Joe Kent on Military Service, American Foreign Policy, and the Future of Leadership | Security Halt! Podcast Ep. 449

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How should military experience shape leadership in America?

In Episode 449 of the Security Halt! Podcast, Deny Caballero sits down with former Green Beret, combat veteran, and public servant Joe Kent for a wide-ranging discussion on military service, leadership, American foreign policy, civic responsibility, and the role veterans can play in shaping the nation's future.

Drawing from years of service in Special Operations and his experience in public life, Joe shares his perspective on strategic decision-making, the challenges facing America, the importance of personal integrity, and why critical thinking has never been more important.

The conversation also explores faith, resilience, the influence of foreign interests on policy, and why informed citizens remain the foundation of a strong republic.

Whether you're interested in national security, leadership, or the role veterans play beyond the battlefield, this episode provides thoughtful insights into some of today's most important issues.

Listen now. Follow the show. Share this with the veteran or entrepreneur who needs to hear it.
 
Chapters:

00:00 Leadership, Transparency, and Why Integrity Matters

01:11 Why Joe Kent Left the Trump Administration

03:08 What Really Happens Inside Government Decision-Making

06:07 The Special Operations Mindset: Debate Creates Better Leaders

08:44 War Gaming, Strategy, and Defining the End State

12:04 Israel, Foreign Policy, and America's National Interests

17:46 Why Joe Kent Chose to Walk Away

21:54 Veterans React: Public Support and Political Criticism

24:42 What's Next for Joe Kent?

29:06 How Money, PACs, and Lobbyists Influence Politics

34:43 What Power Does the President Actually Have?

40:33 Defense Spending, National Priorities, and America First

44:15 Classified Information, Declassification, and Intelligence Reform

50:48 Critical Thinking in the Age of AI and Social Media

52:23 Faith, Purpose, and Life After Military Service

56:37 Joe Kent's Vision for the Future

57:33 Where to Follow Joe Kent

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Transcript

What Are We Trying To Achieve?

SPEAKER_02 0:00

When the war actually began, there was a lot of us too who were like, Hey, I get it, we're gonna try and bomb as much stuff as possible and like kill a list of guys. But like, what is the actual outcome that we're we're looking for? Because you know, a handful of us are like, Look, we've done the try to kill a list of guys thing before. Like, we're pretty good at it, but you know, you kind of know how the last couple iterations of war went.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

If you're gonna do this, this is going to happen. And when you rally, anytime you rallied around just one singular option, one singular call, and and you didn't take anything else in consideration, it never turns out good. It never turns out good.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

So, I mean, when the whole thing started and the Iranians did what we knew they were going to do, which every war game had said they were gonna do, shut down the straits, they were gonna use their ballistics and use their drones uh very effectively, and they were gonna hit the bases in the region. When they did all that, I mean, all of us are just kind of sitting there, like, you know, okay, again, what are we trying to accomplish? And number two, we we knew this is very fr it was very frustrating to us. We knew this was going to happen.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

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SPEAKER_01 1:06

I

Resilience After Speaking Up

SPEAKER_01 1:07

want to just have you today that to just talk about what you've gone through and uh talk about resilience in the in the face of all this.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Well, I appreciate it, man. I mean, I honestly the only opinions I really care about are my family and then the community I came from. So it's good, good to hear from the tribe. Um yeah, yeah, man. I mean, honestly, I I don't feel like I've been through a lot. I try not to read a lot of the the hate online because most of it's just that uh and like a lot of white noise, and a lot of it's game too. Um I I understood that when I left the administration the way I did, which I felt was important to do, uh, just to kind of call out what was taking place to be transparent. And because I felt like we were making a pretty major mistake. Um, we can you know get into all the all those details if you want to. Um, but you know, I knew I was doing the right thing. So I I really, you know, didn't have many second thoughts about it. Um and like you said, this was what we were always trained to do. Um, and then just the experiences that we had in the war on terror. I was just like, I I can't be a part of uh another one of these um because I know exactly how this this goes, and and my generation knows it very, very well. So I'm out and we'll let the cars fall where they may. So, you know, um here we are. You know, I I I feel good. My family's in a good spot. So really, really no complaints, man. I mean, I think that's that's the key.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Dude, nothing short than what I expected you to say, man. Um it it's great to see that. Um, but you're right. You said something in one of the first interviews about what it was like being a young man in Iraq and Afghanistan all those years ago. And a lot of us said the same thing. If at some point I have the ability to speak up and talk about this and and do the right thing, I'm going to do that. Uh, and I think a lot of veterans understand that 100%. Like at there spend so many times in in my own history, if as I reflect back in the middle of Iraq as a young man in later years in Afghanistan, saying, like, okay, where are the adults in the room and the administration? Where are the adults making these decisions?

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Yeah. And unfortunately, after being kind of at the whatever, the upper levels and being kind of in the room, um, you know, unfortunately, there's not a lot of people who have that ground level experience that a lot of our tribe does. Um, not to say that I'm the most, I think actually I'm pretty average for people that came out of uh our our background. Um, but then when you get up to these upper echelons that are highly political, whether in uniform or political appointees, you are, I think, really scarce on people who have that ground context consistently over time, like

Why Leaders Avoid Real Debate

SPEAKER_02 3:44

we knew. And so I was honored to be there. Um, and I was honored to be able to provide some of that perspective. And I, of course, I didn't get everything right all the time. But now that I have that perspective, I can 100% see how really bad decisions were made in that highly politicized environment where people are too scared to speak up. Um, it's it's something that's very challenging that I'd like to, you know, spend more time trying to tackle. Uh, so if we ever get a chance at doing something like this again, where we get, you know, kind of a more um a change agent in the White House where we can actually hopefully have some people uh in the national security apparatus who have more time on the ground who understand how complex these operations can be. Because now I understand that sometimes where you think the adults would be in the room, or the people who are saying, like, hey, just basic stuff that we would do on an ODA, like, hey, what are the second third order effects of this action that we're going to take? A lot of times those questions just really weren't being asked. If they were being asked, they weren't being presented to a senior policymaker for usually like a very petty reason. Like people didn't want to look like they weren't on board with the plan, you know, looked like they had doubts. I mean, just unfortunately, at the end of the day, a lot of this is very very petty and kind of disappointing. Um, but yeah, that's that's kind of what I what I saw from the inside.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

