Host 1:09

Welcome everybody back to another episode of the Vanguard Wall. This one is gonna be different for us. And I'm I was telling you last night at dinner I'm I'm excited. Uh, you know, we've we have really stayed away from politics, uh, you know, rightfully so, for all the reasons you and I have discussed kind of off camera. Um, but you know, with your very unique experience uh in the Air Force, um which we're gonna get to talk about heavily, um, and all the conversations you and I had leading up to this, I uh I thought that this was you were you were the guy to start, you know, for us to have some sort of a political uh conversation. Um good, bad, or indifferent. You're you're very well spoken. And one of the things I really enjoyed as we were preparing for this is you didn't shy away from anything. And I think that's cool. And I think it's important. Uh, and I think it'll be great for our audience to hear, you know, man, us talk about a whole host of different things surrounding politics and your personal views and opinions, shaped by, you know, obviously um your own personal morals and values, but also your service to this country.

Alex Pelbath 2:10

So it's gonna be Yeah, let's get after it, man.

Host 2:12

Well, let's do it. Uh before we start, I'm gonna introduce our guest today, uh Alex Pelbath, uh Colonel Alex Pelbath. Just want to give a shout out to Dave Romero for linking us up. Dave, Dave. Um August 30th, 2021, Kabul, Afghanistan. The Biden administration had just presided over the most catastrophic military withdrawal in modern American history. The world is watching, Americans are stranded, and somewhere on that runway, one man is making sure the last plane out gets off the ground safely. That man is our guest today, Colonel Alex Pelbath, didn't grow up with a silver spoon. He grew up with a blind mother, a difficult home, and a burning belief that in America, if you work for it, you can earn it. So he did. He walked onto that mat as a D-1 wrestler at the United States Air Force Academy. He earned his wings, he logged over 4,000 hours of flight time, more than 1,000 of them in combat. He commanded the only C-17 special operations unit in the entire world. 185 warriors and a one-hour alert, ready to respond to any crisis on the planet 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. He sat inside the Pentagon, shaping two national defense budgets. He was hand-selected to advise the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on global threats. He holds an MBA in strategic leadership. And then came Kabul. While politicians failed, he led. He was the air mission commander for the largest airlift evacuation in the history of the world. And when every other plane was gone, he was the last one off the ground. For that, he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Sully Stolenberger Award for Courage. Off the battlefield, he's a devoted follower of Jesus Christ, married to his best friend for over 22 years, father of two incredible kids, a board member of the Fellowship of Christian athletes, and a man who lives by one verse. Luke 12, 48, to whom much is given, much is required. He's done being a bystander. The battlefield has shifted to Washington, D.C., and Colonel Alex Pelbath is running for Congress in South Carolina's first congressional district to stand with President Trump, secure the border, stop the fentanyl crisis, end the weaponization of government, and rebuild the military that wins. He's not going to Washington to blend in. He's going to lead. Ladies and gentlemen, Colonel Alex Pelbath.

Alex Pelbath 4:23

Thank you, man. I appreciate that.

Host 4:24

I always love reading those, man. It's all the stuff that's great. Thanks for being here. Before we dive into your kind of military career and your in this the campaign stuff, we'll talk about it on the backside. I want to start kind of with your um your family's American history. You got a very unique story. I thought it was very, very cool when we were podcast prepping. Can you kind of tell us about your grandparents who escaped from Hungary?

Alex Pelbath 4:45

Yeah, yeah. Pelbat's a Hungarian name. So my my dad's 100% Hungarian. My grandparents um from Budapest, Hungary. And in 1956, sort of started the family's journey to America. So it was going on at the time. This is Iron Curtain, you know, USSR. Um Hungary is a is behind the Iron Curtain. It's a communist country, but obviously not all the people, you know, were happy under communism. Um and in 1956, it's known as the Hungarian Revolution. So for a two-week period, it was mostly young people, early 20s, college-age kids, finally pushed back on uh the Soviet Union and and for two weeks it pushed the Soviet Union sort of out of the city of Budapest. And and really what it really was, look, is it it just it took two weeks for the Russians to bring the tanks in and quell the rebellion. That's really what it was. That's it, it wasn't um an actual great moment of freedom. It just that's how long it took. It was actually tragic. A lot a ton of Hungarians, Hungarian freedom fighters, what they're called. A lot of them died uh in the fight. But my grandparents, I think my grandfather was 21 at the time. He grabbed um my grandma and the two of them walked. They fled Hungary with a lot of Hungarians, walked from Budapest to Austria. It's about took them about two weeks to get there. This is moving in the middle of the night, hiding during the day, dodging minefields. My grandfather told us a story of actually they got caught one time and uh they had a baby. My my uncle was with them, and my grandfather just the the soldier who caught him was about the same age. They look alike, they speak the same language, and he just pleaded with them with his soldier. Look at my family, please let us go. And the and the Russian soldier let him go. And so they got to Austria, lived in a in a camp there. Um, it took about a year for the for the process to get moving, and then there's a military operation that the United States did called Operation Safehaven, where my grandparents were flown from Austria to America, getting here in 1957. Um, I have the I was able to find the passenger manifest from 1957 from that operation. And it is likely that they came over uh coincidentally on an airplane from Charleston Air Force Base in an evacuation operation, very similar to what I did at the end of my career, bringing bringing folks back home. So amazing. They got here in 57, and then that started the uh the Pellbath journey right there.

Host 7:13

There's a book called The Bridge at Andau, uh, kind of about some of this. What was the significance of that bridge?

Alex Pelbath 7:19

It's a tiny little footbridge. So the bridge at Andau, uh written by somebody who um had a similar story to mine, um, understood what all the families are going there, so really in-depth look at it. And it's a tiny little footbridge that that went over a stream. That stream was the border between Hungary and Austria. So you cross the bridge at Andau. You go from communism to freedom across that bridge. So that's what my grandparents did. Amazing book.

Host 7:45

I think your dad was born in in the camp in Austria, right?

Alex Pelbath 7:50

My dad was conceived. So my dad's born in 1957. My grandparents were somewhere on the trek. Yeah. You know, not in not in Hungary anymore, not yet in America. Uh, my dad was born not long after they got to America. So he was he was conceived somewhere somewhere along the trail there uh on their trek to freedom.

Host 8:09

They arrived in DC and then I I think they I think you told me they they were sent to California and um you know they started very humbly.

Alex Pelbath 8:17

Yeah, so the way it worked is you know, you show up um probably similar to like the way Ellis Island worked with immigrants was you know, you go see the immigration officer and and uh you get assigned a job. They don't speak any English at all. None. He was stocking shelves at Safeway, if you if people remember what that that store was, that grocery store chain. Um that was the job that he was given. And so yeah, the family got moved. Um, and that's that's how they started. So my dad grew up uh English is a second language, speaking Hungarian, kind of learning it, him and his his two brothers. So that was the my grandparents, my dad, his two brothers was the start of the Pelbath family in America.

Host 8:54

Did uh were your grandparents still alive when you were uh Yeah.

Alex Pelbath 8:57

My my grandfather My grandmother just passed a couple years ago, my grandfather about five years ago, something like that, maybe longer.

Host 9:03

What kind of stories did you hear growing up, if you remember any?

Alex Pelbath 9:05

Yeah, the the stories of of um you know, super thick Hungarian accent, my gr my both of my grandparents. Um my grandfather's telling stories of of that, of being behind the iron curtain, what it was like, and and being and knowing some of the freedom fighters that he looked up to, you know, when he was a little bit younger, um telling the stories of of people being you know getting the knock in the middle of the night. We all hear about that, we've all heard those stories, but the the terrible knock in the middle of the night, and you knew what it meant. And it was being somebody a Hungarian freedom fighter being captured, drugged out of their house, and executed in the middle of the street. The the the terrorizing sound of a knock in the middle of the night. And so kind of growing up, him growing up in that environment, and then which is obviously part of what um when he had the opportunity to flee, why he did. I mean, they left everything, right? The clothes on their backs, that's it. Nothing. No money, no left of the family, left the rest of the family behind, that's it. So they went back one time to Hungary to visit family and almost didn't get back out. This was in the 80s, and so then after that, they never risked it again.

Host 10:07

Yeah, I asked that because I I think that conversation, especially as we talk about communism and and and freedoms, is going to be important on the backside of this uh this podcast. Tell us a little bit about your upbringing, kind of where you grew up, what were you into, what life was like for Alex.

Alex Pelbath 10:19

Yeah, I uh you know, 80s kid growing up. Um, some of us remember exactly what that was like. Uh, you know, home by by the time the street lights come on, that kind of thing. Um, so it's good. It was good where I grew up. It it wasn't you know with my dad being the son of immigrants, he was a uh very blue-collar, you work construction. It wasn't always the easiest times economically. And my mom, who's an amazing woman, she's blind. She has a disease disease called macular degeneration, um, which is typically found in in older people, actually, but another eye disease called um retinitis pigmentosa. So those two things together, she started losing her eyesight when she was a kid. Uh, as the name sounds, it's degenerative. And so by the time I I came around, my mom was fully blind. She was she was always fully blind as a young adult as well. She never had a driver's license. But by the time we came around, my mom's my mom's blind, and um, my dad working full-time in construction in the 80s, and they had four kids, all four of us born within five years, so real close, and all very young. Uh, my parents got married at 19, and by the time they were 25 had four kids. Um, so it was great growing, you know, growing up with the siblings and sort of a tight family was not great because like it was a challenging time. Economically, it was a challenging time. My mom, my mom made it easy for us. I don't know how she did it. How how being a young blind woman in the 80s with four kids. I mean, I don't know how she did it. It's amazing.

Host 11:45

I have a hard time even processing that, like as a father and how much I lean on my wife. Um, yeah. Well what what was what was it like? I mean, I guess I'm more interested in like in the day-to-day, not about you know what she had to suffer, but how she overcame that because that that's tremendous.

Alex Pelbath 12:01

Yeah, it was. I I think uh, you know, they say she had great hearing. They say that all the time, right? My mom did you couldn't get anything past her. She heard everything. Your other senses get better. That is absolutely true of my mother. I mean, people used to like question if she was blind because she was so effective at getting around and and knowing things, you know. The the there are some things that it sounds like it's a joke, but you can't don't move the furniture around. You know, that's one of the things. Like I so many memories of my poor mom banging into like tables because it's not where she she remembered it was, you know, and she's walking through the house. I think her shins took a beating, literally for her entire probably still does, as a matter of fact. Um, yeah, she was great, and and she was such, she is such a a great person that you know we had to rely on. We I played all the sports. I still played little league, I still played football, pop warner football growing up. Those two sports uh was how it was. Um, and so it was we took a lot of public transportation. I took a lot of buses, took a lot of tax, taking taxi cabs to really practice, to to little league practice, you know. Um, or hopefully relying a lot on friends and neighbors to help us out with that. And they and they did, you know. My mom was a was uh is a great person, and so we we got a lot of help from our neighbors.

Host 13:10

Did you know that like that was different? I mean, you're taking a taxi cab to practices. I mean, did you process that or is it just like everyday life for you?

Alex Pelbath 13:17

No, it was it was always a little bit embarrassing. Yeah, it is like showing up to same thing with school. I'm I took we had to take taxicab to school sometimes if if just things didn't work out, you know. First of all, it's it's uh yeah, I my my parents didn't want us to miss out on anything because of anything, and so we did have the opportunity to um we never missed sports, you know, because of my mom's handicap. Never it never affected me. She did whatever it took. So as a dumb kid, I I actually'm probably a little ashamed to say that it was like embarrassing. It should have I should have looked at that as like how amazing is this that I'm taking a taxicab to practice or school because my my mom's not gonna let me miss anything. You know, as a little kid, you don't, you're just you're the only one showing up in a yellow cab. That's uh you're a little different.

Host 14:04

But now as you're older, I mean you you have the opportunity to reflect, and that's that's pretty cool, right? Like your mom didn't let something, you know, that sucked define like not only you as kids, but her ability and what she was willing to do and on tape. I think that's pretty a powerful statement. What were you into, uh, you know, middle school, high school?

Alex Pelbath 14:22

Yeah, it was um we started we our family started having some challenges. It it just looked it was a hard time. I I don't really need to get into like the details of it all, but it was by the time I got to high school, um, you know, what what was impactful later in my life is the movie Top Gun. Okay, this is I grew up in the town where Top Gun was filmed, you know, so we knew all the houses, we knew all the spots where the where the great scenes were. And so some kids might grow up playing G.I. Joe. We grew up playing Jets. And so we we that was always in the back of my mind. And then when I got into high school, it I would say became pretty independent person. I mean, there was no um, you're not gonna have a car. My sister and I shared a car um growing up. That was tough. It was like the family station. I can't imagine the family station wagon. It was uh it was not the best. We like parked off campus. We we didn't we didn't like the idea of driving that the white Oldsmobile station wagon. I had a 78 Volvo dude box. Yeah. And so I bought my first car, you know, I got a job, bought my first car, um, paid for with my own money, and then uh, and then I then I, you know, I was now taking myself to sports in high school, which was that's what I did to get out of the challenging situations in the home that we were having. Um we all kind of went our separate ways. Uh unfortunately, the four kids were were close, but at the time we were all sort of doing our own thing. I I spent as little time at home as I possibly could. So for me that meant throwing myself into sports. Um and then when I became a junior in high school, it was sports and church. I got saved when I was a junior in high school, and that I think those two things together, um there's a lot of paths you could go at that age. You know, you could there's there's a lot of openings that are that are not good for 16-year-old kids. I was very blessed that that Jesus found me when I was 16, 17 years old, and uh and I had sports and I threw myself into that. And that's obviously, you know, I got into got into college on a wrestling scholarship. So it was very, very beneficial that we went down that, that I went down that path. That God probably drug me along that path instead of what could have happened.

Host 16:27

Yeah, I'm still very close with my youth pastors from high school, which is hilarious. Uh yeah, that uh that that also that also impacted me. What um how did the Air Force Academy come on your radar or or or what was that whole thing? I you you were wrestling and obviously you were pretty good at it.

Alex Pelbath 16:43

Yeah, yeah. I in high school I played baseball, I played football, and I wrestled. And I I realized after like my junior year, look, wrestling's not it's not the funnest sport in the world, compared, especially compared to baseball and football, which are super fun. Um especially with the weight cuts, dude. Yeah, yeah. Wrestling's the toughest. Uh fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, that was the sport that I was best at. So my junior year, I quit all the other sports and I just threw myself into wrestling. As a matter of fact, I never from my junior year wrestling season until I graduated high school, I never got off the mat. I started doing all the off-season programs, off-season wrestling, going to tournaments. There's a lot of different styles of wrestling. You know, folk style is what high school and collegiate is called. That's the main focus. But in the off-season, it's freestyle wrestling, which is the Olympic style of wrestling, and just there's just opportunities everywhere, just like all sports to do that. And so um, I had, you know, going back to when I was 10 years old or whatever, seeing Top Gun, um, thinking about how cool it would be to be a pilot. But it wasn't, it wasn't I was the first person in my family ever to go to college. So going to college wasn't necessarily like I wanted to, so my friends went to college, but it wasn't a thing that my family did. It wasn't um you know, I didn't go to high school growing up with like these are the colleges I want to go to. It was a little bit, I think, happenstance. I think I I mentioned or heard about the academy somehow. I wish I remembered to this. I don't remember. I wish I remembered how that seed first got planted. But what I do know for sure is there's no way I was gonna get in to the academy if it wasn't for wrestling. So my high school wrestling coach started doing recruiting for me, sending tapes, contacting coaches, just you know, as they would do. And one of them was the Air Force Academy.

Host 18:25

Were you close with your with your coach?

Alex Pelbath 18:27

Yeah, I still am. My my high school wrestling coach, um Mark Cargis. Coach Cargis. I I hope I hope you get actually, Mark, I'm gonna tell you. Coach, I'll I'll tell you about this so that you can go watch it. But he's an incredible guy. Um yeah, and he he turned our wrestling program. We our wrestling program was awful. It was awful. We had we had like not won a dual match, which is like winning a game in a regular sport, in like eight years or something like that. We were terrible. We were the doormats of anything of of our league. And then he came around, and I think two things came together. Uh my senior class of wrestling, we just said we had a lot of talent, and we had a coach who can match that together, and we went from being terrible to being very good. And my senior year, as a matter of fact, we finished seventh in the state of California out of 1200 schools. Amazing. One of the best finishes in the history of my high school was awesome. And a lot was was because of him. And so, yeah, he did a great job. Um I was a late bloomer in wrestling. So I I wasn't if I remember right, like my freshman year, I wasn't on varsity. My sophomore year, I had a losing record. My junior year, I was right around 500. And then my senior year, I think my record was 54 and 4. So a huge change. But but that was that's late in the recruiting season. You know, if you're not popping on these schools' radars um already, it's challenging. And so I uh I was I only got recruited by three schools, um, and one was a complete accident. So it was UC Davis, Naval Academy, that was the accident, and Air Force Academy.

Host 20:03

When you say accident, what do you mean?

Alex Pelbath 20:05

Uh I after the California State Wrestling Championships, uh, I went to a nationals. I went to Nationals in Kansas City, Missouri. And I won. I won nationals, so national champ, which is that's cool to say. Yeah. National champ in wrestling. Um from like nobody, nobody's recruiting me at all to national champ. And I come off the mat after one of my matches, and there's a guy sitting in the stands with my parents. It turns out he's the coach from Naval Academy. And I he meets my parents, I meet him, and we're we're doing the recruiting with Air Force. This is a Saturday. And that was before the finals, too. And so I meet this guy, then I then I go in and he calls me on Monday and says, You're in, you're coming to Naval Academy. And I said, Well, I'm being recruited by Air Force too. Um can I get back to you? And so I called the Air Force coach. I said, Hey coach, I just talked to the Navy coach, he wants me to come there. And Air Force had not given me the yes at this point, right? It's recruiting. Soon as I said, Navy wants me. No, no, no, you're you're in, you're coming here. Bam. So I signed with Air Force like the very next day after that. So but it was very this is think about this. This is March of my senior year of high school. Is that that's how late?

Host 21:18

Is that normal? Normally does that happen way sooner. I wasn't recruited for anything.

Alex Pelbath 21:21

So in in most sports, you start getting recruited your junior year. It's early, it's way early because they they lose, you know, every college only has so many blue chip athlete spots to give out. So I was one of the academies, if not the latest recruit, one of the latest recruits that year. And I do, I really think it was because, you know, the obviously there's a rivalry between Army, Navy, and Air Force. So having Navy come after me was um was I think the what clinched me going to Air Force. And I'll tell you this two things. One, this is this is how dumb I was as a kid. Top Gun is a Navy movie. I was thinking about that as you said that. It's a Navy movie, but I wanted to go to I'm I didn't realize. I had no idea that it was the same. And and I actually met a lot of people like me at the academy. We always joke that Top Gun is the greatest Air Force recruiting movie of all time, even though it's a Navy movie. That's hilarious. Yeah.

Host 22:11

So uh one of the things you told me I thought was interesting is you said the American dream is not something for nothing. You get out of this country, what you put into this country. Where does that belief come from? And like what's the philosophy behind that?

Alex Pelbath 22:22

Yeah, just growing up with the challenges we had that you know, that what we just talked about. It was um uh I look back and this wasn't a conscious thought, but you know, I kind of ran away from home and joined the military. One of those, one of those stories. Like, get out of this environment on my own, go join the military. And if it wasn't for that, you know, back to nobody in my family had ever gone to college, I was the first person to go to college with the last name Pellbath, and the first person to graduate college with the last name Pellbath. And so coming from you know, the upbringing we had, which was which was challenging in a lot of ways, To this life that my family and I get to live now because we chose to serve, because I went into the military. Like I do feel like we achieve the American dream. You're not going to get wealthy in the military, but I don't think that's what I think that's not the American dream to me is become rich for nothing. The American dream is if you work hard, you make a life for yourself. And that's what we did. 22 years in the military, and now both of my kids are in college, and I have my own amazing family and we have our own amazing experiences. And America to us has been amazing, incredible. For the entire Pellbath family, the fact that we got to come here as refugees escaping communism to now we're in the fourth generation of Pellbaths and the opportunities that we all have. But it's if I hadn't gone and served in the military, I don't know where I would be. I don't know where my family would be. I don't know, I don't know what we got. So we, you know, being in the military is not an easy life.

Host 23:55

I I still think it's somewhat of a calling, although I I don't think that's where my head was when I joined. But um you've been able to craft a great life for your family. I mean, as you just explained, because of the military, you earned it. How does your family's immigration story inform your views on kind of legal immigration today?

Alex Pelbath 24:10

Um It it has obviously has a very deep, deep impact for me. So I I'm sure we'll get to later this in politics, but just in general, uh, I am very strong on the importance of having a tough immigration policy. We are a nation of immigrants. We are a nation. We were built on immigrants. We know this. I well, we I welcome that. We want that. Do it the right way. Do it the right way. My family, like look, my grandparents came here as immigrants, as refugees. They didn't have a good life. They didn't get wealthy, they didn't live this rich life just because they came to America. My they worked. They worked for it. Everybody in my family then worked for it. We're in the third generation of Pellbass in America, and we're just now getting to a to a point where I feel like we have the opportunity to where we live a comfortable life, I would say. We're not just like grinding it out. But I think there's this misunderstanding that if you come to America, you just get to be rich or get rich. And young people in America have that too. I think that's a problem, too. This I think why, why socialism is suddenly popular again, is everybody just expects to have something. Either it's wealth or ha they expect to like live a comfortable life. No, you have to part of America is you have to work your ass off for it. And so we, you, you get out of this country what you put into this country. That's what I believe the American dream is. And so we I don't like the idea of people coming here without having to work for it, coming here illegally, not going through the right process. We still have a huge line of people trying to do it legally. Why should somebody get to cut the line over these people who are trying to do it right? Number one. Number two, I think if you have to earn it, if you have to go through the process that's challenging, you have an appreciation for what this country is. If you're fleeing something that's worse than here, then you should come here and be the biggest patriot ever. How can you come to our country? You know, you look at these, you look at what's going on with the Somalis in Minnesota. They want to bring that here. Why did you come here if you don't think this is better? If you don't assimilate, which is, I think, super important for immigrants, you have to come here and assimilate. Don't bring your culture to ours. You came here because you wanted our culture. So, not that you can't keep, you know, not talking about you have to change your religion or change the way you leave, but you certainly have to abide by our laws and and our societal standards if you're going to come here. So yeah, that absolutely, my family's background absolutely has an impact on what I believe for immigration. Just come here and do it right, man. Just come here, work your ass off. Be an American, become an American.

Host 26:45

Yeah, we've talked about this on the podcast before. When did we lose sight of the struggle? The struggle, you know, uh for you and I, especially for our upbringing, to find who we are and what we became later on in life. Um, and I still go through struggles, right? Like this idea that, you know, to your point, right, that we should come here and never have to struggle, that people are coming here like the struggle, what makes you, you know, like when we were always meant to struggle, you know, less than a couple hundred years ago. I mean, you spent the day trying to figure out what you're gonna eat, building stuff around your house, you know, working hard. Yeah. And at some point we lost that. Now, like we don't have to struggle. The biggest struggle is, you know, picking out what food you want at the grocery store.

Alex Pelbath 27:21

That's right. And so I and every and it seems like people want something for nothing. They just like expect I'm gonna graduate high school and I'm gonna have all these. I just get to buy a house. I just get to to live the life I want to live without necessarily working for it. And that's essentially what socialism is, right? Government's gonna pay for me, you're gonna pay for me.

Host 27:39

Yeah. Socialism and social media. Yeah, it's a whole nother conversation. Uh, kind of going back to um to you, you know, kind of getting into the Air Force. Um, was that you know, you going to the Air Force Academy? Was it just you you knew you wanted to join the military, or that opportunity presented itself and it kind of aligned with, you know, you wanting to be a pilot, or what was that decision process?

Alex Pelbath 28:01

Yeah, kind of kind of all those things. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had no idea. I had no idea what the military was really like. Um, I did, you know, because of my family's history, I did grow up, grow up with a with a sense of patriotism. They the the idea of being in the military like the military was a great thing to aspire to. And so I had that. Um my my family had that, that we, you know, we loved America um as only people, you know. I think my grandparents, my parents instilled that in us. Love America like only people who know what the other side actually feels like, shouldn't love America. And so that was part of it. And and then, yeah, being a pilot sounded cool. I I saw Top Gun.

Host 28:43

Like that looks really cool. Even all these years later, that's still a great movie.

Alex Pelbath 28:47

My gosh, come on. Yeah, uh, I wanted to play volleyball on the beach with my dog tags, right?

Host 28:52

Didn't you tell me too that like uh the house, I think the one that Kelly McGillis can do?

Alex Pelbath 28:55

Kelly McGill's house is there. This is on the beach where we grew up. It's like it's it's like a monument now. There's a sign out front of it. So, and it's just really a the regular beach. There's nothing, you know, just the beach that everybody goes to. Yeah. We're uh Kelly McGillis' house in Top Gun, where Tom Cruise went over there, you know, that that's there. So everybody knows where it is, the the Top Gun house. Um, yeah, so so I had this idea of yeah, being in the military would be cool, being a pilot would be cool, and and so then hey, going to the Air Force Academy, that sounds pretty cool and prestigious. And and how do we make this happen? And so I get in on the wrestling scholarship, I show up, fly out there.

Host 29:33

Um Did you get a chance to visit beforehand?

Alex Pelbath 29:35

No, no, I was so late in the recruiting process I didn't even get a recruiting visit. So it's probably good. It might have scared me away. Nobody in my family had ever been in the military either. So not only not going to college, but nobody certainly I mean, we're not I mean, my family's history doesn't, it only goes back a couple generations, so it's not that's not that surprising. But yeah, so I show up for basic training. And you the first thing you do at the Air Force Academy is you go to this, you know, you do like the in-processing, paperwork and whatever, drop off like your suitcase, and and then it's and it's super nice, and it's all these nice old ladies who they know they know what's about to happen to me, 18-year-old me. And and there's cookies, and they're they're giving you hugs, and they're so proud of you that you're there, these nice old ladies. And it's great. And then you get on the bus to start basic training, and the door of the bus closes, and a guy jumps up and starts screaming his head off at everybody, right? And then it starts in that instant, like the the contrast from what what happened to this guy yelling at me. And I remember thinking, like, what is happening right now? I don't know what's happening right now. I'm getting yelled at, I don't know why I'm getting yelled at. And and that started it. It shocked me, it scared the crap out of me. And so I think I was probably one of the best basic cadets ever. So I was so scared. Just do whatever they say all the time. Um, and then I became like one of the worst actual Air Force Academy cadets ever. After I started figuring some things out, you know.

Host 31:01

What uh I don't know, I mean, I don't know a lot about the Air Force to begin with, but especially um, I'm not super familiar with like the Air Force Academy. Um, you mentioned you guys go to basic training. Is that like the first part of the Air Force Academy? Like you go to a basic training style.

Alex Pelbath 31:14

Six weeks, six weeks of basic training where they're they're turning 18-year-old kids, just like anywhere else in the military. It's uh it's three weeks of learning how to march, learning how to make your bed, learning how to do your uniform, right? They the seven basic responses is what they give us at the Air Force Academy is you learn these right away. The only thing you're allowed to save when you're a basic, I'm not gonna remember them all, but it's yes, sir, no, sir, sir, I do not know, sir, sir, I do not understand, sir, mask a question. There's one other, and then it's and no excuse, sir. The answer to every why question is no excuse. No excuse, sir, no excuse, ma'am. Why, why do you look like crap? Why does your uniform look like crap today? No excuse, sir. You know, whatever. That's it. So you get yelled at for three weeks. And then the second three weeks is you go out in the field, you put on, you know, back then it was the camouflage uniform, and you're living in a tent and you're doing the field stuff, you know.

Host 32:06

What is the air for like what just regular basic training, like shoot, move, communicate stuff? Because you know, I never really think about that when it comes to the Air Force, but I'm sure it's Yeah, a little bit of that.

Alex Pelbath 32:14

Yeah. Yeah. It's that that's like the first part is like the discipline, and you're learning the rules of being in the military, right? Chain of command and things like that. Um, because you do have to teach H and Drill kids this. Like you none of us know. It's true of uh very basic training. And then the second three weeks is like now, now I'd say like you're you're maybe getting more into like the military aspect of of what it is. You're still out there, the discipline is still there, but you're literally sleeping bag, caught, tent, out in the woods. Um, yeah, weapon M16, the rubber ducky, right? The fake M16 that you're carrying around back then. Yeah, and you're learning that kind of stuff.

Host 32:48

So go ahead and lose it just once.

Alex Pelbath 32:50

That's right.

Host 32:51

That's a self-correcting number. Just put it on the ground. Yeah. Um, were you guys living initially in like squad bays, or did you guys start off in dorm rooms?

Alex Pelbath 32:58

Or yeah, dorm rooms at the academy, the actual dorm rooms of the Air Force. Because that is a college, also, right? It's such a unique place up there in Collar Springs. It's a college campus. It's a gorgeous. Like if you could separate yourself from the fact that you're getting yelled at in the military, it's a gorgeous college campus.

Host 33:12

We visited there once and it is it is remarkably demeanful.

Alex Pelbath 33:15

It's enormous. This, you know, the sports facilities are so great. Top of the line, everything. Um so yeah, the first three weeks you're living in the norms, right? You're getting your room inspected, right? Hospital corners on the bed, all that kind of stuff, you know. All the kind of stuff that goes into I would say normal basic training stuff, you know. If if when the cadre is dissatisfied with you, they tear your room apart and now you gotta like build it all back together. All that's all the same stuff that I think every service goes through at every level that you go through, um, offshore or enlisted.

Host 33:45

But after basic training, does that kind of level off? And no. No.

