Best of The Program | Guests: Sen. Ted Cruz, Rishi Sharma, & Adam Sandoval | 5/28/21

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Welcome to the podcast.

It's the last day before Memorial Day weekend.

We have a great slew of guests here for you.

Ted Cruz, right in the first hour.

He's got a new bill he's introducing that I think you're going to be interested in.

Bill O'Reilly joins us for his weekly hit.

All the stuff that's going on in the news, including the fact that his book is going to be the number one New York Times bestseller.

Congratulations to Bill for that.

We have Rishi Sharma, who is legitimately one of my favorite guests we've ever had on the show.

It's like the third or fourth time we've had him on, but guy who decided he wanted to document World War II veterans and their stories and just goes around the country archiving them.

Real veterans, their real stories on video.

And he's like 22, and he's been doing this for five years.

He's an incredible guy, and he's doing incredible things for our veterans, as is Adam Sandoval.

He was on as well.

His story about basically giving up his life to go help veterans across the country.

I mean,

it's going to make you feel incredibly inferior, but I think that's okay on a day like this.

It's kind of what Memorial Day is about.

You're going to feel very inferior to the people who protect us and lay down their lives for us.

If you have a chance, you can join us on the Blaze, Blazetv.com/slash Glenn.

Promo code is Glenn.

You can save $10 off your subscription to Blaze TV.

We'll be doing a brand new Stew Does America as well today to get you through the weekend.

You can subscribe to that podcast and the one you're listening to now on your podcast app.

Just type in Stew DoesAmerica.

And I will tell you: if you're doing lots of nice things for veterans, you just want to have a moment of just in your face, feel good,

just, I don't know, just gloating.

You can get the brand new t-shirt.

It's called Don't Be an Idiot, Don't Be a LeBron.

Our LeBron James-themed t-shirt.

It's available at don'tbe a LeBron.com.

You're listening to the best of the blend back program.

Senator Ted Cruz is

with us now.

And

Ted, welcome to the program.

I liked what you announced last night.

Glenn, good to be with you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

The No Vaccines Passport Act.

I think this is one of the more important things.

Can you explain why it's important?

Well, sure.

So

this week I've introduced legislation in the Senate to prohibit vaccine passports.

My view on vaccines, I believe in vaccines.

I've gotten the COVID vaccine myself.

Heidi's gotten it.

My parents have gotten it.

I'm grateful that we have the innovation that led to the vaccines that has enabled for so many of us, us, to return to to normal life and the freedoms that we cherish.

That being said, I think the decision whether or not to get the vaccine is a personal decision.

It ought to be up to you.

You ought to make it for your life, for your health situation.

And the federal government shouldn't mandate it.

There shouldn't be a federally mandated passport.

And we should protect your civil rights, your individual liberty.

So, what my legislation does, it prevents the federal government from requiring a vaccine passport, and it also prohibits discrimination based on whether or not you choose to get the vaccine.

We're seeing employers across the country who are firing their employees if they don't get vaccinated.

I think that's not right.

You ought to have the same civil rights protections you have for other things in the workplace, and it ought to be your individual choice based on your individual liberty.

I have to tell you, Ted, this has become all about politics, 100% about politics.

People have lost their reason entirely i haven't gotten a vaccine because i had it in december and i had a bad bout with it the re the research all shows if you want to follow the science if you've had it you have the antibodies and all of this crap that they were saying for the last year about yeah but it may not last very long They say that if you've had a good case of COVID, that you are, you have the antibodies and they could last up to years.

And I go places and I'm not wearing wearing a mask and I'll say, I had it.

Oh my gosh,

it's like all of a sudden your gerbils or something.

There's so much politics about this that it's bizarre.

I mean, my view,

I've never understood the extremes on either ends of this.

There are some folks who never wear a mask and say wearing a mask is terrible.

I don't get that.

Look, it was a contagious disease.

It's dangerous.

In vulnerable populations, it could be deadly.

You I wore a mask.

I still wear a mask on an airplane.

And I think taking reasonable steps to limit the spread of an infectious disease, I think that makes sense.

But on the other side, the folks that are just virtue signaling that a mask shows how righteous they are, I think is bizarre.

