Ep 116 | Why Vets DEFIED the Taliban in INSANE Rescue Mission | Tim Kennedy | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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In the beginning, there was nothing.

And then God created Chuck Norris.

And Chuck Norris, roundhouse, kicked nothing,

and told it, get a job.

That joke applies to today's guest as well.

This guy is a real-life Captain America.

He's a former UFC fighter, third-degree black belt, prolific

entrepreneur.

He is a cultural commentator, history channel host, stunt coordinator, self-described gun enthusiast.

He makes most of us as guys look bad.

And I don't like it.

He's the kind of guy who could fight against a grizzly bear and probably would and then win.

And then probably cut it up and sear it, you know, over a fire that he made himself,

you know, chopping down the logs with his bare hands.

One of his hobbies is exterminating feral hogs from a helicopter.

I know that might sound weird, unless you live in the South or in Texas.

It is a great sport.

He recently opened a K-12 Acton Academy, full-blown pirate ship, cannons, all of it.

Most of us run from gunfire.

He doesn't.

After his career as an MMA fighter, he enlisted in the Army Special Forces, where he served as a sniper.

He deployed several times during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom.

His military uniform has five rows of awards, including a bronze star.

He was a Ranger.

Those are just some of the accomplishments, you know, in his 17-year military history.

Even in his post-military career, he's a certified Chuck Norris.

He just got back from Afghanistan, where he aided non-governmental organizations in rescuing Americans.

In a recent interview, he said, it was a landscape and a battlefield that was something I had never experienced before.

It was absolute mayhem.

He's the perfect example of what Americans can become.

He is one of the more optimistic guys I have talked to in a long time.

So next time a frail, self-proclaimed communist brags about the coming revolution, find comfort in the fact that he and Americans like him will be the first ones to defend freedom.

Today, we have Tim Kennedy.

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I want to start with a tweet that you gave, because this is...

I remember when we went into

Afghanistan, no, Iraq.

I had worked with

a Vietnam vet when I was young.

And

he was really proud of his service.

And he was very good at what he was an elite,

an elite troop.

And he was very proud at what he did.

And he was good at what he did.

And he came home.

And he said, the first thing somebody said when he was applying for a job, he said, they said, what have you been doing lately?

He said, I've been in Vietnam.

And they said, oh, I'm sorry for that.

And he said, I'm not.

And he spiraled out of control.

And I remember feeling, I don't ever want to be a part of a generation that treats our service personnel like this.

If we're going to go in, let's support them.

And I think we've done a better job.

But now with Afghanistan, you just tweeted something.

We had to do an emergency mission for a veteran who attempted suicide because he didn't get his interpreter out.

We, the country, has betrayed so many people.

How can the average citizen, what do we do when we know a

service personnel that was over there and going through trouble, but we can't, we're not going through what they're going through.

What do we do?

Yeah, I mean, first be available.

You know, that's a, it's a hard thing

to,

in an era of social media and you know distance contact and you know right now we're doing an over

Skype interview

you know it's hard to actually connect to people and

give them the recognition appreciation and value that they deserve for some of the things that they've done and the things that they've done feel really weird right now you know the the af the Afghan OEF war veterans

you know was their sacrifice, was the suffering, the blood, the pain, the violence, was that for no reason at all?

Of course, there was a reason for it, and there was value to it, and all of their sacrifice had meaning, but right now it's just in this really weird position.

So, what do we do?

You have to be available.

You know, you have to be there.

You have to be reaching out.

You have to be connecting.

You have to be hanging out, personal contact, all the regular coping mechanisms that humans need,

not distance,

to be able to let them talk and let them express, you know, maybe they don't need to talk.

Maybe they just need to be there and know that they're valued for, not for what they did, but just for who they are.

And then everything else is the healing will be a byproduct of time and

I think realization of all of the good that we did.

So does it sound

excuse me?

I'm coming, I'm going to come at you from a couple of different angles on,

you're a man's man.

I am, I mean, I'm a wuss.

I like Broadway shows.

I mean, I'm, you know, I've never fought in my life.

I think in third grade, I had a fight.

So

excuse me.

I barely have a man card, but I still have it.

But so let me ask, does it seem?

Because I've been really trying to get my hands and arms around what's happening in Afghanistan and what has it been worth.

But there were 20 years where girls and women were taught, you can't, this is who you should be, this is who you can be.

And that may be lost now, but I don't think that's, I think that's a seed that was planted deeply.

Is that enough for all of this?

I mean, freedom is once that seed's planted, you know, in 1775,

you know,

as the British were

colonizing us and

overreaching in every single regard, a little bit of a taste of freedom where people learned that they could do their own thing and live the life that they wanted to,

that women could go to school, that women could be teachers, that women could be engineers.

I'm a feminist.

I love

everything about the new kind of progressive women movements.

My wife is a brilliant MBA,

finance and economics major, and seen

Afghanistan 15 years ago, and then seen Afghanistan three years ago, where there were women shop owners, there were women teachers.

You know, when I went there, there were guys writing down with scooters and throwing acid on little girls trying to walk to school.

Now, there were schools completely dedicated to young girls learning to read and to write.

walking through our humanitarian camp.

Most women spoke multiple languages now.

That didn't happen 15 years ago.

That wasn't even an option.

So those are contagious, freedoms, a contagious thing.

And

so is it enough?

I've been using this metaphor of a doctor, a doctor that had a patient, and that patient had cancer.

And for 20 years, that patient was treated by this doctor.

And the doctor kept cancer at bay through a variety of methods.

And over 20 years, you know, in his old age, the patient finally dies.