Alex Pelbath 33:50

This is the one difference of being at any of the academies, is Army, Navy, and West Point. Is no, your entire freshman year is basic training. So you don't you don't get freedom. You are still getting your room inspected all the time. There's mandatory formation all the time. You're at the Air Force Academy, you are you have to run between classes, you are not allowed to take angles. So the Air Force Academy on the campus is a is a huge terrazzo. You know, the buildings are are connected by just imagine a huge quad surrounded by buildings. Well, the the shortest distance from my dorm to my classroom may be that way, but you're not allowed to take angled lines. You have to go that way and that way. You have to like run on these strips all the time. Meanwhile, people are yelling at you. You gotta greet everybody. It's just, I'm not kidding, it's a year of freaking basic training, and it sucked. I think it's a miracle that I graduated. I had a really, really hard time after I got through basic training. Um, I think because I was a good kid in high school and I had got good grades.

Host 34:53

You're like, why are you yelling at me? Exactly.

Alex Pelbath 34:56

That's exactly what it was, and I kind of rebelled. And um I am uh, you know, if you get in trouble, you get demerits, and you have to march tours if you get in enough trouble, right? It's this escalating um punishment. Why don't you just get demerits? You can get confined to your room, meaning like you can't go out on the weekend, or you can have to march tours. And and marching tours would literally be for a weekend you put your full service dress on, you grab your M16 rubber ducky, and you have to go march back and forth one hour on, one hour off. All day Saturday, all day Sunday. So if you get like 10 tours, I don't remember exactly what it was now, but that's what you'd have to do. And so I did I all from stupid things that I did. Nothing really bad. I didn't get any any alcohol trouble, no lying trouble, no cheating, that kind of stuff, nothing. Just being just being a dumbass all the time. Just for two years. Um to the point where I was if you march 100 tours, 100 demerits, we call you a centurion. I was a double centurion. It was horrible.

Host 36:03

I was like, what kind of demerits? Like just uniform gigs, like man, like not getting my hair cut.

Alex Pelbath 36:09

Or being late or or ditching like a mandatory. Here's one. This is how dumb I was. I just decide like I think every day or every other day you have like a military hour, and I just didn't want to go. I don't want to go. Me and a buddy, we decided not to go. So we hid in our room with the door closed, and everybody's gone, you shouldn't get caught. But we're so dumb, we're in there like laughing and joking. We're like making noise. And sure enough, like an officer walked by, heard us laughing, knock on the door. What are you doing in here? Like, why aren't you at formation? So things like that. Bam! Immediately, like 30. I think that was 30. 30, 32, like right there, or something like that. So, and those things add up, you know. Um, I did some other dumb stuff that's maybe a little bit worse, but but I never did anything that that got me kicked out, thankfully.

Host 36:57

Um was there other people in the same boat as you? I mean, I'm sure that's uh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Do you have the same roommate the whole time you're there?

Alex Pelbath 37:05

Or no, no. You're assigned roommates, your freshman year. I think you you get to pick your roommate sophomore year and then same junior and senior. I had the same roommate, junior, and senior year. Um, good buddy of mine. So after that, but otherwise, no.

Host 37:18

What was the actual like sports wrestling program like?

Alex Pelbath 37:21

Yeah, it was the only that was the thing that saved me, I think. Uh, I think I would have had I don't know if I how if I would have made it if I didn't have sports to throw myself into. So it's class all morning. The morning formation is like at seven o'clock in the morning, I think, march to breakfast, and then school starts, and school's really challenging. If you go to the Air Force Academy, you graduate with a bachelor of science degree. Even your major's English, you get a BS degree. It takes so much math and science and engineering classes. Like everybody takes aero engineering, everybody. Um, everybody takes chemistry, like no matter what. Like chemistry is the one. Everybody takes computer science.

Host 37:52

You know, I guess I've never understood this. Do you get to pick your major at the military academies?

Alex Pelbath 37:56

Yeah, you do. Yeah, just like any other college or something in your university, you get to pick your major based on what the school offers. Yeah. So I started as a civil engineering major. That was too hard. I switched late. I graduated with a social science major, which I actually loved. And I actually feel like it it pays off now. Social science is um, if I could describe it, it's like uh behavior. Why do people do the things that they do? And my favorite classes in social science were the economics classes and applying economic theory to human behavior, what motivates people to do the things they do, what incentivizes human behavior. Loved it. It was great. But not very technical, not very flying airplanes thing. And then of course I became a pilot and never used my major like ever. Um, but yeah, so so it's uh class all day, and then by two o'clock, you're down if you're whatever your sport is, you're down at the athletic facilities and you're either in the weight room or you're going to practice and you're there from two to seven, you know, every day. So which which is for for college sports, not enough. It's not enough time. We have a significant disadvantage compared to all the other D1 sports, where I mean, you hear about all these other colleges. If you're there to, if you're there to play football, that's what you do. You do school on the side, like when it's convenient for your workout schedule. Not us. Every single one of us had the same routine.

Host 39:12

So five hours a day is not enough? What's it what's it like at a normal D1 school that's not a military academy?

Alex Pelbath 39:18

Yeah, if you're well, it's like two o'clock, your school's like ending. So your practice isn't starting till three or four or something like that. And then it's usually two hours of practice or whatever, two to three hours of practice everybody has. There's no time in there to to then do the extra stuff to do to do weight rooms. Like almost like during wrestling season, we never worked out in the weight room. And that would that would be nice to have, you know, a two-hour strength session followed by two hours of wrestling or a or two hours to to do technique and practice like your craft and then two hours of wrestling practice. Wrestling practice is hard. It's you know, obviously unique sport, but this is true of all the sports. I mean, you know, if you the more time you have to to commit to your sport, the better everybody's gonna be. And we just don't have that that kind of time.

Host 40:00

And I know like in the academies too, like academics, not an option, right? Like, um, is there an academic requirement? Like, what kind of grades do you have to get?

Alex Pelbath 40:08

Yeah, 2-0. You have to have a 2-0 or better to graduate and participate in sports. So it is that is a problem for people. Um, if athletes leave the school, it's usually because of that, because they can't they can't make the grades. So you can't do both.

Host 40:20

Um how did you do uh academically in in in school? 2.5. Hey man. 2.5.

Alex Pelbath 40:27

I wish I had I wish if I could go back and tell my younger self anything, it would be like, hey, dude, just make sure you get a 3.0. That actually matters a lot. Like if you're ever applying to like grad schools and stuff like that, which I found out 3.0 is the magic number. Uh 2.5 at the academy. Actually, it wasn't quite a 2.5. Wasn't quite.

Host 40:44

Um I knew I liked you for a reason, though. You're one of us. Um, and then like summers and and did you take leave and go home at all?

Alex Pelbath 40:52

Uh yeah, our summers were nine weeks, only nine weeks. And it was broken up into three three-week blocks. And two of those three-week blocks, so for six weeks, you're doing something with the academy. So it's only a three-week summer where you actually get to go home on leave for three weeks at a time. And so sophomore to junior year, the two programs that are most common, you're either doing the jump program, getting your jump wings, or you're doing the glider program, soaring, get your soar wings. Uh, and then the second three-week block is you're probably doing for me, for I think it's still this way, but for us back then it was you're going through SEER school or you're going through CST, combat survival training, not the resistance evasion portion of it, just the combat survival portion of it. So graduate or uh school gets out. I you go, I went immediately into um combat survival training, did three weeks of CST, come back, have a couple days off, went right into the jump program, which is still to this day one of the funnest things I've ever done is um are my jump wings. And what's really unique about the Academy jump program is it's all free fall. There's no static line. Your first jump of your life at the Air Force Academy is a solo free fall. Nowhere else on the planet can can you say that.

Host 42:00

We cut a short video. So we had a West Point. Uh my friend Shauna was on the podcast. Uh, he was a West Point. He did six months at the Air Force Academy because he thought he wanted to be a pilot. And he did that jump program, and they like had to push him out of the plane, and and uh, you know, he he he lands and they finally tell him, like, hey, bro, you can't do that again. So I I didn't know that. So you guys have your own. So you it's like a free fall program, but you're getting like uh military jump wings, or is it something like you wear on the uniform?

Alex Pelbath 42:26

Oh, yeah. I've wow, yeah. Same exact jump wings that everybody, anybody in across any service has. It's the same thing. It takes five jumps to earn your wings, just like anywhere else. Same way the army does it, just uh just ours gets to be the free fall. So you go through the ground school program, you know, where they're teaching you how to free fall. I mean, there are these we're the pros, right? We're pros at this. Like probably the best in the world at this, you know, arguably. Um, and so they know what they're doing. They teach you. We're not we're not dying out there every time we jump, even though your first jump is free fall. I will never forget that. That I didn't freeze on the door, but I I will never forget that moment. I was first in my stick, and we're going up in a twin otter um airplane. So you're sitting along the sidewalls, they slide open the door. I remember that. Remember sliding open the door and you hear it, and the you know, jump master is like looking out. The jump master's a cadet. Two years older than me, year or two older than me, probably. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, oh yeah. And looking out the door, they drop the streamers, like get the wins, and then all right, we're over the DC, and he the D Z and he he points to me and it's stand in the door. Those are the words you can't really hear them, it's so loud, but it's a point in a point, stand in the door. And I remember my body just going on autopilot. Like it just moved without my brain, like, you know, I think my brain would have been like, stop, what are you doing? It's crazy. And then you take a knee in the door, and then he taps you on the butt and out you go for the first time. And I don't remember anything from my first two jumps except for except for doing the count that they teach you, you know? It's a 10-second count, I think, to to pull your shoot and then landing, and it's scary. By my third jump, I had my eyes open. My fifth jump was so fun, and I I wish I could have done more and more and more and more after that. It was amazing.

Host 44:03

Are you jumping with an instructor? Is it one-on-one? Oh, really?

Alex Pelbath 44:07

Out the door by yourself. They're film back then, they were filming, they probably still do, filming from the ground, and then you watch it and they critique you, you know. And actually, you have a one-way radio, they can talk to you, you know, if if you're doing something wrong or if you have challenges, if you have a problem with your shoot, they can help coach you through it. So it's pretty effective.

Host 44:24

I got my AFF, man. My first jump was out of a uh out of a Cessna 182 that I was folded up. And so, like, you know, the instructor gets out on the wing and you're literally like, I'll never it's like to your point when you were talking about open the door, like they open the door in that little Cessna, and like the wind is super loud, and then you're like holding on, and all of a sudden you like jump off. And uh what a what an experience, man.

Alex Pelbath 44:45

It's a lot of, I'll tell you a lot of it's so fun. And a lot of athletes like at the academy. I have a lot of buddies. Actually, one of my closest buddies from uh from the wrestling team was like, that that's for me. So you have to you have to choose though. You can't you can't go into the store the four. Flying program as a cadet or the jump program and do a sport. So that he left the wrestling team and became a jump guy. He's probably got thousands of jumps now.

Host 45:07

So you only got to jump those five times and never got to jump again?

Alex Pelbath 45:10

Correct.

Host 45:11

Oh wow.

Alex Pelbath 45:11

Sad.

Host 45:12

Anything else about the like the academy as far as like, you know, how it's shaped. I mean, do they do a good job? Do you feel like I mean you went on to have some pretty significant leadership positions? Do you feel like they they really helped you to uh prepare you to lead? No.

Alex Pelbath 45:25

But that's probably my fault. It's probably my fault. The wrestling team did. Um just I would say wrestling in general to to compete at that level. Is it division one wrestling? I mean, it's as the this is as for that age, as high as it gets, right? Out. I mean, the next step up, if if you want to continue your career after college wrestling, you're you're talking Olympics, worlds, you know, nationals at that level. So the D1 level wrestling is um as tough as it gets. And I got to be team captain of our wrestling team. One of the things I'm most proud of is being a team captain. That is a lot of leadership. It's like leading your peers. And if you're gonna be a captain on any team, you're you gotta be leading by example, you gotta be the toughest, you gotta win, you gotta work harder than everybody all the time. And so I think that really that did a great job of preparing me for leadership. I think the hardest thing to do in leadership is lead your peers at every level. It is so incredibly hard to do to lead your peers. Um, and so that was that was great prep. I think the academy does a good job of of creating a curriculum that should grow leaders, but I was just too dumb and naive at the time to take that part seriously. You know, I was there to to wrestle and then hang out with my buddies, and then when I could fit it in, get my 2.5 so that I could graduate. And that just didn't leave time for anything else, you know, after that. So we you know the joke about the academy, and I think this is true of all the academies, it's a terrible place to go, but a great place to be from. So I credit the Air Force Academy with changing my life. Changed my life. For sure changed my life. Uh, but I didn't really enjoy the time I was there.

Host 47:07

At what point do you start thinking about or um moving towards your actual career field of what you're gonna do in the Air Force?

Alex Pelbath 47:14

Yeah, so I I went there with the sole intention of being a pilot. And and part of the recruiting for sports, at least this worked for me. I don't know if it's anywhere else, but you know, you're talking to the coach, like, why come to the Air Force Academy instead of going to another D1, more popular D1 school, something like that. Why the Air Force Academy over UC Davis for me? Was um, hey, what are you gonna do when wrestling's over? There's no pro wrestling. There's no, I mean, now we have UFC. You can actually go make money in UFC, obviously, um, but not really. But hey, if you come here when wrestling's over, you get to be, you get to fly airplanes, you get to be a pilot. That is a great selling point for the Air Force Academy. So I went there from day one. I'm gonna be a pilot. I didn't look at anything else, I didn't care about anything else. I knew all I had to do was graduate and I was gonna go to pilot training. It's not entirely true, and it's less true now. It really depends on the timing. So I graduated at a time when we really, really needed pilots. In typical military fashion, you we're talking about Desert Storm coming out of Desert Storm in the early 90s, where we dominated in the military. So, so what did what did we do? We we cut back the military. Oh, we just won this big war. We're in great shape. We don't need to spend money. And so they cut a ton of pilot training slots. A ton. If you graduated the academy in the early 90s, you had a really hard time becoming a pilot. Uh, what did we find out five years later? Oh, we don't have enough pilots. We got too, we cut too many pilot slots, we don't have enough pilot. So when I graduated the academy in 2001, they needed pilots so bad that if you were pilot qualified at the academy and you turned down your pilot training slot, you had to go meet with the commandant. You had to go meet with the general. And the general would say, Why aren't you becoming a pilot? Like what you they couldn't make you do it. You got to choose. You could choose not to be it, but you'd have to get counseled. When you you're at the Air Force Academy, we're the Air Force.

Host 49:02

This is what we do. This is what we do. Yeah.

Alex Pelbath 49:05

Why aren't you why aren't you doing what we do? Um, that has then since changed, you know. And then of course 9-11 happened, it was the same way. We, I mean, there's just no such thing. For most of my career, it's just no, there's no such thing as too many pilots. Um, some dumb knee-jerk reactions that happened, you know, here and there over the years, but in general. Um, but it's sort of gone back to now, not everybody gets to be a pilot. Now I don't know what the percentage is. It's still greater than 50% get to be pilot. So uh, and a lot of that has to do with your grades. And there's there's three things like your class standing if you go to academy is not just based on GPA. It's based on GPA, your physical fitness, you get a I forget what they call it, like your PFT scores become part of your GPA, and then a military performance average as well. So you get it's like this whole thing. You have to do well in all three of those things, and that that will determine your class ranking. And then I don't know what it is. 60, 70% go to pilot training today? I don't know.

Host 49:59

Uh a couple of things I forgot to ask. Um, obviously, you got recruited for sports. Did you still have to go through like the I think you you normally have to get like a letter of recommendation from a congressman? Did you have to go through all that? Absolutely.

Alex Pelbath 50:09

You still got to do all those things. Yeah. So I did. I I uh man, and this is back in California. My my congressman in California was a Republican back then, Ron Packard. So I had to go meet with Ron Packard. He gave me a nomination to the to the academy. I remember you still got to go do all the all the normal things. Here's how I know I wouldn't have gotten to the academy, by the way, is you're still applying, like you're still going through like the regular thing. Like you're a blue chip athlete. You get a slot, like you're in. Which if you're a blue chip athlete, it's like, do you meet the minimums? If you meet the minimums and you're blue chip, you're in. But you're still going through all the regular application stuff. And so I get a I get a very thin letter in the mail from the Air Force Academy when I'm a senior in high school. Thin letters from colleges are not good. Uh and it said, thank you, but no thank you. And this is late. I'd already committed. I said no thanks to the other schools. So I was I freaked out. I called my coach immediately. Coach, why I thought, what happened? And he goes, Don't worry about it. He's like, Don't worry about it. Admissions, sports, we don't always, they don't always talk to each other. You're in. Don't worry about it. Throw that letter away. You're in. I wish I'd have saved that letter. I should have framed it next to my degree, my BS degree for the academy. So I get there and I find out I'm not the only athlete who got the thanks, but no thanks. But if there was any question in my mind as to whether or not I got into the academy on sports or not, that was answered.

Host 51:25

So how did you um how did you go about like you have to like reach out to the congressman? I don't know that process.

Alex Pelbath 51:30

You just Yeah, there's there's uh a position called their liaison officers. Liaison officers out there. And and Dave Romero and I had the same um, I'll share this story briefly. We have the same liaison officer, uh, and they're usually um reservists, Air Force reservists. So ours, sure enough, was an Air Force pilot who was in the reserves, and his reserve duty, he was a pilot for UPS by the time I met him, but he was an Air Force pilot during his active duty time. Um, and then his reserve gig was being an ALO, an air liaison officer. And they know this, they get trained, they know the system, how to get in. And so you take a dumb kid like me who's never been in the military, and they hold your hand through the whole process. Here's what you got to fill out, here's who you got to talk to, here's how you you request an interview with your congressman to get a nomination. They coach you through the process. Here's what you should say in your interview. They do everything. The A-los are amazing. Our ALO uh that Dave and I shared, great, just such a great, great guy. Um like my wrestling coach, I credit him a lot with getting to me where I am today. Unfortunately, he took his own life. So um much later in life. You know, we know we know veterans of all kinds, tra just tragic, man, tragic. His kids were grown, he lost his wife, and it just it sent him into a spiral. And um, his wife, she was an amazing woman too, just amazing, amazing family, amazing everything, and um yeah, just just tragic, man.

Host 53:07

Did you have contact with him once you did you guys keep in touch at all? Why once you guys were in the academy? He commissioned me.

Alex Pelbath 53:12

Oh wow as an officer. He flew out to the Air Force Academy, commissioned me. He was there the day I got my appointment. Uh and then, you know, even in in high school when they uh they did this big ceremony for like all the scholarships, he presented the scholarships at the academy to me. He uh uh commissioned me into the Air Force, he was at my wedding, came to my wedding, he knew my family, and we stayed in touch throughout all the years. Every time I go go back and visit, yeah, and then uh Yep.

Host 53:41

That's a sore that's a story that we hear way too much, brother. And you and I were talking about that uh last night uh in the car ride. I've seen the like the videos of the social media videos of like when the guys find out from the Air Force Academy, like what you know, what airplane they're gonna be flying.

Alex Pelbath 53:58

Yeah.

Host 53:58

That's pilot training. Oh, really? Okay.

Alex Pelbath 54:00

Yeah, yeah, that's pilot training. So you graduate from the academy and you go into your career field. Ah, okay. Whatever it is. There we have, we have um, I forget what it's called at the academy, but there's a night where you where they you get your assignment from the academy. That happens there too.

Host 54:16

So um so just because you decide to fly doesn't mean you're automatically gonna fly.

Alex Pelbath 54:20

So I don't know how they do it now, but I remember how they did it, did it then. So back to your class standing. You would go into the into Arnold Hall, which is like the big auditorium at the academy, and it was a computer and you're lined up in class ranking. Okay. So out of whatever, uh almost a thousand who graduated, I don't remember where I was, but it was not in the top 50%. And you go into this, you know, you've already seen all the jobs available. That's what they do. They say, here are all the jobs available to you in the entire Air Force. And if you're number one, you pick whichever one you want. Number two, you can pick everyone but number one picked, right? And so as you're going down this list of hundreds of people, the jobs are going away. Eventually, you know, the the pilot slots are gonna go away. If you're today, eventually the pilot slots are gonna go away. And so that's why your class ranking matters. So whatever you get up there and then you go into the computer and it shows you all the jobs that are remaining that you can choose from and you rank order them. Um, and so for me it was pilot. So I but I knew at the time I was gonna be pilot. I slick, I clicked pilot. I don't remember what else I picked in there, but I just picked pilot and I was going. Then the the second thing you you get to pick is like where you want to go to pilot training, what type of pilot training you go to. And there's definitely um better. So Euron ATO joint jet pilot training, N-JEP, we call at Shepard Air Force Base. You're guaranteed to fly a fighter or a or a bomber if you go there. So everybody picks that number one. And those are gone like real quickly. So it's something like that. You know what I mean? So I won up go, I wound up with uh Columbus going to Columbus Air Force. I'll say the first assignment I had though, this was great, and this was very critical to my personal life happening. Was um, you know how we get coaches at the academies? They come from recent graduates, a lot of the coaches, like the assistant coaches, right? The guys who help out. So, as a brand new second lieutenant, I got selected for one of these programs. They called it the first year lieutenant program. I coached wrestling at the academy. That was my first Air Force assignment. So for a year, I got to stay at the academy. I lived in a house with three other guys who were all coaching, and you get to actually be you're getting a second lieutenant paycheck, which is better than what you got in college. Yeah. And you're living in a house with three guys and you go coach, and it was like one of the best years of my life. What was so important to me at this time, though, was I just met my wife, my now wife. In Colorado. In Colorado. Well, this is let's talk about that. I did not meet her in Colorado. She's from Denver. She went to the University of Colorado. I did not meet her there. But I met her uh my senior year in March of my senior year, like three months before graduation. I don't know. And then I had a year, then we had a year together after that to like date and be there. Like, I wonder if I'd have gone to pilot training right away, how challenging that would have been. And I don't know. I don't know if if our relationship would have blossomed the way they did. God knew what he was doing. So the fact that I got to coach wrestling for a year and be there, and her and I got married at the very end of that year. So, and then I went to pilot training, we started it. But can I tell a story of me and my wife?

Host 57:16

Absolutely, dude.

Alex Pelbath 57:16

It's freaking great. So my wife Lyndon, uh, she's two years younger than me. She was going to University of Colorado at the time in Boulder. I was going to the Air Force Academy, uh, about 150 miles apart, and she's from Denver, like right in the middle. So, of course, we met on spring break in South Padre Island, Texas. I met, we met at a Circle K gas station, first day. So, me and my buddies were poor college kids. We drove all the way from Colorado to South Padre, Texas. And we check into our condo, and it's now probably like two in the afternoon or something, and we're just like driving around to get the lay of the land. Um, and we stop at this Circle K to buy, I think get either get directions or buy beer, whatever we're doing, you know, stock up the condo. And we get back in my car, I'm driving, and right as I back out of my parking spot, this airport shuttle van pulls into the spot next to us, and there were eight girls in it. So we hesitated for like one second, and then I just pulled right back into my parking spot, throw it on the window, start chatting up these girls, and my wife is one of those girls in that van. And so they said, Hey, we're gonna be at this whatever bar tonight, senior frogs or whatever it is down there, you know? Always gotta be a senior frogs on spring break, dude. Yep, yep. And so um uh, man, let's just tell the whole story, too. This is this is freaking great. Uh, my wife hates this part of the story. Um and look, at this, there's I'll just tell it. So we meet up that night, we see him that night, but everybody's playing it cool, of course. You know what I mean? We're not, it's not like we didn't like hit it off like immediately. Well, there's eight of them, there's four of us, this is good odds. We see them, but we're also everybody's like kind of doing their thing. And I actually even tried to talk to her. My wife's name is Lyndon. I tried to talk to her a couple times. And whatever. I don't know, not smooth enough yet. Okay, so then halfway through the night, near the end of the night, they announce the wet t-shirt contest. And so we're I just happen to be at the bar, like getting a beer with one of my buddies, and you hear it or whatever. And by the time like we turn around, it's just like a sea of people between us and the stage. And we're like, man, this is lame. Let's just go back to the bar. So we turn around to go back to the bar and immediately stop. And guess what we see? A hundred girls at the bar and no dudes.

Host 59:43

All the dudes are hey boots. Watching the one girl, yeah, that's up there, right?

Alex Pelbath 59:47

Guys are so dumb. And we immediately realize, like, oh my gosh, guys are so dumb. Like, look at this. This is great. And sure enough, my wife is down there at the end of the bar, and now her choice is talk to me or talk to nobody. So I go down and we start talking. It's just the first day, and we do kind of hit it off, and then I see her the next day. And by like day three, we're hanging out. You know, obviously, I end up I end up getting her number. And one of the things we did, we did bond over. Um, I do have to say this, like I wasn't, I'm a Christian at this point. Christians should not be going on spring break to places like this, okay? I wasn't I'm a believer, but obviously, you know, we're uh we're we're human, just just a regular college floor too. But I did I did have morals. I wasn't down there to do what a lot of college kids are down there to do. Just down there to have a good time and whatever, you're trying to like live in this straddle the fence kind of thing. Um, well, it turns out her too. And we actually bonded over that like right away. So the fact that we both weren't like, you know, maybe every other college kid down there and um weren't down there just like a sleep around or whatever. So I met we kind of bonded over that. Obviously, got her phone number. This is back in like cell phones are brand new. So got her phone number, get back to to Colorado. Man, how long do I gotta wait to call her? Two days, three days, like what do I gotta do? Eventually I call her up, and we our first date ever is I took her to a Colorado Rockies baseball game, and the rest is history.

Host 1:01:12

So awesome. I love those stories. So you graduate the Air Force Academy, you get an opportunity to coach for a year, which man, that's pretty cool. I didn't even know you could do that. Where uh where were you for 9-11?

Alex Pelbath 1:01:24

I was driving to um up to the campus. We lived in a me and my buddies lived in a house in Monument, Colorado, uh, just about 15 minutes from from the academy. And so I was on my way to work essentially. I heard it on the radio. And, you know, just like everybody else, you're like, what? Is this some is this like a joke? Are they really talking about it? I got in time, got into the office just in time to watch um the second tower get hit. And, you know, kind of immediately what we all were thinking was, oh, we're going to war. We knew, we knew we're going to war. And after you get through like the shock and awe of what just happened, we were like, kind of a little bit excited, like, oh, let's go. Like I we I we were expecting pilot training to start early. Okay, they're gonna cancel my orders here. They're gonna send me to pilot training right now. So we kind of went home, every they kind of sent everybody home, you know, probably just like they did, like all over, like, hey, we don't know what's gonna go on. Everybody just like sit tight, we know wait for the phone call. Then things kind of kind of calm down. And you know, what you realize about pilot training is they can't send you to pilot training early. There's only so many people you can train. Like it is what they could have done was I guess said, You're not gonna be a pilot anymore, and we're gonna send you somewhere else, but that's just not the Air Force's business. As a matter of fact, it was like, oh geez, how how quickly can we get? We need more pilot, more and more pilots.

Host 1:02:38

So and they're not gonna rush your pilot training itself, because that's probably right.

Alex Pelbath 1:02:41

And it just it takes what it's a year. It just it takes what it takes, you know, it's as long as it takes. So really things kind of calm down. And then, and I still went to pilot training then as scheduled after that, you know.

Host 1:02:52

So, did you know when you when you graduated, like you were gonna do this T just uh this coaching thing for a year and then go to pilot school, did you have any idea what type of frames you were gonna be flying?

Alex Pelbath 1:03:01

I mean, you mentioned No, so the way pilot training works then, so I went to Columbus Air Force Base in Columbus, Mississippi. Um, it's a year I showed up almost a year to the day after I graduated. As a back, my wife and I got married, went on our honeymoon, got back from our honeymoon, got in the car, and drove to Columbus, Mississippi. Like it was all like right, it happened like together. So her and I have been on the Air Force journey essentially the in the in my entire career. A year in Columbus, Mississippi. Um, and you the way pilot training works, it's changed now. They're they're it's advancing and they're getting better using technology. But back then, and it was for six months, you fly, uh, everybody flies the same basic airplane trainer. For me, it was a T37, the tweet. Twin engine, side-by-side airplane. So fun to fly. Um, go upside down, learning everything. Like they're teaching you like all the maneuvers. You know, first they're teaching you to be a pilot, how to be a pilot, significant ground school. Pilot training is a one-year master's degree program. It's actually a, in my opinion, it's a crime that we don't come out of there with a master's in aviation, because it's not just learn to fly this airplane. You you have to learn everything about aerodynamics. How does an airplane fly? Not only like how does flying work scientifically, you have to learn, but then you have to learn everything about your airplane to the point where you have to be able to draw from memory, sketch it on a piece of paper from memory, like the entire hydraulic system.

Host 1:04:26

Right?

Alex Pelbath 1:04:26

Here's the hydraulic pump, here's how it flows, here's what, here's everything that it moves and controls. You have to do it with the electrical system. So that by the time you get up there, if if a warning light comes on, like you don't, you don't just know what to do to that warning light, but you understand what's happening with your aircraft. So it is a, it's very, very hard. Very hard. It's harder than, like academically harder than the academy. And you're getting tested on it all the time. And man, it's the Air Force. Like they're intentionally putting a ton of stress on you. Like this is what they want. They want you to be able to learn how to perform in these stressful situations, and not everybody makes it. So then after six months, um, you know, and it's you're being evaluated on everything. Check rights on everything, test scores on everything. Everybody knows your class ranking, where you're standing. After six months, then it's track select we call, and you're gonna go to one of a different number of types of airframes. You still don't get your aircraft yet, but you're either gonna go fly helicopters. Um like I don't know the Air Force had helicopters.