That is um that's incredible, man. I it's it's shocking to hear because if you go to like if you ever spend time, uh for a lot of us, you know, we we didn't spend a lot of time in the skiff, we didn't spend a lot of time at the op the ops end at you know, back at the rear on a FOM. Like it's um it's a point of pride if you never had to do AST duties. But if you ever if you ever went to the jock to check on your boys or or grabs, you saw in a massive room filled with leaders. And if something wasn't right, if something wasn't going right, it was brought up many times in Afghanistan. You submit your Khan off, and immediately, if it's off, if there's something way off, you get that email on red saying, hey guy, check your stuff. There's no way this is gonna fly. And if you if you look at it the way the administration is running, if you look at some of the things leading up to our involvement with Iran, I was asking myself, who the hell is in there saying, hey, if we do this, these are the possible repercussions? And it sounds like there isn't any of that. It's people that are jockeying for positions for the next year and the next year.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it I think is a study on leadership styles. Um, there was just a in the lead up to the 12-day war and Midnight Hammer, there was a pretty robust debate, which I thought was healthy. Uh again, I you know what something I've I've learned uh over the last year and a half, two years is that the the team room environment that I I grew up in where friction is healthy and friction is actually like pretty celebrated, um, for better or worse. Like if we have a conflict, we work it out, may the best idea win. You know, if guys go to blows, well then whoever's the best of combatums, may he win. You know, it's it's very, it's very merit-based, very like present your idea and defend it. And so I'm used to that. So I didn't really mind there being a lot of friction or people saying, like, hey, Joe, I disagree with you, you know, and here's why. Never really took that personally. Um, but I kind of found that we are very, very, uh, very weird. We're the weird ones, uh, because when you get into a lot of these rooms, a lot of times everybody kind of just wants to cooperate. They don't want to make any ripples, there are things that can't be said, et cetera. Um, so there was a robust debate in the lead up to the first part of the war.

Red Cells Ignored And Predictable Blowback

SPEAKER_02 7:13

And then after, you know, Midnight Hammer, and we thought that we were gonna be done with it, when things started to develop and move towards, hey, the Israelis are gonna try and drag us back into this, there, there's still a lot of pressure going. A lot of the people who had kind of called that because it was pretty easy to see, uh, if if you had a broad enough aperture, instead of bringing us into the room and saying, like, how are you gonna deal with this? We were pushed out. And there was a lot of people I think didn't want to have to come back and say, like, you know, maybe we got this wrong, or there's some other things that we should look at. So instead of opening back up, I would say the discussion to the broader, you know, National Security Council deputies committees, there was a siloing off. And I think that did a disservice to the president. So he was left with just a small amount of advisors around him. Now, ultimately, you know, he's the guy in charge. If I I think he probably at this point, considering the direction that he's gone, um, you know, he probably wishes that he would have had more advice there. I'm not saying from me, but I'm saying from other people. Um, but instead he didn't get that. He he got just a handful of people who told him, like, hey, we are basically invincible at this point. We can we can do whatever we want, we can just totally kick some butt. And then when the thing began, when the war actually began, there was a lot of us too who were like, hey, I get it, we're gonna try and bomb as much stuff as possible and like kill a list of guys. But like, what is the actual outcome that we're we're looking for? Because, you know, a handful of us are like, look, we've done the try to kill a list of guys thing before. Like, we're pretty good at it, but you know, you kind of know how the last couple iterations of war went. So what are we hoping to achieve here? And it's still, I just don't think that that hard question was ever really asked to the to the president.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Yeah, the desired end state. What are we, what's gonna be the end goal? And I think you you hinted at something that has been a pitfall in tons of military operations. When you don't take in consideration anybody that's playing the red, the red cell, like if you're going in co-a dev, like someone has to be the asshole that's gonna sit there and say, Yeah, or we're gonna do if you're gonna do this, this is going to happen. And when you rally, anytime you've rallied around just one singular option, one singular core, and and you didn't take anything else in consideration, it never turns out good. It never turns out good.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Yeah, and it and it was wild to see. I mean, because I I think the the people at the upper rungs who are close to the president, they knew that the president was leaning towards military action. The people who had been playing the red cell across the the IC and the Pentagon now for, I mean, almost two decades at this point, they pretty much laid out what Iran was going to do. It wasn't a secret. I mean, most of it was pretty obvious. Um, but because in that scenario, the the red cell kind of won every time, that entire portion of the process was just stonewalled uh and blocked off from the president. So, I mean, when the whole thing started and the Iranians did what we knew they were going to do, which every war game had said they were going to do, shut down the straits, they were gonna use their ballistics and use their drones uh very effectively, and they were gonna hit the bases in the region. When they did all that, I mean, all of us were just kind of sitting there, like, you know, okay, like again, what are we trying to accomplish? And number two, we we knew this is very fr it was very frustrating. So it was like we knew this was going to happen. Um, so it's again, it's just a case study, I think, for leaders, especially people who are in senior, senior positions. If you've only got a handful of people around you and they're telling you exactly what you want to hear and how great your plan is, you better give it a couple sanity checks. You know, I'd I'd highly recommend you bring in a couple people in the room who you know are gonna at least be be strong enough to argue the reverse. Like go ahead and shoot holes in this plan that we have right here before we go out the door and make decisions that can't be put back in the bottle.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

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Veterans Question The War Narrative

SPEAKER_01 11:45

For a vision of what we thought we wanted in America, the things that we held close to our hearts and our minds that we needed, that, you know, and at the forefront of my mind, I wanted leadership and a government that understood what we sacrificed the last 20 plus years in Iraq and Afghanistan and understood the weight that comes with sending our men and women to war. And immediately following Operation Midnight Hammer, it felt like we're, we're, we're going right back into this mentality of, okay, we're just gonna send more guys and gals into combat. It's like, for what? There was, it didn't seem like there was a measured understanding of what was really happening. And for a lot of us, it seemed like we had our greatest ally pulling the strings and involving us in something that a lot of us didn't understand, like the implications of. Like, what, how is this a threat to America? How is this a threat to our livelihood and our our our American way of life? And you can't sell me, and now it's a lot of it has been unveiled. A lot of people are now starting to wake up to this idea that maybe this isn't something that our greatest friend would want us to be involved in.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yeah, yeah, man.