But that didn't mean that that doctor didn't do a lot of good in that time.

And while that patient may have transpired, may have passed, all of the positive things that happened from that person still being alive for 20 years, and that's how I'm viewing this Afghanistan situation where, yes, 20 years later, this war might have been lost, but we did a lot of good.

And more importantly, the good that was done, it's a ripple effect, a butterfly effect.

I know girls learned how to read.

I know plenty of that are now pilots and engineers and shop owners and entrepreneurs and translators.

So like, you know, you can't stop that train once it starts going.

I don't care if you're the Taliban and you're a bunch of gangster thugs.

Once that train starts going, you know, it's a hard thing to stop.

Yeah.

Because I do think you're right on this.

I think this is a really exciting time.

I feel horrible for the girls who never knew it any other way.

Their moms may have, but they didn't.

And now they're, you know, 17 17 years old.

And you're like, wait a minute, what's happening?

It's one thing to read about it, hear about it from the past, and then experience it.

And

my heart goes out to them.

Let's stay on Afghanistan for a little while before we move into some other things.

You're involved with Chad Robucheau and Mighty Oaks and the Save Our Coalition, or Save Our Allies Coalition.

You guys have been in rescuing people.

I know we've talked before and you said, I'm just, I was just an armchair guy, you know.

But you are deeply involved in this.

Can you tell me a little bit of what you guys are doing?

Yeah.

So Save Our Allies Coalition was put up between two different nonprofits, the Mighty Oaks Foundation and the Independence Fund.

I had been struggling with going to Afghanistan since, you know, the writing was on the wall.

The moment that President Biden announced that we're gonna be moving out every myself and all of my colleagues knew what was going to happen.

It was gonna happen very quickly.

So we are already looking at ways of getting back into the country.

And it wasn't until Sarah Verado and Chad Robicho, two people that I respect highly coming from two great organizations, they both called me within 24 hours and said, hey, we have these a few hundred orphan girls and Chad, my translator, is stuck there.

He's going to be executed and all of these orphan girls are going to be executed.

I mean, that might be the best thing that would happen to them.

Can you come and help us?

So, for the first time, there was a reason, there's a purpose, and it wasn't like, let's go be rad, do commando stuff.

Here is your mission, here's the end state, here's the support, this is what we want you to do.

So, I became part of a four-man task force that went onto the ground at Kabul.

We had two separate elements: one in Washington, D.C., and one forward in the UAE.

That was going to be our host and partner nation to help people get to help us get people out.

We had a very complex team coming from the most elite special operations units on the planet.

The four of us that were on the ground,

this was not the Tim show.

I was working for Sean Gabler.

He was our team leader on the ground, and he

just exhibited extraordinary professionalism.

He is a master of his craft.

He has been doing personnel recovery his entire life.

He came from special operations.

There was another SF guy, there were two other SF guys that comprised of the four-man team.

So, the 12 guys that were in

UAE, they were receiving intelligence from DC to put together our target packages of who we were going to go and recover.

And then we had a very complex bona fides vetting process to confirm that we were getting the right people.

And then ultimately, it was getting air, getting ramps, finding the people, smuggling them through the Taliban and American lines, and then putting them on our planes and some of your planes and getting them out.

Can you tell me a little bit about?

Sorry, that was a

Can you can you tell me a little bit about

because I've heard this from a couple of people about the sewage tunnels

Can you can you talk about that the rat what do you call it the rat hole escape or something like that

A rat line.

A rat line is it's a term that's been around for a long time.

The Nazi Yeah, Nazis used rat lines to smuggle out guys.

You know, the Russians and Americans are coming in.

There are rat lines by the Vietnamese, by the Viet Cong.

You know, a rat line is just a line that goes behind enemy lines, whether it's a supply line or an evacuation line.

In our case, it was a human evacuation line.

We had rat lines all over the whole entire base of the airport in Kabul.

And

the one at Abbey Gate, which is what you're referring to, there was a culvert that was just adjacent to the main gate it was for the culvert if you think of like a canal in California like the California

it was just a big cement drainage ditch and sometimes it was sewage sometimes it was water during

I've been there during the spring and the snow melt all the water from the snow melt would be running through this culvert but what it did was it circumvented one of the gates the abbey gate and we raised the constantina wire and propped it up on plywood so you could go through this culvert drain and not get stuck in the Constantina wire.

So we were able to smuggle in hundreds of people in a really short amount of time as they could just walk up this

cement culvert.

And

obviously the Taliban learned that this was one of our route lines and that was the place that they bombed.

It was one of many places that they attacked.

But it was the place that ultimately

they went and blew up and killed those heroic Marines.

How is the

I mean,

I have to say the military is unbelievable.

It is so important that we have a military that is run by civilians.

But man, when you have a military run by civilians, it can go this bad because they don't have a, they don't know their ass from their elbow.

And if they don't let the military do their job

and clearly define what that job is, we run into these kinds of problems.

But I will tell you, I'm impressed that

these were all lawful orders.

They were awful, but they were lawful.

And nobody, I mean, I got to believe that those Marines and everybody else on the ground were just dying inside because they knew they could help.

They knew it didn't have to be this way.

And yet they didn't.

They stood the line, which is remarkable.

Yeah,

the Marines that were at the Abbey Gate when the bomb went off,

there was very, very good intelligence that there was a bomb coming and it was coming to that place.

So you want to talk about heroes.

Not only were they in Kabul in Afghanistan during the withdrawal, which is extraordinary.

Think about being in Saigon in 1975.

The fact that they were on the ground is beyond heroic.