Host 1:05:23

Oh yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

Alex Pelbath 1:05:25

So if if that's what you want to do, you can choose to go fly helicopters. You can choose to go, we had a we had a track just for C-130s. They'd send you to Corpus Christi, go learn fly Hercs. Then there's the the basic heavy track, and then there's the fighter track, the fighter bomber track. Um I don't know if the if you where UAVs fit into this now. If you track UAVs or if that's a separate thing now. Um and so then after six months, yeah, then there's a drop night. They yeah, drop night, they call it, where you get your track or track select night, and then you find out where you're gonna go, where you're gonna go fly. And then it starts another six months of training in that sort of, I would say, mission set. Um, and then at the end of six months is assignment night. And this is like what you just were mentioning was like the videos you've seen that are super cool, you know. But so by then you have, and at the very end, you don't know what you're gonna fly, you know what your class ranking is, you know what cockpits are available to your class, which is based on needs of the Air Force. And so you're just gonna rank them all, like one to thirty or whatever. How many people are in your class? You're just gonna rank all of these cockpits.

Host 1:06:25

Does your class standing in flight schools? It's similar to like the academy, grades, performance.

Alex Pelbath 1:06:31

Absolutely, it's all it's check, it's your it's your test scores and it's your flying ability. And you're getting graded every single day that you fly. And then, of course, you have check rides as well. And and people, you know, people do wash out. If you don't, if you fail a check ride, you get one more shot to do that check ride. And if you fail that, then you immediately go to an elimination ride and you're done. And if you don't pass, and that's usually with like the commander, with the colonel or somebody like that, or the DO, you know. And if you fail that, you're gone. Like it's it, it's just like that.

Host 1:06:59

Is there a Failure failure rate in flight school?

Alex Pelbath 1:07:01

No, no, it's a low failure rate, but every class has them.

Host 1:07:05

Are you needs of the Air Force at that point? Are you out?

Alex Pelbath 1:07:07

I I don't remember. I think if you fail out, they try to, yeah. If if I remember right, if you fail out of pilot training, they help you. If you quit pilot training, if you quit, if you're like this is not for me, and you quit, no, then it's needs of the Air Force. Then the Air Force kind of like pissed at you. Like you took this pilot training slot from somebody else. No, you don't get it, you don't get a say in where you're gonna go. But if you fail out, if you give it your all and you just can't hack it, I think the Air Force is pretty good about taking care of you.

Host 1:07:33

So you're in flight school post-9-11. Obviously, the war's kicking off. Um what's the mood in flight school? Obviously, it's super academic, it's hard. Um, but are you guys picking up tidbits of, you know, kind of what's going on in the world?

Alex Pelbath 1:07:45

Not I would when I went through, not really. But a little while after that, yeah. And the reason I would say no is because all of my instructors hadn't been over there, right? They were all there in Columbus, Mississippi, teaching when 9-11 happened for them too. So they hadn't necessarily been over in the war. Fast forward five years later, yeah. Then now it's like people have been fighting in the war for five years, and now they're coming back. It's sort of like a break after five years to go teach pilot training and they're coming back with all the war stories, and so then it would change. So for me, it was not, and I would say two things. One, they do a good job of be like, don't think about that. Like you gotta be totally focused on pilot training right here. Like this is your mission today is getting through pilot training. Like, we don't not that we don't want we want to be disconnected from everything going on, but you certainly can't be thinking about what it might be like to go to war when you're trying to freaking fly an airplane for the first time in your life. So makes sense. Yeah, and it's it's a lot of flying, and you know, unfortunately, there's flying's a dangerous business, and we we do lose people in pilot training. We we while I was there, there was you know uh a T37 crash, and just yeah, it's it happens. So no, you gotta be you gotta be incredibly focused on what you're doing right then and there.

Host 1:08:56

You ended up flying C17s. Tell us the story how that came about.

Alex Pelbath 1:08:59

Yeah, so I I track selected to heavies. I really wanted to fly fighters. Um finished seventh in my class in that first go-around, and the top six got fighters. It was heartbreaking, bro. I was I was heartbroken. I really was. Um it was hard, but whatever. Then you move on, and and then from that moment on, at the time, I think it's still this way. The C17 was the newest and the coolest and the baddest thing that you could possibly go fly once you once you track select there, and so it was, yeah, all about C17s, and you just throw yourself back in into it. And um, they only had two C17s come to our our class when we graduated, and so me and one other person got C17s, and um, and then you go. So once you graduate, you go through the drop night. I was very excited now at this point to get C17s. Um, and that this I also knew a lot of people who are flying C17s too. It was a coolest airplane.

Host 1:09:51

What was that mental shift like for you, man? Because I, you know, the I've looked we've had a couple people on this podcast. You think you want to do something in life, you're focused on that, you've watched this Top Gun movie, that's kind of what's brought you up to this. Uh, you don't get what you think you've been working for for years. Um, you know, how did you overcome that?

Alex Pelbath 1:10:08

Well, mental toughness, I guess. You know, you have to make a decision. You have to make a decision. Like, okay, it's that's it, that is over. Like you can dwell on that, you can continue to be disappointed, or you can move on. And if you're if you're a competitor, then you do, you find a way to move on. I've lost before, lost matches before. You know, I took fourth in the state of California, the California State Championships. I took fourth place, and then I won nationals. Like you, you hopefully just motivates you to like not want to lose anymore. Like, all right, now, you know, and for me, flying, like there's situation awareness is one of the most important aspects of being a pilot. And that's you know, understanding not just what's happening in your own cock, but what's happening around you, right? It's four-dimensional space you're like flying in. And for me, the the light bulb came on a little bit late. And and I I remember it. I remember when all of a sudden I I could pull my head out of the out of the instrument panel and be like, oh, I I know what's going on. And so um, I think that's why I finished almost, almost above the cut line, but not quite was. It took me a little bit longer to to develop that situational awareness. So I I think the the skills were there. If you're an athlete, the hand-eye coordination stuff, if you're an athlete, it was there. And so then I I I just decided, like, all right, let's, you know, head down, let's let's not have that feeling again. I don't want that feeling ever again. And so you work hard and and then uh yeah, and then it was great to get C-17s and moved my first assignment was to go out to to McCord Air Force Base in Washington. And now this is I graduated in uh 2003 from pilot training. Showed up McCord like October, November of 03. Dude, the war is hot and heavy. You you get to your your unit, if you're especially if you're C-17s, you're gone immediately overseas. And the way the C-17 life is and certainly was there, is you deploy once every couple of years, but when you're not deployed, all you're doing is flying over and back. So we would leave for two to three weeks at a time. And it's and you you fly over. We had we had what we called a stage in Germany. You would leave McCord, probably stop at an army base somewhere, picking up a bunch of army equipment, fly to Germany, no idea what you're gonna do after that. You land in Germany, you walk up to this counter, go talk to the ops officer, and he says, uh, tomorrow you're flying to um Iraq, and here's your mission. You're going to Baghdad, then you're going to Al Tskatam, then you're going to Al-Assad, then you're going to wind up at Al-Yudid and spend the night there. And then you get to the so you go do that the next day. You go get your intel brief, get your tactics brief, and freaking fly down there. It's like a whatever, it's like a five-hour flight, six-hour flight from Germany to get to to Ballad or whatever. And so, you know what the pilots are doing. We just got our mission. You're freaking reading the tactics binder. You're like reading about the about all the threats. You're like, all right, how are we going to get in there? How are you going to do this tactic stuff? Fly in there all probably night vision goggle stuff, nighttime mostly. And then you make three stops in Iraq, and then you wind up at the deed. And then you go to the ops officer there at the deed. Walk up to the counter there, and he says, uh, all right, tomorrow you're going back to Iraq or tomorrow you're going to Afghanistan or whatever. And you do that for two weeks. And then you come home. And then you're home for three days, right back out on the road again. My it is a tough life, gone for two to 300 days every year. And when you're not deployed, my wife had always said, she'll tell you right now, that it was easier when I was deployed because we just knew. Oh, you're going to be gone for four months, you're going to be gone for six months. But when we weren't deployed, we had no idea. I could be leaving tomorrow, be leaving in two weeks. I'm gone for two weeks. I could be home for three days.

Host 1:13:44

Like it's just Yeah, kind of uh help me understand uh what it's like to be be deployed as a C17 pilot because your job is flying all over the place. Yeah. Like I would just assume that's what it was like a deployment for you, and just fly around, come home. But when you're actually forward deployed, do you stay with that aircraft in a forward-deployed location and that's your place?

Alex Pelbath 1:14:04

Yeah, we deploy we deploy as a unit, it's evolved over time. So I'll just talk about the like the funnest deployment that I had was in 2007. Um, military guys know what I mean by like funnest deployment. Like you're getting after it, yeah. You're doing cool stuff, you're with the boys. This is a really good time. Um so when the C-17, what makes it so great is we're a strategic airlifter, meaning like FedEx. We're gonna fly stuff all around the world, right? From the states all around the world, moving stuff all around the world. We're also a tactical airlifter, which means we're gonna fly intra-theater airlift all around Iraq, all around Afghanistan. We're doing both those mission sets, which is awesome. When you're deployed, you're almost exclusively doing the tactical airlift mission. You're just we were deployed to Inserlich, Turkey. We we are usually outside, not usually, we're almost always, C-17s are outside the combat zone and you're just flying in every day. And so we would, when we were deployed to Inserlik, it was our whole squadron was deployed together. It was a super good time, man. It was it reminded me a lot of those old World War II movies you see with like the bomber squadrons in England, and then they would like fly into Germany, and they would come back because when you come back, you're you go to the bar, you know, you're having beers, you're hanging out with the guys, and then like the next day you go freaking fly. And some of the guys are going to fly the next day, some of the guys are not, and so you're, you know, you're seeing everybody, and everybody's getting a uh a little bit uh has different experiences going in and out. And it was it was probably 90% of our missions were in and out of Iraq just every day for four months, and then hanging out with the guys. I look back on that as like one of the funnest times I ever had. And I was I was a captain, I was an 03, I was an instructor pilot at the time. I I felt like you know, if you asked me, I would have said I was the best, I was the best C17 pilot of the planet all the time, which is really dangerous. Uh young enough, young, experienced enough to really be an expert at your craft, but uh, but naive enough to to forget that man shit happens.

Host 1:15:59

How uh how many how many crew are on a C-17? That's a massive plug.

Alex Pelbath 1:16:02

Yeah, we we would fly when you're deployed, you it typically in order to fly a 24-hour mission, you have to have three pilots because you gotta, yeah, one of them's resting for 24 hours, literally up for 24 hours, right? You're doing you you work out a uh rest cycle. So two pilots in the seat, one pilot resting somehow. And same thing downstairs, you'll have two loadmasters, one to be working and one to be resting. So it's a crew of five. When we're deployed, we went out, we'd call it combat basic. So just two pilots. So you couldn't have the full 24-hour day. But you didn't need that because you were you're, you know, Iraq instrate to Baghdad's an hour, hour and a half flight or whatever. So you didn't need that. So four, you just go with four guys, combat basic. And it was really fun that way, really efficient, easy, easy to manage a crew like that and and go have a good time. And usually you would your crew would stick together for most of the time. It would be the the same four of you. Um, so it was really good. But it and we're getting really experienced. And back then it was so I mean think about that time, it was mostly Iraq. Like the first half of my career was almost all Iraq. The second half of my career was almost all Afghanistan.

Host 1:17:03

What uh when you're showing up as a new pilot, um what like you have to start in the training role? Because obviously you graduate pilot school, but then you still got to learn, you know, you gotta learn.

Alex Pelbath 1:17:12

Yeah, just like every so you graduate pilot training, you get select, they they give you your airplane. You have to go train in that airplane. This is true of every aircraft where you go. So for us, our main training base is Altus, Oklahoma. Not the most fun place to hang out. Altus, Oklahoma, the middle of nowhere. Um, and you go there for four months for initial call. And you learn how to fly the C-17. You're already a pilot, you already got your wings, and now they're teaching you the C-17 and the C17. Then you show up at your base and you're brand new, and now they got to teach you the combat part of your mission. You already learned the airplane. You can fly the airplane, now you're gonna learn the combat stuff. And the whole time you're you're a pilot, you are always in training, by the way. Always. We never stop training and we never stop upgrading. You start as a co-pilot, then you become an aircraft commander, right? Which is which is uh like a captain in the airlines, become an aircraft commander, and then you become an instructor pilot, and then in the C17, you can become an airdrop qualified person, and then you can become an air, you can be an aircraft commander in the C17, but a co-pilot for airdrop. And then you got to upgrade to aircraft commander for airdrop, and then instructor pilot for airdrop. Um, and we do air refueling as well, so you're learning that as well. You you so you show up as a co-pilot, your job is just to be a co-pilot. Just sit in the seat, work the radios, learn, learn the mission, learn how to fly. And then over time, we're gonna teach you how to do air refueling and assault landings, land on the dirt, all the stuff that that the cool stuff that C-17s do. And we're constantly going back. You have to go back to Altus to the training base to do aircraft commander school. To learn to do air refueling, essentially, you go back to this school and learn it that way. Um, so it takes probably four years to become four to five years to become an instructor pilot to go through all of it.

Host 1:18:45

What was that mental shift going from flying T-37s to just like uh a massive aircraft?

Alex Pelbath 1:18:51

Yeah, and what the the flying part of it what is the same. Um, the C-17 is awesome. It flies with a stick uh instead of a yoke for a big airplane. That's great. It it is incredibly tactically capable for how large of an aircraft it is, it can land on a 3,000-foot runway, dirt, dirt runway. That that's try to put it in context for people. That's remarkable. Just just trust me, that is insane that a big airplane like that can land on a tiny little runway like that and can do air refueling. Air refueling is one of the hardest things we do too. It's it's uh you're up at 30,000 feet or whatever with another two big airplanes. Uh doing air refueling together is really, really challenging. Um and it takes and we take a lot of gas. It takes it's I love air refueling the most because it takes like the most skill. It's your hand, you're flying the airplane. It's what you look like. You're like, you know, the tanker's freaking 20 feet away from you, or whatever it is, and you're f you're flying, you have to fly up to the tanker like this, and you're you're flying the stick, your hand on the throttles, and this your movements kind of just look like this all for like 10 minutes, and when you're done, you're pouring sweat.

Host 1:20:05

That's all micro movements.

Alex Pelbath 1:20:06

Yeah, it's it's awesome, man. It's cool, and it's like pure flying skill. It's awesome. It's just great.

Host 1:20:11

Great. You said that Iraq and Afghanistan were very different for you. How how so?

Alex Pelbath 1:20:15

Iraq um in the early 2000s, for folks who remember, was we're talking Fallujah was going on at the time, you know. We we were it was very, I would say, like well structured. We knew all the bases. Uh, C-17s weren't really getting shot up. We had a couple of them like early on um take man pads. I think we had two or three get hit, and then small arms kind of happened throughout all the time. Not nothing significant. We never lost a C-17 uh crew in combat. We had a few C-17s crash. I mean, complicating factors usually, usually pilot error were involved in all those big crashes, but um, but you're you know, pilot error, but you're talking about doing a tactical approach on NVGs in in one of the cases and it's freaking snowing in Afghanistan. You're doing all that stuff at once.

Host 1:21:04

Yeah, I didn't know you guys flew C-17s with NVGs. I mean, I I know the helicopters and obviously the fighters, but I I didn't know.

Alex Pelbath 1:21:09

Yeah, almost, I mean, going in look, you can't C-17 doesn't go fast enough, it's not maneuverable enough. You know, you're almost a sitting duck if they if our ground guys hadn't eradicated man pads, we'd have lost a lot of C-17s. But man, the army Marines freaking did their job and killed all the bad guys who had who had the man pads that right we're talking about missiles, man portable um air defense system is what manpads is freaking missiles, right? Um so I think I think we had two or three get hit with man pads in the early 2000s, one in Afghanistan even. But by the time Iraq, the other thing about Iraq is it's flat, there's no terrain, there's a ton of terrain in Afghanistan. It's very different tactical environments, yeah. Very, very different. And for whatever reason, you know, we kicked off the war in Iraq. We had two things going on as a nation. We're hunting for bin Laden. If you ask me, Afghanistan was righteous when we went in there, and and Iraq was not. Iraq was a mistake. You know, it's terrible to say that. Acting on bad intel, what everybody knows the story, whatever. We shouldn't have been in there, we certainly shouldn't have been in there that long. And look at Iraq now, it's no better off. Maybe it's even worse, as a matter of fact, today than it was when cool, we killed Saddam Hussein, we got we got him. I mean, I think an argument could be made that as horrible as he was that Iraq was a stabilizing force over there, right? To understand Iran is a Shia country. Saddam Hussein was Sunni. They hate each other. He I think he kind of balanced some things out, maybe. Not that he was a friend of ours or anything, that we wanted him there, but man, if if he was still there, maybe we didn't need to be there. I don't know. I don't know how it would have happened, but certainly I don't think Iraq was um looking back on it, something we should have done or for as long as we did.

Host 1:22:54

We'll invite you back and we'll do a podcast just on that because that could be its own uh um what's it like flying an aircraft that big into a combat landing zone at night? Um there's a lot of super fun.

Alex Pelbath 1:23:08

Is that it's super fun? Flying missions was super fun. Um, there's a lot going on. So you one of the awesome tactical abilities uh of a C17 is it is the fact that we can stay high for so long. It has an incredible ability to descend very, very rapidly. Um you can if you've seen the videos of it, you can look up what a tactical descent is. You literally pop the thrust reversers in flight, point the nose at the ground, the whole aircraft is shaking, it's wild. We don't we didn't do that in combat very often. You didn't because we didn't need to. The aircraft was still, we usually planned uh the aircraft to descend at a thousand feet per nautical mile, which is remarkable. You're still pointing the aircraft like right at the ground. I mean, I would practice my favorite things to practice was uh a 10,000 foot beam approach. So you would cross the runway at 10,000 feet and then be able to just turn around and land from 10,000 feet. Airplanes can't do that. Big airplanes do not do that. I fly for Southwest right now. No, there's no chance that that airplane can do that. The C-17 can, it's remarkably capable. And so the idea is stay as high as you can. That keeps you out of the weapons engagement zone.

Host 1:24:19

Right?

Alex Pelbath 1:24:19

You're not get back to you're not hiding a C-17. Everybody can see it. You don't hide, you can't hide C-17s, that's not the thing. Well, we turn off all the lights. We go at night and we turn off all our lights. That makes us harder to see. That's why we're on night vision goggles. Turn off the lights on the runway as well. So nobody, nobody sees that the lights are on the runway. You don't see an airplane with its lights on, you don't know it's coming. That's the that was the the best tactic for us. And stay as high as you can as long as you can, and then freaking point the nose at the ground and freaking land. It's awesome.

Host 1:24:45

Yeah, those landings in Balad uh flying in and out in Afghanistan. I flew out mainly C-130s, man.

Alex Pelbath 1:24:50

And same thing, yeah. C C 130. So we're twice the size of a C-130 and very similar tactical capabilities. You know, there's so I love C-130s, I love Hercs, especially when we got into the Soul II stuff. I mean, flying with AC 130s, flying with the gunship. Uh, there's nothing, there's nothing better. God bless you. I'll trade every fighter on the planet for an AC-130 gunship doing what we did.

Host 1:25:13

God bless spooky. Did you get to spend time on that platform at all?

Alex Pelbath 1:25:15

No. Oh. Just watching them, being being hanging out with those guys. Yeah. That's it. And MC 130s too. MCs were were they have the ability, like their radar, the things that they can see and do, like their cool equipment is better than ours.

Host 1:25:29

So what were some of the hairiest moments you had flying a C1 C17 in combat? If there were any.

Alex Pelbath 1:25:35

Yeah, the closest I ever came to dying wasn't even, it was in Iraq, but it was my fault. Most of us have these stories. Like most of the time when you die, it's like it's like self-imposed. And for me, it was I was flying with a good buddy of mine. And I was senior to him. I was the instructor. He was actually upgrading. And one of the things, like if you're going to become uh an aircraft commander, a combat aircraft commander, you have to do these tactical approaches in real life. So you go with an instructor, in that case, that was me, watching him do these tactical approaches. Um, and then I could sign him off, and then he gets cleared to go do it on his own, right? Go fly with other people. And so we're doing that, and it's it's the winter time in Iraq, and there's not weather, but it's just this gross haze, small, whatever it is, like the haze that just like lives right on top of the entire country of Iraq. And the way haze, just like fog, is the same thing. When you're above it or below it, you can see through it. But when you're in it, you can't see anything. Okay, so we're at 20,000 feet flying into Kirkkuk, which is out in the middle of nowhere Iraq. There's like no cultural lighting either. It's just like this bass, like all by itself. We're flying into Kirkkuk. I start talking to the tower, and they're like, dude, visibility down here is terrible because of the haze. They're like, we recommend you do like a tack in approach, like this instrument approach. And I'm at 20,000 feet on NVGs, on night vision goggles. I can literally see the runway. I'm like, what is this guy talking about? I can see it right now. And I was like, I'm not listening to you. Uh, we're doing the tactical approach. So that's what I tell Tower. So we do it. Well, we get down to like 5,000 feet and we get into the haze, and sure enough, I can't see a damn thing. Like we can't see the runway at all. And now we're literally like flying blind. Like we have a, we have the um, you know, the computer. It's like the runway is on our multi-function display, and so we know we're heading in the right direction. But by the time we get through the haze and pick up the runway, we're just displaced like this. That's the runway we're like over here. And that's not that that's not the end of the world. But we can't land. So we we'd say go around. And now what I should do on the go-round, first of all, that's dumb too, to put yourself in a position to go around because you spent all this time being high and quiet and blacked out. But when you do a go-round, you're pushing up all four engines on the C17, and everybody on the planet can hear you. You're you're not you're not hiding anymore. Now everybody knows you're there. And by the way, you're like low and slow, too. It's really dumb to like put yourself in this situation. Not a factor, Kirk Cook's a pretty quiet place. That wasn't a big deal. But so now we're going around or whatever. And instead of being like, all right, now let's listen to the guy and go do the tackend approach. I didn't do that either. I was like, we'll be fine. Let's just land. And so, but now I'm really concerned about keeping my eyes on the runway so we don't lose it again. And so we're doing this pattern, we're flying around the runway, and we're coming around to land like this. If the runway's right here, we're coming around to land, and I'm in the left seat, and so my head's just outside. The C-17 has a very unique feature. No other airplane on the planet is like this. It's we call it backside flight. What happens is our and the reason is the reason we can land in such uh short runways is the flaps deploy behind the engines like this. So when thrust hits the flaps, it acts like airflow and you would climb. So thrust becomes pitch instead of airspeed. Usually you step on the gas, you go faster. In the C17's landing convision uh landing when the landing flaps are out, geez, um thrust, your airspeed, you step on the gas, you climb. Okay, so in the landing configuration, instead of stepping on the gas and going faster, you step on the gas, you climb. Well, the opposite is also true. You take your foot off the gas, you descend. And your pitch becomes airspeed. So you're like the way you aim the nose. You want to go faster, push the nose over. So we're coming around to land, and we had gotten fast, and so we pulled the throttles back. Then we put the flaps in the landing condition in the configuration where the throttles are back, and we just start sinking. But one of the problems is when you're landing in an airfield that doesn't have cultural lighting, is it's a known thing on night vision goggles. It's called the black hole effect. Okay. Lighting, you know, if you don't have cultural lighting, the black hole effect is you don't have perspective. You see the lights to the runway, but you can't tell if you're high or low.

Host 1:29:58

Yeah, there's no depth, it's no depth, there's nothing.

Alex Pelbath 1:30:00

There's no depth perception. This is a known thing called the black hole effect. Well, we I don't realize it, but that's what's happening to us. And I'm just keeping my head outside, making sure I keep the runway in sight so we don't have to go around again. And I am convinced to this day that that God pushed my head back into the cockpit. So I'm looking out, the instrument panel's right here, my buddy's lying in this seat, and unbeknownst to me, we're just sinking and sinking and sinking and sinking. And and at some point, God pushed my head back in, and I looked at our instruments and I saw that we were at 200 feet a mile from the runway. And we're descending at 800 feet per minute. That's normal. Well, 800 feet per minute descent rate at 200 feet. 15 seconds. 15 seconds. Probably less than that because even if you catch it at 10 seconds, are are we gonna have the reaction time to push the power up and be able to climb? And so I I saw 200 feet at one mile, and I said, I still remember this a long time ago. I said, Oh shit, John, climb, climb, climb. And then the only time in my life I've ever done this, I took the airplane from him and climbed up and landed. And it was fine, they're being fine. But after we landed, my brain started doing all that math of like, oh geez, I got cold, I got out of the seat, I went and sat downstairs in the cargo berry, and I just sat there for like 30 minutes, you know, like, oh, I just almost killed us. I would have been one of those stories that everybody reads about where people are like watching the the accident, you know, investigation when they put it all back together of what not to do in life. I would have been one of those guys.

Host 1:31:36

Yeah, there's a video of a C-17 crash, and I think it was a train and it takes off and then veers to the left.

Alex Pelbath 1:31:41

And yeah, yeah, that was the air show bird up in Alaska. Yeah, yeah, we've all seen that a thousand times. It's horrible to watch. It's so, so tough to watch. Because you know, you got the cockpit tapes too. That's what that would have been, yeah, that would have been us. And all my friends would have watched it and been like, oh, AP, what are you doing, dude? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? And and typical, you know, complicating factors you're in a combat zone, but a hundred percent my fault. Not even the bad guys. No, the bad guys had nothing to do with that. That was just me. It would have killed myself.

Host 1:32:06

What'd you uh would you take away from that? Um besides cleaning your your your shorts out.

Alex Pelbath 1:32:12

Yeah. Um, probably like don't don't take anything for granted ever. Um, we you know, what I heard when I was a younger pilot is uh is you start, you have a bag of luck and a bag of experience. The goal is to fill up the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck. And I I think I emptied the bag of luck right there on that one. But yeah, but now the experience is higher and it's just you know, teach you this as a pilot all the time. Have a good cross-check, have a good cross-check. Like don't get fixated on one thing. People crash and die all the time because they get fixated on one thing. Cross-check, you should be looking at everything all the time.

Host 1:32:46

So is that what the pilot and the co-pilot are doing in the cockpit a lot? Like talking to each other, cross-checking, passing information.

Alex Pelbath 1:32:52

Yeah, and what that's one of the advantages of flying a big airplane like mine or flying for southwest now, is why there's two pilots. Is you have one guy who's we call him the pilot monitoring. You're watching what the other person is doing and helping out, you know? Yeah.

Host 1:33:04

Um, how long were you in Washington? Station there at least. Four years, four years, almost four years at McCord.

Alex Pelbath 1:33:09

Yeah. And then uh, yeah, just about. I think we left in 07, 03 to 07.

Host 1:33:15

Is it common for the Air Force pilots? Do you guys move around a lot? Yeah, three to four.

Alex Pelbath 1:33:19

Three to three years is most common. Three to four years, very, very common. Something like that. Four years is a long time to be at one place. Most assignments are three years, and then you'll move. And some sometimes you go fly different airplanes, sometimes you'll stay in the in your same airplane. So I did C-17s at McCord, then I went and flew C-40s at Scott, then I went back to the C-17, then I went to the Pentagon, then I went back to the C-17. That's pretty common.

Host 1:33:39

What's a C-40?

Alex Pelbath 1:33:40

737. Okay. Uh Boeing Business Jet. It's a it's a blue and white airplane. It looks painted just like Air Force One. Um, just a different mission for us. We're flying Congress around. That's what you're doing. How's that? The most look, there's a great break from the life that I was living in the C-17. It was very cush. We're flying around the world staying in five-star hotels. Very easy mission set. Look, Congress doesn't like long days. They don't, Congressmen don't like being on the airplane for a long time. That means I didn't have to be in the airplane for a long time. Congress doesn't stay at crappy military bases. They say five-star hotels in London, Rome, Paris. From that perspective, it was a pretty cushion job. It's the most most worthless I have ever felt in my military career was doing that job. Why is that? I was flying around members of Congress who I don't know what they were doing. I don't know what they were doing. Sometimes it was, it would be legitimate business, I'm sure, but a lot of times they're called Codells, congressional delegations. And most of these Codells were a waste of taxpayer money. I knew it. I could see it. I saw all of these people in Congress, you know, up close and personal. And you see them on the airplane when they're with their staff and and around people and there's no cameras around. And so you actually see who they are as people. And uh I developed a theory that um niceness is directly proportional to importance. So if you actually had an important job in Congress, you usually are a pretty nice person. Most of the senators we flew were nice and respectful to us and understood us, treated the military great. There's a lot of members of Congress, though. Most of them you've never heard of, and they're on some random committee you've never heard of, or they're working on some project you've never heard of, and so they treat you like crap. They like feel like they're self-important and they just treat you like crap. You know, some random sometimes, I mean, look, these people get on. You I don't even know which one of them was a congressman, which one was the aide. And so they just were so self-important and it sucked. And you, you know, and we're we flew a trip in the C40. We took this Codell to the Galapagos Islands, okay, so that they could go talk about a freaking boondoggle. So that they could go look at the erosion of the reefs out there, right? Okay, so we before we even left, an article popped in the news and it got sent to us like, hey, heads up, guys, there might be some media on this one. And it was essentially um, this article was like, hey, what a boondoggle this was. Look at what your congressmen are doing with taxpayer dollars. They're freaking flying to the Galapagos Islands to go snorkeling. It's just what they did. So we knew about this ahead of time. So we fly these people down there, and they're all they're all allowed to bring a plus one, by the way. And I think the rule is they have to pay the cost of a first-class plane ticket, and that's it. But they eat for free, they stay in the hotel.

Host 1:36:21

At the government rate.