Israel’s Goals Versus America’s Goals

SPEAKER_02 13:00

I mean, this is another thing that really surprised me. Like I was aware of the influence of the Israeli lobby. I had run for Congress, I had had, you know, APAC come, you know, he's have me talk with them. They didn't like exactly, I guess, the the way I was presenting myself. They never gave me any money, which I'm glad in retrospect they didn't. So I understood it a little bit, but then being on the inside, and obviously with our backgrounds, you know, being Green Berets, working with partner forces is our bread and butter. So I've worked with, you know, most of the intelligence services, most of the militaries in the region. I had worked with the Israelis before, but now being at this level, watching the amount of deference that we gave them, I mean, it really put my hackles up because I was like, you know, rule number one of whether it's, you know, UW, fit or or running human operations, like you don't fall in love with your source. Like you understand why you're doing business, you understand that you've you've got two different objectives here and you can work together in the middle and it can be great, you know. But at the end of the day, we have our own agency. And I just consistently saw us surrendering that and us like lying to ourselves. It wasn't like nefarious. There wasn't a bunch of guys in a room being like, we're gonna do what the Israelis say because they paid me off. There wasn't that. There was a lot of just really blind, like they have the exact same objectives that we do. But when we sat down and spoke with them to, you know, to the Israelis' credit, they were basically like, this is what our objective is. Our objective is to take down the entire regime. And then when we would ask them, I would say, okay, we'll unpack that. If you, if you guys, if we kill the Ayatollah, like, do you really think the entire regime just crumbles them? Because human nature and my understanding of this culture says that the people are actually probably gonna rally around the flag. Like the only thing that saved the the revolution in the early phases of it was when uh Saddam invaded uh Iran, and then people rallied around the revolution. I mean, so this is pretty well known. And the Israelis were like, well, yeah, of course. I mean, there's gonna be a rally around the flag effect. I mean, but they every they kept going back to the more that we weaken it and the more chaotic Iran becomes, the less of a threat it is to Israel. Like they were always very upfront with that. It was it was us that had the blinders on. We were like, yeah, yeah, that's our goal too. And I was like, I don't think I've never heard, you know, the boss, the president, or anyone say that that's our goal. We have some very, very finite goals, you know, about nuclear enrichment, uh, about other things that we're negotiating, we're concerned about the funding of the proxies, et cetera. But the Israelis were driving a lot of the intelligence, they were driving a lot of the operations. And so I was, again, this is a part where I felt like I'm I'm the weird guy in the room because I would just come out and say this like, hey, we need to take away things from the Israelis because they're gonna get us sucked into this. I mean, even before the 12-day war, there was a few of us who who sat around and said, How can we prevent this from happening? Because we're at the negotiating table with the Iranians. The Israelis are telling us they really want to get into this war. And so it was pretty evident if we took away some of the military support that we would the Israelis needed to conduct the operations, that they wouldn't be able to do it. And that to me just seemed like one plus one equals two. Let's just do that, give our negotiators more time. You know, when that was brought up, you know, people looked at me like I had just proposed something horrible that can't be spoken of. And so that that was my my first taste of of you know, just that dynamic that I just felt was very, very off-kilter. And I still think it it is. I I think now that it's getting more exposure, uh, it's gonna be hard for the Israelis to maintain that level uh of influence in our government. But I mean that I've talked about it quite a bit, but that that uh that shocked me.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Yeah, I I think you're right, and I think a lot more people are requesting it. Um I didn't bat an eye for a long time because um dare I say, call it propaganda. Uh it's been part of our American way of life for a very long time. Our our greatest ally, our strongest ally, our greatest ally. We repeat these things over and over and over again. And again, clarification this is just talking about a nation. Uh not talking about people. We're talking about a nation. And I believed it. I was a strong advocate for a very long time. And then you start seeing what's happening in Palestine, you start seeing the casualties, and it's not fighting age males, it's women, children, over and over and over and over and over. And then, of course, we get brought into this, and now you're starting to realize okay, why are we pushing for war? And why is any time we talk about having agreements or peace deals, it gets completely pushed off to the side. Um, one thing that's important for for a lot of guys from our background is like we understand the importance of winning over the human domain. That's one of the biggest factors. And and I'm sitting here under like listening to the news, the 24-hour news cycle. I'm watching these individuals that I respect and admire, that are great leaders, and I realized, wait a second, you're pivoting. You're pivoting from America first, you're pivoting from making sure our American way of life is taken care of, you know, being mindful of how we send our men and women off to war. And very quickly it became we have to go to war. We have to go to war. And I'm I'm sitting here wondering like, how is it that now more than never, we don't have temperance, we don't have the political leaders are willing to say, you know what, up the brakes, let's talk, let's re-engage. Like, we should not be pushing for this. And as when you took a stand and you were willing to say, hey, for everything I've gone through, for everything I've experienced, it's my time to step down.

The Decision To Resign Publicly

SPEAKER_01 18:21

How did you come to that decision? What was that like sitting there knowing that, like, fuck man, like I know I'm good with who I am. I know I have my family, you know, I've got my teammates, my brothers, but there's gonna be a lot of Americans that are gonna look upon me with a lot of ill will and think of less of me. Like, how did you make that decision?

SPEAKER_02 18:41

Uh, you know, both uh what does the saying go? It's like gradually then all at once. I mean, uh basically from from the the time that the war kicked off in uh the springtime, I thought, okay, this is not what we signed up for. The Israelis, you know, forced our hands. I understood what the president was trying to do with with Midnight Hammer. He was trying to basically kill the idea of enrichments that would get us back to the negotiating table, and it worked. Um, but I knew the Israelis basically weren't gonna stop. Um, but then I saw the siloing that took place, and I was really hoping that he'd be able to kind of resist that pull. Then, you know, the Venezuela operation happened and we were thankfully we were successful. Um, however, that did give us a false sense of confidence. And so my my worry after that was like, oh man, they're gonna tell the president that they can do this in Iran, that they can do something similar in Iran. And I just kind of watched these dominoes fall. And again, like there was a lot of boxing out that took place in the lead up to the 12-day war. I keep going back to this because there was an entire National Security Council process. There was a deputies committee process. I was very involved when I was uh the DI Gabbard's chief of staff. And then once I was finally uh Senate confirmed as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. So I was involved in all those processes, but I watched all those processes kind of get pushed off to the side. So we essentially were kind of like, and I like there was one silo that was going on where the Israelis were basically pushing information that we knew was not factually accurate in order to drive an outcome, uh, a decision for the president to make.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