You know, when you're driving down the road and you see someone in a car alone wearing a mask or a double mask, I just laugh out loud.

It's like, you know,

what the heck is wrong with you?

I know.

It's really bizarre.

So the vaccine.

Well,

Glenn, I got in trouble with my team because I did tweet out.

I said, wearing a mask in a car alone

is like wearing a condom in bed alone.

Very true.

Very true.

What exactly is the point here?

So, Ted, the problem with the vaccine,

or not the vaccine, but the problem with the vaccine passport.

The government is going to say, we're not going to do any vaccine passports.

You know, if the private industry wants to do that, but they are making an end run around our Constitution on almost everything

with the coddling of these giant corporations.

I've never been a guy who's been against

corporations.

I'm a free market guy.

But when the free market becomes an arm of the government and they are the ones spying on people because the government can't, but we'll share that information with the government.

That's just an end run.

Is there anything that's going to stop these corporations from doing this?

Well, part of the legislation I've introduced prohibits discrimination based on vaccine status.

And so what it does is it adds it to the existing civil rights laws.

And so the Americans with Disability Act, for example, requires that you make a reasonable accommodation for an employee that has a disability.

Now, reasonable accommodation doesn't mean

that

you always

allow, you know, look, someone who's blind, you wouldn't hire to be an airplane pilot.

I mean,

there are some instances where there are disqualifying medical conditions.

I would beg to differ with you, and I am not making this up.

This is absolutely true.

When I worked at CNN, they had a deaf sound engineer.

So please don't give me your non-woke descriptions of what people can and cannot do.

That's crazy, but that's what they did.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Was the guy any good?

Could he do his job?

Well, I only know that he was deaf because I had to ask about some

issues.

And they were like, yeah, don't ask.

He's deaf.

And I'm like,

excuse me?

Anyway, anyway.

So, So, but the point is, we have an existing legal structure that protects your civil rights and with respect to disabilities requires reasonable accommodations.

And what my legislation does is it puts your choice of whether or not to get a vaccine with the same protection

so that the blaze doesn't fire you, Glenn, because you chose not to get a vaccine.

Now, given that you control the company, I think you're pretty safe there.

But, you know,

well, I mean, I could be schizophrenic at some point.

Let me, is there any chance of this passing

in the House and the Senate?

I don't know.

So I just introduced it.

The question obviously is going to be, will Democrats be willing to support it?

The Biden administration has at least said publicly

that they do not support a federally mandated vaccine passport.

Now, I think you and I have reason to be skeptical of that claim.

And so it will be interesting to see.

So I have not yet, and I will in the coming weeks be reaching out to Democrats and seeing if any Democrats are willing to come together and support it.

If no Democrat supports it, then no, it won't pass in a Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi Congress.

If Democrats are willing to support it, and they should,

then it has a chance of passage.

We'll have to see what they're willing to do.

All right, Ted, a couple of other questions just to sweep up on some things.

The January 6th committee, I have no problem with a committee looking into what happened on January 6th, which I think was disgusting, and what happened all around the country on the other side all through the summer.

But that's

they're only doing January 6th.

And

you just said, and I

had a hard time not speaking out about it when you just said, you know, we have a system that protects people's rights.

Well,

as you are well aware, the Justice Department is going through every cell phone record if you were even in Washington that day.

There's no warrants, nothing.

They are just going through everyone.

If you were GPS tagged for Washington, D.C., they're going through everything.

What the hell happened to civil rights?

Well, look, I think civil rights are always in peril, particularly when you have

too big government and over-vigorous criminal prosecution.

My view, let's start with first principles.

Violence is wrong.

Violence is always wrong.

If you carry out an act of violence against someone else, if you assault someone else, if you injure someone else, if you attack a police officer, you should be prosecuted.

You should go to jail.

100%.

And that's true regardless of your politics, whether you're right.

You're left-wing or you have no wings at all.

I think the guys who broke into the Capitol, I think the people who broke into the Capitol put their feet on Nancy Pelosi's desk or whatever.

I think they should all go to jail.

That was wrong.

No questions asked.

I don't care who you were for or who you were against.

It's wrong.

Go to jail.

Look, that's exactly right.

And there were a lot of police officers who were assaulted, who were injured, some injured badly that day.