Alex Pelbath 1:36:23

At the government rate. I have no idea how much it was. But anyway, so like one guy brought his daughter, usually they're bringing spouses or whatever, or you know, if it's a serious business, if they're going to a crappy place like the Middle East, then they're actually bringing the other workers. But no, this is Galapagos Islands, so they're bringing all their they're bringing who they want to bring. So we get down there, we fly to Quito, Ecuador, um, and then it's a short hop to the Galapagos Islands. We drop them off. We didn't get to stay, we stayed in Quito. We drop them off in the Galapagos Islands, they're there for a couple days doing whatever they do. We go back to pick them up. We're picking them up. They're not even pretending like they're working. They're walking, I'm watching them walk to the airplane and they're wearing swim trunks and flip-flops. One congressman has a mesh bag over his shoulder with his snorkeling gear, like they just got off the beach, like right now. Well, apparently, as they're coming, Inside Edition found out about this boondoggle. And so Inside Edition went down there and literally like popped out from behind the bushes and stuck camera and microphone in their face. And this guy's like holding, like, he very clearly doesn't, you know, I don't remember if it's like a Hawaiian shirt or whatever, but clearly does not look like a congressman like you're doing any kind of work. And Inside Edition's like, hey, what are you doing here? What are you guys doing? And he immediately immediately launches into like, oh, the importance of you know, the erosion of the reef and look what global warming is doing. We're down here to study, blah, blah, blah. No, nobody bought it. Typical Congress wasting.

Host 1:37:46

Do you remember what year this was?

Alex Pelbath 1:37:48

2009, probably. I was there, I was doing this from seven to ten. So it was in that window somewhere. It might have been 2010. It was such a joke, but uh, we got the inside edition. I'm the I'm the pilot flying the airplane at the time. And inside edition does like after they do their interviews or whatever, the the final like you know, comments is the reporter. He's standing on the runway, and I you can see me taxi right behind him, and then I turn around and like go take off. And like he's he's got the microphone, and like, look at how worthless these people are. And I we I agreed. That's it. Like, I'm watching this happen like all the time. Like, these people are a bunch of clowns.

Host 1:38:22

Yeah, that's gonna be important here on the back half of this podcast. Absolutely, of this podcast as well.

Alex Pelbath 1:38:27

If you, if you this is what I like what I saw there, and what I'm learning now is like everything we think is happening, is happening. Everything that we think, like our perspective of so many of those people is exactly what's happening.

Host 1:38:41

Earned rightfully. How did you get out of that? I mean, you did that. Uh, was that an assignment you volunteered for? You just kind of get bounced around and get orders.

Alex Pelbath 1:38:48

Yeah, it was time for me to move McCord from McCord, and I thought I was gonna wind up at um at Altus instructing, and then then a need light came up, like it was real short notice, whatever. And I was like, that's uh I'd rather go there than frickin' Alpha.

Host 1:39:03

Were you guys stationed up in DC for that?

Alex Pelbath 1:39:04

No, this was at Scott Air Force Base. It's a reserve unit, actually. That's kind of why the the slot came open so quickly was they were transitioning from C9s to C40s, really complicated. And they decided to put an active duty reverse associate unit there. So I think there's only 10 of us active duty guys.

Host 1:39:22

Where's where's where's Scott Air Force Base?

Alex Pelbath 1:39:24

Uh Southwest Illinois, just across St. Louis. I always tell people St. Louis. We're 20 minutes from St. Louis.

Host 1:39:29

So you would fly to DC, pick people up, and then take them wherever they needed to go.

Alex Pelbath 1:39:32

Yep, you got it. Yeah. Yeah. So fly, yeah. Every every first spot was from there to um DC, do that. And then I will tell you the the no, this actually came later. Yeah, ironically. I was saying I got to fly on a C40 as a passenger when I was working with the chairman. Um, we can get into that later. But like, yeah, it's that's usually what it is, it's flying, flying Congresspeople around. What was your next assignment after that? I went back to the C-17, Travis Air Force Base. Um, this time it's super, super pivotal experience because uh, like most of us have stories of great people who come into your lives, leaders in the military who transformed the way that you think. And in my case, like not just the way that I thought about the military, but my entire career, transformed my career. I went back to Travis Air Force Base. I was kind of thinking at this time too, you know, I love being in the military, I love flying airplanes. I I was not um an Air Force career guy. So I was never the golden child, I wasn't getting, you know, all the awards. I I loved flying the mission. That's what I did. I wanted to fly, I wanted to be gone. I liked being over there, I like deploying. There's a natural rub, and everybody in the military knows this that you know you gotta check boxes in the military, right? You gotta you gotta get FaceTime. Um, there's a stratification system if people don't know this. Everybody gets ranked in a in a unit, one to whatever, one to a hundred. And if you're not in the top ten, you're just not gonna get a ranking at all. You know what I mean? I was never a guy who got ranked, like ever. And my perspective at the time as a young guy was the people I saw getting ranked were like, they were all always volunteering for these necessary jobs in the military, you know, be the um the POC, the point of contact for the change of command ceremony or whatever, right? Or a base visit from some dignitary or something like that. The advantage for doing that is you get FaceTime and you still have to do a good job. I mean, people doing that job are sharp people. I'm not I've learned later in my career to not knock that. But as a young pilot, you're what the my perspective was if you're doing that, you're not over there fighting the war, you're not flying the mission. I don't want to be some nerd running a change of command ceremony at the base and getting out of going overseas. Like they're they those at the time, like that group of people pissed me off. And a lot of us did because if you're not flying a mission, somebody else is. The missions never go away. So when you when you volunteer to not fly, or you say you don't want to fly, or you say you don't want to deploy, what you're actually saying is I'd rather my buddy deploy. Like they're not saying that consciously, but that's what I hear. And that's and this this was later in my life when I became a commander. Very much how I thought about it, too, was um, you know, I didn't have a lot of conflicts with with younger folks, but I did have to give somebody later in life like this this kid, um it was it was a deployment. I'm talking about a deployment, and he made a comment like, that's not what I signed up for, I just want to fly airplanes, and it really pissed me off because I said, You look at your uniform you're wearing. This is what you signed up for. And I said, Here's another thing. When you tell me you don't want to deploy, that deployment's happening. Somebody is going on that deployment. When you tell me you don't want to do it, you know what I hear? Send my buddy. Don't send me, send my buddy. That pissed me off. And so as a younger guy, I had that perspective. And so I just I like to fly airplanes and do that, and it that meant I was never the golden child. So I show up at Travis Air Force Base, my last assignment now, right? We have a 10-year commitment. When you graduate pilot joining, you graduate with a 10-year commitment. So I've done four years at McCord, three years at Scott. I now have three years left, and then I'm out of the military.

Host 1:43:25

And you're an 04 at this time?

Alex Pelbath 1:43:27

Uh 03, about to be an 04. Yeah. As my friend, I pinned on 04 the first year there and at Travis. And so that's kind of what I think is that I'm gonna get out and go to the airlines and go into the, you know, the C-17 reserves. They got a reserve unit there, whatever, and and have fun. And just keep flying airplanes and have fun, it'd be great. And then I meet Joe Dingman. To this day, still the best leader I've ever known in my life. Joe Dingman should be president of the United States, probably. Uh, he's my squadron commander, and he's just one of those guys that just motivates you. Just a phenomenal human being, first of all, right? Phenomenal human, amazing leader in every way. Made our unit great. We loved it, it was like the funnest squadron I'd ever been in in my life. He made he made you want to be in the military, made you want to be there. And you like wanted to be be with him. He's like one of those leaders that like you didn't want to disappoint. Like, you know, you don't want to disappoint dad. Like he never had to like get mad at anybody. Nobody just wanted to let him down. He's just one of those guys. Like everybody who was ever in that unit who ever worked for Joe Dingman would say best leader they've ever had in their lives by far. So I meet Ding. I'm a captain or turning major, and he's uh Lieutenant Colonel Squadron Commander, and fast forward to the end of end of that assignment, and all I want to do is be Joe Dingman when I grow up. And so my wife and I decide like, man, maybe we should stay in the Air Force. And so he uh he made me his his he kind he he invested heavily in me and he really started developing me. I became like a project for him, I think, because I wasn't a shining guy. Like my record was nothing bad in my record, but nothing good. My if you read my record, you would have just said good pilot. That's what my record said. Seven years in the Air Force, what it says is good pilot. You know, weren't a lot of leadership opportunities in there, weren't a lot of the strats in there, nothing ever said number one of anything in there. And so I just look at I'm not Air Force Golden Boy, I'm not on the command track, none of that's happening.

Host 1:45:23

What was it about his leadership that both inspired you and made it you made you want it to be something else or or greater?

Alex Pelbath 1:45:32

Yeah, uh a couple things. First first and foremost, being a great human. That's a secret to life, by the way. Just be a good dude, right? Just be a good human being. Like if when I die, I want my tombstone to say, I want other people to ride it, and I want it to say he was a good dude. But well, Joe, first and foremost, a good dude, great family, just genuinely cared about everybody, and for all the right reasons. Like, never, never a guy who appeared like he was trying to get ahead. It was like, hey, let's do we're we're here. He made serving, he made the service before self. He would serve one of our core values, but we never talk about that. Those in the military, we don't like talking about like that. I'm here to serve. We don't, you know, we believe it. He made it cool. He made it cool to like want to serve, to like want to be at work. Um, and he was fun too. You know, he he did a really good job in our unit of making us proud to be in the unit. So one of the things so that the unit is um the 21st Airlift Squadron is the B liners. And you know, B liners is a rich history, um, all the way back to World War II, our unit, like flying the hump in Burma and stuff like that. It's really cool. But so we've been the B liners forever, and our colors are like red and black, I think. Well, Joe kind of came in with this idea that, like, hey, we if if we develop like an identity that makes people proud, like a sports team, like, hey, I want to wear the jersey of the unit that I'm in, wear the colors. He had this vision for that, and so he right away he came in and said, you know, we're the beeliners, we should be black and yellow. And so at the time, Wiz Khalifa's song Black and Yellow was out, and so he kind of brought in like that, like, hey, we're gonna be black and yellow, and and we capitalized on the Wiz Khalifa song, and we were like blasting that all the time. And it didn't take long for us to be like, yeah, this is cool. We're the cool squadron around. Everything was black and yellow. We had to this day, we have black and yellow everything. I'll and I'll tell you this like this for me is like a very special unit, and there's a group of us. Um that that ended Joe, Joe's change of command was 2013. I left in 2013 to go to the Pentagon. We had we had been flying together, you know, for years, a lot of us in there. And when you're in a special unit like that, you get really, really close to the people. And we did, and we when Joe left, um we we those of us who work for him thought like we need to do something for this. We've all I've been in, I've had lots of commanders. I've I've loved a lot of my commanders, but but nobody liked Ding. And we all felt that way. So we said, hey, we need to do something. Let's we all like to golf too. Air Force guys, we golf. Uh so hey, let's uh let's kidnap him. Let's right after his change of command ceremony. He's out, he's got some time off. Um, let's take him to Vegas and go golf. So we do that. So we we seven of us, ends up being eight of us, including him. Seven of us put together this trip. We don't tell him coordinate with his wife. We tell him we're gonna take him, you know, away to golf for a couple days. But we had bought him a plane ticket, we've done everything, made the reservations. We had guys who'd already left the unit who were flying to Vegas to meet us. So we kidnap him and we go to Vegas and we just have like this one great last hurrah. That was 2013. It is 2026, and this year will be our 14th consecutive year of doing that. We had such a good time at that trip, and and we were all going our separate ways. We said, dude, dudes, we gotta get together again next year. We gotta do this next year. So we did it the next year, and now we've been doing that golf trip every single year since 2013. That's that's like our reunion, you know, guys you go to war with essentially, right? These are like this is like the brothers, and and Joe Dingman is like he's the godfather of all that.

Host 1:49:16

So super cool story, man. Thanks for sharing that. Um, so you leave that unit and you you go to the Pentagon. This is a a very unique story. Uh, you and I talked about this a lot when we were prepping. Uh, I think you learned a lot. It wasn't your dream assignment. Um, so yeah, man, uh tell the people that story.

Alex Pelbath 1:49:34

Yeah, so I I wasn't not being uh the Air Force Golden Child, um, getting a shot to go to the Pentagon, which is a career-enhancing job for sure. Uh, it took a lot. It took Joe like cashing in all the chits he was owed, ding, to get me a job there. And he was able to do it. So, what should happen if you're an Air Force officer, what the normal progression is, is you learn your craft. You're supposed to become like an expert at your craft for the first, you know, six, seven years of your career. Then you become a major, you start getting leadership roles, and we send you to school for one year. We call it IDE, uh intermediate developmental education. You got to go to school. So this is Air Command and Staff College in Alabama or various versions of that. And it's the first significant narrowing in your career. I think only 30% of the people go. So everybody's the same, and then bam, immediately like now there's a top 30%. And that's usually where the commanders are gonna come from. I was not selected for school. I was I was told thank you, but no thank you. You didn't make the cut, you're not in the top 30%. And it's usually only those guys who wind up at the Pentagon. Well, Joe cashed in all his chips, got me a job to the Pentagon, and of all places that I got to go to go to the Pentagon, it was to the programming division, which programming in military speak means budget. So I wind up in a cubicle at the Pentagon, where Working on the Air Force budget.

Host 1:51:01

Sounds super exciting.

Alex Pelbath 1:51:03

I will tell you, I was uh, yeah, people downplay, like, nobody wants to go to staff jobs. Everybody loves flying airplanes. I will say I was excited about it because at this point I'd said, like, well, we're only I didn't now, right? I decided not to get out. I could have got out. My commitment was over. I owed the military nothing. And so we decided to go. So when you make a decision like that, like I decided, like, okay, I want to go be a commander. We're doing this. We're doing this thing. Let's go try to go. So I need to go there. You know, I want to go learn part of it. Um, the second part of it was, man, we were burned out. Flying season, flying airplanes for 10 straight years of just being gone all the time, right? This is this is where my wife came up with the I'd rather you just be deployed. The rest of the life is like too hard. I and we had two kids now. I was excited to go be a regular guy. I was excited to go work, you know, at the Pentagon, which is like 7:30 to 4:30. Get to know your kids. Coach my kids' T ball team, which I did. It was like the very first thing I did when we got there was I became my kids' little league coach. Yeah, I got to be a regular dad. I was super pumped about that. So I didn't have, I don't have the perspective that a lot of people have about going to staff job. Oh, it sucked. It's so terrible. I look back on the time, it was awesome.

Host 1:52:13

I do find that a lot of people that went and did the staff time, even if it was unwilling, it really enhanced their career. Because now you know how this now you know how the sausage is made, man.

Alex Pelbath 1:52:21

And now you know how to like that is such an important point you just said. And you want to you want to really learn how the sausage is made, go work in budgeting. So my my biggest takeaway. So I was in the in the um, I worked a year as a programmer on an aircraft, like I was responsible for the you know, the entire budget of the of this aircraft. And you're a major, you're not really making decisions, you're doing the nuts and bolts, you're making the sausage. And just like any budget, just like people's budget in their house, you can't have everything you want. So you're prioritizing things. How are we best going to spend it? How can we, how can we budget this over years to make sure that the program has everything it needs to have? And then I went, I did that for a year, and then I went to what's called the engine room. The engine room in the Pentagon is notorious. Anybody who's ever been in the Pentagon, if you just if you worked on the half staff, headquarters Air Force staff, and you just say engine room, everybody knows what that is. It is a freaking meat grinder. It is not 7:30 to 4:30. It is uh my worst day. I almost slept there. Me and a buddy were. We it was two o'clock in the morning. We just got finished. We had to be back at 6 a.m. for the brief. You gotta drive home. Nope, you know, I don't live inside the beltway. And should we just freaking sleep here? Go shower at the gym or whatever. What are you doing there? You're putting together the engine room, takes um so what when I was when I first got there, I was the programmer for the tanker, all the tankers, KC10s, KC-135s, KC46s. So I'm like a tanker programmer, which is also weird because I'm not a tanker guy. But whatever. So that's me. Then there's the the programmer for strat airlift, C-17s, C5s. There's the special ops programmer, there's the F-15 programmer, there's the F-22 programmer, there's the MILCON. Some, you know, MILCON is military construction, right? Not even now we're not attacking flying. That's still part of the budget. Takes a lot of money to build stuff on bases. There's that programmer. There's the programmer for people, all the people in the Air Force, officer and enlisted. There's programmers for research and development. Think about all the things we spend money on. $800 billion, okay, uh uh is the budget that we're working on. And in the military, unlike what we see in Congress when it's a year-to-year budget, the budgets you do in the military are five years. It's called the POM. Program objective memorandum. The dumbest name I've ever heard. I heard POM all the time when I shoot the palm, the palm, the palm. I'm like, what the heck is the palm? It's the budget. That's what we do in the Air Force. We come up with names for, or in the military. Come up with names. Don't make any sense. It's called the Palm. So we're we're building a five-year budget, and I had like one little slice of that. Well, the engine room is where you take all the slices and you put it together, and it becomes the budget that gets pushed forward to um Secretary of Defense area and then goes up to become the president's budget, the PB, they call it, which then becomes the N NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. Well, if you're building a budget like this, you can't, you can't just, we're not gonna waste our time by doing what we want to do and then send it to Congress and have them chop it all up and be like, that's not what we want. So this whole time we're doing it, we're we're coordinating with Congress. We're meeting with staffers, we're writing papers, trying to justify what we're doing. And in my case, this was during sequestration. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah. The huge budget cut. So we actually were building multiple budgets. We built an entire sequestered budget that was $747.7 billion. And then we had a second budget. This is just for the Air Force?

Host 1:55:55

Yes. Oh, wow.

Alex Pelbath 1:55:56

$747.7 billion just for the Air Force. Everything we do in the Air Force, all the special op stuff, all the fighter stuff, munitions. We spent a lot of money on bombs. Bombs are very, very expensive. It's probably half the budget. It's a lot, it's a lot. And the unique challenge is sort of I'll get to like why all this mattered for me, why it matters for me now, too, in a second. But yeah, so you're putting all those things together. Well, you can't have everything you want. So things that we would say, we decided to retire the KC-10 tanker. And what we said is look, there's only uh 72 of them, I think, in the Air Force. They're only at two bases, so we're only gonna piss off two congressmen. This is important. You can never remove assets from a congressional district. That congressman's not gonna let you do it. We've been trying to retire hundreds of C-130s for probably as long as I've been alive. And we can never do it. These C-130s are not even combat capable. You want to talk about like fraud, waste, and abuse? This is a freaking joke. The Air Force is coming to you and saying, we don't need these assets anymore. I would rather have the money that goes to sustaining those assets go somewhere else so that we can fight a war. So these C-130s are not even combat capable. But we have C-130 units all over the country. All over the country in the Guard and the Reserve. And so each one of those units is in some random congressman's district. And that congressman says, You're not taking my airplanes. I'm not losing jobs in my district. I want to get re-elected. Screw America. I don't care about America. You're gonna keep these non-combat capable aircraft. I'm t I'm smarter than you, entire Air Force. I know what the Air Force needs, and you need these 12 C-130s in my district, whatever. So so we so that's what we have to do. Anyway, my point is this whole time we're building the budget, we're communicating with the Hill because we want to make sure that they're okay with what we're trying to do, and you eventually come to agreements and you push the budget through. And so I learned a I learned a ton. My single biggest takeaway from being a budget guy is you want to know what somebody values? Look where they spend their money. Everybody talks a big game. Everybody, every freaking talking head on TV, everybody in Congress says this is what I care about, this is what I care about. If they're not putting dollars behind it, they don't care about it. And just words, right? I think that the old joke was uh um investment, maybe investment without dollars is is just a wish, you know? You're just dreaming. So that that time working on budgets, um I learned everything. I learned everything about this. Is why I know about munitions. Why would a C17 guy know about munitions? The biggest problem with munitions wasn't how much they cost, it was actually about industry being able to produce enough of them. Right? We went into killing ISIS, and we want to give, we're giving, we're selling our munitions to other countries to help us kill bad guys, and we're running out. Like that was like the big deal with like munitions wasn't how much money we could spend. It was literally industry couldn't produce them enough. So it's very, very beneficial to learn that type of stuff.

Host 1:59:01

How did working on that budget make you kind of an economic policy expert, if you will?

Alex Pelbath 1:59:06

Yeah, same thing I just talked about. Like the the understanding how to prioritize things, how to message things. Um, that was really important too. Messaging, like, hey, we're not we may be retiring the KC-10, but we have another airplane coming down the line, the KC-46, and we're gonna make sure it's in your district. And that's what we're doing. Like we retired the KC-10 from the fleet, and that means we took them out of Travis Air Force Base. Uh Congressman Garamendi is out there. I think he was on the Hask at the time, pretty powerful guy, but he's not gonna just let us remove KC-10s until he knows, oh, we're gonna give you KC 46s, you're not gonna lose any jobs. Actually, you're getting something better, right? Understanding that's that's really how it works. That is really how the budget works is selling it to every to all the interested parties to make sure they can get through.

Host 1:59:51

So not only are you working on the budget, I mean you're working in policy uh because you're having to meet with decision makers.

Alex Pelbath 1:59:57

Yeah, and I I I wasn't as a major, I'm not the guy meeting Garamendi. I'm the guy writing the paper to inform the general who's gonna go meet with Garamendi or whatever. And you know, I'm I'm hearing stuff too is you can't you can't just go meet with the congressman. Like there are rules about this stuff. So here's what I saw. Okay, I don't know how this happened. Okay. I saw uh Garamendi and we had KC 10s at McGuire, which is in Jersey. Somebody wrote a letter. Congress wrote a letter, and it said, We are very concerned with what we are hearing from the Air Force that you may be considering retiring the KC-10. As you well know, the KC-10 has all these great capabilities, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we do know. We fly it. We know what the capabilities are. Thank you very much. And yeah, we're trying to retire it. Um, and it was signed by Garamendi and other congressmen. Well, we knew that we were gonna replace the KC-10 with the KC-46. Garamendi had a meeting with a general, and I have no idea, I wasn't there. I have no idea what was said, but what I do know was Garamendi then removed his name from that letter that said, so I don't know, you know, I'm not, I'm not not gonna accuse anybody of anything, or certainly not any impropriety. This was the right level of messaging that needed to happen. Like, hey, we're doing it right. But but yeah, I imagine in that meeting it was like, hey man, we're helping you out here, bro. Yeah, you're losing that airplane, but you're getting this brand new bright, shiny airplane. Don't worry, you're not gonna lose it. You're gonna look good. We're gonna make you look good, Congressman. So yeah, so that that's the when it when it comes to policy, it's not just what is right, it's also what you can sell.

Host 2:01:29

Yeah, after that assignment, you became the special assistant to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

Alex Pelbath 2:01:33

Yeah, one man, one one caveat in there is I got deployed.

Host 2:01:39

Oh, that's right.

Alex Pelbath 2:01:40

Uh deployed dude from the Pentagon. You go to the Pentagon so that you can be home every day. And I'm working in the freaking, and by the way, there's two types of jobs in the Pentagon. There's the 7:30 to 4:30 that I mentioned, which is great because you're home every day, you're coaching baseball, but your job's probably not that important. Anybody can do that job. You're just a cubicle monkey or whatever in there. That's what I was first year. The other type of job is you're working all kinds of crazy hours and you're actually making a difference. I had both types of jobs in there. They're both great, right? One is like, I'm home every day, I get to coach my kids' baseball team. And the other one is like, man, I'm actually doing something that matters in the world, and I love that too. So I went from the first job where I'm coaching to now I'm in the engine room where it's all hours of the day. Lucky if I'm home by 8 p.m., but you're actually learning and doing something that makes a difference. And and it's a good career. Working in the engine room is a great career-boosting job. There are tons of generals in the Air Force who who got their start in the engine room. So that's great. But it is a ball buster being in there. It's called the engine room for a reason. I'm sitting there in the freaking engine room, and the boss comes up to me, and I know he's it's not it's not like something's wrong. And he puts a freaking piece of paper on my desk and it's deployment orders to Afghanistan from the Pentagon. I'm like, what? What how how why? What? What I don't understand how I'm getting deployed out of this. You know? Didn't I do my I mean I spent 10 years like over there? Like what's kind of like a freaking thing was a punishment? Go walk. You can't you can't walk five feet with without tripping around a tripping over a freaking rear echelon, you know. You know what I'm talking about. RMFs, they're there's there's they still exist today, Vietnam guys. REMFs are everywhere. I I changed it. I I call them, it's my own personal term, CMFs instead of REMFs. I call them CMFs, and the first word is careerist. Careerist MFs. Go freaking give it to one of them, man. Nope, you're the guy that so this uh particular gosh, this sucked. It's the most worthless. This is the worst. Not only you can deploy, but you're getting deployed to a worthless job. This is what it was. It was to go be the uh US 4A commander, the four-star commander of Afghanistan. It was to go be on his staff as his air planner, the air planner for the four-star. And the requirement was field grade, so major, mobility guy, so heavy guy like me, staff officer in the Pentagon. So click there. So really, when I look at like the requirement, if that's the the requirement, then all none of these CMFs actually could do it. Like part of the requirement is if you had to have some of the experience I had. That sucked. So I go, I show up to um ISAF headquarters in Kabul, and that is a tiny compound. It's about a 11-minute Hilo ride from Kabul International.

Host 2:04:37

ISAF stands for I served for American Forces.

Alex Pelbath 2:04:42

I didn't know that actually. I was there. I didn't know that.

Host 2:04:45

That's all somebody made a meme about that. It's true.

Alex Pelbath 2:04:48

Well, you know, it's the NATO, is the NATO force. He's the NATO commander and the American Forces commander, the four-star, dual-hatted. Um, because the ISAF was uh international, international security assistance. Oh, yeah, that's what it's what it's.

Host 2:04:59

I forgot.

Alex Pelbath 2:05:00

I like yours better. It actually changed while I was there to resolute support for whatever reason, whatever bureaucratic reason, they changed the mission to RS. So I'm working for General John Campbell, General Army General JC Campbell on his staff. I'm the only Air Force dude. I show up and uh I'm doing like changeover with the guy in front of me. He's a C5 pilot. And this is like literally what he tells me is like, oh, this job is so great, you don't have to do anything. He's like, people are gonna come ask you for help all the time, and you can always just say, nah, you're you work for the general, you can't help him. And I, in my, you know, in my inside voice, I'm like, what? This is my experience with deployments, is the opposite. You want to be employed. If you're freaking deployed, you're a loser, dude. You want to be working. Otherwise, you're gonna be miserable and bored. Like, what's if I'm gonna be over here, I might as well be doing something.

Host 2:05:47

Dude, couldn't agree with it.

Alex Pelbath 2:05:48

So I I sure enough, what I find out pretty quickly is it's the most worthless job in the world. And it's uh, I'm the air planner. The general flies one helicopter trip a week and one fixed-wing flight a month, and that's what I'm there to plan. It takes 30 minutes to plan that. It was awful. I went to the gym for two hours every day in the morning.

Host 2:06:12

Come back looking like a Lou Ferrigno.

Alex Pelbath 2:06:16

My wife was pretty happy with the came. Uh, best shape I was ever in in my life by far. So the job sucks. I'm I'm two weeks in and I hate it. I hate my life, and I'm the only Air Force guy with all these army dudes, and and uh, and it's my first introduction to the army, by the way. And look, I I know what the other services think of the Air Force, and they're not necessarily wrong. I did golf a lot. I had all kind of jokes in my head, man. We were just went, I've I've heard them all, bring them all. I mean, and they're all comf, you know, the chair force is is also not wrong. I mean, because even when we're like in combat, I am sitting in in that cockpit in a chair. I mean, you're you're not wrong. And we do golf a lot. Yeah, I'm a single-digit handicapper, bro. Like, come on. This they're all right. They're all right. Um, it doesn't mean we don't, you know, especially for me, I'm a wrestler. I'm a I I feel the I I do, I always have had and and still do have the warrior mentality. So I'm maybe a little bit different than some of these guys. So after two weeks on this job of just being miserable, I go to the uh the XO, the four stars 06, right? And the XO's guy really runs the office, runs everything. And uh Patrick Frank, now general, Patrick Frank. And I was like, hey sir, I'm dying. Can you you gotta give me some work? You gotta give me and he goes, Oh. He's like, Man, there's plenty of work to be done. None of you guys have ever asked me that question before. They have this perception, which rightly earned, you know, based on my uh interaction with the guy before me, is that they're all slugs. These Air Force guys are worthless. Which sucked, but he was like, Yeah, man, we got plenty of things for you to do. So I kind of became special projects officer for him. And uh and one, so one of the things I did is like we to land at headquarters. Everybody who's ever been to headquarters in Kabul knows this that the LZ, the helicopter LZ is a soccer field. It's called soccer field LZ. It's an Afghan National Army soccer field. And so I show up there and the helicopters, and this is what the helicopter would do flies up to the LZ to this soccer field. Kids are playing soccer, Afghani kids are playing soccer, and the aircraft, the helicopter would like hover until all the kids scatter and then it would land and it's and it's outside the wall of the compound, so it's not even like in a protected space in the freaking middle of Afghanistan. And which, by the way, this is look, this is a time in Afghanistan where the reason we had the helicopter, it's so short of a drive from Kabul International to headquarters. Why are we taking helicopters instead of driving? The reason is because everybody was getting blown up. All the convoys were getting blown up, man. You just you land in Kabul and you need to get to the headquarters. No, it's too too unsafe. So you so they killed the convoys before I even got there. You have to take the helicopter over there, but that's it. It's like landing on an LZ. And and uh Colonel Pat Frank is like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. And so he's like, AP, here's your first project. Turn that into an LZ. So he's like, we'll get you some money, we'll we'll get the we need T walls brought in, we want to wall off that thing, and we need some way of like communicating with the helicopters so that they don't just hover, right? And if you're leaving, by the way, this is what happened. The helicopter would land, and there's people like standing, you know, inside the fence waiting for the helicopter to land, and then you would run out there and talk to the dude in the door and be like, Hey, are you going to Bogram? He's like, No, I'm going to Kabul and be like, all right, I must be on the next one. Or you run out there and you're like, same thing, shouting, where are you going? Bogram. Oh, yeah, that's me. And then you get on. That was literally how you got it. It was it was so dumb for how long we had been there. And so that was my that was my first project was to go build this LZ. And so we did. I had I had three Air Force calm guys. Calm in the Air Force means uh computer tech. These are airmen, E3s, E4s. And their job was to fix the general's computers, right? Computers always go down, and legitimately, the four stars, he can't, he can't be disconnected from you know the secret computers, though. That's their job. They had a very important job, even though they're E4s. But they're calm guys. So I employed them. We get a trailer shipped in, we get these T-walls shipped in, we wall off the compound. I get a radio. I forget where we find a radio. We get a radio, we we formally give the LZ a name, um, and a radio frequency. And now I've got these Air Force E4 computer dudes. I love these guys, so I don't want to call them computer nerds. Just call them computer dudes. I still love these guys. Fantastic. I think it was a great experience for them, too. They'd never been out from behind their computers before. And now I got them out there on an LZ talking on the helicop, talking on the radio to the helicopters so that the people would show up in the trailer to get on the helicopter, they'd know exactly where it was. And that by the time we left, by the time I left, that's what it was. They just kept developing it and it became like a full-on LZ. I'm so proud of this project. I'm a freaking Air Force C17 dude. I don't know the first thing about helicopter landing zones. And we built an LZ. So, nonetheless, that that was great. That put me, I think, uh, they thought this Air Force guy was a little less worthless than all the other Air Force guys. More important than that, I played ping pong. Okay, this is super important. Um we're in the headquarters, you know, at the headquarters base in the headquarters building. Uh, General Campbell. I think I think he was whatever previous division was, when he was a two-star, his farewell gift was like this custom painted ping pong table. And so we had it right out back of our compound. And I would, you know, go play ping pong with the guys all the time and whoop everybody's asses in ping pong. Just whooped everybody. And so um I'm sitting in my office as the airplanner one day, and now I'm already seen as not as worthless as every other Air Force guy before. And the general walks in, General Campbell walks in, he's got a ping pong paddle in his hand, and I maybe talked to him three times the whole time I've been there. Like a month, and he goes, uh I heard you play ping pong. Let's go. So we go out and start playing ping pong. That started him and I playing ping pong every single day. At the end of the day, I would wait. He always did it, it was like between 7 and 8 p.m. He's like taking a break, and then he goes back and works till midnight, you know. Well not long after that, his aide camp, right? All generals have aides. Four star has two aides, but uh his aide has to rotate home. And Colonel Frank comes into me, the XO comes in and says, Hey, what what would you think about taking over as the general's aide? And uh and he said, The caveat is we need you to restart your deployment right now. So six months more from right now. And I thought about it, called my wife, like, what a great opportunity to be the Forest Art. As aid, and I'm already feeling like my job is stupid anyway. I was a huge advocate for deleting my position. Like, if we this job doesn't need to exist, anybody can do it. And uh, and that's what happened. So, so I I became General Campbell's aide for six months, and it was um it was incredible. It was life-changing in so many different ways, especially seeing what had happened. But, you know, now now if now I got a four-star like serving as aide, not just learning what I'm learning, but he gets to write a little note for me when it's time to rotate back.

