally, and I can attest to that.

They were very mature.

I didn't know they were that young.

Wow, that's impressive.

Yeah, they presented themselves like adults.

Well done, man.

That's the goal for me as a parent to have kids because they're a representation of you, too.

Well, I got to shout out to my wife.

I mean, she's frankly carried

the burden of that.

I mean, she's every day, she's with them.

You know, when I was on the campaign, there was a lot of times that I had to be away from home.

And she was, you know, she was doing that full time.

Yeah.

And she's like she's teaching them Latin right now.

You know, it's like she's learning things with them and teaching them.

And, you know, it's, I'm just, I'm blessed to have a wife who, one, has the opportunity to do that, but you know, has the love and the desire to do it as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

One of the funny things from your book, I forgot to bring this up on the first interview.

You were chased by a bear.

Yeah.

What happened?

Man,

kind of a wild story.

So it was, that was 14 years ago, almost like exactly right now.

So it was in November of 2010.

And it was my wife and I's first trip.

We were both still in the military.

I was in my recovery in San Antonio, Texas.

And we took a trip to Lake Tahoe and

didn't have a lot of hiking experience, like outside of like just the military stuff that I did.

And

I stupidly, like now it's stupid.

I didn't realize at the time, but like I took, we had our dog with us.

Yeah.

And I took like these really

just very odorous doggy treats.

I think they're made out of like beef liver or something like that.

And

this bear must have caught wind of it and just started kind of tracking us on the trail.

Damn.

gave us a real good scare.

But like now I look back on it, it's like the bear wasn't going to do anything to hurt us.

It was just, but for a bunch of like newbie hikers, it kind of got our blood pumping.

Wow.

Wow, was it just one bear?

Yeah.

Was it a big one?

I mean, yeah, a bear seems big to me.

I mean, any bear.

I feel that.

Yeah, any size bear is pretty scary to me.

Right.

I'll attest to that.

So did it charge at you or you just saw it from a distance?

It kind of like approached us near this creek.

It wasn't like a charge.

It was kind of like a slow approach.

Okay.

We bolted and it didn't chase us.

Oh, so you picked flight.

Oh, yeah.

I thought with bears, you're supposed to like yell at them and stay.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, we totally didn't do it right.

you're not you're not supposed to run you're not supposed to like look like you're prey uh yeah you're supposed to like yell get big like stay in your ground now we totally did not do it right but no

i'm still alive yeah i will say if i'm with my dog yeah that's a different scenario yeah i'd want to protect it so i would probably dip uh yeah i mean it was like it was one of those flight or flight fight or flight moments and it was like i'm not fighting a bear absolutely uh so there's been some cabinet announcements which of these picks do you think will actually be confirmed you know that's that's a great question

I

actually, I think most of them probably will get confirmed.

Look, I mean, here's the deal.

President Trump had an overwhelming win.

And, you know, the Senate went fairly strongly for a Republican majority.

We held the House.

I mean, this is a mandate for America.

The American people are demanding that President Trump gets to lead with his agenda and, frankly, his picks.

And I think that members of the Senate, a lot of them recognize that.

And

whether someone's got personal beef or issues with somebody, I think we're going to see most of these

picks get confirmed.

I really do.

Because at the end of the day, everyone who votes on these confirmations knows that President Trump won.

The American people are asking for him, his leadership.

you know, and his prerogative on who should be leading different segments of the administration

to have trust in that.

Right.

And so I think most of them are going to get confirmed.

Yeah, the odds are looking good.

Tulsi's at 77%, RFK, 73.

Now, Matt Gates is low.

He's at 30%.

Really?

So he might get some pushback, but that's the lowest one on here.

What's the highest one?

John Ratcliffe, 93%.

Mike Huckabee, 95%.

I'm shocked that some of these aren't even like 98, 99.

I mean,

How are you going to not confirm Mike Huckabee or John Ratcliffe?

Well, there's some bias from the other side probably betting against it, I'd imagine.

I mean, if you want to lose money, go ahead.

All right, check out Polymarket, guys.

Sam, what are you working on next, man?

Where can people keep up with you?

People can, you know, follow the journey at Captain Sam Brown on, you know, any of the socials.

And look,

I can't tell you exactly what's next.

One, because I don't know for sure, but I can tell you I've got some big, some big meetings this next week.

Whatever I do, it's going to be be a huge impact.

And I'm always going to keep fighting for our country, for Nevada.

And I'm just grateful that you're spent a little bit of time with me.

I love it, man.

It's an honor.

Thanks for coming on.

Good job.