And I think if you hurt somebody else, if you hurt a cop, you ought to do serious jail time.

And so I support prosecuting anyone who committed a crime of violence.

Now there were thousands of people in Washington that were peacefully protesting, that didn't break into the Capitol, that didn't hurt anybody.

And I don't think they should be persecuted for standing in the national mall and singing God bless America.

There's a difference between peaceful protests and committing acts of violence.

As you noted as well, January 6th is not the only day on which acts of violence occurred in America.

We just came through a year where, for almost an entire year, we saw riots across the country.

We saw peaceful protesters, yes, and they have a First Amendment right to do so, but we also saw violent criminals that were firebombing police cars, that were looting stores, that were assaulting and, in some instances, murdering police officers.

Every one of those violent criminals should be prosecuted and go to jail immediately.

Amen.

So, is the January 6th Commission going to pass in the Senate?

I don't think it will.

We're likely going to vote on it later today.

It will take 60 votes.

So the question is, are 10 Republicans going to vote for it?

I think the answer is probably not.

And part of the reason is we already have multiple investigations going on.

We have multiple

subcommittees investigating.

We have the Department of Justice.

We have the FBI.

And what Schumer and Pelosi want

is they want a partisan kangaroo court to spend two years laying out the theory that Donald Trump is bad and Republicans are bad and it's all about the next election.

And so that's why I'm not going to support it.

I think most Republicans in the Senate are not going to support it.

Okay,

one last thing, two-part question, but we only have about 70 seconds for an answer.

The $6 trillion, is it six or eight, six trillion dollar budget proposal that came from Biden, and the, you know, we'll give you half a trillion dollars for infrastructure.

What's happening there?

Are the Republicans going to hold the line here?

I don't know.

I am worried about it.

You know, Biden has laid out

it's actually about $7 trillion in new spending.

I've been joking.

Please, dear God, nobody tell the Democrats what comes after a trillion.

Trillion.

It is

the amount of spending they are rolling out is staggering.

It is a budget in excess of what we spent in World War II.

We're already seeing inflation taking off across the country, and I think we are on the verge potentially of a serious inflation crisis.

I think we need to stop bankrupting the country, and that's what I'm fighting to do.

At least so far, Republicans have not been willing to go along with this.

It is always dangerous, though.

I mean, look, look, there has been historically a coalition of all the Democrats and a bunch of the Republicans who were willing to spend and spend and spend and spend.

Right.

Republicans.

Republican colleagues.

Yeah.

Yeah, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

They're usually not as bad as Democrats.

Years ago, a friend of mine suggested a bumper sticker.

Republicans, we waste less.

That is a way.

I hope we hold the line.

Yeah, that's the quickest way to lose

people coming out and voting for the Republicans to stop this this madness.

This is madness that's going on.

Clear and utter madness.

Ted, thank you for the good fight.

Thank you for

the new bill on the passports.

And we're here to inform people that it should be supported.

No vaccine passports.

Ted Bruce, thank you very much.

The best of the Glen Bank program.

I want to introduce you to somebody that I just think is one of the greatest guys I've ever met.

And that's hard to say because I've met so many really incredible people.

Rishi Sharma, he is a guy that's been on my program a few times.

And he started out

just

wanting to talk to World War II veterans.

I'm going to let him tell the story quickly.

Risha, how are you?

Rishi.

Great.

How are you?

Yes, sir.

Can you hear me?

I can.

I'm so glad to

have you on the program again.

Can you just quickly

recap how you started doing this, how old you were,

and what you're doing?

Absolutely.

I really appreciate this opportunity to talk about the World War II heroes.

But my name is Rishi Sharma, and I started interviewing World War II veterans when I was in high school.

I've always been interested in the war, and one day I decided to ride my bike basically to the local retirement home.

And I wanted to meet the men firsthand who I'd been reading about and seeing TV shows about.

And it was an amazing experience, just how open they were, and the fact that I got to actually look in the eyes of someone who went through hell so that someone like me could be alive.

And after meeting a number of these veterans at the retirement home,

I really felt a burden that I owed these men not just my life, but to preserve what they fought for so that future generations won't go to war and that we'll always remember what the World War II veterans have given us.

And so when I graduated,

I was very blessed to get a bunch of news coverage.