Host 2:13:30

Is that common for Air Force guys to serve for Army generals?

Alex Pelbath 2:13:33

Yeah, in this case it was. He always had two aides. One was always an Air Force guy. The guy before me was an F-16, F-15 guy, F-15 guy. Um, and that was common. Um, and it was some extenuating circumstances. He actually had already hired another aide, and then that aide got in trouble. Uh, you know, I don't know. The easy thing would be thinking like he got a DY at home or whatever, and now we're not freaking sending this guy to go be a general's aide when you're dealing with these, but who knows? I don't know what it was. He got in some kind of trouble, but the bottom line is he couldn't come, and that's what what the X, why the XO came to me. And I'm super proud of that too, because okay, I started out, I show up as the only Air Force guy, and I'm like worthless, and they're all you know, looking down on me and like, you're nothing. You have the you have the most worthless job on the staff. We don't know why you exist.

Host 2:14:20

You eat ice cream and that's it.

Alex Pelbath 2:14:23

Exactly, exactly. Um, and I don't know, maybe I never asked the guys this, but like these are tough dudes. There's freaking rangers in there. I mean, these are guys like they're deployed. Army guys like love being deployed, it's like part of it. Like, you gotta deploy in the army, right? Very different worlds, and uh so I wonder if, like, being a wrestler, like I was a gym guy too, and I could outpull up every one of those dudes in there. So I don't know, maybe that's some like street cred, maybe I'm not. Who knows what it is? I I do know without question, ping pong had a lot to do with it. And General Campbell's an introvert, so he didn't he didn't talk a lot, and I recognize that in him that this is his like processing time or blow off steam time or whatever he's dealing with stuff as the freaking commanding general and all of Afghanistan. And so I didn't bother him.

Host 2:15:08

No chit chat, just ping pong.

Alex Pelbath 2:15:09

None actually it was like this running joke. People would be like, Yeah, we knew it was you and the general playing ping pong because all we heard was the ball bouncing. We never heard any words being spoken.

Host 2:15:18

Yeah, because I'm sure that guy's used to people kissing his ass all day and probably staffers being staffers. Did you just try to stomp them all the time, dude?

Alex Pelbath 2:15:24

No, I took it easy on him too. Took it easy. He was legitimately good, great reflexes. He he didn't have like a uh You let him win, bro?

Host 2:15:32

That's disappointing.

Alex Pelbath 2:15:34

It was um I made it fun. I made it fun. It's not fun if you're not evenly matched, it was fun for me too. I got really good playing left-handed. I played a lot of these guys left-handed. Now you're just talking shit. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I have the ping pong paddle. I was like, hey, hey, boss, like when it was time for me to rotate home.

Host 2:15:52

Sign this.

Alex Pelbath 2:15:53

Yeah, hey, we I still have the ping pong pad. I'm like, well, you sign this. I forget he talks some shit on there. He said he's like, go army, go beat air. I forget what he put on there, but but it was really good. And I remember that so that when it's now it's time to rotate home. So look, can I let me back this up a little, right? So I am not Air Force Golden Boy. I somehow wind up in the Pentagon, which was a miracle that that happened. Now I get deployed in this worthless job, and I'm leaving as the four stars aide.

Host 2:16:17

Well, what was it like being his aide? What did you do? What was that job?

Alex Pelbath 2:16:21

You're an aide. You're I carry his hat. I carried a backpack in the backpack. The backpack was heavy as hell because it always had diet cokes and coins and all his coins. Because we'd go visit all the all the troops, but I logged more over a hundred sorties on Blackhawk helicopters, which is cool. I never done that before as an Air Force guy. That was cool because we flew around everywhere in helicopters, you know. Um, I got to come back to DC with him. My first time coming back was uh I'd just, you know, not been in aid for not very long, and they it was cool. They gave me this trip because I was expected to be home at this time, and now I'm not. But we were coming back to DC. He had to testify before Congress. So we flew back and I got to see my family for a couple days. It was sort of like a mid-tour, you know, pseudo-RR, even though we're working. But that was really cool too because I flew back with him. We now I'm like driving around DC in the armored car, you know, going to the we went to the White House, he had a meeting in the White House, and I I go in the side door with him and I sit in the waiting room and wait for him to like do his meetings, and then we go to Congress, closed door, testify. Um, was really, really cool. Getting to see that as a as a young officer was amazing, you know. And then and then flying back, and um and we went everywhere. I got to go to it, it really opened my eyes to all the other things that we're doing as a C-17 guy. I just knew that mission. Now I'm learning all the other missions, man. I went up to NSOC Alpha, the special office base in Afghanistan up at Bagram with them. This is cool. We're leaving, he's doing his meeting with the with the NSOC guys, and we just happen to be walking out and we're going through the command center, and they're like, hey boss, we're we're about to take out a dude you want to watch. And so he's like, Yeah. So we stay there, and you know, this is uh we've got uh UAV up flying around, and we've they've done all the back work on proof of life, and you know, it takes weeks to get permission to kill a dude, and they got it, and it just happened like when we were there. So I'm like, Oh, to watch this too. So I stand next to the general and watch us some bad guy in Afghanistan, and they wait till he's you know, they do it right. We do it right. America's amazing at this stuff, America's amazing at this part. We wait till he's all by himself and we freaking launch a hellfire at this guy. Bam! Awesome.

Host 2:18:27

America.

Alex Pelbath 2:18:28

I loved it. It's awesome. C-17 guys don't get to see that. Yeah. So yeah, so that was great. I will say it was not all perfect being his aide. I thought I was gonna get fired. This is you want to talk about a steep learning curve. Being an Air Force C-17 dude, now you're working for an Army four-star. Okay.

Host 2:18:45

And there's no training course, they're just like you're playing ping pong in a cubicle, like, hey man, you're getting it.

Alex Pelbath 2:18:49

That's right. That's right. And it was, I knew, I knew they probably went through a period where they're like, oh, we made a mistake hiring this guy. And I know this because I gotta tell this funny story. Army guys will freaking love this story. So we're in a meeting with the four-star, and we're getting some dignitaries visiting. I forget who it is, you know, congressman. I don't know who's, I don't remember who it is. But these are always like a big deal. The general's like gotta make time for these.

Host 2:19:12

One of the dudes who didn't get to go to the Galapagos.

Alex Pelbath 2:19:15

Yes. Yeah. So whoever it is coming to visit. And uh I so this is part of the age job. It's like you're running the the day, like the calendar, not the strategic calendar, but like the day-to-day. Like, how are we gonna fit this in? So, like my job is to work with public affairs. It's a pain in the ass when these guys come visit, but the general has to do it. So, how are we gonna work this in or whatever? This is like part of your job. And so I'm working with the public affairs guy who is a fantastic officer, he's super sharp, he gets it. He's not he's not a clown, he understands the general's time is valuable, and he puts together, in my opinion, an awesome plan. And so now we're in this meeting, it's the general, it's the exo, it's all the staff and me, the aid. And I'm pretty new at being the aide. And the and uh I'm briefing this schedule, and the general's like, don't want to do that, I want to do this. What are you supposed to say? Yes, sir. No problem. No excuses, sir. Yeah, yes, sir, I'll move out. That's not what I say, that's not what this dumb kid says. I see, I hear him say that, and I'm like, damn, this grid, that's gonna blow up this whole plan. Like, so what? Like, so what if it blows up the whole plan? I don't know what I was thinking, man. But I tried to defend the plan to the four star. I was like, hey sir, I don't remember you remember what I said, but I spoke up and don't do that, man. Don't do just don't just don't do that. Just say yes, sir, and move on. And man, it pissed off the general to the point where I remember this. He's now ranting, and everybody's like dead quiet, and everybody's like, and I'm just sitting there, and he and the last comment he makes is like he's like telling, telling everybody why he's right and I'm wrong. And he goes, and he goes, Am I the idiot here? Clearly meaning he's the idiot here. And I and now, and I'm at this point, I'm like, shut up, don't say oh damn word. I sit there. And I walk out, we walk, the meeting ends, and now we all like we all work in like the same office. The general has his office by himself, the big office, and we all work in like the you know, the big community office. And uh Colonel Frank the XO is like, AP, come here. And it's awkward, right? I just got like I just got my clock cleaned in there like publicly, and he walks me up to the whiteboard and he goes, he he draws a field. I'm gonna try to draw, try to explain this perfectly on the whiteboard. He draws this line and he goes, AP, this is the battlefield. And he's like, We're all over here, and the enemy's over here, and he draws stick figures, and he draws the enemy with a stick figure and a machine gun. And the machine, it's like all these dashed lines, and the enemy is laying down a field of fire, and here's all of us. He draws all these stick figures laying down. Here's all of us taking cover. And then in the middle of the field, he draws this stick figure like this, and it's like, here's you running through the field of fire. He goes, Next time you see us taking cover, you take cover. And I was like, Yeah, yes, sir. Yes, sir. I'll never forget that stick figure drawing of me running through this the field of fire with all these army guys too. And he's gotta be like half serious but half joking. Like, yeah. You're he he was yeah, he wasn't like he's like, You're such a dumbass. You know what I mean? It was just a great lesson to learn. Like, I I thought I was getting fired. I'd barely been the aide for like a month or something like that. And and you know, so back to like the great leader Joe Dingman. So the first thing I did, man, I walk out of there, I called Ding. Ding, I'm about to get fired. I took this aid job of aid job extended. Now I'm gonna get fired. And uh another reason it makes him a great leader, right? He's the kind of guy you call. I still call him for advice today. Um, and he's like, AP. He's like, Look, you're new. Leaders do this. They gotta build their staff, they want you, they want you on the team. It's called wire brushing. Everybody's gotta take a little wire brushing sometime. He's like, Don't worry about it. And he was right, you know, we we moved on from there and I fully became part of the team. And I know, I know by the end that that they loved having me on the team. And and and I remember like the the very end, the the general, our last dinner together was we're sitting, we're in the chow hall, and he's like, Hey, what do you real casually like, hey, what do you want to do? Right? What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? And I was like, oh man, there's a couple things like I would want to do. And the bottom line was he ended up sending me to J33, which is where he was when he was a major, which is current ops in the NMCC in the National Military Command Center. And it was that was awesome. Um, and also it was awesome because like, man, that's a great push. Going to the joint staff's a great, it's a cool job. I love that he was sending me where he was when he was a major like me. And so it was like this awesome thing. Unfortunately, it all worked out, but unfortunately, it was a it became a huge ordeal with the Air Force. So when I say I'm like not a golden child, like the Air Force is like very particular, they have plans, they got other officers slaughtered into that. Dude, I'm on the air staff. The joint staff is like one notch higher than the air staff, you know? You shouldn't have been on the air staff anyway. We're not you didn't you didn't make the cut to go to the joint staff, you don't get to go to the joint staff. And so they pushed back on this thing, on this, on me going there. The Air Force did. Like, no, he can't go there. He's gonna go back to the engine room, which is no, no, thank you to that. And so now I'm working with the XO. The XO's like making phone calls for me. And he he had got an email, he shared it with me, from some Air Force guy saying AP can't go there. An Air Force civilian, like in the officer, personal management, whatever, whatever these I don't know those are. And it pissed him off. Like, who is this nerd telling us like what he can and can't do? So he just all he did was uh he prints it and he showed it to General Campbell. And I wasn't there for this, but what came back to me is what the general wrote on his in chicken scratch on there, who do I need to call? And that was it. That was all it took because then Pat Frank gets on the phone and he calls uh some general back there. And then the next email that Colonel Frank showed me was from a general, the civilian's boss, that said, Um, don't worry, we're I'm so sorry. We took care of it. Major Pellbath is going to J33.

Host 2:25:31

And then I went and uh and the biggest question I have is Did you continue to play ping pong with him when you became his aide?

Alex Pelbath 2:25:36

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Every still every day, every day that we weren't traveling. Yeah, that never that never ended. We played ping pong the whole time. Super the whole time we were there. Yeah.

Host 2:25:45

Uh, how was how was ops at the Pentagon? I mean, you're not just seeing, you're seeing everything.

Alex Pelbath 2:25:50

Yeah, it going over to the J33 was uh fantastic. J3 Kern Ops specifically, I loved that job. It's down in the basement of the Pentagon in the NMCC National Military Command Center, like it's already freaking Fort Knox getting to the Pentagon. And then you go down there and it's like more. There's like more security to get in there, you know? And we were doing part of my job. It wasn't like a super important job, but it was uh finger on the pulse of what's happening all over the planet operationally. Um, so part of our job is shift work too, um, which is good and bad, you know. But I think one of the shifts like starts at two in the morning or whatever. So you do it, but um, it's good because because it's shift work, it's back to the eight hours. I was home a lot more. And I really did feel like I understood and knew what was going on around the planet. And also the other thing I found out on the joint staff is like a lot of the um the careerists, the CMFs I called them, weren't there. This was like nobody ever asked me like where I came from when I got down there. What is what I love about working with the army? I freaking love the army. Um, they they don't care about your background. Like, how well do you do your job? Like, how well do you do your job today? Like, how mission focused are you? What kind of a dude are you? I loved that. The the Air Force like cares about that. We definitely, the good dude thing matters tremendously. But then on the back side of it, it's like, but what does your paperwork look like? What strats did you get? Oh, you weren't the number one guy. Sorry, you can't you can't play with us today. Army never was like that. So I loved being down there with those guys. Everybody's just so mission-focused. And it wasn't just Army, and this is the joint staff, it's everybody. Um, and so part of my job was uh was doing the the update brief every morning, preparing the brief for the J3, the three-star J3. And so we're we're we're we get an Intel report every day from J2 from the Intel guys, and we would put it together on this um, you know, a one-pager. Generals only like to read one page. Don't put a lot of words on slides for generals, okay. Waste your time.

Host 2:27:41

Just a lot of pictures.

Alex Pelbath 2:27:42

A lot of pictures. This was a picture, and this was hilarious. This was a picture, and on my the picture, this is now 2015. Uh, ISIS, hot and heavy with I fighting ISIS. And so every day I did part of the update brief was the strike report. You know, how many, what assets, how many troops in contact, how many bad guys did we kill, how many, how many good guys got killed. And but but it was funny because the one pager was a picture of Iraq and Syria, and we would use those little PowerPoint like explosions to like move them around the map, you know, to where where all the battles were taking place. And I'll I'll never forget this. My favorite strike report of all time. And this the reason I love this, I remember it so much, is because, in my opinion, this is America, is how America fights wars. Like I heard it said before, like we're not America is not interested in fair fights. We don't we don't ever want it to be a fair fight. So this strike report was troops in contact, they were being engaged by an enemy sniper in a building. We brought in a B-1 bomber. Enemy with a rifle, America with a B1 bomber, and just took out the building. That is how we fight wars. I freaking love it. So I loved being able to be a part of that. Um, and then uh then there was an opportunity for one more cool thing to happen, which was um to go work for the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

Host 2:29:09

How how did that position or job come about?

Alex Pelbath 2:29:12

My my boss brought it to me. I was, you know, looking for opportunities. You don't want to stay in one desk job for too long. And um I think I at this point I had a reputation as being a high performer there. And the job for the chairman, this was um to be on his CAG, the chairman's action group, commander's action group, and other agencies, the chairman's action group. So you're kind of doing all the nuts and bolts stuff. It's not the immediate staff, you're just at the outer the second ring.

Host 2:29:39

Who was the chairman then?

Alex Pelbath 2:29:41

Uh Dunford. Joe Dunford. The Marine. The Marine. Yeah, Marine of all Marines. And Mattis was a sec at the time. Um Dunford was is one of the greatest Americans I've ever met. So uh I applied to to join the CAG and uh man, you're talking about a an interview. It was an exhaustive interview, it was really cool. Um I was well prepared for it. Interviewed the team, it went really, really well. It helped that I had just come out of Afghanistan because the questions were how much do you know of policy and what's going on around the world? You know? And I was able to answer those questions probably better than a lot of them could. And they loved it. The interview the interview killed. I knew it did. Walked out of there anyway. I got hired and so joined the chairman's team. And so I spent the last a little over a year in the Pentagon working for the chairman.

Host 2:30:30

Is that a big team?

Alex Pelbath 2:30:31

Yeah, it's a pretty big team. Um, the travel team isn't isn't very big. So I was strategic engagements. He had like three parts of his CAG. It was like the the thinkers, the the really smart dudes who literally wrote papers. These are like Ivy school, Ivy League school grads, right? In the military. They're like writing, their whole job is to like think of other things that could be happening around the world so that the chairman's not caught by surprise. And then there was his speech writing team. They literally wrote his speeches. And then there was the um strategic engagements team, which was the travel team. So we did all of his like, hey, he's he's he doesn't just go to one place. If he has to go meet his counterpart, one of the trips we did was to go to the uh go meet the French Chad. We call him chairman, they call him chiefs of defense. And it was in the French version of the Pentagon where you're not just gonna take the time for him to fly over there without capitalizing the fact that he's over there. So we would go meet a lot of people. We go to a lot of different countries, and so our job was to plan all that, was to like find the strategic engagements that made sense for the chairman. Like, hey, if we're gonna be meeting with him, maybe we should be meeting with the Chad from Germany as well. You know, let's put these put these plans together. And so I got to travel with him. I remember sitting in the room in in the French Pentagon, and I'm listening to the French Chad and Chairman Dunford, and we just get the big brief on what the French are doing to kill ISIS, just like we are. And I just get to sit there and listen to policy being developed. Like the two of them having a conversation, right? I love this is the difference between them and like politics, is they are both experts. Our chairman, Chairman Dunford, was a freaking expert on all of these things, right? He's not like regurgitating, he like actually knows. And so listening to them develop national defense policy, freaking unbelievable opportunity. Amazing. I had so much fun doing that.

Host 2:32:21

Can you explain to the audience a little bit? I mean, I I have a better understanding than most because of my previous life, but can you kind of explain what the chairman of the uh of the joint chiefs does and why that uh position is important?

Alex Pelbath 2:32:32

Yeah, uh great question too, because now I get to um I went from uh Chairman Dunford, then I left, and when I was doing the Afghanistan stuff, we had a new chairman, it was Millie, and the contrast between the two could not be more clear to me. So the chairman of the Joint Chief, the Joint Chiefs of Staff consists of the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Chief of Naval Operations, right? The CNO, uh Coast Guard leader, um, and the uh Marine Corps Commandant. I think I think I don't remember if the Marine Corps Commandant.

Host 2:33:08

I love that Coast Guard leader, whatever whatever that forget it's I think he's a three-star, but he's part of it.

Alex Pelbath 2:33:13

Part of it. Um anyway, it's all of them. That's the that's the joint chiefs of staff, the leaders of all the services. And then there's always a chairman of the joint chiefs, right? The coordinator of all of them. And the chiefs of staff are running their services. Chiefs of staff of the army, chief staff of the air force, really big jobs, obviously, the biggest jobs you can have in the service. And the chairman is oversees that council essentially, but the chairman has one specific job: principal military advisor to the president. That's it. Chairman's not actually in command of anything. But I think this is really important. Principal military advisor to the president. So giving military advice to the president, how we should be executing wars, where we should be and where we shouldn't be. Obviously, it's a freaking super important job. And so who I think having a good working relationship with the president matters tremendously. I I remember when President Trump took over and and he got rid of um the chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, and people people give him a bunch of crap. And I I'd I've been a commander, and the first thing you do when you take command is you you make sure you have a team that's gonna work for you, right? That is good, that you gel with. Like you don't want to have like you can't have like conflicts. So I thought that was like the the dumbest crap he ever took was oh, look at him like fire and all these people. It's not fire, he's just maneuvering the team to be the You want the team that you want. Principal military advisor of the president, you better be a guy who gets along well with the president. Like, I don't know what those relationships are like, but geez, you get to, you have the privilege of doing that when you're the boss to have the team advising you that you want advising you. So I thought that was so dumb. And anyway, anyway, that's that was later President Trump. But that's but that's a very obviously significant role. And so, how do you best be do that role? Um, I I watched Chairman Dunford do it. It meant he was busy all the time. I don't know anybody who slept less than him unless it was the president. I mean, we traveled, traveled all over the world meeting. He wanted to have, he needed to have the actual no-kidding like pulse of everything going on. So he we would fly to, we flew to Afghanistan. It was really cool, actually. One of my first trips ever with the chairman was to fly back to Afghanistan. General Campbell was still the commander in Afghanistan. So I went working for him. Now I'm working now. I show up with the chairman on the chairman's staff. That was really cool to see. But that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to speak face to face with the leadership on the ground in all these places.

Host 2:35:32

So what's the what's the interface between the chairman and the sect F?

Alex Pelbath 2:35:36

Um they work hand in hand. The sect dev obviously is a uh politically appointed position. The chairman is not. Um, but otherwise, pretty similar. I mean, the sec dev is technically a civilian chain of command and and ahead of the chairman, above the chairman in the chain of command. So um different. The sect dev doesn't have to be a military guy. Lately, the sec def has, you know, for the like the last quite a few sec, they've all been military folks, but not always. It hasn't always been that way that the sec def was in the military or served in the military. Obviously, I mean Heg Seth, uh, there used to be a lot more of that, you know, where it was people who maybe served when they were younger and um but aren't serving now. Like we we've had we've had titans of industry serve in those roles before, you know, not necessarily military people. So it can it can go both ways. But you know, the the contrast between Dunford is why I'm sure we'll get into it more why I loathe Millie is what I saw from him was if you take that that job title, principal military advisor to the president, and you look at what happened in Afghanistan in August 2021, the withdrawal, either that was Millie's best advice to the president, what which that was bad advice, you're fired. Or he gave the president other advice and the president didn't listen to him, which probably means he should have resigned. So what one of the two, you know, you either you either gave him that advice and it sucked. Well, you're fired now, dude.

Host 2:37:03

Yeah, we'll definitely talk about uh that um a little bit later. So you you go to the Pentagon, you know, initially started budget, and you get to do all these different experiences. So now you're coming out of the Pentagon, and man, you have just a an uh a massive understanding of how like the entire system like uh works.

Alex Pelbath 2:37:24

Yeah, I think so. I think uh so leaving that job, working for the chairman, um this is so fun for me because I'm still not the Air Force's golden boy. Like I made my way, all of my success in the professionally in the Air Force came from being overseas, from being deployed. It was either flying airplanes, you know, the first leadership job I ever had was while I was deployed to Inserlik, or it was um, you know, being deployed to Afghanistan and somehow becoming the general's aide, going from the most worthless job in all of Afghanistan to being the general's aid um to traveling the world with the chairman. And that was all really outside the scope of the Air Force, too. That was the best thing. So now it's like time for command. Now I'm in 05. I get I got promoted when I was working for the chairman. And now, like, this is why we stayed in. I want to be a squadron commander. I want to go back and be a C-17 squadron commander. This is like, this is what's the goal. I wasn't even thinking about what could be after that. Like, this is the goal. After working for a guy like Joe Dingman and some of the other great commanders I had, like, that's what I want. I want to be that guy. I want to go back and make that kind of impact and get back and into the where the rubber meets the road. One of the best uh um definitions I ever heard of what the importance of it, of the squadron as a unit in the Air Force. And this is different than others. Squadrons are are larger, I think, than a lot of other uh military units, but the squadron is the beating heart of the Air Force. I heard somebody say that, I've always believed that it's true to where we execute combat from. So I wanted to go back and command that. Well, I never went to school like I was supposed to. I got pushed into jobs that the Air Force didn't want me to take. I was still on the outside looking in. And when I but when I when I put down my uh you have to like apply to be a squadron commander, like you send your records through, and then right on top is uh uh two lines essentially from your current boss and that the last line on the piece of paper on top said my number one guy signed Joe Dunford. Well, you're gonna be a commander now, you know. That was it. I actually got some feedback. I had a previous boss, another great commander I had, a guy named Tom Cooper. Awesome commander. He happened to be like on the board that was meeting, and he said he saw that. And he said when he saw that he laughed, people laughed, and immediately my name goes into the you're gonna be a commander bin. And then the way it works in the Air Force, one of the few things, personnel processes that I absolutely love is to be selected for command is your record. It's very objective. They don't even know who you are, they're just like reading the record or whatever. Now, what goes into the record is very subjective. There's I have problems with that process, but it is, they're just looking at records. And they just, I think the number is like however many commands are available. If the number's 100, they do 150, like 50% more. Because some people are gonna turn it down or whatever, it's not gonna work out for timing. So I think that's it. So they're like, they're looking at all these records, and this year the there's 40 commands open or 50 commands open, so they're gonna take 75 names. And so bam, I made the list of 75. These are the 75 now commanders you can choose from. Then the reason I like this process is now it gets completely subjective, and they send those names out to all of the base commanders, and the base commanders get to hire, they get to pick who they want. And if there's a conflict, then they talk about it. Then it goes back to the board and the board decides what's best for the Air Force. But I love that because it's like an actual now, they're looking at the actual person who would be a good fit. And I've heard there's some really great things, like uh um feedback from some of those boards is like, hey, this person is like number one of the command candidates, but not a great pilot. And the board will say that person's gonna be a commander, but we're not sending them to a flying unit because they don't have a strong enough flying record. That's we love that. We want that to happen. And uh, and so it just the the way things, you know, come full circle in the Air Force. I've now made the command list. The list goes out to all the base commanders, and one of the one of the 06s out at one of the bases, when I was working for Joe Dingman back at Travis Air Force Base, the ops officer, his number two, is now an 06 at one of those bases, and he hired me to be a commander. That is how I got to Charleston Air Force Base.

Host 2:41:53

So you're leaving the Pentagon, you get picked up for command, um, you get this, you know, cool assignment. Um, talk to me a little about uh, you know, your first command assignment.

Alex Pelbath 2:42:03

Going to going to Charleston, first of all, Charleston's, you know, it's the uh dream assignment, in my opinion, if you're a C17 guy. This is where you want to be. We first time I ever went to Charleston was 2003, and we literally been trying to get there ever since pilot training. I mean, we were trying to move there. Um we look on it now and we just see this amazing like plan that God had for us because it's rare to revisit an assignment. Like if you go, if you go, I went to McCord, you're probably not gonna go back to an assignment like that unless it is for command specifically or something else. It's just it's just rare for that that happened. So the fact that we didn't get to move to Charleston early meant we got to move to Charleston all the way back, and you know, it's almost 10 years ago. Now we moved to Charleston. So I get selected for uh command. I went down there the first year I was uh chief of safety, sort of a holding pattern for me to take command. And then I took command of the 16th Airlift Squadron, which is the Lions, which was still to this day the best job I've ever had in my life. Being able to be a commander of you know almost 200 people in a squadron. I loved it. Being able to try to emulate guys like Joe Dingman as much as I can. Um, you know, I do not put myself in his class at all. Um, but it was amazing. Same thing, building that identity and trying to connect, like, hey, what we do and all the training that we do and why we why we take care of people so that we could go execute a combat mission. And, you know, Charleston's sort of the mothership of C17s. Um, we're the ones who get the most abused. We everybody does airdrop there. We do formation flying, we have the special ops organization there. And so it just was, and it's in the low country, it's home, it's Charleston. So Charleston's the best city in America. Um, I hope that doesn't inspire people to go there. We're good, we're good. We had a lot of people move there. I think we're good at this point, but uh, but it is. I mean, so we we moved there, that became home. It was the first place we ever lived, we were ever stationed where we would say we live in Charleston. Usually you're like, I'm stationed, I was stationed in McCord, I was stationed at the Pentagon. We live in Charleston. So that was really, really special to us. Um and on top of it, I got to command, which is which which was amazing, just an incredible experience. Um, so grateful to have done it, to have been a part of like the organization and all the great young people I had in the unit. So my favorite time in the Air Force for sure.