I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it.

That this isn't running towards the sound of gunfire because you know the evil's there.

You are going to a spot where you know a bomb is coming and you're waiting.

You don't know what that's going to look like.

It might be surrounded by 100 women and children, but you are going to be the one thing that stops evil, you know, health, fury, chaos, anarchy, pain, and suffering.

You're the stopgap between that and everything else behind you, which is people on planes trying to fight for their lives with absolute despair.

And that's what those Marines did that day.

You know, the level of heroism, when you think about those young, they're babies.

Like there's a picture of that beautiful young woman holding that Afghan child.

You know, she died in that gate that day.

And

the testament to who those people were, who those Marines were, and the sacrifice that they made, they knew a bomb was coming and they were there.

The Taliban,

the White House has said that this was ISIS, but please describe the, I mean, I think we...

We set people up.

We put them in a kill box,

you know, surrounded by bad guys.

But there were three checkpoints that the Taliban had, and it was an extraordinarily large suicide vest.

Did they somehow just miss that?

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, so you can't make a distinction between ISIS K and Taliban.

These are the same organizations.

But the White House does.

The White House does.

I mean, I obviously

was there as a volunteer for a nonprofit.

So in my capacity in Kabul this last time, I was 100% just a volunteer working for them, but I'm still in the military.

And so what the White House says and does when I'm in an official capacity,

I'm going to toe the line.

But

in real intelligence, ISIS-K and Taliban,

they're feathers, different feathers from the same bird.

It's the same creature.

It's the same animal.

It's the radical wing of the same movement.

And if you look at the people that are running ISIS-K, it's the exact same people that were leaders of the Taliban just a year or two ago.

So it's not like these are different people that have changed or morphed their ideas.

Somehow the Taliban is now a political organization.

No, they're just putting a face on to try and receive some support and funds to, you know, to get lists about who are they allowed to go and kill, and then they can blame it on ISIS-K.

But to be super, super clear, ISIS-K and Taliban are the exact same organization.

So to think that the Taliban

stopped an ISIS-K bomber,

it's idiotic, and it's insulting to the lives of

the service members that died that way.

ISIS-K and Taliban sent in a bomber.

They blew up the Abbey Gate, killed a bunch of Marines.

That's what happened.

Was there any reason to leave all of this stuff behind?

The 33 Blackhawks, the.

I mean, I know I live in a cartoon world, but there should be a self-destruct button on some of these things.

Or we should have bombed them.

If we knew we were going to leave them or

that the Afghan army stopped using them and ran away, I don't know why we didn't destroy them.

We destroyed the vast majority of them.

You know, everybody's toting this $85 billion of military equipment that was left behind.

We laid out, we,

the military that was on the ground, not me, our American counterparts, laid out arms on the ground and they rolled them over with dozers.

You know, they

put water and sugar inside of gas tanks.

They, you know, they put C4 on important mechanisms inside of helicopters.

So none of those aircraft that were left in Kabul are going to function.

I thought it was hilarious.

I saw an article this morning how the Taliban was infuriated that most of the aircraft left at Kabul airport were not functional and that those were actually belonged to the Afghan people and that they're that they're furious that those things weren't left in functioning order and I got a kick out of that.

There is a great debate debate that

this is expected at the end of wars.

This is the way you end wars.

I can't think of any other war that America has fought, even Vietnam, that has ended this way.

Is there any as just looking at pure history, is there anything to compare to this?

No,

I mean, I've been

in working special operations for 17 years.

I've never seen anything like this in my life.

And, you know, I've worked for the History Channel.

I am a studier of history because I believe

it predicts what's going to happen in the future.

So I love history in that regard.

And this is unprecedented.

The way that we

withdrew from Afghanistan was unique.

We have not previously done anything like this in our country's history.

And

I think it will be a great learning lesson moving forward about how not not to do things.

But, you know, this is not how wars are won, how they're fought, or how they end.

This was hard.

So

there was a story that came out today that the White House is considering another withdrawal in

Iraq.

And

normally I would, you know,

I don't want to be fighting wars all over the world, but I don't mind leaving forces around to stop bad guys from doing bad things.

But I just don't want to be the world's policeman.

But it scares the hell out of me knowing that the people that are currently in the administration were the ones that dropped a pallet full of cash onto the Iranian tarmac.

We have Afghanistan.

If we leave Iraq, isn't that a clear path from China all the way to the Mediterranean and a really easy caliphate to be produced there?

1945 was a really long time ago.

We're still in Germany and we're still in Japan.

We have a larger presence in both of those countries than we do in Iraq or Afghanistan during our time of global war on terror.

I don't know where

the messaging got crossed, where our troops being in those countries for a prolonged period of time was perceived as a bad thing.

Should we be over there fighting a war?

No.

You know, was I anxious to leave Afghanistan?

Yes.

Are we needed in a large presence in Iraq?

Probably not.

But on like a national strategic level,

having bases, forward operating bases that give us a foothold and are able to prevent our enemies and China and Russia are our enemies right now.

And that we are in a degree of warfare with both of them.

Having Iraq and Afghanistan and having a footprint in both of those is

a priceless value.

Absolutely crucial.

So

I am not in the Pentagon.

I do not dictate strategic policy, but I...

I definitely don't want China or Russia to have a direct shot to the Mediterranean through

Albania, Romania, all the way down into Greece, just because we are going to cave to political talking points of not wanting to be someplace.

Is anybody going to be held responsible for this in the Pentagon?

I mean,

it seems like in today's world, no one ever pays a price.

No one ever pays a price.