And I had a fundraiser and I raised funding

to go out and interview as many World War II combat veterans as possible myself.

And

now it's four years later, 48 states, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and just over 1,100 interviews now on camera.

Who has contacted you, Rishi, for I mean, has the Smithsonian or National Archives, anyone contacted you about preserving these yet?

Absolutely not.

You wouldn't believe the number of organizations I've reached out to who just, I guess they aren't interested, maybe because it doesn't fit their narrative.

Okay, okay, okay.

May I, as a representative of Mercury One, put you in touch?

We would love to preserve the record of

these stories.

I think you do one of the most important things.

History will remember your name.

It might not be in your lifetime, but they will remember you because of what you're doing.

This is vitally important.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

I mean, I'm not all for that.

As long as people remember what the World War II veterans went through.

I mean, when I was in high school,

you know, as a member of the younger generation, I'm 22 now.

I can honestly tell you.

that they don't teach World War II in school anymore.

And what they do cover is how bad, quote, the bad the U.S.

was for dropping the atomic bombs.

I mean, people are being brainwashed nowadays.

The younger generation are being brainwashed to hate our country, to hate our veterans, to hate our way of life.

And it's not right.

And I don't want to see that happen any further.

That's why recording these stories of what these veterans actually went through, what they witnessed, the atrocities they came across.

I mean, whoever has that footage is going to be able to control the narrative.

I I know.

I know.

I know.

I tell you, Rishi, you know, I just looked at the brand new AP standards for history.

These are AP classes.

This is not your regular class.

This is the, I'm really smart.

I want to take an AP history class so it counts towards college.

World War II, there is no mention of Hitler, the Holocaust, the Germans, the English.

It picks up the story.

There's more to it than that.

I can't remember all of it.

It picks up at the bombing, not of Pearl Harbor, but of Hiroshima.

That's it.

And the AP requirement is that you understand that the United States bombed Japan with a nuclear weapon, and quote, that made the world question

the

motives of the United States of America.

Holy cow.

It's absolutely, I mean, it's revisionist history, and it's a lies because what people fail to realize is that we gave Japan many opportunities to surrender.

We had them completely surrounded by naval blockades.

They had no food coming in or out.

They refused.

We dropped over 5 million pamphlets.

We, meaning the United States and our allies, dropped 5 million pamphlets over the target cities telling the civilians to evacuate.

And after the first bomb, they didn't surrender.

I mean, it took two atomic bombs to even make them consider surrendering.

And there's a well-known story that when the Emperor Hirohito actually came on the radio across Tokyo, the citizens didn't believe him.

You know, they thought it was some kind of allied propaganda.

Because they had trained their citizens to believe that that's what was going to happen.

The propaganda in Japan about the United States,

they believed we would eat them practically.

I mean, they thought we were monsters because of the propaganda.

Absolutely.

I mean, there was a well-known incident on the island of Saipan where the Japanese had a garrison.

There was a civilian population there as well.

And when the Americans landed, the Japanese forced the civilians to a cliff, women and babies, and had told them stories that that the Marines and the Army infantry would, you know, hurt them and do cruel things.

And these babies were thrown off the cliffs, and the women jumped after them.

And the Japanese, you know, officially soldiers went themselves.

But we had translators up on the cliffs trying to tell these civilians to come and that they would be safe.

And I mean, it's so dangerous,

this type of rhetoric that the United States and the Allies were in the wrong.

I run this YouTube channel called Legends of World War II, and some of that content of the veterans talking about their experiences, it's been censored by YouTube.

But what's also shocking is how many uninformed people there are.

I get comments all the time

of people thinking that Pearl Harbor was in retribution for us bombing Japan.

They don't realize it was the other way around.

Oh my gosh.

So we are with Rishi Sharma, who I met, I don't know, about three years ago, and he is one of my favorite people I have ever interviewed.

I think he was probably about 20 when we first met.

And I just think he is, I mean, you're a hero of mine, Rishi, and I mean that sincerely.

So tell me, you say, oh, no, like, because I don't even know if you like me or, you know, anything else.

You might be like, oh, no, Glenn Beck just said he's a hero of his.

Oh, no.

I'm going to go kill myself now.

Sorry.

No, no.