Host 2:44:24

What uh what was it about command that that made you really enjoy it? I mean, you obviously worked for some really great leaders. Um, what was your command philosophy? And what do you think that you know all that?

Alex Pelbath 2:44:34

It's an awesome responsibility trying uh taking care of people. I think like the that is the fundamental job of a commander. Number one, is to take care of people. I think Simon Seneck said it great. He said being in a leadership role is not about being in charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge, which I that really resonated with me. I love that. And so it was work my ass off to take care of everybody at home so that I could send them forward to fight the war. And there might have been like this little disconnect. I think I had a good reputation of taking care of people by the time that I left command. I think people believe that about me, that I was passionate about taking care of people. Where I may not have connected the dots for everybody is the why I work so hard to do that. So when I would say take care of people, I'm like, you're having you're having problems in your home. I'm gonna do what I can to help with that. Maybe that means I pull you off the flying schedule so you can solve your problems at home. Or if you've got special needs in your family, you work so hard to take care of that, or just the stupid little things that happen in the military, like you have a pay issue. Pick up the phone and make make calls to make sure you get your pay issue taken care of. Why do you do all of these things? It's so that when I got to send you to war, you're ready to go to war. I don't need somebody over there flying airplanes in Afghanistan when their mind is back home with all of their family issues. So I loved being able to do that. That just was my fundamental belief. The harder I work to take care of people, the better prepared we are gonna be to go to war. And I was very proud, proud of our combat capability. We were combat capable the entire time. We we that I think that part matters. And watching people, my I had a boss ask me uh it was sort of our initial feedback sessions, the base commander asked me this what um what does success look like for you? So what he asked me. And I I thought about for a minute and I said, when we get a deployment or a hard mission and I start getting volunteers because to me that is people saying, I don't want you to send anybody else, send me, right? The here I am, send me. That's what success looks like, I think, in a squadron. And so I loved it. I love the challenge of that. I read more books when I was in command than I'd ever read in my life. One of the things, most challenging things of being at the top in a leadership position is you no longer have people pouring into you. You're the one supposed to be pouring in other people. The other leaders just don't have time. And so I listened to a ton of podcasts and read a ton of books. And uh, and then I got to like read a book and be like, man, that makes a lot of sense. I'm gonna go try that. And then I would literally would just go try that thing and and uh and see if it worked. It was a lot of fun.

Host 2:47:13

What do you think uh your favorite book from that time period is?

Alex Pelbath 2:47:15

Great leaders have no rules. So two books. One, I think Extreme Ownership is a phenomenal book. Um, I encourage all young leaders to read it. Whatever, whatever you think of Jocko and those guys. Uh Jaco's legit, man. Yeah, that book, that book, unbelievable. Uh I did, I made it mandatory reading for anybody who's gonna work for me directly. You had to go read Extreme Ownership. Phenomenal book. And then uh Great Leaders Have No Rules, which first the title just speaks to my heart. Uh as a as a disruptor, a maverick, a rule breakers is kind of how I live my career. Is it like not being a I didn't follow the normal path and the normal rules to get to be a commander? And so just I loved it. And it was essentially that it was here's a great principle from that is that all policies need an expiration date. Um, and one of my great takeaways, I talk about this all the time when I'm when I'm given leadership talks, is a leader's job is not to obey the rules, a leader's job is to apply judgment in the application of the rules. Explain what you think that means. If our job was to obey the rules and follow the rules, why do we need leaders in the first place? Here's the rule book, here's a checklist, follow it and go execute it. What is the whole point of leadership? Judgment. Because things don't aren't easy. Because you can't because we operate, especially in combat, in the gray area. We operate in the gray. You can't just follow the rules. Now, the rules are there, I think, as a great starting point. And younger people should follow the rules. I I said this talking point is great. I was, I had to got the opportunity to go back to the Air Force Academy. Like, talk about this was really cool for me, a cool moment. All the way back after being a cadet, I'm now back at the Air Force Academy. I received an award and I got and I'm giving a talk, and I say this, and there's a Vietnam vet in the room, and he freaking loved it. You know, the old fighter pilots like love the break the rules thing. And he said, That's great. He said, I have one caveat to it. He said, rules are for amateurs and beginners. And then he turned to all the cadets and said, You are all beginners. So I think that's totally true as well. So I'm not encouraging people to break the rules, and uh, and I think most people understand what I'm saying, but but that's what a leader's job is, is like, yeah, I know what the rule is. Does it apply in this situation? You know? And that's good for like accountability too. The other thing I learned is there's always more to the story. You learn this as a commander. There's always more to the story. No matter what facts are laid before you, give it a little bit of time. There's probably going to be one or two or three more variables that are going to completely change your perspective about it. Um, I'll tell you just a real quick story about that. I get uh one of those mid or middle of the night phone calls that one of my dudes has been arrested. Got in a bar fight downtown. He's in jail. So, okay, send the first sergeant, get him out of jail.

Host 2:50:03

Air Force, dude? That's impressive.

Alex Pelbath 2:50:05

Come on. This guy's great. He was freaking one of my great troops, too. Awesome dude. And so here's the story I get. Um, they're downtown at the most notorious bar club downtown Charleston, where the young people go. Um, and he had thrown a glass at another guy's face, busted the glass on his face. Guy got a bunch of stitches, went to the hospital in an ambulance, and my guy's in jail. This is clearly assault. Like, I get the police report, it's like, seems like it's cut and dry. Okay. So call him in. What's the story? I get his side of the story, and I'm like, okay, that changes things. Let's let's start doing some more digging. I'm able to get the the footage. So this they've got cameras in this bar, and I get the footage of this whole fight. Here's what actually happened. My guy had just shown up, hadn't had a uh a thing to drink. BAC was 0.0. He's sitting down there with a group of people, and he's with his wife, and she's a very pretty girl. And as he's sitting there, I watch on the on camera this guy come up and looks like he's hitting on his wife. So you there's no there's no audio to this. So you're just kind of watching it in full. But we're guys, we know exactly, we can see exactly what's happening.

Host 2:51:18

Communication is 80% nonverbal.

Alex Pelbath 2:51:20

My guy's sitting down at a table like this, and he has like his first drink of the night, whatever, in front of him, and his wife is right there with the standing up, and some drunk guy comes up and starts apparently hitting on his wife. And my guy says something, the guy says something back, you know, he's probably like, hey, she's with me. And he says something back, and whatever he said was not, oh, my bad, bro. It was the opposite of that. And so now my guy stands up and he's kind of a big dude, he's like 6'3, and now he's standing next to his wife, and now they're jawing at each other. And then the guy says something, maybe stiff arms him, and just as he's getting ready to leave, he gives my guy the middle finger, I mean, right in front of his face, like right there. And my guy slaps the hand down out of his face. The other guy throws his liquid from his drink in my guy's face, and my guy reacts and throws his glass at the other guy's face. That is very different from the way the story was given to me. And so I'm watching this and I'm like, would I have done anything different? I mean, I I don't react that way. I know what happens when I get angry. Like, I I'm I'm like a simmering explosion anger. So I probably set my drink down and then punch the guy right in the face without throwing my drink. But so this is really challenging. So my guy has committed assault, but come on. The dude, the dude definitely deserved it, you know, number one. And it wasn't like my guy was the instigator at all. So they just that to me changes everything about that whole process. We were able to get custody of it. Uh, we found like a great, a great way to work on it. Turns out this guy was a Navy officer, by the way. So we that's my whole point is like there's always more to the story. Like you get this clear-cut case of assault, and then you get the rest of the story, and you're like, mm-hmm how do I punish a guy for doing exactly what I'm saying. So, how do you handle that? It so in this case, you can't be nothing. So we we were able to get jurisdiction over the police so that now I am the authority to handle it, and I just have to come up with a punishment that satisfies everybody, that makes my boss okay, makes everything okay, uh, while at the same time, in my opinion, doing the right thing. And I do think here's one of the great definitions of integrity and leadership that I abide by is um leadership is doing the right thing regardless of the consequences. So maybe I have to go have a discussion with my boss if he's gonna be upset with the punishment that I really don't want to give at all, you know, in this case. So what I did was uh I there's a thing you can do, you know, you can you can demote a guy. You can take a stripe from him. So, whatever, he's an E4, I made him an E3, but I suspended it. And what that means is I I'm not gonna actually take this stripe. You're on probation for six months. So I took the stripe and then like the next line was like suspended for six months. So as long as you don't get in trouble for six months, you get to keep your rank the whole time. So that's what I chose to do. And then the one impact that was significant was he was up for promotion. He didn't get to compete for promotion that year. So that that's that hurts because he probably wouldn't be promoted. Well, after six months, goes away, restored the stripe, he committed for competed for promotion the next year and he got promoted.

Host 2:54:30

Yeah.

Alex Pelbath 2:54:31

And he's great, he's still great.

Host 2:54:32

Yeah, I mean, a lot of people don't understand too heavy is the head that wears the crown, right? Like when you're in that leader leadership position, if you've never had to do that, it's real easy to criticize leadership. But when you've been in a leadership role, um, you know, it's it's it's a duality that a lot of people don't understand.

Alex Pelbath 2:54:46

You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And I I know that there are people you people probably even listening to this who are gonna like hate that. And maybe this is like where I differ from the army. I love working in the army so much, but but sometimes they're they're pretty the army's pretty freaking ruthless, uh, what they do with people. I and I just don't think that way, and that's fine. That that's that is um the the type of leader I am is that I I'm gonna do look. I get it, it's a rule. I get I get what it says you're supposed to do in a situation like that. I'm gonna do what I think. Not what I'm supposed to do, but what I should do.

Host 2:55:21

Yeah, that's powerful. So you spend three years in Charleston?

Alex Pelbath 2:55:25

So uh this is at the three-year point. So, yeah, Chief Safety, two years of command, and then uh, and and now I'm done with command.

Host 2:55:33

Do you get to fly at all while you're in command?

Alex Pelbath 2:55:34

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Not as much. And unfortunately, my belief about being a flying squadron commander is you're not being paid to fly anymore. You have to fly, you have to continue to be an expert. Like you can't go up in an airplane with these freaking young guys that you're leading and suck at being a pilot. Kill your credibility right away, just like anything. I'm sure it's the same way in every unit. The boss be able to better be able to do what he's asking all of his people to do. And so you bet you got to stay sharp with your skills. But the fact is, that's not the job. You're leading 200 people. That's a ton of work that you're doing. And every time I went to go fly, all it did was make the work build up back home, the sucky work that you have to do, the paperwork and all that crap. So, yeah, I made sure I flew once a month, stayed current, went, we did deployment swap outs. I made sure I was on all those. Um, our our unit was deployed over Christmas. I was the guy, I was the aircraft commander for that mission. I went to I flew over there, spent Christmas with our guys deployed, that kind of stuff. So you you have to continue to do it. So you're never gonna be as good as you once were. You know what I mean? Um, and flying units are unique. So most military units, especially in the army, is a few officers and mostly enlisted. In a flying squadron, it's 60 40, 70 30 officer. So I have a hundred officers and you know, eighty enlisted, or whatever the numbers end up being. So these are like a high performing, highly educated men and women. That you're leading, man. There's no, there's no just like giving out orders and expect people to follow them. Like these guys are smart. They know, they know what's going on. So it's just a different style of leadership.

Host 2:57:09

Um, what do you think made you successful at that?

Alex Pelbath 2:57:11

I like to think um that people believed that I actually cared about them. I think empathy is one of the most important aspects of being an effective leader. Empathy as opposed to sympathy. Empathy meaning I actually know what it feels like, what you're going through. And I think people actually did believe that about me, that I actually cared what they're going through. And it and I the reason I think that it's important is because you have to ask people in the military to do some very difficult things. And it's way easier if they believe that you know what you're doing, that how that feels. Like when you have to give somebody one of those six-month deployments, like I got at the Pentagon. Hey, man, I'm sorry. You know, you nobody likes deploying, everybody likes deploying with the squadron. Everybody, everybody loves going. This is what we signed up for. Like, send us over there. You go over to this unit to fly airplanes. Unfortunately, there's a lot of deployments in the military that are outside the cockpit. And we have to have people fill them. It's got to be, they got to be filled by pilots. There's got to be experts on the ground who understand the flying mission. Well, those are filled by pilots. So you you got to send people, everybody's got to do their turn. But they're universally feared in the in a flying squadron. Nobody wants to go. So that sucks, man. So the way that I did that was I called in the family. If a guy was married, I said, bring your wife. We're going to talk about this. I said, just heads up, I'm considering sending you on this deployment. Please bring your wife in. Let's have a conversation.

Host 2:58:39

Wow.

Alex Pelbath 2:58:40

And so they sat down and I'd say, here's what's going on, and here's why you're on the short list. Um, why I'm considering you as to other people as opposed to your fears. Please tell me what you got going on in your life. And then from those five conversations, I would pick who I thought was the best one to go. Part of it is like, whose turn is it? I'm not going to make somebody go who just went, you know. So whose turn is it? Uh the other part is like, you know, naturally the deployment's going to have a requirement for a certain rank that narrows the pool. And I think people really valued that. And one of my favorite stories actually is I gave a guy one of these deployments. I had to send him to Africa. And it's super short notice. I get this deployment and it's like, this happens all the time because a so the bureaucracy is so inefficient. Three weeks. Guys has to, guys, deploying to Africa for six months and he's leaving in three weeks. That sucks, man. Like, F that. That's be better at your job, Air Force. So I call this dude in and his wife, and I go through this whole process, and I decide it's going to be him, but I'm pretty pissed off at the three-week thing. So I start making some calls, I work some backroom deals, and the bottom line is I get it extended. So it's uh he doesn't have to go for seven weeks. I get him the extra, the actual lead time you're supposed to have. And most importantly, that made the six-month deployment five months. I didn't just like spread it out. Like I called his deployed unit commander and said, Hey man, I'm sending you a guy, but I don't know if you know. I'm telling him today, he's supposed to be there in three weeks. You can you do without him for a few weeks? And the commander is like, yeah, no problem, man. So at the end of it all, so I give this guy deployment to Africa. His wife brought me a cake and a card that said thank you. So I upended their life. I gave this guy orders to deploy without his unit to Africa, and his wife said thank you. That's like one of my favorite stories of and nobody, I don't even think anybody in my unit has probably ever heard that story. That's one of my favorite things. Like, that's how I knew, like, okay, we're doing this right.

Host 3:00:39

Like, where did you come up with the idea to bring the spouses in? That's so powerful. I mean, obviously, not every unit could do that. Uh, you were in a unit where you had that ability. Um, but that's I've never heard of that. That's pretty outside of the box. Where did that come from?

Alex Pelbath 3:00:53

Uh Joe Dingman was big at taking care of families. And my my own wife, my wife Lyndon. I mean, she'd been there. She'd she had been there when I had to deploy all those times. I know what the effect was on her and the family. And so it was um, I think one of the mistakes leaders make is feeling like they don't they don't have to give the why behind it. No, no, you're in the military, you're getting an order, just go carry out the order. I think that's a mistake, especially with this group of people who are highly educated, you know, who know. No, I'm gonna tell you why. I'm gonna tell you all of the reasons why behind it. And I've just felt like even when people didn't agree with me, like, okay, I would have made a different decision than you, but I get it. Now I get where you're coming from. It just made it so much easier. I don't know why everybody doesn't do it, you know? And I I wanted to hear from the space. Same thing with when I was given out assignments, when it was time to give out assignments. I invited the spouse in there. And I would always ask them, what do you want to do? Like, what about your life? You know? My wife has two master's degrees. That is hard to do. She and she's a she's a professional, she's she's kick-ass at everything she does, and she's she's a smoke show. I hit the freaking hit the lottery with my wife, bro. She's amazing. Great, my best friend, great partner in life, smoke show, highly educated, successful woman. Well, we did all that while I was in the military. So so hate. And she here's the best part is she was part of this 22-year Air Force journey with me. I think I think what we're supposed to do with leaders in the military is also recruitment. We want to keep the good people in. Otherwise, we're left with all the CMFs. No wonder everybody leaves. The wrong people are in leadership roles. So, how do you do that? Well, you you how do you invest in these people to make them want to stay? Somebody made me want to stay. So, how do I make you want to stay? And so that's what we did. And my wife is a part of that, and she had always had great perspective. And I knew that about her, so might as well bring the spouse in. Like, I would never have stayed for 28 years in the military if my wife did not want to stay in the military for 22 years. If if she wanted to get out after 10 years and we didn't have a commitment, we would have got out. But she was liking it too. So, all right, that's probably the same as your family. I'm not unique in this. So bring in the spouse, get them to want to stay, and then then the military member will want to stay.

Host 3:03:08

Man, for those of you out there listening that are in a high leadership position, I hope you take note. I've never heard of that. That's a that's a great idea. And obviously, it doesn't apply everywhere, and not all units can do that, but it were applicable, man. I'm sure that built a lot of um, I mean, it gave you you know a lot of favor. Or I don't know if favor is the word, but you know, at least credibility.

Alex Pelbath 3:03:26

Yeah, I do think it did. And then, and then the, you know, let me tie this again to the whole reason we're doing it is so that we can send people to war. So now we're in war, and you don't have the luxury of telling people why because things, the decisions are happening quickly, and you say go do this, and people say yes, sir, and they go do it because they already trust you. You've built all that trust at home. They know you have their best interest, right? They the credibility already exists. It is how do you get people to want to do the hard thing? It's like one of the age, the timeless leadership questions. How do you get people to want to do things they don't want to do? So, where do you go after command? So we uh now we made the decision. So we're at 19 years when this command is over. It was the greatest job my life. And um, I I was selected for school finally. So I'd never been the Air Force guy.

Host 3:04:16

You're going to leadership school after you're done with leadership. You got it.

Alex Pelbath 3:04:19

19 years later, love it. The Air Force finally said, and it wasn't even look, I'll be honest, I didn't they come up with a list of like who made school. I was an alternate, so I still didn't really make it. And it was like my second or third try, like trying to make it. So I got selected for school, and it was uh to go to the Naval War College, which would have been cool in Newport, Rhode Island. Um, but at the time, my son was in high school. My daughter was about to start high school, and the way the timing would work is you know, school is one year. So he's in high school now. So then we go to Newport, that's one year, and then you have to move. So then we would have moved again. So that would have meant three high schools for my son. And we said, nope, we're we're done, we're good. And so I declined school, which is the end of your career. And I went to a job where 05's go to die, go to be a deputy ops group commander. It's a really fun job. I love it. It's like a holding pattern for retirement or for like a next job. And so I went to go be the deputy OG until we hit 20 years, and that and that was the plan. I was going to retire. And then we stayed for two more years. What happened? So we have that special operations unit at Charleston, uh C17 Special Ops Unit. It's called Sol 2, stands for S O L L two, Special Operations Low Level 2, second generation of it. Um, which is more of a brand name because we don't really do a lot of the low-level stuff. So there was a need for a leader in that organization. Look, and it is a super high-performing organization. So it's uh an organization that is funded and owned by JSOC, even though they're C17s. The metal is owned by the Air Force, um, but the mission set is owned by JSOC, and it's the unit is part of the nation's immediate response force, which means there's guys sitting alert uh right now, one hour alert. Everybody's got a pager, a cell phone, like an old school flip phone pager. And if the pager goes off, we have to be airborne in one hour, which is really difficult to do. I mean, if you're a passenger flying on Southwest, it's difficult to like leave this couch right here and get to the airplane in one hour, you know? So we these guys live on on in dorms on base. The airplanes are like cocked and locked, and it's just and it's awesome. And and we go, we go do some really cool missions, and it's the highest qualification you can have in the C-17. It's really unique and a little bit of source of a friction. So we have um top gun graduates in the Air Force, right? We call them weapons school graduates, graduates of the weapons school, and we have C-17 weapons school graduates. Soul II, and this is as far as I know, the only air airframe where this is true. Soul II is a qualification that is more than weapon school. Usually, if you're a top gun graduate, you are the elite. You you can do all of the things the airplane can do. One exception in the C-17 is the special ops unit. There's some additional qualifications that are great. And in my opinion, the highest trained, the absolute best C-17 aviators on the planet are in Soul 2. And that's not, I don't say that to be insulting to anybody else. Not that there are not better pilots out there than the ones in Soul II, but the fact is if you're in Soul II, we train more. It's harder training, it's harder to get in there, and we train more than anybody else. They are the most proficient. And I'm like bringing all these caveats out here because the non-Soul II C-17 Force kind of hates that. There's like a lot of friction of like, I hear this all the time. There's nothing special about Soul Two. There's nothing special about C-17 special ops. That is a lie. There is a lot special about these guys. And I was an outsider. I did not grow up in the Soul II unit, but I just come out of command. There was a need for a new leader in there. They're having some culture issues, not necessarily performance issues. And so I am in this job where I'm just waiting to retire. And I get a phone call from the base commander who says, Um, America needs you, is basically what he's like. Wave the flag in my face. Hey, dude, America needs you. Would you consider taking over this organization? Get it in a good spot, and then you can retire. He said, Great news. I know about your family, Sitch. Um, you don't have to move. Like you said, you know, you told us that you love the Air Force, and the only reason you're retiring is because we're making you move. Well, you don't have to move. And so this was it took some thought. He's like, Take take a few days, you know, let me know. And so I went home, and my perception of not being ever being a Soul Two guy, but having worked with them and had had some Soul Two guys in my unit, my perspective is these are the most the highest performing guys, these are the best. They're not the best because they're in Soul Two, it's the type of organization that attracts the best to it. So my my opinion of it was that's pretty badass. It's freaking awesome. Dang, I would love to be a part of that. And the opportunity to go like lead some more and do this thing that I love. And so uh I don't know, but at the same time, I'm retiring. Like we're like we're halfway out the door of the Air Force. And so I talked to my wife, talked to the family about it, and then I talked to some guys in my church, and I remember the dude specifically, non-military guy at all. Jim Chambers, Jim. So you want to talk about like God using a dude in your life to um freaking change the course of your life, like this decision changed the course of my life. I was talking to Jim at church, and I was like, man, I don't know what to do. Can you pray about this for me? Like, I want to do it, but we're retiring, you know. He goes, it sounds like and obviously what what a retired pilots go to? We all go to the airlines, right? Gonna go to the airlines. He's like, just as an outsider, it sounds like you know, the airlines will probably be there forever. They'll be there in like two years. He said, Would you ever get the opportunity to go into a unit like this again? Is this a kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing? And I said, Yeah, it is. And he said, Man, maybe you should do it. And so I walked out of church and I called my boss walking out of the church and said, I'll take it. And so then I took over this uh this special ops unit and um and man, a lot of things changed pretty quickly after that.

Host 3:10:29

What uh talk about some of those changes?

Alex Pelbath 3:10:31

Yeah, so I I went in there. This was hard. This was the hardest leadership challenge I ever had because I didn't feel welcome. There was a lot of pushback from the community because I didn't grow up. I wasn't qualified. I wasn't special ops qualified. And that's really hard to do. You're like one of the principles of leadership is never ask somebody to do something that you couldn't do yourself. Well, I couldn't do these things. I wasn't, I literally wasn't qualified to go do some of these things I'm now asking people to go do. Very, very significant challenge. And so there was um I found early on in taking over this organization of super high performers, freaking the best, in my opinion. Uh and I found I after about a month, I kind of, and I'm the boss of this organization, you know? I put people in three groups mentally. One was there was this group of people who served under me when I was their commander, and I had a lot of credibility with them, and they were they were huge advocates. They were like, yes, look, I know AP's not qualled, but he's the right guy. And they were, they were advocates, a small group of people. Then there was this group at the other end of the spectrum that was like, I don't care who this guy is. He's not qualified in the mission, he doesn't belong here. I'm not gonna support him no matter what. And then there was like the group in the middle that was like, all right, he's got a good reputation, but it's really weird. We've never brought in a guy who wasn't from the organization to lead the organization. Let's see what happens. That was like the big group in the middle.

Host 3:12:06

So it was, it was um who was the base commander that gave you the job? I mean, is it somebody that you knew and worked with in the past? Because that is that looking as an outside perspective, it it is kind of unique that you would get.

Alex Pelbath 3:12:16

Yeah, well, you this so this should say so the the base commander and the ops, so the wing commander and the ops group commander were both sold to guys. They both grew up in the community and they both picked me to go over there. So, and part of that was look, there's just a lot of things. I'm not knocking the fact that it a little bit of it was opportunity. I was a free agent, so there probably weren't a lot of guys like me who were available to go do it. So, so that's certainly part of it. And yeah, I and I know for a fact what he told me was I he wanted somebody with command experience to go over there specifically, right? And I'd been in command for two years. I was a seasoned guy when it came to some of the challenges that you have leading organizations in the Air Force. And I had I did have a good reputation. I know I had a good reputation at the time, and so he thought I could just I could overcome that. Um and so that's that's why he did. They had a lot of they had a lot of options. There was a lot of there was a lot of changes and turmoil going over there.

Host 3:13:09

And so So how did you I think this is super important for people to hear? Uh, there's a lot of leaders that are either in an organization or going to an organization. We have a huge military audience, but it this applies to civilian leadership. How did you turn that culture around?

Alex Pelbath 3:13:24

Um, a couple of things. Look, I I I do think I got to the end of it, and there's still were people who are not believers. Just still never, they just hated it so much that it never got there. Enough credibility for us all to work together and have a good time. And um a couple significant things. Um one, I went in there with eyes wide open. I didn't try to force, I didn't just come in there and start barking orders, right? Hey, I'm the boss now. I don't care what you guys think, I'm doing it. I went in there like I know how a lot of these guys are are feeling about me being here. So my goal was to win them over with credibility. And so uh a couple things happened. First of all, there's a lot of civilians that work in that organization and they've been there literally since the beginning. These guys have all of the knowledge. They are there because they want to be there. They're super prideful about the organization, and they know everything, they know how it all works, they have relationships throughout the entire JSOC special ops community. The Ranger community worked a lot with the Rangers too. These guys have great relationships. And so I immediately went to them and said, Yeah, I need some help here. You know, like you guys are the guys. Um that helped. They they didn't resist me because civilians can. They could, they could have easily made it difficult for me. But however they felt, I'm sure, I'm sure many of them did not agree with the decision to bring me in there, but none of them resisted. I'm grateful for that. And so and a couple of them like really came alongside me and you know, hey, we care about this mission enough that we don't we want you to succeed. And then uh a couple things happened after that. You know, I went out and started learning the job. One significant thing that happened. So one of the the training things we do, they're called MLATs, multilateral exercise. This is the Rangers. We are now working with the Rangers with battalions. Uh, they're they're working doing airfield. This is what Rangers do, airfield seizures. So jumping out, seasoning airfield, doing all this stuff. We're we work hand in hand with these guys. The first exercise I walked into, I go into this big hangar, and it's all the rangers, all these freaking army guys, and I'm going to the meetings with the battalion commanders and the leadership. And and it took me a minute to like, what is this feeling I'm having walking in here? And then I realized I was like, oh, I know what this, I know this. Like, I'm home with these guys. At this point, I'd spent a ton of time with the army with my deployment with the guys in Afghanistan and then working for the chairman. I I meshed so well with the army guys right away. Like, I didn't need any training in that. That was huge for me. That was like to like walk. I felt more comfortable in a meeting with the Rangers than I did running a staff meeting in the special ops unit back home. That helped tremendously. I just understood them and what they were after. So that was super helpful. I became friends with a lot of the battalion commanders on the Ranger side and with the guys we worked with at the peer level. That was very, very helpful. And then, as it always happens, the best thing that could ever bond people together is we freaking went to war. I took over that unit in April and we did our first actual mission in July. We actually left in June. So, like freaking two months into the job, we get forward deployed to do an actual real world operation. Is this national mission unit stuff? This, yeah, this was with the Rangers, the Rangers. This was, um, I won't, I won't tie things together. I don't even want to like get close to the line of what we what we talk about and don't. Like our mission is not classified just like you understand. Like everybody knows what SEALs do, not classified. But then the actual missions themselves and the capabilities are classified. So let's not get close to that. So here's what I'll say is uh we did an airfield seizure type of mission in Afghanistan. And it was it was awesome. There's a lot of airplanes, a super fun mission to execute. Uh, we four deployed, we went out there like a week or 10 days prior to actual execution and did all the planning like on scene. It was great. But I was brand new, man. And one of my roles in leading this unit is when you go forward, you are the air mission commander. You run all the air assets. So my counterpart is the ground force commander. In this case, it was uh Ranger Battalion commander. Um, but there's freaking generals in this stuff, of course, always. Well, I've never done one of these before, except in practice, and I'm brand new. What is this eight? It's freaking two months into me taking over this organization. I have to go like lead an actual organization. And I had no idea what I was doing. I've never done it before. I'm like, I did it in practice one time, but I mean barely. Like, barely did I know what I was doing. So this is like how how do you like get through this? I did I made one move that I don't know if the guys saw, understood what I was doing, and appreciated it. I actually wish I would have asked him before I left about this, but my thought was like, I can I can't screw this up. So put your pride aside, right? Don't try to pretend to be the man. You can't fake something like this. So I grabbed an extra guy, a captain. I'm an 05, the commander, and the air mission commander. And I grabbed one of my senior pilots who was an 03, a captain, and I said, Uh, I'm making you the deputy air mission commander. Your job is to stand next to me, to listen to everything that I'm hearing on the radios, and make sure I do not. F this up. So took, I literally took him with me. He stood, there's like no room on these airplanes, man. We're like, you know, I'm not at the I'm not at the controls. I got the, I got, you know, the captains to the guys who fly every day flying it. I'm running the air picture. And so I just brought this guy like, don't let me F this up, was all, you know, it was just like an admission that I don't know what I'm doing. And so I don't know how people took that. I don't know if they were like they appreciated the humility to be able to acknowledge that I don't do it, or if that made them feel worse. Like, you know what I mean? Like, what is this guy doing here? But I will tell you, the mission was huge success. We crushed it. It was amazing. And we were over there overseas for a while. And now, you know, part of being over there is all the downtime and being with the guys and with the boys. And I think I came back with that with a lot more credibility. And maybe I came back from that feeling like, okay, I belong now. You know, we actually did a real mission.