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SPEAKER_02 20:24

And then we were in this other silo where we really couldn't get a lot of the information to him. So we were still doing our due diligence. And this is why you saw disparity in the public testimony between uh what the DNI put out where she said, you know, 18 intelligence agencies, we all agree Iran's not developing a nuclear weapon. The imminent threat was always like really janky. Even when Rubio came out and tried to sell it, he was basically like, Yeah, the imminent threat was the Israelis that were gonna attack, and then we knew the Iranians would hit us. So he just kind of came out and said it. Um, but the fact that we we weren't able to really affect stop us from from getting into the war, and then once the war started, I would say the siloing almost doubled because we were trying to find off ramps, you know, for the president where he could just say, you know, we bombed X amount of things, and now we're gonna leave and get back to the negotiating table. The Israelis outmaneuvered us on that one too, because they got the president in really early on on killing the Ayatollah and then killing a lot of the negotiators, which basically kind of got us to the position that we're in right now where like the Israelis knew that at some point, probably in the near future, this would become politically unsustainable for us back here at home. And so they were like, well, we want to make sure the negotiations are gonna be really hard, so we're gonna kill a lot of the moderates. Now, the Iranians are proving to have like a pretty robust uh bench, not just of capable military leaders, they've definitely displayed that, um, but also of I would say pretty seasoned diplomats and statesmen who are not going the hard line route. There is a struggle within Iran. So I think if if if unfortunately if the Israelis aren't restrained and if the war resumes again and they kill more of these guys that we're dealing with, we're we're not gonna get anybody better than this because they've got their hardliners too. And So seeing that we couldn't influence that, I realized like, okay, I've kind of reached my limit of effectiveness here. Like, if I if I'm not being listened to and I can't help us get out of this situation, I think that like, number one, you know, just a basic rule of combat, like if you can't lay down effective fire from where you're from, you've got to maneuver. And so I've said, I've got to maneuver, I've got to do something. And it's going to be the uncomfortable thing because, you know, I'm a human. I like my title. It was neat. It was cool to be the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. They treat you really nice, they call you sir, all this, all these different things that I found that a lot of people really, really love. Sure, it was nice. I liked the people I worked around. I like the position. But I was like, if I'm not being effective and I can't help get us out of this war from this position, then I do need to move and maneuver. And then second, you know, when the casualties started coming in, when we hit that that marker, it just seemed like we were going to continue to take losses. And I and I'm glad that we haven't lost more, but I still think losing 15 was was too many. Um and so when I saw that happen, having been to Dover to receive my late wife, um, I was just like, I I can't be a part of this. Um, because this was this was basically a promise I had made to myself both at Dover and then 20 years prior in Iraq that if I could speak out and say something, I would. And so that was what that was how I made the decision to leave the administration, but then also leave in the way that I did to go out kind of publicly in a very loud way.

Influencers Attack And Moral Courage

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Yeah. And it's uh I I can't, I wanna keep this professional for this one. For this one, I really want a I'm trying not to swear as much, but nothing ticked me off more than seeing these influencers on that are supposed to be America first, that are supposed to be you know veteran focused, and and you know, rally around supporting veterans in the American way of life to come out and attack you in in such a disgusting way. Individuals that were former police officers and now have all this following, individuals that serve and have all this following. And they felt like they were reading off a script. And I'm like, dude, how much are you worth? Yeah, how much did it take to get you to flip on somebody that served just like you? How much did it take, man? I'd love to see that deposit. I'd love to see to find out how much you're worth. And that's so disgusting, man. It's so disgusting. You can't even say, even if you don't agree with it, respect the man. Respect what he's gone through and understand that, like, man, I'm not of that caliber. I've never lost that. I've never put it on the line over and over and over again. I'm not gonna say anything. And there's a specific one out there, and I really hate, I really, really hate his content. I and uh, you know, I'll pray for him tonight. But when he put out his video on TikTok and it's getting all these likes and shares, I'm sitting there like, bro, you wouldn't say that to his face. You wouldn't walk up to him and say any of that to your face because you know that man's been tested. He's gone to combat, he's done real things that matter. But you sit in your studio and you're receiving that money from a certain in certain entity and you feel comfortable saying that. And to me, it's like a lot of us cheered you on. A lot of us were so friggin' proud when you got that that administration, that position. And a lot of us still cheered you on and had your back when you made those statements and you decided to step down. Because that's what a leader does, that's what a man does. Like that's an important thing for us to focus on. Like, we don't want yes men or women in the administration, good, bad, or indifferent, if it if at any point, and this can be for anybody in any any walk of life, if you're a banker, a lawyer, whatever, wherever you're at, if your company makes a decision that doesn't align with your morals and your values and your ethics, you stand up and you walk away and you hold your head up high, regardless of what the peanut gallery is saying, man. And that's that's ultimately like one of the greatest gifts that you gave to every veteran out there that's running that has real values and real ethics, is like, okay, at any point, I can walk away and I should walk away. Um, but a lot of us had the same question of like, okay, what now? What's next for Joe? How is he gonna continue fighting for us or for the people of his state? Um, have you thought about what's coming down the line for you?

SPEAKER_02 26:22

I mean, nothing definitive. I I want to stay active like in this discussion because I think it's gonna be pretty key, especially going into 28. You know, there's a a force within the Republican Party uh that wants to suck us kind of back into this neoconservative, you know, we're gonna go to war with everybody, that that's our number one problem is which country we're gonna topple next when we have real problems here in America, which you know, I I thought Trump was the antidote for, which is why I why I, you know, agreed to work for him. I feel like he's getting kind of back on course right now, but I want this issue to be front and center. Uh, and and this issue too, I think really points to a lot of other issues about who we're gonna have you know in the next administration. Because if we continue to hire, especially in the national security side, if we continue to hire people who have checked all the right blocks by working at think tanks and working on this guy's campaign or that guy's campaign, um, we're just gonna continue to get rolled by the system because right now, unfortunately, the the system within you know the DOD and within the IC, like they do, they like these wars. They just do. It pays the it pays the paychecks. Um, and so we need people who kind of understand and have their finger on the pulse of like how do we thread the needle between being a secure country and being a country that's always at war constantly. So I want to stay active in that. I don't know exactly what that looks like. I do think there's gonna be, I think it's gonna be a big fight uh on the Republican side in 2028. I think on the Democrat side too. And I do think maybe not in 28, but sometime in the near future, I do think there's gonna be the development of a third independent party um just because the the two-party system is so broken. And unfortunately, I hate to say this, but the way that the Trump administration has governed up to this point basically has proven that. I mean, we thought that we had taken over the Republican Party, it was populist, it was it was make America great again. Um, you know, we're gonna put the American people first, and then he gets back in for the second term, and you know, all the people who previously hated him now love him, but we go right back to basically getting the same foreign policy as somewhere between Joe Biden and George Bush, you know, um, what both with better hype and better PR and better influencers, but we get the same thing. So I do think there's gonna be a yearning in the country here pretty soon, especially if the younger generation, as the baby boomers, you know, fade away. I think we're gonna have more people that are saying, like, I don't want R or D because both of them have basically given us the same crap. Um, let's come up with something new. So that's that's kind of loosely where I where I want to be. Like, like a lot of us, luckily I have the the freedom of you know being retired military, so I've got all kinds of time to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Dude, yes. Um you you've definitely earned some time to to think about what's next, but I I do want to focus on the I, you know, the the problems that we're facing right now, that the things that we're seeing continue to plague our political system.