No, no,

you know, I feel very strongly that the word hero is really only reserved for those, you know, who put their lives on the line.

I mean, the fact is, if I had all the money in the world, I would still be doing what I'm doing.

I'm so blessed that I get to hang out and talk to the men who save the world.

Good for you.

All right.

You mentioned a minute ago that your videos are being banned or demonetized on YouTube.

Why is that?

You know, I wish I knew the answer, sir.

Oh, my God.

Basically,

you know, I raised all that funding and I've been doing these oral histories of the World War II veterans.

I give the then copies of the interviews, but I would also put it on YouTube.

Back in December of 2020, the channel, I wasn't trying to be a YouTuber or anything.

It was just a storage place for the videos.

But back in 2020, December,

some of the little vignettes I was making, you know, 10-minute clips taken out of some of the interviews, some of them started going viral.

I mean, getting millions of views, and I guess

the way it works is the YouTube algorithm picks it up and it'll show it on many people's home page.

And so that was happening to some of the videos, causing a huge surge in traffic to the channel.

And so I go from about 2,000 subscribers to about 25,000 in just maybe a week.

And it's about 2,000 every day,

and then it stops, and it craters down to maybe 100.

And the analytics just don't make sense.

You know, because

yes, they do from the YouTube side.

If you know exactly what YouTube is doing, it makes perfect sense.

They throttled you.

Absolutely.

I've looked it up.

I've reached out to other people who deal with World War II.

on YouTube.

They face the same exact thing because I guess the algorithm and the people behind it, YouTube, they believe anything to do with World War II is promoting Nazis and Hitler, and they don't take the time to decipher.

And

it's ridiculous because, you know, there's no politics in these videos.

It's facts.

It's the veterans saying what they went through and what they saw.

And, you know, without the monetization, I can't keep affording to stay on the road.

And I just find it incredible that they find themselves to be the superior power that can censor whose voices can be heard and whose cannot.

I mean, these makeup tutorials, they get a billion views, but the men who fought for our freedom, who went through hell, I mean, why can't we give them the same attention?

Tell me

the most interesting and

best

out of all of that you've done, hard to choose, I know.

What was the thing that really opened your eyes or moved you or had you look at things differently

you mean you mean veteran interview in an interview yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you know that's difficult there's so many interesting veterans but i would like to tell you about a man named chuck pataglia

um

i found out through him through a directory of uh wounded veterans.

I was, you know, I literally would spend my days going through name by name calling these veterans who all belonged to the same organization.

And I came across his name and I reached out to him and he agreed to do the interview.

And he didn't mention anything on the phone, anything unusual.

I come to his house.

This man is a double amputee.

Both of his legs were blown off by a mortar.

during the fighting for the Hurtgen Forest in October of 1944.

He was the friendliest man, I swear to God.

He would take the shirt off his back to help you.

And I just, it was incredible to sit there and talk to him and hear his story.

Basically, he was 18

when Pearl Harbor gets attacked, 19 when he decides to join.

After training, He gets shipped overseas and he joins as a replacement for the 1st Infantry Division.

And

he was only in combat for about two weeks.

And he is sitting behind a hedge one night.

And he told me he could hear Germans on the other side, but he was out on guard.

And all of a sudden, next thing he knows, he hears the loudest explosion of his life.

And when he comes to, he can't move.

And he doesn't feel his legs.

So a couple of his buddies come and they carry him to the first aid station.

It doesn't look like he's going to make it.

He had a strong faith and obviously he did.

He comes back home.

This is someone, you know, who had his whole life ahead of him, you know, 19 years old, to be dealt such a severe blow.

But his family told me something I sincerely believe.

that he never complained a single day in his life about his situation.

All he wanted to do was get a job and raise a family and be a contributing member to society.

He wanted to give back, even though he had already given his legs.

And the real interesting thing is

he ended up working for the VA

as a prosthetic technician making prosthetics for other veterans.

Here's where I want you to go.

I want you to go to the Facebook page, Heroes of the Second War, or Heroesofthesecond World War.org, Heroes of the Second World War.org.

You can help them out with gofundme.com, Legends of World War, WW2,

if you will, WWII, GoFundMe page, Legends of WWII.

It's Rishi Sharma.