And so when you do that, that's like the bailouts from the banks.

Well, they learned, oh, there's no cost to my mistakes.

Is anybody going to pay a price?

Is anybody's feet going to be held to the fire on this?

Well, let's not forget that we're a country of laws, but we're also a country where the people have the power.

There are 13 fathers, and there's 13 mothers, and there's 13 brothers and sisters, and husbands and wives of those Marines that just died.

You want to talk about a compelling, powerful voice, those voices right now demanding answers about why their children died in Afghanistan.

You know, that's the power of the people.

We have the power to talk to our representatives.

Like, we are their constituents.

They are representatives of us.

So you can pick up the phone and you can call them and say, I demand answers of what this is and what this was.

And only through the

proper legal channels do I think that there

consequences for that.

But the pressure has to be put on.

I'm, I'm, we, you know, you, as you know, we save our

allies and that

We don't have time right now to focus on anything else besides saving lives.

I'm not looking to go and save some cat dogs.

We're trying to save people right now and prevent further loss of life.

So here's why I asked that question.

And I think it's why you just said in every legal way,

I'm with you.

I am very afraid.

You know, this country,

the left, has tried to paint everybody who disagrees with them as a radical, extremist, terrorist, even.

And, you know, there are, if there isn't pressure relieved in some way or another,

somebody's going to do something on all sides, it doesn't matter, somebody's going to do something stupid.

And if that happens,

we could transform into a very different country.

And so, I guess what I'm kind of asking you, and

it also goes back in some ways to the first question I asked you.

What can we do?

Because we don't want...

We are split.

We're split as a nation right now, and we have to find that bridge back to each other.

So how do we do it?

Afghanistan's not that bridge.

You know,

women in Afghanistan are not going to be able to have jobs.

Women in Afghanistan are not going to be able to learn.

Little girls are not going to be able to go to school.

I think that is our bridge.

I think that's a great bridge.

Yeah.

Like, if there's somebody on the far left, okay, do you want girls to be able to go to school?

Cool.

We agree on that.

Do you think that our Marines should be dying over there as they're sacrificing their lives trying to get the women that learned how to read and went to school and became entrepreneurs out of that country so they're not murdered by the Taliban?

Fantastic.

Yeah, another thing that we agree on.

Cool.

Now, what should we do moving forward?

Do you think that people should be held accountable and responsible for what happened over there?

Fantastic.

Yeah, again, another thing that we agree on.

Now let's come together and try and find solutions to prevent this from ever happening again and make sure that people that made it happen are held accountable for the bad decisions that they made.

What do you think of the Marine Colonel that

resigned his commission?

because he just was asking for accountability.

Yeah,

wearing the uniform is a great responsibility, and with that responsibility

comes some restrictions and limitations.

You know, as you've asked some questions that I have skirted,

that's

the response.

We have a bigger responsibility, and that's having the flag on our shoulder.

And, you know, we have a chain of command, and

there are clear communication pathways that are vertical in how we

our chain of command.

So if I have a grievance about something, I can be a whistleblower.

I have that authority to be able to say, there's a problem here.

Let me go through the whistleblower process or let me go through my chain of command and try and fix it.

I have a huge social media presence.

You know, like I could say things on there that could flip some of these issues on their ear.

I stay positive.

I

stay purposed to trying to make positive change

and also not get fired.

You know, so

A really gentle line I have to walk all the time.

And, you know, sometimes I misstep slightly and I get corrected.

And I have great people that help me with that.

But, man, it is really hard to wear the uniform, the First Amendment and the uniform.

It's ironic that we swore.

Yeah, I mean, they have to,

but we swore to protect the Constitution to include the First Amendment.

But how our right to express.

So

was his problem that he didn't resign first?

Because he said, I've seen others do it the other way where they did it within the system, and he said it never affects change.

He's right.

It's a really,

the military is a big bureaucratic process.

And like the Titanic, you would have had to turn that helm miles and miles back not to hit that.

Right.

that iceberg.

It's the same in that regard where it feels like changes aren't made, but changes can be made within the system.

I've personally seen great changes happen.

You know, we have struggled with

sexual harassment within the military for a really long time.

And just in my military career, seeing going from don't ask, don't tell to

like, let's not even pretend it exists to okay now everybody's welcome to we're an inclusive military to now directly talking about how to prevent sexual harassment in any way, shape, and form.

These are really great changes that happened just in the time that I have been in the military.

You know, where you see things like the young woman that was killed in Fort Hood that had a long, that had years of sexual assault in her military career.

Like, how do we prevent those things?

Well, we're seeing good things happen within the chain of command and through the legal process.

That doesn't mean that you can't, we're also a people of rebels, right?

Like you're a rebel, I'm a rebel,

and I think we have a great heritage of being rebels.

And if there were a cost,

I joke sometimes with my command that don't put me on a hill that is worth dying on

because I'll die on that hill.

You know, like I will happily flush my career in the toilet if it's the right problem and I can't fix it through the normal channels.

But I still have faith in the system and I work for some really incredible people that I have a lot of faith in.

How can this army and military be such a behemoth and bureaucratic nightmare?

And yet it seems to be the only thing really

that works well?

Is it the people down at the bottom?

Is it, yeah, that they just have

a different attitude?

They believe in something.

Yeah, that's, it's really intuitive and perceptive of you to it.

The belief is the big part, right?

that there was a belief in a young boy or a young girl that walked into a recruiter's office and said I want to do this.

I'm like this all volunteer military every every one of those Marines that died on that wall at the Abbey gate they volunteered to be there and and that that that thing that compels somebody to service is a very powerful thing that's that is first a characteristic in a person.