AIPAC, Money, And Voter Engagement

SPEAKER_01 29:09

The if if we have other Joe Kents out there ready, willing, and able to run, how do they fight back against APAC? It's been known, it's now publicly seen that if you don't toe the line, they'll just buy you out. Stories shape culture, they build trust, and when they're told the right way, they move people to action. That's what we do at Security Hall Media. We don't just produce content, we create authentic, impactful, and purpose-driven storytelling for podcasters, nonprofits, brands, and leaders who are on a mission. For people who've lived real experiences and want their message to actually matter, from podcast production and video to strategic storytelling and distribution. We help you clarify your voice, elevate your brand, and connect with the audience you're trying to serve. You have a story worth telling and a purpose behind it. Security Hall Media is here to help you tell it the right way. Click the link in the episode description to learn more today. They'll literally just buy you out, and that broke my heart. Uh, and and I think anybody listening knows exactly what politician I'm talking about, who's been putting it out there for the very beginning for a very long time. And what happens? You speak up, you bite back, boom, you're bought out of your spot. How do we fight against that? And how do we how do we make other American or our brothers and sisters understand, like, hey, like you can be patriotic, you can be completely for America, and still think that it's wrong to have another nation involved so deeply in our political system that they dictate who becomes your governor, even at the local state levels. Like that's a that's the the scary part. Like, they even have people on lock for that. Um, and I think not enough people are looking at that and seeing, like, oh, that's problematic. That's a big issue.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

Yeah, unfortunately, the the answer is in having an engaged citizenry. We need people to be more engaged. The reason why they're able to throw a ton of money at a race, Massey's race, for instance, i in Kentucky. I mean, Massey basically won the vast majority of voters that were under the age of 55. Because if you look at the demographics, who who votes in primaries, who's actually much more politically active, who consistently actually goes and votes, it is the older generation. And understandably, I mean, if you're younger and you're, you know, you and your wife are working and you got kids, you got, you're just trying to make ends meet, you got stuff going on. Like, are you gonna remember to vote? Are you gonna do your research? Probably not. That's why a lot of this falls on the older generation who has more time to vote. But then also they're watching legacy media, which is way easier to buy. It's so much easier for any of these organizations and packs to go in and spend a couple million on TV, radio, and mailers, and that moves the needle. And the reason why that moves the needle is because younger people aren't voting. So if we can get younger folks out there to vote, and I'm really hoping because Trump did do very well with younger voters, he got a lot of, especially young men out there to vote. I'm hoping that a lot of them don't get disenfranchised and say, well, that guy screwed me over, so I'm just done with politics. I'm hoping that we can continue the momentum of getting more young people involved because really the the demographics are there if if we can get younger folks to get out there and to vote and then to do their research so they can see, like, hey, which candidate is taking money from, you know, APAC or any other special interest group, and which which candidate is just asking me to give them 15, 20 bucks. I mean, that was the worst part. I being a candidate, I didn't mind going and debating, I didn't mind knocking on doors, I didn't mind talking to people, like all that stuff was fine. It was kind of like uh a UW campaign, really, without without a gun, you know. But uh the the asking people for money, unfortunately, is probably the most important thing in a campaign. And I I didn't enjoy it. Um, but if we're gonna be able to beat back APAC or or whatever group comes up next, I think APAC's kind of got a name now, they're gonna they're gonna be like the boogeyman and they're just gonna brand it to the city. It's just gonna pivot. It's marketing 101 and dark money, and they use nonprofits and like it's everywhere. But if we can get people to start doing a little bit of research and staying more engaged, I think social media helps with that. I think podcasts help with that. We're gonna get more traction, especially as like the legacy media dies out. Um, but I I really do think that that is that's the key. People have got to get engaged as as blackpilling as it all is. If you if you don't like the two party system, then you've got to get engaged.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Absolutely. It's it's up to us. And we talk about it a lot, talk about it. Uh with our first episode, talked about it when we had uh uh Kobe Jenkins on. The the idea that we can sit back and not be involved in our government is long gone. Like we have to be activated, we have to go to the polls, we have to be willing to read and understand the issues that are going to be on the ballot. Like, because they they honestly, I remember as a young man going into that at that first the first time I could vote and sitting there, I wasn't informed. I was a complete uh uh I was an idiot. I was an absolute idiot as a kid. And you vote on personalities, you vote on what you saw on MTV, you voted on the popularization of people, but you weren't thinking about economics, you weren't thinking about all the propositions that are on the ballot. So you go down there and you're just checking, you're checking. Take it serious. This administration and the last couple years have really shown us that yes, it's important to have a great campaign, it's important to have great marketing, but you really gotta understand the people running. You gotta understand the issues that are are are going to be part of your life for the next foreseeable future. So vote on that. Don't just vote on personality, be willing to understand. And that's not, I'm not trying to suede you to vote one way or another. Both sides are pretty messed up right now. Uh, and and and that's that's coming from somebody who's a a conservative. I'm very conservative. There's a lot of things I'm very left-leaning for, a couple things, but a lot of things I'm very conservative, especially when it comes to money and being capitalist. Um, but I want you to be informed. I want you to understand that it's not being blinded by identity politics. Take off the blind. Be willing to talk and engage with people. If you don't understand a concept, be willing to sit down and read, be willing to engage with somebody that's more understanding of it and ask them questions. The days that we can afford to hate each other based on our political leanings are gone, man. Like does you have to be willing to have friends, have informed decision making, and go into the next presidential election informed. I think we really do need that third option. I think it's it's by and large, both sides failed to truly understand the American way of life and what it means to be an American. I really think right now in 2026, what it means to be American means focusing on your family, focusing on your well-being and your livelihood, and being kind and compassionate. We have to put that on and understanding that, hey, like, you know, should we be rallying up people from restaurants and putting them out of the mill uh putting them out of our country? If they have a job and they don't have a criminal background, maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe that's a crazy idea. But the time for us as a nation to just stay quiet and vote on on what we see on TV, that's long gone, man. Like we have to do our studying. And I know that's a lot. I know that's asking a lot from people right now, but man, it'd be really nice if we could.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

It is, yeah. And I think a big thing too is understanding not just who you're voting for, but the office that you're voting for and what that office can truly