Rishi, keep up the good work.

Thank you for joining us.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

You know,

when I hear people talk about America, I think about people like Rishi, a 19-year-old kid who started this because he was fascinated and now he knows the truth and he is fighting hard that we don't lose, so we don't lose all of these voices and experiences.

When I think of America, I think of a country that makes an awful lot of mistakes, but then does its best to right itself and learn from that mistake.

I want to introduce you to Adam Sandoval.

His story began because he was disappointed in himself.

He said, I never served in the military.

I didn't do so for no good reason, just poor choices, temptations, distractions.

I had my focus in all the wrong places at a young age.

And as I got older, it really started to set in, the sacrifices, and even more so, realizing the sacrifices that other people have made for our country.

I wanted to find a way to give back and do what I could.

So he came up with something that he is now very passionate about, and I want him to explain it.

Adam, welcome to the program.

Oh, happy to be on.

Thank you so much for having me.

I wish we were together in person.

I know you're up in Oklahoma.

You are a guy

who is dedicating his life now to raising awareness of our veterans, and you have some things going on soon that you're going to talk about.

But tell me what you started and what you're doing.

Sure.

You know, it all started with a campaign.

I called it Scooting America.

And I just rode my Harley-Davidson to every Harley-Davidson dealership across the country and raised awareness and support for veterans.

It was an 88,000-mile road trip that took me coast to coast.

Yeah, like 16 times coast to coast.

88,000 miles.

Oh, my gosh.

Okay.

Yeah.

It was a long adventure.

It took me about 21 months.

Got hit by a car, had to come back from that, you know, damaged my leg pretty bad.

But was able to get back on the bike and finish it and ride to every dealership in America.

And, you know, had Americans ride with me from every corner of this country in honor of our veterans.

We raised a ton of money and a ton of support for veterans.

And, you know, I just couldn't stop after that.

I just kept going.

So we've got all kinds of of programs rolling out.

So didn't you, when you would stop at these dealerships, didn't you many times give a bike to a veteran?

I have done a lot of veterans motorcycle giveaways.

I think to date,

don't quote me on this, but I think I've given up 12 bikes away to veterans at this point.

And that's always such an impactful thing because I know what the motorcycle community stands for when it comes to our veterans.

And they're very passionate and they're very embracing.

And it can be a channel for a veteran that needs it.

So, when I find a veteran and I give them, hand them over the keys to a brand new motorcycle,

I know it's not just a motorcycle I'm giving them.

It's a channel

for therapy, it's a channel for community camaraderie.

I get messages from them all the time, changes their lives.

Why did this happen to you?

I mean, you

veterans are

part of a community.

And if you're in that community,

you can understand it.

I don't know if I can fully understand it, but they are just, they walk as one many times.

And you weren't part of that community.

What was it that changed in your life or what happened in your life?

You know, I think it's maturity.

You know, I grew up, I think you said it well in the open there.

You know, I just made a lot of bad choices and I started to regret those choices.

And I wanted to be part of that.

But wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

By society standards, you didn't necessarily make bad choices.

You were quite wealthy, were you not?

I mean, you had a big house and nice car and an extensive art collection, right?

I mean, yeah, I was successful in business, there's no doubt.

But

it was more than that.

Even that success came later for me, you know, in my early 30s, late 20s, it started to happen.

And in my teens and early 20s, when I would have joined the military, I was just a young punk.

And I I was just making bad choices and had the wrong priorities in life.

And as I matured, I did find some success in business.

But then, you know, the reality of my veterans set in.

I started, got some very close veteran friends that were active duty, some that didn't make it home,

some that did come home and then deal with struggles every day back here in America.

And I really started to feel like I didn't do my part.

And I felt like I should have, should have been part of that.

And it just, I don't know, it hit me.

And I want to.

There's a lot of people, honestly,

there's a lot of people

that will say, I want to do my part.

But you sold your house, all of your expensive cars, furniture, your art collection.

You let it all go.

And you then got on your motorcycle and you went on this trip for the American Legion's Legacy Scholarship Fund, which benefits the children of fallen veterans who were lost on or before 9-11.

A lot of people say, I want to get involved.

You sold everything

and went on the road.

I did, man.