Now we have millions of those people that we kind of shape and create into, and we morph them into what we need them to be in the military, which is people that can contribute with a servant's heart and to lead and to and to believe that in the greater good and knowing that their sacrifices have

that's a powerful thing.

Can that

because I think that you know, there is something about

the people that serve, they

and not this is not universally true, just like not every cop is bad or every cop is good.

We have bad eggs and

everything.

But

generally speaking, it seems as though they

are

they believe in something honorable

and they believe the mission is honorable.

And, you know, the few, the proud, the Marines, those kinds of things that we were raised in and steeped in

helps select those people that you're not going in for,

you know,

adventure and glory.

You're going there

to do something noble.

And now that may be just an idealistic look at things, but I think that's the way a lot of people in the military feel or have felt when they got into it.

Can that when they got into it?

When they got to it.

When they got into it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That goes away?

No, no.

I mean,

it's always there.

You know, like there, even now, I'm two years away from retirement and and there's like a string in my heart that's

that will always compel me into that service.

Right.

You know, like I don't need the military.

You know, like I'm a successful entrepreneur with seven businesses, but man, you're going to have to fight.

You're going to have to kick me out because I can't leave this amazing organization and all the good that they do all over the world.

Okay, so let me let me pivot here on you are a very successful guy.

You are one of those people that people like me hate.

You make us look bad.

You know, because

I look at him, I'm like, I am such a slug.

I am such a slug.

Seven successful businesses.

Obviously, very successful military career.

You're in MMA, which I want to get into.

What is it?

What is it?

What is this?

I think it's something uniquely American, but what is it in you that is driving you, that drives you like this?

So in the center,

my executive, I actually just got working out with Justin, my CEO of NCEO of a couple of our businesses, and we're talking about has

anything shifted about what our purpose is?

So we have this Venn diagram in our office, and in the center of it is my purpose for being on earth.

It's the reason that God made me.

Which is.

And

to preserve and protect human life and to expand freedom.

Wow.

And

I think you're 100% spot on when you said it's uniquely American.

That is a very American thing to preserve and protect human life and to expand freedom.

And I know

that I love Jesus.

And when he made me, I'm not a special mold.

There are millions of other people that have that exact same mold, that have those exact same ideas.

And at the core of who they are, that is the reason that they're here.

And it's the same for me.

So So everything that I do, whether it's my businesses or fighting or going, hopping as a volunteer for a nonprofit on an airplane into Kabul in the middle of the night, 36 hours after I get the call, it still has to connect to the sole reason in the center of that Venn diagram of why I'm on this planet, the purpose of me being here.

And if it connects, then I do it.

If it doesn't, then I don't.

And then

the next question is, how can I, if that's my mission, how can I expand that mission?

Like, if I'm going on a TV show or if I'm going to get on this podcast with you,

I think you and I both agree that us talking about these things expands that mission.

You have a massive audience.

You have donated an,

I don't know if I'll just go and throw you on the bus here.

Thank you for your generosity, and you have saved countless lives.

The planes that you sent in and the financial support that you sent to save our allies coalition.

I can send you pictures today, Glenn, of babies that were born in the humanitarian center that would not have been alive had you not helped.

Would you please send those to me?

I want to share those with the audience.

Please send those to me.

It's a brand new baby that was born today in our humanitarian center, and his dad was a translator, and he would have been murdered in Afghanistan five days ago had we not got him out.

Wow, amazing.

Know that.

So, that to answer your long way, that's the reason why.

Okay.

So, now,

and I'm sorry, sorry, I grew up in you know the Muhammad Ali era, uh, you know, George Foreman, and and boxing, which my mother used to say, it's such a brutal sport.

I never thought so, I thought it was great now.

MMA,

while it's not the most brutal of sports, how does that

what was it, rescue lives

and expand freedom?

I mean, where is that?

Yeah.

The skills of being like a special forces guy and being a fighter, I argue that you could walk into a lot of special forces ODAs and randomly grab a guy off the A-team and throw him in the octagon and he would fight at a very, very high level.

So, and vice versa.

A lot of fighters have a lot of great characteristics that would make them a value on an SF ODA.

So, that overlap of those kind of connected bubbles made it, I'm fighting Wildman Special Forces, so I'm training.

And then

you might have the greatest product in the world, you might have the greatest idea in the world, but ultimately you still have to get it out to the masses.

And

fighting was a means to the end in that regard, where, you know, it gave me an opportunity to get in front of millions of people and to

to spread the gospel of my ideas, which I don't own, right?

Freedom is not a Tim Kennedy experience.

But it put a mic on my face, you know, that I could talk about these ideas.

And you thought

having people kick you in the face was the

would give me that opportunity.

Unfortunately, I'm a two-time runner-up.

I fought for the world title twice.

All right.

Can I let me just explore this with you just for a second more on two things, and they both happen to revolve around women.

I know so many guys that feel this way, but we're all wusses, we're all couch potatoes,

just can't stand watching women just beating each other up.

Can you help me with that one?

Yeah,

I know it's sexist, I guess.

I guess it's sexist to say.

I see a guy hit a woman, it's bad.

It's less bad when a woman is hitting a woman, but to see them just kick the snot out of each other.

Let me say this.

Do you watch Yellowstone?

I do.

Okay.

Well, I've seen a couple of, I don't watch, I don't have TV.

I was on a flight.

So I, uh, so there's, there's a, there's one of my favorite episodes, and this sounds horrible, is

Beth is the woman, and she's just, I mean, she will kick your ass six ways to Sunday.