Host 3:19:53

Yeah, and there's got to be like this testing period, right? Like, who is this guy and and what does he bring? And he's not from our community. I'm sure there's a lot of units and or careers like that, if you will.

Alex Pelbath 3:20:04

It was I and I, man, I felt it. I just felt it that there were people questioning, like I didn't need even need to ask around. And so I reached out to a bunch of my buddies, my peers, who were not at Charleston, who had grown up in the unit, and I said, Hey, dude, I I just asked for advice. Okay, I'm taking well, I called these guys and word had already made it out into the community. They already knew that I had been selected to lead it, and none and none of them liked it. These are my friends, too. And like they hated it. And they were cool with me, you know. They're like, well, if it's gotta be anybody, it's you, but just to let you know, AP, I think this is a terrible idea. That was not freaking inspiring at all. So I asked them all I'm like, all right, well, given that I am going over to this unit, help me out here. Like, what, you know? One, be a voice out there in the community, that's helpful. But what do you recommend I do?

Host 3:20:57

Yeah, because I would imagine the C17 sphere of pilots, it's not a massive.

Alex Pelbath 3:21:02

Especially when you get into Soul Two, it's even smaller. Yeah. And a lot of them wind up with great careers. A lot of those folks, they're high performers. So they wind up as commanders and doing great things. There's a lot of them out there right now. They're commanding bases, generals now. A lot of them are generals now, as a matter of fact. So, yeah. So I reached out to, and I remember one of them, he told me he's like, you know what you need to do. He's like, you need to get qualified. And I was like, dude, this is it takes five years to get qualified in the mission. I'm running it today. I'm like talking to you from my office. What do you mean go get qual? I can't. Like, there's just no way to do that. Like, you know, thanks, but no thanks for that advice. Um, whatever. I I made the decision like there's just no, there's no way I could do both. If I had if time wasn't a factor, yeah, that'd be great.

Host 3:21:46

But your senior enlisted advisor, was he much help?

Alex Pelbath 3:21:49

Hell yeah. He he is the man. Man, super helpful. Um I had he is a badass too. He actually was a JSOC guy. Dude's got a purple heart. He's an Air Force Calm guy, which back to the other story I told about calm guys means he's a computer nerd. He started his career as like a computer nerd, but he's not. He's one of those guys, warrior mindset. He wound up as one of the calm guys in one of the top-tier units. And uh dude got shot. He was a freaking purple heart guy. And now he's in my unit. And uh, and we, you know, I learned this a long time ago too. Uh, every I don't care what level of officer you are, you need you need an equivalent enlisted dude by your side, like coaching you in everything. So if you're a captain, it probably is a E6, E5, E6. You become a commander, it's E7, E8, E9. This guy was an E8. And so he was like, yes, like right by my side. And he had a ton of credibility in in a lot of areas too. So hell yes. I actually, actually, that was like the one group. I think all my all my enlisted guys, so we had a lot of unique career fields in the enlisted team. I know my maintenance guys, those guys, calm guys, really um, at least the way that I felt was they liked me as the boss.

Host 3:23:07

Yeah. We don't care, dude, what your qualifications are. It's how you're gonna treat us, man.

Alex Pelbath 3:23:12

Yeah, yeah. It was awesome. Yeah. And then, of course, so that happened in in uh June, July timeframe. We did that op. We came home, and and then Kabul happened. And Kabul was a freaking, you know what, everybody knows what is Kabul was freaking.

Host 3:23:28

I really want to take this, uh, I know you've talked about it before in other podcasts. I really want to um kind of take time to just break this down. So, where were you when you guys found out that you were going to Afghanistan or to the to this Kabul thing? And kind of what were you aware of what was going on in Afghanistan? Obviously, you know what's going on in Afghanistan, but to the point of how fast the country is deteriorating, the withdrawal, because it happened, man. It seemed like it happened so quick.

Alex Pelbath 3:23:54

It did, you know. Uh, but it really the last thing that happened in Kabul happened really quickly. But the rest of it wasn't. We were, you know, President Trump ordered the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And then Biden took over and effed it up by the numbers. And President Trump's uh ordering of withdrawals, it's called an orderly withdrawal, conditions-based withdrawal, meaning we set the conditions for the withdrawal that we're gonna collapse things and withdraw as conditions are being met to our satisfaction. Yeah, and then that kind of went out the window and it was like, just get out of here. But what we were seeing at the time was we would shut down a base, and C-17s, just so the regular C-17 community was heavily involved in the drawdown in Afghanistan, bringing all the people and everything out. That's what C-17s do. Super busy. One of the busiest times we ever had was the withdrawal of Afghanistan. And so we're closing down these bases all around the country of Afghanistan. And we would close down a base, we would turn it over to the Afghan National Army, the guys that we trained, the A. And 24 hours later, the ANA disappeared and it's now in the hands of the Taliban. So we're collapsing, you know, all the all of the bases uh inward to winding up with Kabul and Bogram there at the end. And as we're collapsing, the freaking Taliban's just like moving in, just like this. So that's kind of what we were seeing happen all around the country, you know. The ANA, and part of the problem with the Afghan National Army, we train these guys, but somebody thought somehow, I mean, in typical disaster nation building that America tries to do and never is successful at. Um, we had like these guys working, like if you're in the A and you're from the north, we've got them at a base down in Kandahar, whatever. Well, these it's very tribal culture. They're they're more they're not defending their country. So we leave this guy, hey, Kandahar's now in your hands, defend it against Italians.

Host 3:25:50

I'm out.

Alex Pelbath 3:25:52

And what did they do? They literally just like took off their uniform and walked away, and now you're just a regular Afghan. You know what I mean? So that's that's it was that part of it.

Host 3:26:00

One of the things I just will never understand as a guy who spent a bunch of time in Afghanistan is why we tried to evacuate from Kabul and not Balad. I mean Kabul. From Bogram, you mean from Bagram? Yeah, I'm sorry, from Bagram, not Balad. Balad was in Iraq. Yeah, I mean, Bagram, you know, you it it just seemed like it was a way more strategic. Like what's your thoughts on that?

Alex Pelbath 3:26:21

Yeah, I'll tell I know exactly why we didn't. Not exactly. I wasn't in all the meetings. So we're loosely we're tapped into the Intel Soul 2, as we're hearing some stuff, but um Bagram is enormous, it's the largest base in the Middle East, I think. Definitely larger than FGS. I think it's like the was the largest in the Middle East. Uh huge perimeter is also home to Parwan Prison. Like pris like Parwan Prison was like the gitmo of the Middle East. Some bad dudes in there. And in order to successfully or or securely uh use Bogram as an air base, I I think if I'm remembering right, it was we needed like 2,000 more troops or something like that. Like the footprint we had there with the Taliban coming in was not enough to keep the base secure to to what to what we thought in the military was would have been required. Well, bringing in 2,000 troops while we're drawing down from Afghanistan was politically untenable. It was a political decision to not do that. Wow, that one might look bad. We might look bad. That would be weird. What would the papers say? What would they say in the press? What would CNN be reporting if we had to bring in 2,000 more people? You know, that's my understanding of why we chose to close Bagram. Now we didn't know Kabul was gonna fall the way it did. We didn't have that information in our hands at the time. I'm not confident would have changed anybody's minds, but we closed Bagram uh, you know, six weeks before Kabul fell. So it wasn't like it was open the week before and we chose to get out of there. Like we we closed Bagram because of political decisions. That's what it was.

Host 3:28:05

How did you guys or where were you when you got the call or or or you know, you find out your dad?

Alex Pelbath 3:28:09

Yeah, so we're just seeing this happen and we're kind of on, you know, because we were an alert force, um, we're we're a little more tuned up to like something could happen, we could get a call. And then I think on August 14th or 15th, we that's what happened. I'm it's like nine in the morning. I'm in the uh the current ops meeting. Um just a regular meeting, you know, with all the 05s, whatever, the 06 and the group commander. And my alert phone rang. I get it, I get a I get a heads up, uh, I get a notification. We're going. So wow, I jumped out of that meeting, um, took the phone call, walked back to the meeting, got my boss's attention. Let's let's race over to the we gotta get over the special ops building because all this you know stuff's highly classified. Get over there and yeah, we're going. They there's the Taliban has surrounded Kabul. Kabul has still not fell yet, but it's looking bad. And look, we gotta remember at the time, part of the reason I think to keep Kabul open in the end, too, was we had the embassy there. Uh and it was still the ambassador was still in the embassy, co-like co-located actually with the place I was deployed, the the headquarters, um, Resolute Support, not far from Kabul International. So the embassy is open and the Taliban's at at the outskirts. And I wonder if there weren't, you know, pretty much the same party in charge as what Benghazi. Remember, we know Benghazi. Literally, it's the same people running the country as the disaster in Benghazi. So I wonder if that wasn't on their minds, like, oh, geez, we can't let this happen again. So we launched um out of Charleston, the alert force launched to deliver a force to do this, you know, do the classified part of our mission, do what we do, into Kabul. We actually brought in forces to Kabul. And while we were on the ground there, like we we landed, everything was calm, and hours, some amount of hours later, the field was completely overrun by people. Like it all it happened that fast.

Host 3:30:11

What uh what was the reality like on the ground when you guys landed?

Alex Pelbath 3:30:16

Yeah, so what we did we landed, we did it uh in Enfill very benign, like super chill, like going to an international airport, like nothing was going on. Um but something was brewing. Like there were, you know, sparks, like it's something could possibly happen, it could explode here real quickly. We landed, uh, and we're getting ready to leave. We ended up like I ended up like bringing out. We had now our jets are like empty, and somebody came up and was like, hey, can you take all these dudes out? There's a ton of interpreters. They were all like kitted up, like body armor, they all spoke English, all Afghans, all Afghan interpreters. But it was basically like that, hey, the Taliban's here. These guys are interpreters working for America. Like, they're gonna get murdered if if we leave and they're still here, these are the first dudes who are gonna get murdered, right? By the Taliban, if you work for the US. Can you guys they already had approval to like get out of there? So I was like, yeah, we got room, yeah. Put them on there. Let's go. Nice and calm and orderly. We go back and land, we get back to uh the main operating base where we were staging.

Host 3:31:15

Where did you take those guys to?

Alex Pelbath 3:31:17

Al Udid Air Base. I don't know where they went after that. No idea. I don't know anything after after the deed. Sure. You know, all of our mission was Deed, Al-Ud Air Base, the Deed, in and out of Kabul. So we actually the first thing that went in there, we we launched over there, we flew over there before that any of this this had happened, and then Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, bailed on the country. Like he gets on a jet, the Taliban has showed up and he's like, I'm out of here. And he freaking bails on his country. That's when I knew we were we were going in.

Host 3:31:46

Yeah, because I think the Afghans were taking some of their fighter planes and going and landing them up north and uh like they were getting out of there like Yeah, yeah.

Alex Pelbath 3:31:54

They all knew. They knew, and they knew it was bad for them if they were around, you know, for the Taliban. I mean, the Taliban doesn't just kill you, it kill your whole family. Like this is like real fear that that happens. So we anyway, so we land back at the deed, and I'm I now get in the operations center in the jock, right? The joint operation center. I'm in the jock on the airfield or yeah, at the deed. Oh yeah, yeah, at the other, at the other airfield. And and that's when it falls apart. And we walk and I watch it. I watch like this thing freaking fall apart. And you so here's what's super crazy, too. So we're seeing this happen. We fly, we've landed, we we do our mission, the field falls apart. We're like watching this, like it's insane. It is the most insane thing that I've ever ever seen in my life. Like people have seen the videos, you know, that that video that got posted on Twitter by an Afghan. That's like, how wild is that, first of all, that like this third world country, they don't know how to use a uh a toilet, but they've all got iPhones, you know? And this guy's like live streaming, right? As people are like running around. It's crazy, the craziest story. And all that happens, and uh, you know, in that first day, you know, that airplane that's got all the people hanging on it, that was a Charleston crew. Actually, guys that I commanded. And they go through that ordeal, the freaking people fall off their airplane, freaking tragic. Uh, talk about that, how the Air Force F those guys over. Um, and it's, dude, it's just it's messed up. It's the most messed up, crazy, wild thing I've ever seen in my life.

Host 3:33:22

Yeah, what's going through your mind? I mean, we're all watching this un unfold. I mean, I I almost remember that day similar to 9-11. You're watching, you know, videos of Afghan one, you're like, dude, how did they get in the air film? Two, or like they're hanging on to airplanes, falling out of the sky.

Alex Pelbath 3:33:36

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had the same thought. Like, where did these people come from? Was like, what? How did this happen? How did this happen? Like, it felt like it happened in the blink of an eye, too. Like it, it uh, like watching that happen and watching watching the bodies fall off that airplane. I remember like the first body fell. I was like, What? Yeah, is that what I think it is? And then, oh, then you see this, and now you know. Like, oh my freaking nuts. And it was it was a long day. And you know, the other crazy part for me, and probably for like a lot of us, like we're living on this special ops comp had no phones. Okay. I have no idea this was televised. I had no clue. So, like, yeah, I get to the end of that day, and you're just like, you know what? That was the craziest day. I don't understand how any of that happened. You know, how it was like so calm a minute ago. I was just on the ground right there. It was like so calm. And now what has happened? Now what's going on right now? And then I go, at like at the end of the day, I'm like, I'm not thinking anything. It's like, all right, I'll go check, check in with the family, go check my phone. I leave the the secure side of the compound, go turn on my phone. It's blowing up. That was how I found out that it was all over the news. That it was all because you know, in this comp, we're staying in this compound too, right? And it's like squad bays, it's like bunks everywhere, right? It's like 50 bunk beds in there, and it's a hundred pilots sleeping in this in the squad bay, the lights off permanently. And so when you want to be awake, you're like outside the the bay, and then you go outside to where now where you can wear your um oh turn on your cell phone, and it's like the common area, and there's like a TV, couches, whatever, people hanging out. But dude, nobody's interested in the news while you're over there. So all that's on TV is movies. Like somebody's got a big uh hard drive of 10,000 movies, and it's just movie after movie playing. None of us had any freaking idea that it was on the front page of every news publication on the planet. That was how I found out was by turning on my phone and having 25 texts from my wife saying, Are you alive?

Host 3:35:33

So you guys end up having to go back or what's the what's the brief to go back?

Alex Pelbath 3:35:37

Yeah, so now, yeah, so now it's like trying to figure it out. Um, so much credit to the dudes who are on the ground in Afghanistan for for getting some semblance of an operation up and running there. Uh, a lot of Air Force guys, too. We like we have an organization, a lot of pilots are in this organization called the a contingency response wing. Like their job is to like go into combat fields like this and make them serviceable for airfield operations. It's like combat airfield operations, what they do. It's why there's a lot of pilots in there. But these guys are non-pilots, they're like on the ground. As a matter of fact, like I think the second or third or fourth time I went in there, uh my jet's parked and I'm in the cockpit, and like all of a sudden, like a body like comes up in the cockpit, and I think it's like some ground guy. I just see that at the corner of my eye, and I turn and it's one of my guys who I commanded, who is now in the unit. He's fully kitted up with like an M4. He'd been there the whole time. He was like on the ground. I was like, Mike, what? First of all, what are you doing here? And then you know, tell me what's going on. So so much credit to those guys who who got it under control. And I think I don't know this story, but I just think I this is like thoughts I have as like a commander. So the field gets overrun, and we send out like Humvees and a lot of guys, like initially to maybe protect the field. At some point, somebody realizes these are civilians panicking, rushing the field, right? And and the reason they rush the field was these people are trying to get out. They are desperate to leave their country, they're afraid they're gonna get murdered. America's leaving. We got to get out of here, too, right? That was the panic. It was not a nefarious thing, it was desperation that we are leaving them in the hands of the Taliban, they're all gonna get murdered. So that's what was the panic, right? To get there. And so somebody, somebody, I don't know how this decision was made or what, or but somebody got all of those soldiers off the airfield. I think that's so important because I I can't imagine being you got 18, 19-year-old kids with guns out there. They see this mob coming at them. Could you imagine if one person popped off around maybe what that would have done to everybody else? And and that we could be talking about the biggest the the worst black mark in the history of America if innocent civilians had been killed. So there's some leader out there, there's some person out there who made an amazing decision that could have like altered the course of American history by getting all those people off of there, you know. Um, I wish I I wish I knew, I wish I was in the room for that decision, like to know who that was, right?

Host 3:38:18

Well, at some point you have like the Marines get deployed there, and then you I think they brought the 82nd Airborne Division. Yeah. They're, I don't know if it was a rapid response battalion or of some sort.

Alex Pelbath 3:38:28

Yeah, we brought it. We we initially, yeah. So after the field gets overrun, it's like, how do we turn this into an operation now and this evacuation operation that we had been planning just not to go down in this fashion, you know what I mean? And so yeah, we did. We now we started bringing in traditional C-17s, brought in like the 82nd and brought in like we we were flying airplanes, like there was a whole mission set. I wasn't a part of this. It was it took place at Charleston. Charleston Air Force Base was like the staging base for all these C-17s in the Army, and we were bringing stuff in for those first few days to set up an operation so that we could then safely like bring everybody out. So that whole thing happened to, I was not a part of that really at all. I don't, I don't, I was I was forward the whole time from before it fell till obviously the last day. So I don't really know about how that stuff was happening. And look, we still had a mission set we were doing. We're still the the special ops guys, there's still support stuff that we're doing. So we were flying stuff in and out. And my role was for the first few days was like after that first day, we kind of sat for a couple days, and then it was all right, we're gonna get this operation going again. We were doing our mission set going in, and then about halfway through, so 17 days of the operation, about halfway through at some point, we started talking about the end game. How do we leave? Right? All these people all the way around and and you know, there's more chests, how'd they get all the people off the field? How'd they get all those civilian, the thousands of people off the airfield so that we could start using it again? You know, we had agreements with the Taliban, right? We were talking to them every day. We basically, my understanding is we had we were in direct comms with the Taliban commander, and it was a mutual agreement. You want us gone, we want to be gone, let us just let us leave, let us get out of here. Probably not the best thing in the world. I hate that that was how it was done. My opinion, the way it should have been done was you're not welcome in the city of Kabul. We're the United States of America. You are not welcome in the city of Kabul. Go hang out in the hills. You guys love hiding out in mountains anyway. Go go out there, go spend some time in some caves. We will let you know when we're gone. And that's not what we did. They basically forced us out, right? They were there and they they forced us to do to exit the way that we did. Freaking terrible.

Host 3:40:49

What uh I mean, nobody ever fell on the axe for that, which I still think is kind of disgusting because there were some massive leadership failures. There was a lot of good things that were done. Um, you know.

Alex Pelbath 3:41:00

know i in spite of you know leadership failures but what uh what's your thoughts on on that whole you know from the chairman on down I mean yeah for for a lot of this came later like that type of um after action and money money quarterback and I can get to that too. I went to all the all of the after actions which to me were a joke. But in it it was it was just how do we execute the mission. Everybody everybody understands that. And you're not you're trying not to think about how did this happen. You're you're focused on like how do we get through this in in the best way possible. So for us I was flying a lot of missions and I am super proud of the military and the air force and the C-17 community specifically because it was there was almost no command and control at some point, right? We had so many C-17s in theater taking part in this. I think the number was 80 by the time it was done which is over a third of the entire C-17 fleet on the planet was committed to this more airplanes in that airspace than we'd ever had ever. We were parked we were using parking spots on bases that we'd never used before. I mean the operation was insane and because of that the normal command and control system was just not capable of keeping up there was no calling home and getting permission for things this was individual aircraft commanders like frontline leadership like on display like guys just figuring it out like hey we're gonna you know hey uh your job today is to fly to Kabul pick up a bunch of people good luck we're a very organized military you know that you worked on the Pentagon you worked for a four-star general you worked on the chairman how did it disintegrate so fast um I don't know at the weak leadership I I I'll tell you a story about being in a meeting with uh Millie and the sec def. This was after I became the the air mission commander I don't know how it got to that point but then watching the the decisions that they made um you know we're sort of back to um Millie's principal military advisor the president like I don't know what side of his advice I never heard of his advice I don't know what he said I don't know what his advice was to them and and I did meet Millie after after two and just wildly unimpressed okay especially going from uh an a tremendous American like Chairman Dunford to that I don't understand I don't know and so I don't know if it was like he was embarrassed like it was his pride I don't know but when things go wrong in an operation first of all no plan survives first contact with the enemy my gosh we've all heard that since like the day we could you know tie up our boots uh so when it doesn't survive first contact with the enemy you make adjustments and like we didn't like we didn't the adjustments we made was like sorry guys the lead you know from top down was like this is the solution this is the this is what's happening we're not changing it good luck so now within that decision making space that created this chaos what I did see was tons of frontline leaders doing exactly that just like freaking figuring it out one of the stories I'd love to tell about this is we're flying in and out all the time we eventually get like pretty efficient at doing this thing you know C-17s are really good at it we're carrying out I think the number was 450 people on a C17 is what became our standard C17 normally holds 102 people so we're at 450. There's no seats we're just floor loading them it's called uh you just cram as many people as you can on there and then you close up the back of the C-17 and then you put one big cargo strap over everybody's lap and that's like their seatbelt. Like literally like sitting you know crisscross applesauce on the on the freaking floor with a cargo strap. So you got 450 people on a C-17 one aircraft bathroom one bathroom 450 people one bathroom and I had walked through Kabul one of the days I was up there I ended up going up there for a lot of the for planning stuff. So I'm up there and I'm just walking through downtown on Kabul Airbase but you know it's a base it looks like a town and it is it is a homeless city of Afghanis literally laying on cardboard boxes on the sidewalk or wherever they could find while they're waiting to like get out of there. They made it on base so they're safe. They're just waiting to get on an airplane and it's like families and little kids are like laying on cardboard boxes. So I don't know how long these people have been there. So we get them on these airplanes and um third world country a lot of them bathroom is just a hole in the ground so now we have 450 people on a C17 three hour longer flight in one bathroom that they don't really know how to use it got the word I always use when I tell the story is unsanitary. It was gross it was gross and like there's this wild mix of emotions okay you like you you fly in there you know what's going on it's like tense getting in there you go through you fill all your aircraft up with all these people and there I saw a lot of little kids man so many little kids were bringing out and so like now you feel like man you're doing something good in the midst of this like disaster you're like doing something good and then three hours later you're like get off get off the airplane get out of here this is like so gross. But part of part of that problem with that unsanitary nest was like now you got to like clean the airplane or whatever. And it was really it actually had mission impact like slowing it down. Okay. So I come out to my airplane one time and are you gonna show pictures here because if you're gonna show there'll be pictures I'm gonna give you this picture that I took myself. I I walk onto the airplane and there's a picture taped to the bathroom door and it's this diagram hopefully it's like if people are watching this hopefully you're seeing the picture like right now this diagram of how to use a toilet and how not to and it's like this you know made from like Microsoft PowerPoint or whatever. And it's got some instructions in their language like taped to the door. Well then right below this picture on the aircraft floor is a huge industrial roll of plastic huge thing of plastic and we like came up with this new procedure. When flying into Kabul when we're empty we took that plastic and we lined every horizontal surface of the C17 we like taped it down and then we filled up the airplane and then whatever happens you get you drop all the people off and you just like rip the plastic off. So what I love about this story though is like this is not you're in a combat zone. Whoever thought that we were going to have to come up somebody was going to have to come up with an idea to solve that problem while flying into the chaos and combat zone of Kabul like this is such a great example of frontline leaders figuring out here's what I know for sure. That was not some general's idea. Yeah no nobody high up with the committee guaranteed guaranteed this was like a frontline leader finding a creative solution to a problem nobody ever knew we would encounter and look there were there are so many stories like that from Kabul it's I'm extremely proud of like what our military members did to to thrive find a way to thrive in in that chaos.

Host 3:48:45

Yeah so the one thing I guess the question I have in my mind is you guys were there I mean although you're there to help Kabul obviously you're you're part of a national mission force you guys are doing something a little bit different but now it's like everybody scrambled you just mentioned there's over 80 aircraft that are involved that are rotating in and out is did this become an all hands on deck to yeah not for us we were still we were still doing our our um the mission that we were there to do supporting that mission so can you talk about that at all or is it classified?

Alex Pelbath 3:49:15

Yeah I'll I'll it's what they're doing is classified and who who we're working with is classified but um essentially like it wasn't that it's actually there's not real cool stories that came out of that is what I would say. So it was it we it got very routine for us as these operations tend to get sometimes very routine. But we I forget how many times we flew three or four times in there and then but what really changed for us is at some point we started talking about how do we get out of here? Like what does the end of Kabul look like okay we had the airfield overrun in the beginning we had to clean it up clear the airfield um which by the way they did that I watched this happen. How do you get all those people off the airfield? Like they weren't listening to us like we we literally that first day when it like the chaos just happened we had a couple helicopters like I think there are Apaches come in were flying like over the like literally trying to like scare the crowd away and like none of it was happening man. It was dude it's wild um it's that fear right like yeah like like there's nothing we can do so uh here's here's how we cleared the airfield I watched these Afghans in white robes and these really you know tall staffs stick six foot staffs sticks walk out on the airfield herd people and then beat them when they didn't listen we didn't clear the airfield so those were they looked like to me you know hey guys help us out you'll do things that we're unwilling to do but I watch that happen I watch with my own eyeballs hurting people hurting them with these sticks and then beat them when they didn't respond fast enough so so now fast forward to the end like all right we gotta get out of here and we look the whole the whole part of this we had an end date right August 31st we're gonna be out of there by August 31st it's like a hard end date why why why was that a hard end date why like this is this is like the question why is there a hard end date? Why don't we just stay there until we're done we're the United States of America by the way we hadn't lost a troop in over a year so close to two years maybe we hadn't lost anybody in combat in a long time it's fine. Does the Taliban really want to start another war with us? I don't think so I think it'd be pretty easy to be like get out of the city go go hang out in the hills we'll let you know when we're gone and we'll be gone when we're done well we didn't we didn't this is this is to me is like the the saddest part about all of it the part that frustrates me the most is we were influenced by the Taliban. How? Why? Who were they to influence us? Oh it just pissed me off so bad. And there was really one day where where I was the most pissed and you try not to when you're in these operations especially like when you know when we're we have like a job to do we have a mission we're trying to do stay focused on the mission not the external factors but we uh we just landed as I'm with the Soul Two team we just get back to the deed after one of the the missions we flew and it's like two o'clock in the morning and what do we do when it ops over we go to chat everybody goes to chow hall right that's what you do. So we're in there they got midnight meal and I just happen to see on TV um Al Jazeera news is plan, you know, on all the freaking TVs at the deed chow hall and the Taliban spokesman comes on TV and right the right in the middle where we're not it's not going well for us. Like we can't we the military are trying to solve this problem that you can just describe it as a math problem. We know the number of people we need to bring out whatever hundreds thousands it is need to bring out we know how many airplanes we have we know how many people fit on the airplanes and we know how many days we have you literally can just do the math and figure out how many days are going to be required. Well that's well beyond August 31st okay we can't do it. The math does not add up to get out of there by August 31st. So we are as a country like we start hearing like maybe we're gonna extend our time there. And so the Taliban holds a press conference and this guy comes on TV and says nah August 31st is a line in the sand America will be gone by August 31st and I watch this happen and I'm like what like you don't tell us what to do. Taliban doesn't tell America what to do better see the president on TV tomorrow, right? Pretty easy. And if you ask me yeah and I'm not in politics I'm an 05 like leading out there like even I come up with like the easiest political response to this uh hey just want to be clear August 31st is still our goal we want to be out of here by August 31st but we are the United States of America as a matter of fact you are a terrorist organization as a matter of fact you don't tell us what to do. Stay out of our way or or we'll send you back to the caves for another 20 years. We'll bomb every single one of your houses um yes which that's a great point there's a great story about President Trump when he ordered the withdrawal have you heard this he meets with the Taliban leadership and in the meeting he slides a satellite picture across the table and it's a picture of the Taliban commander's house. And all no words need to be spoken get in our way we know where you live okay fast forward now we're in the middle of the withdrawal the Taliban gives us an ultimatum and I see Biden go on TV the next day and he says yeah no no we agree we'll be out of here by August 31st like don't worry. So it's already not possible mathematically possible so now we know for sure we're leaving people behind but we also know we're not gonna we're probably gonna keep doing more and more and more of this stuff and it's probably gonna get worse before it gets better. That was August 24th I think August 26th ISIS detonated a suicide bomb at Abbey Gate.

Host 3:55:13

I will never forget where I was at I was in Colorado Springs with a Marine he was getting treated uh for some PTSD stuff and I remember sitting in a vehicle with him I think we must have sat there for an hour I don't even think we talked exactly where I was too I was in the jock in IUD standing the jock and I I will never forget the moment of seeing the smoke rise and and the only words that escaped my lips were oh no and it was dead quiet in the jog.