Why The Presidency Defaults To War

SPEAKER_02 36:43

do. Because a lot of these wedge issues that, you know, we spend a lot of time in our in uh campaigns arguing about abortion, trans rights, all these different things. If we're talking about the presidency, they really actually can't affect probably 99% of those social issues. And a lot of the domestic issues, too, a lot of the domestic issues revolve around the House, the Senate, the overall budget that the president has a hand in, but he he doesn't control the entire thing. But actually, even then, the majority of these like these social day-to-day issues, that's your local government. When it comes to the executive branch, really, and this is something I'd like to educate more people on, the foreign policy is truly what matters. Because if you look at the biggest line items in terms of how much money we're spending, it's defense and it's intelligence. Like the defense budget now is gonna be 1.5 trillion. We're almost 40 trillion in debt. That's the inflation. So we keep getting involved in these wars, and basically that is that is by and large because there is no policy but foreign policy. Look at what the president spends the vast majority of his time on. He's he's dealing with Iran, he's dealing with Venezuela, he's dealing with all these foreign issues that really don't impact Americans whatsoever. But that's what he chooses to spend his time with. And it's actually quite understandable because when the president tries to advance any part of his domestic issue, whether it's Obama and it's Obamacare, or whether it's Trump and it's like mass deportations or something, they all kind of get their teeth kicked in because they have to go to the House, they have to go to the Senate, and then they've got to deal with governors. They're like, oh, this sucks. I thought I was the president. And then in walks their national security team, and they're like, good news, sir, you're the king of the world. Do you want to go to war? Do you want to top governments? Like, we're we're the world's superpower. We can do whatever we want. So I think just human nature, most presidents are gonna be like, you know what? I want to stay in king of the world land. I don't want to go do all that other stuff. So our foreign policy has gone so off the rails, and there's been this entire apparatus and machinery built in Washington, D.C. that makes, you know, billions of dollars. It's made a lot of people rich here, uh, that wants to keep the president focused on these overseas entanglements, which eventually are gonna are gonna destroy our country just because of the spending alone. So if we don't get someone in the executive branch as as the president in the next in the next, I'd say by 2028, um, then this whole empire is basically going to drive drag us down. If we don't have someone who can soberly look at it and just see where we are right now and the hard decisions we have to make to keep our country safe, but also to be able to prioritize everything in America, we're gonna be in trouble. So that's that's why I'd say like I'm I'm very conservative. I was an America first, you know, MAGA Republican, whatever. But basically, I would be willing to make a lot of political coalitions right now, if we could just agree when we go to vote for the president and when we put people in the executive branch, our number one goal has got to be to keep us out of these foreign entanglements and basically to do enough to secure ourselves. But so therefore that that will create the time and the space where we can actually have all these other discussions and we can disagree, and people can vote for different candidates and different parties down ballot and advance those issues. But when it comes to the presidency, really foreign policy is kind of it. And we'll we've seen like the inverse of that, I think, over the course of our lifetime, where regardless of who we vote for, they'll say different things, a different issue will be a hot button issue, but the foreign policy remains the same. I mean, Bush and Obama, I think, are a great contrast, or even just Trump this time versus you know the Trump that we had in the first administration. We keep getting basically the same thing over and over again. And so it's until we understand what the presidency can truly do and what their scope of duty truly is, we'll keep getting distracted by all these other side issues that they want us fighting over.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

That's a huge that that's thank you for bringing that up, man. Like that is a big problem. Like we are divided as a nation. We instead of saying, hey, I dislike your views, but I want to hear you out, I want to be understanding that we can agree to disagree. People are violently at each other's throats when it comes to so many different things. When in reality, if we sat down and were just able to talk, we'd come to the understanding that are some big issues that we can all agree on. Childhood literacy. Like that is that is a huge issue that I'm just now starting to understand. Uh, I'm I am I am blown away. Shout out to a great nonprofit, Empowerless. Um to hear stories of kids in fifth grade that can't read. Like to hear the modern problems that our education system is facing, it blows my mind. And yet we don't focus on it. We we push all that aside just to yell at each other over things that are honestly not even that important, that they shouldn't be that important, but we are so focused on dividing each other. And I don't think anybody's really hyped, hyped up the idea of like, hey, like we're all American. Can we just coalesce around being proud of you know what we have in this country? I think, and it's it's shocking too. Like one of the things that's great about the World Cup right now is people are seeing people from other nations come to the United States for for an insane event, and all of them are saying how amazing America is.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

It's it's uh it's it's shocking to hear people complain about what we have here, and then people from South Africa, people from Germany, from France showing up for a World Cup saying, like, wow, I wish I could live here. I'm like, listen to that. Listen to that. Like that that is remarkable, but we're so focused on being divided. And from where you're at right now, and after going through everything, like how do you think if we get the right person in 2028, what do you think are some of the first things we should be focusing on as a nation? Like moving forward, if Joe Kent could have a seat in the next, in the next race and be part of be part of the administration, what are some of the things that we should be focusing on?

Defense Posture And Intelligence Reforms

SPEAKER_02 42:26

I I mean, I would take a look at like our just overall our spending, because that's that's driving the inflation. I would look at what what cuts we could make within the Department of War and just basically our posturing overseas. Like, do we still need in the year 2028 by then, 2029, by the time we get in office, do we still need to be basically providing security guarantees for large swaths of the entire world? Now, I'm not saying we like we have to leave all these different organizations, but I think it needs to be looked at. I think the the way that we have forces constantly arrayed throughout the world, number one, that that's an old construct. It doesn't really benefit the American people. It's this like weird kind of uh version of an empire, but it's a it's a it's a reverse empire where it sucks more out of us than it actually gives us. We're not getting anything out of the empire. Um, but also, too, like the idea of us having military bases in a lot of these different locations, especially in the Middle East, that's proven to be a strategic liability on asset. I mean, we just literally had a lot of our bases in the Middle East, you know, bombed to heck during this last iteration of the war. And so my my question is like, what good is a military base that you can't fight a war from? So we don't need to be rebuilding those. We need to be bringing a lot of those back here. We do need to be making some real changes to the Department of Defense. We need to learn from this last iteration of war and say, like, do we need to be buying more aircraft carriers and investing in like these large ticket items that make defense contractors rich? Or should we take a look at what the Ukrainians and what the Iranians have done with ballistics, with drones? We helped the Ukrainians develop a lot of these. We're I was against us supporting the Ukraine war because I didn't want us getting sucked into a conflict with Russia. But I was told by a lot of people, you know, in the defense and intelligence agency. Agencies that, hey, we need to be involved there because that's the cutting edge of battlefield. And so when we went in this last iteration of war, I was like, did we not send any note takers? We paid for all of it. But at the same time, we thought that we were going to defend our static bases from these ballistics and drones. The entire war in Ukraine showed us that that's just not that possible. So I think having a much more agile and lighter military force and then intelligence. I can say a big, a big problem, and this kind of goes back to the Israeli issue. We've become over-reliant on not just Israeli, but Israeli in the Middle East, but we've become over-reliant on liaison intelligence where we're not going out and collecting unilaterally our own intelligence. Liaison intelligence is great, but at the end of the day, you got to realize it's coming from somebody else. They've got an agenda. A lot of times they're looking to influence you, which is what the Israelis are trying to do, as well as inform you. Um, so we can keep those relationships, but we do need the ability to basically check that work. Because of a lot of the risk aversion within the intelligence community, we've gotten away from a lot of that. We do need to get at the same time, we bring back a lot of our, you know, forces and conventional forces. I do think we need to get better about putting out kind of global scouts in a small, agile way so we can see what's going on in the world. And then I really think we need to embrace engaging with the world as it is. There's some geographic realities that we have been trying to basically fight against for a very long time. Iran or the Persian Empire is one of them. We kept in a box for a very long time. But if you look at a map and you look at history, it's like it's got some key terrain. It's got one of the key bottlenecks, it's a massive landmass in between Asia and Europe. Like we're gonna have to deal with these guys. And we're doing that right now, and I'm glad that we are. Uh, same thing with the Russians. I mean, we've been told since we were kids in the 80s that the Russians are, you know, evil and they're trying to take over the whole world. We're told that with the Ukraine thing. At the end of the day, Russia is it's one of the world's big, it is the world's biggest natural resource producer. It's a massive land mass. Let's just deal with them. Let's deal with them in a pragmatic way. If NATO is gonna get in the way of that, well, then we we need to do what's right for our country. So I think those are the big things. There's also a lot of reforms that need to be made in terms of secrecy.