I lived off of a back, it ended up being a total of five years.

I was homeless.

I lived off the back of a motorcycle.

And

it was an incredible learning experience for me.

I gained so much knowledge.

And

really, and I think you're right.

I don't think either of us can understand what these veterans go through.

But I've spent a lot of nights next to campfires and a lot of miles on the road talking to veterans and helping whatever way I possibly could deal with whatever struggles they may be having or dealing with.

And I mean, it's heavy stuff, man.

I mean,

it's very heavy stuff.

I've heard you say that there were two

events or two meetings that really kind of changed your life.

They deeply affected you.

One was with a mom, and the other was a salute.

Can you tell those stories?

Sure.

So I was, you know, kind of in the beginning of my campaign.

You know,

this always gets me going.

You know,

it's tough to deal with a veteran who

is

trying to understand what they're going through.

But when you have a mother come to you

and her child didn't come home,

And you're riding to support a program that helps her grandchildren, her child's child, a child that's missing a father.

And she comes up to you and out of the blue and wraps her arms around you and starts crying.

And you've never met this woman before.

And she starts telling you the stories of what her family is still dealing with today because of the loss.

I mean, if that doesn't change you, I mean, if that doesn't take you back and humble you and make you realize that there's so much more important,

I'd have given any one of them cars or any of that art collection in any moment.

You know what I mean?

To help that lady and change

what she was going through.

All of a sudden, all those worldly possessions just don't mean anything

when you've got somebody sitting in front of you like that.

And you were talking about World War II veterans.

I had a World War II veteran teach me to salute.

That's something I would have learned

had I actually served.

And that was quite the honor as well.

Meet me do something.

So

I don't want to meet that guy.

I'll be there all day trying on one.

Let me ask you two things.

You've traveled now over 80,000 miles around the country on your bike.

You didn't have homes.

So you were everywhere in this country.

Two questions.

What did you learn that you didn't know about veterans?

And what did you learn about America that you didn't know or you came to fully understand?

Sure.

You know,

to answer the later question first, America, I learned that we're much more united than anybody wants us to believe.

We are every, you know, on that campaign alone, it was 88,000 miles and I went to 702 cities across America.

That campaign alone,

I learned very quickly that we are united and we are aligned.

And the people that are out there working every day and grinding to keep this society going and to keep us afloat and to keep us, you know,

a healthy country, we vastly agree on almost everything.

The country's not on the big principles.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, and that to me was really an eye-opener because before stepping foot in all these cities and having dinners and breakfasts and meetings with all these different people in all these different cities, I had no idea we really really were as united as we are.

And it was an eye-opener for me.

And it got me excited.

It got me amped, you know, because I'm like, man, we really are in much better shape than maybe, you know, a lot of people want us to believe.

And

I think that's one reason why people in the middle of the country, you know, when I warn about the things that are happening and the things that are coming, they don't necessarily feel that because in their usual daily life, they are talking to their neighbors who are Democrats or Republicans or Independents, and everybody's getting along.

And so they just don't, they, I mean, it's a different world when you're outside of the media or outside of the social networks.

When you're actually in America,

it feels entirely different.

It does.

I mean, amazingly different.

I mean, I get chills just hearing what you just said because it's so true.

I mean, it's

people are good.

People are good.

Yeah, they are.

People in this country are good.

You know, there's a lot of good out there.

I've only got about 60 seconds left.

Tell me about what you learned about veterans, if you can, in 60.

Man, I learned that there's a lot more

trauma going on with our veterans than what we even know.

And there can never be enough awareness, and that we need a whole lot more support and help for them than what our government's giving them.

And that even though I can preach it to you right here on the show, you'll never know until you get with enough of them and see the struggles they're going through.

They're fighting a very ugly war right here on our own soil.

And I learned that it's important that I do my part.

I got coined a statement I'd like to say, and that is if you did not serve in your military, find time to serve those who did.

And that's what I try to do.

Adam Sandoval, you find him at AdamSandoval.com.

Also, youtube.com/slash Adam Sandoval.

Adam, I'm sorry, I'd love to have you for a podcast.

I know we've been trying to put it together the last few, but you're a fascinating guy with much more to tell.

Thank you so much.

Let's get together soon.

Thank you.

God bless.

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