Just nobody messes with her.

She's a girl, she's one of the greatest characters, I think, ever on television.

And there's this scene where she is brutally raped.

And I have to tell you, I've never seen, I know, listen, hey, I know this sounds bad, but I've never said I've seen a scene like that.

I've always skipped past it or turned away from it because it's always awful.

But this one, she's fighting back, and she's like, really?

That's the best you have?

And there is something about that that my wife even said, I love her.

I love her.

Yeah,

the women in the octagon,

they're most extraordinary athletes.

They have a true fighter spirit.

And

I've been fortunate to

watch women's MMA go from, you know, kind of this taboo thing to they're the main event.

I think the women fighter are better than a lot.

A lot of the men fighters and the current women champions are, I would say, pound for pound in the running.

If you take gender out of it entirely, some of the women champions are just extraordinary athletes.

And I don't know the difference between a woman marathoner to a man marathoner to a woman fighter to a man fighter.

You know, like it's all the same to me.

It's, you know, like, if my daughter is going to be a president, or if she wants to go fly a plane, or if she wants to go be a professional fighter, ultimately, it's her choice.

Yeah, whatever she wants.

Okay, so there is one thing that I have told both my son and my daughter.

You're not going to get your driver's license.

You're done.

I'm not even going to hear it unless you know how to defend yourself.

And so, my son is getting his black belt.

And my daughter hasn't really started, and she's 15.

And I say, you have to, you have to know how to defend yourself.

What is the,

she's, she's like, dad, I don't want to do all the.

What is the best thing that I could have her learn?

Send her to me.

Oh, I will.

Don't think I won't.

All right.

One of my companies is Sheep Dog Response, and we're a defensive tactics self-defense company.

And in a three-day course, obviously, you don't learn how to defend and protect yourself in three days.

But what you learn is you get on a path of all the, you learn what you need to learn.

You learn the basics of fighting.

You learn the basics of shooting.

You learn the basics of situational awareness.

Like your daughter and I probably have a lot of different characteristics, right?

I'm a 220-pound, hair-headed, scarred-up ogre, and she's young, pretty, and small.

I don't walk out of a Walmart and worry if somebody's going to rape me.

Like, I step out and I'm like, man, I wish somebody would try.

So we have to have different tools, and those tools, our minds have to work differently.

Those are practice rehearse tools that take a lot of time to develop.

Situational awareness, where do I park?

Like, how do I have my keys?

Am I using light?

Am I notifying my dad when I get out of the car?

You know, does he let me know?

Does he know that I'm walking out to the parking lot right now?

There's a lot of different things that we can do in the 21st century that take safety to a new level, but

have to do them.

Like they are practice rehearsed things that are a skill and they're a perishable skill.

So I believe in the basics of fighting.

I believe in the basics of shooting and I believe believe in the basics of situational awareness for both men and women.

And

we have courses that built around that.

But seriously, send her to me for a weekend and we'll send her.

Oh, I will.

I will.

I'll tell you,

I've had protection now for, gosh, 15 years.

And my detail has gone from six people to two people at different times.

And there is, you know, it's called perishable skill.

I didn't realize how perishable

any kind of situational awareness really is.

When you are constantly

shepherd, you know, somebody is a shepherd and they're moving you and they're looking for things.

You're just allowed to think, have the conversations that you want.

You're not thinking about anything.

The first time that I said, guys, I don't need you this weekend.

We're fine.

See you.

I went to the mall and I almost had like a panic attack because it all,

I was doing what everybody does every day, but it was gone.

And I don't think people understand

how perishable that is and how built in that is with all of us.

Yeah.

I explained, like, your brain's a supercomputer and you have a certain amount of bandwidth.

And

the more efficient, more effective you are at that,

the more able you are to process information and the more you're able to see.

The first time a bomb ever went off on a door and I went into a shoot house to execute a hostage rescue exercise, I remember it felt as looking through a straw.

Like I was literally like trying to see what was happening in this house looking through a straw.

And then by the 200,000th time that I did it, I could see everything.

I could see the guys, the instructors on the catwalks.

I could hear the guy breathing next to me.

I could hear his finger move the selector from safe to fire.

I could hear and see everything.

It's the same with situational awareness, right?

The first time that, like, I went into a foreign country in a non-permissive environment, and I was just like so focused on, oh my God,

that guy is a turban.

Like,

or is that a Muslim?

Like, I don't even know.

Like, I couldn't even process what was happening around me.

But then, by like the 15th time, you know,

I could see everything.

I could smell, oh, man, there's a great restaurant next door to here.

Like, maybe we're just taking breakfast.

But you're 100% right, man.

That is, it is a practiced, rehearsed, perishable thing that you have to do diligently and often for it to stay acute and sharp.

Do you know Jocko?

I do.

Can I tell you something?

I probably shouldn't say this on a podcast, but I feel like we're just having a conversation.

He was on a podcast of mine.

That guy is humorless.

Like no sense of humor at all.

I tried to, I tried, you know, joke with him and say, and like.

Like I thought he was going to kill me.

I thought he was going to kill me.

He's a

facade.

It's a facade.

Is it?

Because he's serious.

Well, in three hours here, he never broke it.

I mean, he never broke it.

I have one of the guys on my team is

a former Royal Navy commander, or not Navy, Royal Marine Commander from Scotland.

And that guy is just...

Yeah, he's a good guy.

He's a good guy.

And

I said to him, I'm always teasing.

I always do this to people.

I'll always come up to them and say, like, if you were here, I'd say, I got to tell you, Tim, I don't think this.