Declassification And Reining In Bureaucracy

SPEAKER_02 46:01

Um, our government running all of these different operations uh in many cases to influence the American people against the American people. There's a lot of declassification that needs to be done. We thought we were gonna get this in the Trump administration. Uh, I was very frustrated by the way the Epstein files were handled. The American people deserve that transparency. JFK, there's a lot there too. MK Ultra, there's a good deal. I mean, just even I've talked a lot about the Butler assassinations and what I learned, the Charlie, the murder, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. There's just a lot of secrecy. We do need people that can go into these intelligence communities with a very skeptical eye, but who have backgrounds like we do where we were familiar with the community and understand that, hey, look, we are here to rein this thing in. We're not here to be accepted by the community. There's a lot of people in the Trump administration who, when they were on the outside, they were very effective at pointing out where a lot of these institutions had kind of gone off the rails and were working against the American people. Unfortunately, the second they get put in charge of some of these organizations, they were like, oh, everybody likes me here. This is great. They they call me sir and they give me a security detail and they say I'm the greatest director ever. And then we stopped asking critical questions. Like the bureaucracy is very the bureaucracy in America has become a threat to the American people because it's become its own beast. And that has got to get reined in. JFK talked about a lot of this, and that's probably why they had to get rid of him. Um, but if we if we don't figure out who's truly pulling the strings uh in our country, like we simply will continue to not have a country. And a lot of that points to probably why we get the same results, regardless of who we vote for. So if we ever get a chance again, I mean, we have got to go full court press, you know, declassifications and really just getting to the bottom of what what is going on with these intelligence agencies, what they're doing against the American people, what they have done in the past, and then really getting the empire under control and bringing the empire back home so that we can actually have a sovereign country. Because like at the end of the day, I just don't think that there's a ton. America needs to have good relationships with around the world, but we're blessed. See the shining sea. There's not a lot that we need to go abroad for. We should have the freedom to go abroad, but we do not need to be an expeditionary empire that kind of constantly has to go and take things from other countries

Assassinations, Labels, And Asking Why

SPEAKER_02 48:10

because we we we have it here.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Absolutely. And one of the biggest things you hit on right there, the the intelligence entity, the it's got its tentacles and everything. Everything. And if you're not way if you haven't woken up to that and seen the last what was happened to right in front of your eyes, you saw it happen live for a lot of you. The Charlie Kirk assassination. Um that happened and how quickly they removed it, and how quickly it faded into the black. Um we should all be asking questions. We should all have uh the understanding that something's not right. Something is not right. And yet, for a lot of Americans, it happened, it occurred, and we focused on the outrage and then never brought the aperture back into focus on why it happened. What is going on? Where a key figure, a somebody who was vocal against certain things, was killed, murdered on TV, on live broadcast, and nobody is continuing to ask questions and pull the thread. And immediately when you do that, when you get on and you have a platform and you ask why, you're labeled a conspiracy theorist. You're labeled a crazy. No, no. If somebody in my unit in Afghanistan was shot in the head by a sniper, what would happen immediately after? You go after, you immediately start looking for the shooter. There's an entire intelligence committee, or not committee, but intelligence apparatus at BAF, at what you at your fob looking to figure out what's going on. And you find out and you target the cell, you go after them, you don't let it happen and just move on. And yet here we are in the United States. Key figures, Americans murdered on TV, and you don't bat an eye and you don't raise questions. That's crazy to me. That is crazy how fast we move from it.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

It's insane, man. And, you know, I've I've talked a lot about this. We we were blocked from continuing the investigation. There's a lot that there's still a lot there, I believe. Um, I don't know definitively, but there is a lot there that should be looked into. Um, and I think most people understand that. That's why it's it is kind of resonating. Um, but especially when you put it on the timeline, I still can't tell you exactly why. You know, I gave you all the very practical, real, real reasons why Trump was influenced to go to war with Iran. But after being around Trump for for quite some time, I, you know, I was surprised that we ended up going to war with Iran. And then you look at the way that he has had multiple attempts on his life, multiple breaches of his security, where nothing was done, no changes were made. We there was a lot of us that were saying, like, what is going on here? Like, you may like some of these people, but they need to be replaced. And after a while, you know, the purpose of any system becomes what it truly does. And I'm like, is the purpose of the system the security apparatus around the president, is it intentionally just so incompetent that occasionally someone can go out and just remind him that he can be touched or his family can be touched? I have to ask those questions because like these things keep happening. And then Charlie, who is very adamantly against the war in Iran, is publicly killed. Now, if it can be proved and explained to us that he was killed because of his stances on you know transgenderism or whatever, fine. I all of us are open to that. It's it's certainly possible. But to tell us, like, no, that's the official story, it was a lone gunman. Uh, ignore the people who were posting on the internet before he was killed that he was going to be killed that day. Um, and if you question it all, you're a conspiracy theorist. Like, I just think you can't accept that. I give the example all the time. If I was looking at any kind of foreign government and I was trying to figure out why a leader was making the choices he was made, and I ignored multiple assassination attempts, breaches of his security, and one of his political allies being killed in the lead up to a major decision being made, like I would be fired. I would have to look at those things. Um, so again, man, we we've got to keep asking questions because there is a lot of machinery within the intelligence community right now and from other outside groups that are trying to shot, you know, really shun anyone and shame them from asking questions. They want they want that to be taboo. That's where the whole conspiracy theorist label even comes from in the first place. But I mean, after we lived through COVID, I mean, when when the whole country got through COVID, at the other end of it, we realized that the people who were asking questions, they weren't right about everything, but they were overall very, very correct when they said, wait a sec, I think we're being lied to. I think this is part of uh an operation, you know, and the operation was the largest transfer of wealth in the history of our nation. So I uh we've got to keep that in mind and keep asking the questions.