But Craig over there said he just could kick your ass.

I always do that.

That's hilarious.

Jocko, I said that, and he went, I don't think he could.

So let me ask you.

A fight between you and Jocko, who's going to win?

I would mop the mat, whole entire mat with his bald head.

He better say the same thing about you mopping him.

He better say that he could mop the mat with my face.

Oh, I can guarantee you he would.

I can guarantee it.

Let me go to

the

sheepdog mentality.

I love this mentality, and

I think, again this is uniquely American.

Explain what the mentality is and then if you would go back to uniquely American.

Why is this

here

and without being a slam on other nations, why do you say it's not elsewhere?

So Colonel Grossman coined the term sheepdog in the metaphor that we use.

I'll just give you this brief analogy so everybody's on the same talking points.

You have the sheep, which are just regular people living their lives.

They're eating grass.

They're making little sheep, right?

They're just kind of living.

And there's nothing wrong with being a sheep.

The vast majority of people are sheep and God bless them because sheep are amazing.

I like wool.

Sheep taste delicious also.

Sheep, just that's everybody.

Then you have the wolf, and that's a natural predator that looks for the weakest of the herd

to feed itself for the sole purpose of

its own self-worth.

Sometimes it kills just for fun.

Sometimes it kills for just its own nourishment.

But the wolf is exclusively a predatory thing that only worries about itself.

And then there's the sheepdog.

The sheepdog genetically

is a descendant of the wolf.

It has a ton of similarities, right?

It has canines.

It eats meat.

It knows how to move like a predator.

It knows how to stalk.

It knows how to fight, it knows that it's gonna attack the neck instinctively, it knows all of these things.

The only thing that makes it different than the wolf is that it likes the sheep, it values the sheep, and it there's something in it that makes it want to protect the sheep.

And they'll they'll even at their own

at the expense of their own life, they'll do anything to protect the sheep.

So, that's that's this idea.

And I know that there's a lot of people that have that thing in them, they don't know why,

they can't let

you know.

I don't, I think I was 16 years old and I was walking down San Luis Obispo and a guy hit a girl in front of me.

I'm just smashed her in the face, waiting for an elevator to go up into a parking garage, downtown San Luis Obispo.

I didn't wait.

I was just in stride.

I was just walking and I cracked this dude in the face, put him on the ground, got up on top of him, and I hit him probably 10 or 15 times until the elevator door opened.

Then I stood up, got in, took my bloody hand, pressed number three, got in my car and drove home.

And my dad was super pissed at me because I came home with bloody bloody hands.

Did you just say I came home bloody again?

Yeah.

Okay, all right.

Again, another difference between you and me.

I don't,

I don't think you could stand there and

you might have done something, right?

You'd be like, excuse me, sir.

Like, that's not like picking up a phone.

Correct.

You're doing something because you can't let

bad like that happen.

There was no reason for us in 1942 to be sitting here and be like,

all right I'm just gonna be okay with them gassing and burning all those Jews it's fine I don't need to worry there's not there's not a single American that would stand there and say that that type of genocide is allowed and okay right the Holocaust is starting like get on the boats boy get on the boats boats boys we're going overseas and we're fighting fascism you know like fast forward to

a variety of wars where the impetus was we have to go over there because the wrong that is happening cannot be allowed it cannot exist on this planet if we're the same species there's no way that i'm gonna let that happen okay so and that is something go ahead deep inside of us okay so deep american so tell me because

i don't know if that's waning uh or if it's exactly the same we have china we're buying iPhones that were made by slaves.

I had a Chinese,

a Chinese dissident.

She escaped.

She was over at a friend of my a friend of mine's house.

He was a pastor.

It was around Christmas, and she had escaped a few months before.

He had gotten her out of China, and they were taking all the stuff out of a box for Christmas, and she was handed the big ball of Christmas lights.

I don't know why they gave her the worst job, but he's like, just untangle these.

He looks over in about 10 minutes, and she is crying.

She's weeping over these lights.

And she said,

These are the lights that I made.

These were, I was making these when I was a slave because I believed in Christ.

We're buying our stuff from the, we know that the concentration camps are over there, and yet there's something in us that's outraged and yet

you say we a lot.

I'm going to push back a little bit.

I've never seen a movement of buy American made

as strong as right now.

So of the seven that I own, I'm trying to shift all manufacturing to the United States.

Jocko Willink himself, you know, because we're going to bring him up again.

You know, they said that never again would soft goods be manufactured in the United States.

Well, let me introduce you to Jocko Wellink in origin, right?

Where he's like, no, I have a huge factory.

I'm going to make geese.

I'm going to make jeans.

I'm going to make shirts.

I'm going to make like jackets.

There's something happening there where Americans, I hope, are realizing that that phone in their hand or they want to spend $5

less on Amazon and buy China made.

Cool.

You are running those slate camps.

You are also contributing to what will be a war in our future with a foreign nation that does not share our same values.

Or you can go ahead and start right now buying American made, making in America.

Figure out a way to do everything in America.

So, DIME, D-I-M-E, diplomatic, information, military, and economic.

They're the four ways that we can wage war, and we are currently at war and three of them with China and Russia.

We are not overtly at military war with them.

We're at war via proxy.

But diplomatically, absolutely.

Information, absolutely.

Military?

Kind of, maybe a little bit.

I saw some Russians in Afghanistan trying to get people out.

And then, of course, economically, man, we are at war with them.

So

you guys better figure it out and start buying American Maid, or it's going to get way worse really fast.

I will tell you,

but 15 years ago, I started making jeans when

Levi's said, you know, they want to be the official uniform of the revolution.

And I was like, hmm, I love

Levi's, but

I'm not for that.

And started making them at the Cone Denim factory.

They were really expensive at the time, but things have changed and people have changed.

And I think COVID had something to do with it.

When we realized, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait.

We don't make our own medicine here.

We don't make anything.

We are in a really precarious situation if the, if, I mean, I said to my wife yesterday, we ordered, we've been remodeling our house for a year.

And they keep telling me it'll be done in two weeks.

It was supposed to be done in four months.

But anyway,

we just got news that the stove we ordered is now possibly

another

year out.

That'll make two, okay?

And I said, I think I know what it's like to live in a country that's not America, that doesn't get service.

You know, you got to wait and wait and wait.

They don't have it on a shelf.

I've had so many of those experiences because nothing is made here.

And it kind of wakes you up going, we're really screwed.

We're screwed if we don't change this.

Yeah, I think we are, though.

I see a new wave of entrepreneurs that their focus is American-made, American-manufactured, American-sourced, American materials.

We're launching a suppressor company.

And not only are we looking at being American-made, American-owned, American-assembled, but all materials to be made from Texas.

So, like, yeah.

I need a few of those.

I want a few of those.

Yeah, and it's, it's, it's, I think it's

things, I don't know, maybe it's just the groups that I'm traveling with, but um, there's definitely energy around America made.

You know, when you're reading online that if you are vitamin D deficient,

that you have a higher risk of having something bad happen to you from COVID,

and then you can't get any water-soluble vitamins because they're all from China.

And you're like, oh, shoot, what do I do?

That kind of wakes you up.

I can't get toilet paper.

What happened to?

I mean, I know you're friends with Joe Rogan, and I think he's just getting,

I think this is insane, what's happening with COVID, where he's like, hey, I took all these different things.

We should all go good.

I had COVID.

I had a bad case of it, but I think it would have been much worse if I hadn't have been taking hydroxychloroquine and there were a few other things,

I can't remember what they were.

It's been about a year, but I took drugs that

have been prescribed for other things for a long time, and it really helped.

why is all of a sudden that so wrong to do and you get hammered like joe is getting hammered now

i it is a really really dangerous precedence when we are making medicine politicized yeah um

i i hope every doctor right now is

freaking out over um

I mean, the writing's on the wall that this is a slippery slope of setting a precedent of being able to limit people's freedoms off of medical necessity and then telling doctors what they're allowed to do and what they're allowed to do is being governed by not medicine and not science, but by

political agenda.

That's not okay.

If it's good for you and your doctor's for it, go for it.

What's your take on fat phobia?

Speaking of health?

The vast majority of everybody that died of COVID died from COVID and they were obese.

Almost every single, the two leading causes of death in the United States are weight related, obesity specifically.

So

the cost of my health care as a young, healthy person with young, healthy children and a young, healthy wife, I am paying an exorbitant amount for my health care because of fat, unhealthy people.

I

Fat shaming, I don't even know what that means.

Like this new trend of accepting anybody for their shape, it's not okay.

It's not healthy to be fat.

It's dangerous to be fat.

And you're doing,

if

I spend a lot of my time,

nobody looks like Americans.

The moment I get on that plane and I fly, I land in Atlanta or I land in Miami or whatever those international hubs are, and I get off the plane and I look around.

I'm like, oh,

I'm back in America.

I hope that person's diabetes doesn't get on me because I don't want it, you know?

Yeah.

What'd you say?

I'm just.

I said, no, it's not contagious.

It was a joke.

I was just reeling from

you.

I think you were talking directly to me about being fat, and I was a little offended by it.

I didn't mean to fashion.

You were what'd you say?

You look great.

You are a liar.

Let's just end it here on

Texas.

You born here?

I got here as soon as I could.

I was born in Central California.

Central California.

Wow.

Well, first, let me explain what Central California.

Hey, hang on.

I love this.

I talk to Californians all the time and they're like, I'm from California.

But wait, let me tell you.

They immediately qualify it.

It's a 45-minute near stoplight, and all I did growing up was fixing bobbed wire and fighting with Mexicans the best way to plant a few.

Yeah, you know,

my family are militant conservatives because they're surrounded.

You know, San Francisco is three hours north, LA or south, Sacramento is four hours northeast.

And every single one of these blue-collar agricultural towns, you know, past Roebles and Atascadero, you know, into Salinas and Bakersfield and Fresno.

They're very, very

conservative, but they're militant conservatives because they're surrounded by these people that are governing them.

And so I enlisted on 9-11 and I never went back to California after I left the military.

I can never go back.

So I came to Texas and Texas.

All my kids are Texans.

And I'm a Texas, I'm a Texan, Glenn.

No, you're not.

My son, we adopted him here from the Dallas area.

We were living in New York.

He was probably maybe four, and we were talking about moving to Texas.

Four.

We had never talked about Texan attitude or anything else.

And he's sitting at the dinner table and he said, you know,

I will be the only natural born Texan in this family.

And we're like, oh my gosh, it's in the blood.

There is.

There is something about Texans.

Yeah, it's great.

It's great.

It is a, it's a,

it's a pleasure to talk to you.

Um, and thank you for all of the good work that you do and the just the good vibes that you put out

and staying positive.

It's hard to be positive right now for a lot of people.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a choice.

Choose to be positive.

Amen, brother.

Thank you.

And I am sending my daughter to you.

All right.

I'll take her.

She'll be better when I'm back.

You got it.

Thank you.

God bless.

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