SPEAKER_01 52:41

Absolutely,

AI, Faith, And Staying Grounded

SPEAKER_01 52:42

man. Um thank you. Thank you for having common sense. Critical thinking and common sense uh are a scarcity. Uh it's going extinct. People aren't willing. And and and it's not to open up another can of worms before we we have to close it out, but in in the age of AI, in the age of Claude and ChatGPT and perplexity, it's so easy to have an AI agent create your reality for you. It's so easy to have them give you the answer you're looking for. And and it's it's scary. This is literally a twilight episode. Um, and it's it's getting worse. Uh, and I, you know, we're we're a show that focuses on positivity. So I gotta get myself out of this negativity mode as we close out because Joe, one thing that I focus on is, you know, as veterans, we get out. If we're lucky, if we're fortunate, we got people to advocate for us, help us get better, overcome the issues that we have. But you've not only gone through so much in your life in service, as you've transitioned and you've been able to face everything with grace and honor and dignity. What are some things that you've leaned on to ensure that as you go through this next phase and and going, you know, having to exit this tran this administration and move about your life, what are some things you focus on to keep you grounded, to keep you positive, to keep you from going back into any negative habits and you know, keep you on the straight and narrow?

SPEAKER_02 54:15

Well, faith, first and foremost, and I think like probably like a lot of us, I mean, I wasn't, I grew up Christian, um, but especially when I was in the military, I just it was kind of an afterthought. Um, but then the older I got, especially having kids, um, I really leaned heavily into faith. Um, married a great woman who who's heavily into faith as well, brought me back into going to church consistently. Um, and so I think faith, number one, just God has a plan for you. Um, it's your duty to be here, it's your duty to try and fulfill God's destiny. I think that's absolutely key. But something I would tell like most veterans, especially you know, former soft guys watching this, like I think a big problem that that all of us struggle with when we leave is we used to operate at such a high level. We used to have camaraderie, we used to have a sense of purpose. And when you take that away, it's challenging. I'm not telling anybody anything they don't know here. But what I would say to them is like, your country really needs you. Like the experiences that we had downrange, um, the what we just learned becoming earning our green berets and just earning our slot on a team, you know, rotation after rotation, deployment after deployment, those skills, man, like you can't really define exactly what they are, but it is so valuable to have that critical thinking, to have that tenacity, uh, to have that just overall, I would say grit and situational awareness. Like our nation needs it at basically every level, whether it's getting involved in politics, whether that's being involved in your local community, like the skills you have that you feel like probably don't apply. Because I've gone through this before. I'm like, what the heck do I like what how do I translate being like an SF guy into like the real world? It seems like the most, it seems like the the two opposite ends of the spectrum. However, yeah, like the skills are really needed. So I would just say like the the mission really, really continues. And especially if you want to continue to serve in the government, as frustrating as the government can be, which a lot of us were glad to be out of the army when we left. But if we don't step up, we don't get involved, we're gonna continue to have, I hate to you know, just to put anybody down, but we're gonna get have a lot of people who didn't have the courage to come fight when the fighting was hard running our government. So I don't think our generation of warriors, I don't think we have the luxury of being able to sit back and be like, hey, it's somebody else's turn. Like our mission continues because if if we don't step up, we are gonna have a bunch of people who've never heard a shot fired in anger running our country. And that should terrify everybody.

SPEAKER_01 56:28

Absolutely. Man, I'm so glad you brought that up. Um, the faith piece. Like, guys, I always say it mind, body, and spirit. You don't have to do it today. You don't have to do it tomorrow. But at some point, be willing to ask the questions. Be willing to, and if you're already diving into it, I'm proud of you. Uh, we don't get through this journey on our own. We need each other, but we also need God. We need to be plugged into that faith domain. And I know it's uncomfortable. I know everybody has their own path. Uh I like like Joe, I came back to Catholicism because of my wife. Because I married somebody that uh was strong in her faith. And and that saved me. That that's been one of the key things that has replenished me and constantly been something I can lean on now. Because I will tell you, trying to trying to go through life, you're gonna get rocked. You're gonna get hit in the face, you're gonna get hit in the mouth, you're gonna get knocked down. And when everything else fails, you can go to the Bible, you can go to your rosary and get that, get that little bit of faith back in you and get you to step up, get back to the plate and say, all right, I'm ready for it. We need you guys. Um, not just in your local community, but being willing to run for office, being willing to be a leader. And and I know it sounds scary, and I know a lot of you saw the way Joe was, you know, vilified as he went through this. But if we can take anything from that, is you can stand up, you can be a person of your moral character, hold your head up high and walk out of any position that doesn't serve you, and be willing to say, not for me. I'm gonna do what's right for me and I'm gonna move on. Joe, thank you so much for what you've done. Thank you for continuing to lead from the front, brother. And um, man, it's just an honor to have you back here. Before I let you go, though, what's next for you right now? What does your next couple weeks look like? What are some things that keep you hopeful? How are you feeling the time now that you're back home?

SPEAKER_02 58:30

Well, uh, luckily my kids still like me. It was an intense year. So they didn't see a lot of me. So I'm spending time with the kids trying to do some some summer vacations and stuff. Uh kids are in Cub Scouts, but uh really I'm I'm trying to right now hope hope that this MOU we have with Iran holds. So I am doing a lot of media to talk about like why this is a good thing. Um so I'm still active very much in the political scene. I might be doing, it hasn't been confirmed yet, but might be doing a debate hosted by the New York Times up in New York about the Iran war specifically. So still very active in this space, might hit the hit the the um hit the different parts of the country kind of on a group speaking thing about the war. Um that we're still hashing out the details that might happen like later on this fall. Um but yeah, a lot a lot more to come. So if you're interested in in staying active in politics, I encourage you to do so. 2028 in the lead up to 2028, these issues are

What’s Next And How To Follow

SPEAKER_02 59:20

going to be on the forefront.

SPEAKER_01 59:21

Awesome. And if guys want to follow you or reach out, where can they go?

SPEAKER_02 59:25

Uh, just my social media, Instagram, and uh and Twitter. It's just Joe Kent16JAN19.

SPEAKER_01 59:32

Heck yeah. There you have it, folks. Straight from Joe's mouth to your ears. Do me a favor, pause the episode, go to the episode description, click those links, support Joe, give him a follow, give him a share, give him a like, and uh please share this episode with your friends, with your family members, even if they're on opposite sides of the political spectrum, because the reality is everyone's an American here. Uh, whether you like it or not, you gotta be able to break, break bread with them, close the divide, close the gap. And uh if you're out there in the trenches in political office, thank you for what you're doing. But remember, get up and put America first. Be willing to walk away if something doesn't look right, because that's that's part of the job, whether you believe it or not. Being willing to stand up for what's right, no matter what. Joe, again, thank you for being here and for everybody tuning in. Thank you as well. And we'll see y'all next time. Till then, take care.