Alex Pelbath 3:56:00

Just everybody probably feeling the same way, seeing the same thing saying the same prayer like you go from oh no you're watching the smoke rise and immediately I'm I start praying for a low body count. Like you know exactly what it is. I just I just hope it's a low body count. I I have a really hard time separating the Biden press conference where he agreed with the Taliban and that day so yeah that that that was by far the low point for me you know but but then we actually flew that day like the reason I was in the jock is because we were getting ready to take off we flew into Kabul that day so um yeah man I and I I'll tell you so we flew in that day and and at also at this point we're now starting to plan for the end date and uh how are we going to get out of here and this is kind of what we do. There's a name for the operation to get out it's called a joint tactical exfil a JTE so we somewhere somewhere up there I forget even how I get wind of it but hey there's gonna be a JTE and I know exactly I know what the JTE is that's what we do that's what I plan for is what we practice you know all the time and the JTE always has an air mission commander and dude I sent an email so I don't tell this story very often but I I solicited myself I I'm like I'm dude that is my job I am going to be the the commander for this the air mission commander for the JTE so I sent an email back home on SIPR and was like hey I'm hearing about a JTE. I'm the air mission commander I'm doing it and they started talking about and first of all it should be Soul to this is going to be a Soul II mission. What can you explain what a JTE is for those of us that maybe may not yeah think of it as like a reverse airfield seizure a reverse sneak attack. So it answers the question like hey you got all these guys protecting they're standing on a wall with their backs to the good guys and facing the bad guys keeping us all safe making sure the bad guys don't come over the wall okay very very generically how do you get those guys safely off the wall there's nobody there to watch their backs right how do you get the guys who are protecting us safely out of there when there's nobody there to protect them you know so you do uh it's called a JTE so I don't need to get into the tactics of it but it's a cool mission it's a cool mission set and it's a very well orchestrated we usually plan for these things I mean practice these things definitely a lot of planning we were we planned for probably a week I think maybe um is I think yeah because August 26th was the day of the Abbey Gate bombing we were already in planning for the JTE and so we uh yeah it's just cool it's like and it and it what it ended up being was this is how I end up flying the last airplane out of Afghanistan was it ends up being five C-17s that went in at the very end to land and you go in completely blacked out we and we had this whole plan which obviously got altered as they always do things change like real time and we're all parked like in different places on the airfield you know and there's rally points for for all the army guys and they rally up and they get other jets and we freaking get out of there. So you go in as a formation kind of starburst out across the field then you all come back and take off as a formation get the hell out of there should take 45 minutes should be like fast you know what I mean and maybe the last thing you get on on your airplane is a helicopter maybe right maybe the helicopter's like doing some of the cool stuff we do out there. Um it ended up taking three hours dude it was it was not it was not good actually. Before we dive into that part what was it like to land on the e on the airfield right after the Abbey Gate bombing um it was terrible actually we we got asked so we started getting the casualty count coming in and we needed to evac guys we had a lot we we were gonna evac everybody but we had a lot of wounded and so the actually the first phone call I got was since we were launching hey will you guys be an evac will you guys do the evac the medevac um of course yes yeah of course send us it ended up not being us we found some other aircraft and and the the reason it was not us is because not that any mission was more important than that mission in that moment but we had this other mission we were doing and to evac we probably it was probably going to take us out of the theater maybe for a little bit or certainly take us out of the mission that we needed to be responsive for. And so they ended up using some other C17s but we went in there did the the same thing that day was I don't remember I don't remember a tone about like that day landing there that day um you know after the moments of being in the jock that's like what it's been years now, right? So it's that's the moment that stands out to me. But it was the next day uh that you know one of the days like like personally you have so it was um I this was sort of my life at this point too. So we're flying a mission we fly our actual mission in there come home the next day I would fly up to Kabul as a passenger to do planning for the JTE to plan with the 82nd and uh and General Chris Donahue who made General Christonahu at the time is 82nd Airborne Division commander badass dude so like fly mission come back next morning wake up like go literally just I would just like get it right out to the flight line find or I'd go into the C17 ops so not the special ops ops squadron but like the regular C17 ops squadron like look at the board and be like who's the next jet going up to Kabul I got to be there you know at at 1300 for uh for the JTE planning meeting whatever and be like all right that tail and I find out where it is and I get it right out and I would just show up show up to this jet and go talk to the pilots and be like guys I need a ride. I need a ride up to Kabul. So and it's cool because I saw a bunch of my friends like I saw a bunch of folks I know and so then I would fly up there spend the day planning with with some of the guys we were working with and also with the 82nd and then I would just catch a ride home it's same deal. Now there is no op squadron up there. So one uh one of the dudes uh one of the soft dudes would I'd get in his car and we would drive out to the flight line at Kabul and I would literally like you know knock on the door of a C17 like hey where are you going? Oh we're going to Kuwait okay not you go to the next one hey where are you going? I'm going to the deed all right I'm coming with you I got to get back to my guys and then I'd have a day off so fly a mission come back fly up there and plan come back usually like have a day off after that or something like that. That was sort of the life I was living so August 27th I go back to Kabul for a planning day and I'm I'm in that planning cell and there was Intel that came across there was a bolo for two dudes who had two suspect suspected suicide bombers. So they were caught on camera I think climbing one of the walls they're somewhere on the base. We have no idea where they are so there's a bolo for these dudes so I don't think anything of it I'm doing this thing. End of the day I get on the C17 to go back I don't even know who these pilots are but we're full and we get a radio call at the cockpit that that they found the guy and he's one of my passengers on the airplane so I get off we got call the security guys out I walk downstairs I'm like out the back we're now like deplaning everybody you know and like all the securities there like searching him and I mean I imagine this we're standing right outside the back out of the back of C17 on the tarmac in Kabul and there's just like 500 Afghans like standing there, you know, in our army guys. And I remember thinking in the moment, well, if the dude's here, he's not just gonna give up. Right? He's not gonna be like, oh you got me. Right? Freaking just gonna push the button. And like any any moment. Any moment. And like there's nothing I can do about it. Next thought I had was my family. Thought I was my family. And so right like standing right there, I pulled out my cell phone on the tarmac in Kabul, and I just sent a you know my family's group and I just texted my family's group chat, like hey guys, I love you. And then like put my phone away and kind of went back after it. So I I obviously it worked out for me and everybody there. You know, that was not another bombing. Um and I don't know, this is what sucks, man. And some stuff I had to I had to work through like cut when I got home was not getting closure on that. I have no idea what happened. I have no idea. Because the next order I got was like, get back on the jet and get out of here. You know what I mean? We crammed everybody on. They apprehended a dude. So I don't I I tell myself I don't think you end up being a suicide bomber. I have no idea. But right, we don't we never get to find out. We never get to see the end of these things. Like you're in the military, it's not a movie. I tell people this all the time. They're like, what happened? I'm like, I don't know. It's not this isn't like the movies where you get to find out. Like, I have I'm doing my job still. So it's like go back and finish your job now.

Host 4:05:46

Who was doing the searching of those guys the 82nd?

Alex Pelbath 4:05:49

Some army dudes, I don't know. I don't know.

Host 4:05:50

Well, if you're listening out there and you were part of that, leave us a comment.

Alex Pelbath 4:05:53

Yeah, maybe it's just like a guy. I don't know, dude. Um yeah, so like so now it's a three-hour flight back. Sitting in the cockpit, and you know, Jesus and I had some good conversations during that three hours. You know what I mean? And it's like it's probably fine, but I hope he one, I hope they got the right guy. I hope he didn't leave anything behind. You know? Whatever, can't you can't think about that. I know guys have been through like way worse than that too. So but yeah, but anyway, um that was like the the the day I remember more they all kind of run together too at the end, you know what I mean? So then then uh then it was like now hardcore planning. That might have been the last time. Maybe I went up one more time for planning. That might have been the last time I went up there for planning. Because then on August 30th, we executed the JTE. And here's something I can never talk about, too. You know what the hardest part about executing the JTE was? Being the air mission commander for the JTE was dealing with the Air Force. That was the hardest part of my job. Like flying in there with this formation. We here, what it ended up being was five C-17s went in there. We had three C-17s in stand on standby. Uh, they flew with us as well. They were airborne spares. Each one had its own role. Because sort of the worst case scenario is we lose a C-17 on the ground. So we had uh uh a full medical team on one of the C-17s that was airborne. We had a C-17 that was full of spare parts because we really didn't want to leave a C-17 behind if it broke or you know, took some took some enemy fire or something like that. We wanted to be able to like that would have been a disaster for America, is like we're gone, and now the Taliban has a C-17. So we had parts and then we had a full empty one in case we needed to execute like a bump plan for the cargo. So we just had we had eight C-17s. Uh I had a ground spare too, so it was really nine uh on the whole um air picture. And then we had this massive uh air support package of fighters and uh AWAX, you know, command and control and some some UAV assets and stuff like that. It's just it was like 30 aircraft involved in this operation. That to me was the biggest headache. Like us doing our mission, like we knew what we were doing. We knew what a JT is. I we usually execute these things without all of that air cover. So we knew what we were doing going in there. Um, and the 82nd sort of knew what they were doing, sort of not. One of the one of the best decisions I made in the planning was they gave me a load package, like this is hey, this is what we want to put on each C-17. And it was like, I forget what the number was, two or three hundred fully kitted up paratroopers. And I was like, man, that's a lot. That sounds like a lot for a C-17. Those guys take up a lot of space when they're full all kitted up. I was like, I don't I started asking around, like, I don't think we've ever done that before, that many. Like, and sure enough, nobody could remember. I actually had some first battalion dudes, Ranger dudes, down at down at the deed with me. And I asked them, I'm like, what's the most you've ever seen on a C-17? Not that many. So I uh I called up to there and I talked to some of these Air Force guys I knew who were running the ground and I said, Hey, can you do me a favor? Dude, we're gonna we're gonna um commandeer a C17, an empty C-17 on the ground there before you load it up with people. We're gonna put it in it off to the side, and the 82nd is gonna come over and practice loading to see if they can fit all those guys. Dude, it wasn't even close. So we did that, it wasn't even close. And I, this guy was awesome who I talked to. He took a ton of pictures for me of the 82nd, like trying to load this. It wasn't even freaking close. So thank goodness we did that because it completely changed the load plan, and it still took over three hours when we finally executed on the ground. But I'll give you two stories of why, of what I had to deal with with the freaking Air Force to try to execute this mission. If it was me, if if I was uh the four-star, it would have been my C-17s and a gunship and an AC-130 gunship. That's it. That would have been the entire air picture, right? The AC-130 has a has a range of offensive munitions, right, to help us out. A lot of a lot of varying opportunities. Plus, they can see things really well. Plus, they're C-130, they got a lot of gas, they got the loiter time. Instead of bringing in fighters to like provide air cover for one hour and then swapping that guy out for another one and swapping that guy out for another one and having tankers so they can all go hit the tanker too. It's a huge headache. So, what we do in the Air Force before we go launch a mission like this is you have a big mission brief. Okay. We have a mission brief. The mission is execute the JTE. But I'm doing this at the Chaoq at Al-Ud, the Combined Air Operations Center. And I've been going to these meetings all the time, and I'm like, listen to these guys develop the air picture. You know, I'm my my role as the air mission commander is all the air, but I know what the priorities are. Okay. The priority is uh I am supporting the 82nd on the ground. They are the supported force in the military. Speak these terms matter. There's the supported force. I am the supporting force.

Host 4:11:04

What what happened to the Marines? Did they have their own package or?

Alex Pelbath 4:11:08

Yeah, they were gone. By the time we actually the JTE, it was min force on the ground. Um, so it was really just I don't think we had any Marines come out with us the last day. It was the 82nd. On the last flight, it was it was literally General Donahue on on my airplane, and then it was we still had that other mission going on. So we were doing that as well. Uh sort of embedded. So I go into this final freaking briefing. The mission is tomorrow. Okay. I go in there and early on in the planning, I'm just so tired of it. They there's a mission planning cell leader. The guy's a super good dude. I wish I remembered his name or his call sign. F-15 guy, I think. He was probably, I think, the only guy in there who understood like what I was dealing with. Because yeah, I get asked these questions, and we're sitting down one time, and this some some other pilots asked me a question, and I was like, hey, can I just be honest with you right now? And the mission planning cell guy's like, you don't care about this at all, do you? And I was like, no. I say, here's we I established this earlier. I mean, here's the deal. I will not go above this altitude. You guys do not go below this altitude. Do whatever you want. And the reason I had that perspective is because none of them were part of the min force. I don't, I'll be honest to this day, I don't know why somebody decided we needed that huge air package to go in there. And so it felt very much to me like you just complicated my mission at all. No, I don't have the brain cells as the air mission commander to track all you guys are doing up there. So we go into this meeting, and this freaking dude, I think he he was also, I don't remember what airplane he flew, he was a major. And he's like, This is before the final briefing. And he's like, you know, I really think we should make the air mission commander the AWAX pilot. I'm like sitting right there. I'm like, I'm right here. You know what I mean? Like, what are you talking about? Um it was one of the dumbest comments I've ever heard of my life. And it, but it what it did was it really made me realize how little this guy and probably a lot of them understood of what the mission actually was. The mission was not the air, the mission was the ground. The mission was if we're gonna use those terms again, the supported force was the 82nd on the ground. I am supporting them. My job is to go in and freaking get them out. And the way that we practice these JTEs is I have one job and it's to be there. It's to be there on time and then be ready to be called in when they're ready for me. So I got I get there on time. They could call me in right now. They could call me in an hour later if the conditions on the ground are not ready for it. And that's not as easy as you get a radio call and you come in. We're running a formation. It's it's complicated. So that's that's my job is to be there for those guys. And I know we know this job really well. The air picture, fine, if we're gonna have them, well, then I their perspective should have been the supported force was me. They were there to make sure I got in. That's not how they looked at it. They actually looked at it like, at least my perspective of the way they thought was that they were the mission. And so this guy makes this just the dumbest comment ever: like, we should make the air mission commander the AWACS guy. And I didn't have time. You know, I've thought about it later, like all the things like I would like to have said to that guy, which started with like, that's that comment is so dumb, I probably shouldn't respond to you. But um, one of the questions I get asked as the Air Mission Commander from the guys on the ground when they call me in is, hey, how long can you wait? Hey, we've changed the plan. How long is it gonna take you to get here? Um, hey, we lost this asset or we're using this asset. Like, how what's the bump plan gonna look like? Well, I'm sorry, no other pilot's gonna know that but us. So he just clearly didn't understand why. Not to mention we train for this thing. So that's what I was dealing with, with guys like that who are like, you're going in this mission with me, and you don't even know, you don't like don't even understand. So I just I ignored the guy. Uh and I'm actually very proud of myself like for this because you know, ego gets involved too, and you just want to like, let me tell you how dumb you are and how important I am, whatever, whatever you want to do. No, just it just wasn't worth it. Focus on the mission. So now I get to the last meeting. Two things happen. This is we're talking a couple hours before we go to sleep to execute this mission. And I walk in, and the way the table is set up, we're about to brief the three-star. This is the um AFSENT commander. Um and the mission planning cell, the O5 or the O4, is sitting here, and I'm sitting right next to him, and I'm the mission commander. He's the planning cell commander, I'm the mission commander. And as I walk in, I I this I'm going to take my seat, and some random 06 I've never seen in my life says, Do you need to be or do you need to be here? So he said to me, he's like, Do you need to be here? He sees me about take the seat at the table, and he's like, Do you need to be here? And I was like, What? Uh hey, and I so I just said, Hey, sir, I'm just here to answer questions. So I like take my seat. But that I'm in the mission planning cell at the chaos, about to execute this mission that people still talk about today, and some random 06 has no idea who the air mission commander is or why he should be in this. This was the headache I dealt with all the damn time. Like, if it would have been just go to war, it would have been so much easier. But dealing with like this massive bureaucratic mess. Let me tell you, like, this is the funniest story about it all. So we do that briefing. We go do all the briefings with my crews, the actual crews. By the way, that whole scene with like, do you need to be here? We went through a one-hour briefing with the three-star. Never one time did they bring up C-17s. Never one time in this briefing did they mention the guys actually got to go do the mission. Dude, what a freaking joke. Um, and it's and I do think it's a little bit of like the they didn't fundamentally understand the special ops aspect of like what we're doing. But my aircraft commanders, I got five freaking pilots in there with me, and they're like, what the hell was that? And I was like, guys, we uh we're the we're the we're have a real job to do. Don't worry about that. That don't worry about the clown show that you just saw. Let's just focus on what we gotta go do. So we go do our brief, and then I I make one of the mistakes you should never make in a leadership position. And that's go check email one more time. Like when you have when you have all your ducks in a row, you have all your questions answered, don't don't pick up the phone, don't ask another question, and definitely don't go check email. So I go into the jock, I open up my zipper computer, and there's an email in there waiting for me. And um, min force, for people don't understand how min force is one of the most important decisions we make. You want the minimum force to be as small as possible, right? To guarantee the mission goes, especially on the air side. The more airplanes you bring in, the higher the risk somebody breaks. And so we made the the decision was made above my level, really by we have input, obviously, but um by the the folks executing this mission that it was going to be five C-17s on the air side was the min force. That was it. Not even my backups, not the three backups. Certainly none of those freaking 30 airplanes fly in the support rolls. Five C-17s, the min force. This is great. So I know what the min force is. In order to guarantee that five of them take off, I decided we needed nine. Those three backups and the one spare. Because airplanes break all the time. So we're launching 12 hours from now. I check email one time. I have an email from the four-star general back home, who's who owns all the C-17s back home. And the email says essentially we don't feel comfortable with the Min Force being five C-17s. We think those three spares are very important to the mission. The Minforce is eight C-17s. So I read this and I'm like, oh shit. Eight in order I probably need 12 now to make eight to guarantee that I have eight. I don't have the air crews for that. Like, I don't who are these pilots don't exist. Like, what are we gonna do? Like, what is this person freaking talking about? And then I thought about it and I was like, you know what? Not not only are they wrong, but they're not technically in my chain of command. Like I know this is a four-star, so they're kind of an in-base chain of command, but not really in my chain of command. So I I closed my laptop, logged out, and I left. And I never told a soul about that email that I got. And we launched and we went with the plan as is. I never told, I never, it's my thought going through was like, shit, I gotta call General Donahue out in Afghanistan. Now I gotta call him at Kabul and tell him the whole plan's changing. Nope, never. So I just left. I never told anybody got that. I never told him. We launched with the Min Force of Five and uh and executed, and it was great. And and nobody ever knew.

Host 4:20:08

Did any of the two, three, four-star generals besides General Donahue, did anybody ever go to Kabul?

Alex Pelbath 4:20:16

No. No, no, none of them showed up. The centcom commander never showed up. Nobody should, dude, the freaking AFSENT commander who wanted to be in this briefing were flying 30 aircraft. I don't know why, I don't know why we're flying 30, but all those fighters, he never showed up. No, none of them. The only people that were there, um, I'm sure there were a few generals floating around, obviously, who were forward deployed, but no, nobody from back home, nobody in the chain of command. It was General Chris Donahue. The closest we came to that, you know, was uh this is my disgust with Millie. Was there I got pulled into a meeting. I was up there doing the planning, and I'm I'm talking. This is actually a really cool memory. CeeDee, he goes by CD, Chris Don, General Chris Donahue. He was a soft guy in the Army. Now he's the 82nd Airborne Division Commander. He had such a great reputation. I knew he was a good dude because all the troops loved him. And he goes by CD, just a cool guy. Um, I'm up there playing with him. We're sitting on the ground in Kabul outside and on this like a rickety ass picnic table. And him and I are just me and him, which is also very weird that he's the ground force commander and I'm the air mission commander and I'm an 05 and he's a two-star. But whatever, that's just the way it goes. And so we're having this conversation, and it's literally just like super big picture, you know, where are things gonna go wrong? How's the mission looking? You know, it was a cool conversation, cool for me. And then his aide comes up and is like, hey boss, you got it, you got the media, you got the tank or whatever, you got to come in right now. And so he's like, Oh, AP, come with me. So I go in this classified room with him. He's on screen now with I think it's the tank. It's with all the co-coms, all the four stars. The only two-star there was him because of what's going on in Afghanistan. And so I'm everybody's all the you know, strap hangers are against the wall. He's the only guy on camera. And I listened to this meeting for an hour of Millie asking all of the four-star generals on camera why things are being reported the way they are in the press, why we can't get the story straight. This, this is, I heard this, I heard I saw these numbers and this paper, I saw this and this. It was unbelievable to me to have that type of a priority when we had this going on. Never one time did he say, Hey CeeDee, how's it going out there? What do you need? What can we get you? How can we make sure your mission goes off well? Never one freaking time did that happen. So I hated that. Um, I left there just like disgusted. Whatever, you're you're everybody's everybody's straight faced. General Donahue, of course. I have no idea what he felt because he's a great officer and leader. He would never have shared his feelings. I don't know how he felt. He probably felt like I did. Um, so that's what I left there with. And I and then I met Millie. Millie came to Charleston. You know, the generals like to come give out coins, right? Shake your hand and hand out coins. So he comes to Charleston

[Ad] History Analyzed

Alex Pelbath 4:23:46

and we do this like private ceremony with just the Soul Two guys uh on us on RC-17. He shook a lot of hands on the base. It's a little private ceremony for us. He's trooping the line, shaking hands and handing out coins. He gives me a coin, moves to the next guy. I gave the coin right back to his aide. Said, no thanks, man. You keep this.

Host 4:24:08

Yeah, dude, that guy should be in in jail, in my opinion, and and and many of Americans' opinions. You know, as the military advisor to the president, I mean, he got it wrong. No, whether that, you know, trickled down or whatever. You know, when Biden gave him that pardon, I think it was him and Lloyd Austin the night before he left.

Alex Pelbath 4:24:29

The preemptive

(Cont.) The Last Plane Out of Kabul: Air Mission Commander Reveals What Really Happened | Col(r) Alex Pelbath

Alex Pelbath 4:24:30

pardons that tells you everything you need to know. Yeah. Yeah, I always felt like he was he was more concerned with politics. He was a politician more than he was a leader.

Host 4:24:38

He's a clown. That's what he was. And so he'll be remembered as too, as a clown. Doesn't matter what his whole career, like that's what people will remember him from, you know, people that died that shouldn't have died, an evacuation that was already happening that could have been done. Yeah. Uh, I mean, we're an orderly military. I mean, you know, you worked at the Pentagon. I I I had, you know, unique opportunities to be in different places and watch leadership work. And man, we were so much better than that. As a nation and as a Department of Defense, we have a strong military, the best in the world, arguably. And the how we let that happen is uh I don't know that I'll ever understand it. Um, I don't, I don't, I don't think any of them, I mean, most military service members won't, um, especially to to just leave in the way we did. And to your point, let the Taliban, our enemy, our sworn enemy forever how many years, dictate our departure. Yeah, yeah, man.

Alex Pelbath 4:25:31

I mean, that's a it was it was politics driving the military, which happens all the time, right? It's not the first time in history this has happened. It is just still disappointed. But and it was also some of those folks. I mean, I I do have I, as you know, you just heard me say that four-star trying to change the plan on me the night before, you know, putting me in a position where I have to ignore an order from a four-star, which I love the story now, by the way. Yeah. But and then Millie, who's another four-star, being frustrated with that. And all the other generals who could have showed up on all the different ways we could have done it from a leadership perspective, and they all didn't. They all just kind of like, they all just I think wanted to stay out of it, you know. I think they were all either too concerned with their careers. I don't know why. Well, I mean, let's be honest, too.

Host 4:26:13

We're on the backside of COVID. COVID was a whole nother debacle, yeah, right. And then so we're on the heels of of of that. And then, you know, this this new presidential, you know, Biden's administration. I mean, just what what a clown show all about. Disaster. You're right. Yeah. Um You know, you've said we're the United States of America, we we should not have the logistics problems. What kind of logistics problems were you seeing on the ground? I guess as I was hearing. You this and you know, talking about this withdrawal and you know, knowing where Kaya is in Kabul, like what were you guys doing for fuel? I mean, I heard there was guys like they, you know, they were having problems getting chow in there and and all kinds of stuff. Uh, was any of that true?

Alex Pelbath 4:26:56

Or well, yeah, I mean, Kabul could only be supported, I think, at that time by air. So, you know, I I that wasn't a uh that was uncomfortable, but whatever. We're in the military, like whatever. We'll figure, we'll figure out how to freaking eat. I I think some of the bigger challenges, the biggest challenge I saw, and again, I don't want to speak for anybody who was on the ground the entire time in Kabul dealing with what they had to deal with. That was not me. Um, you know, we were we were flying in and out, and so we the frustrations I saw when it came from a logistics perspective were once again with frickin' general. There's a the guy running the base at the deed, I was very, very disappointed with. So we are we have so many airplanes now involved. We ran out of drivers to get crews, like everything was delayed, like forever, everything is delayed. And it's made more complicated by the fact that this is freaking July in the Middle East.

Host 4:27:53

It's hot.

Alex Pelbath 4:27:55

I'm not even not 120 degree real air temp, 120 degrees every day. Like anybody who's ever been in the deed knows this. It is so bright there, and like the the colors and like the reflection off like the desert ground. You get issued sunglasses when you go there because you physically cannot open your eyes outside. It's like so bright. So this is this is that already just like sucks. It's challenging. And now it's like you get you get your mission orders to fly to Kabul, and it takes you like four hours to get off the ground because you're like you're waiting just for everything that's back. So I I went, I see all these frustrations happening at the deed. It's a it's just the deed is a freaking disaster. They can't figure it out. This is freaking behind the lines, man. They can't, they just can't figure it out. It sucks everywhere you go. And of course, what always happens when things suck is like the the people actually executing the mission take the brunt of it. So in this case, all the C-17 guys, it's horrible. So I happen to be friends with the the vice commander of the base. We flew C-17s together. Now he's in 06, and we're so I go to lunch or dinner with him, whatever. I just hit him up. My kid here, let's talk. Mike, what can I tell the troops? Like, these people are so mad at you right now.

Host 4:29:06

Like this because they weren't getting like rotations or what yeah, because like nobody knew where you're gonna sleep.

Alex Pelbath 4:29:11

Like you like, okay, you just do a mission, and now they've given away your room because you never know. This is this is every time you go fly a mission, like you check out of your where you're staying, like the hooch is that you're staying in or whatever. And so you get back and now you gotta find a room again. Well, they don't know. It's like everything takes out, you just flew all night, and now it's starting to get hot, and you're literally like standing out there, just like waiting for somebody to like assign you building and you're hungry and you're tired, and the deed is huge. How do you get around? There's no bus system, the only way you can get anywhere. You got all your gear, like it's just miserable, man. It's just horrible. And so guys are not sleeping before they're going to do these missions. They're like scrounging for places to like sleep. And I don't care about I don't care how many guys are to a room. I don't care about any of that stuff. I just care that like guys have beds and they can eat and like you to me, to me, you introduced risk to mission, which is also a real term that we use, right? Risk to force and risk to mission. You introduce risk to mission by putting all these air crews in a position to be exhausted before they even go execute the mission.

Host 4:30:11

Yeah, and I'll be honest, man. I mean, pilots take a lot of shit, right? They're they're going to they get a lot of Gucci places and Gucci assignments, but let's be honest, the guys that you want sleep deprived are probably not the pilots that are flying. That's exactly right.

Alex Pelbath 4:30:23

Um we know this. We know that decision making, ability to make decisions under stress degrades the the less sleep you have. And so it this was like part of it. And guys, and I'm watching this happen. And what is most frustrating is this is within our span of control. We are the United States of America. We can solve these problems. We we don't have enough food or gas or whatever. We can we can solve this. There's not enough bathrooms on the base, we can solve that problem. Friggin' write a check or something. So anyway, so I go out to I go out and I tell this guy, I'm like, here's something that would really help, man. First of all, I asked him, like, what can we do? And he was like, nothing. There's nothing we can do. And I was like, well, that's not true. Like, here's something we can do. He said all of the airplanes from Charleston Air Force Base are now here. That means all the vehicles and the truck drivers and the fuel guys are back home doing nothing. Why don't we bring some of them over here? And his response was like, oh, they would never let us do that. Like they would never. I'm like, what are you, a captain? You are the they. Like, pick up the phone, have the one star, pick up the phone and say, here's what I need to accomplish my mission. That's literally how it works. And we fly those guys over here. Like it would not be that hard. Um, or even if his he is right, then fine. He wants to pass the responsibility of the buck upstairs as somebody else's fault for not allowing us to do that, then I blame them. Like whoever it is, that was a solvable problem, and that just sucked that we had to deal with it. Not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, just disappointing.

Host 4:31:46

Was he just he just refused to make the call?

Alex Pelbath 4:31:49

I think they didn't want to make the call because it made them look bad. That they could. That was my I don't know that for sure. You know, I'd have no, I don't know if that's true, but I can't think of another reason why here we are the leadership. There's no more they. We are the they. So let's solve this problem since we are the guys who are supposed to be solving this problem. And you're telling me like we can't.

Host 4:32:14

And that's that's the problem when you have when you have a commander that cares more about what the person upstairs thinks about them than the welfare of the people below him.

Alex Pelbath 4:32:23

This continued, man. So we get home, and there's now this big after action that they do in DC. It's at Andrews Air Force Base. Huge thing. It's like a three-day thing, and it's like it's run by the vice chief of staff of the Air Force, and we're gonna like look at this mission. What do we do well? What do we what do we not do well? This after action report. I go in there, uh, you know, and it's all there, is it a lot of people? It's like a hundred oh sixes and a bunch of generals, and I'm like sitting in there, I'm like looking around, and I'm hearing people talk about like their roles, and I'm pretty sure fewer than 10 of the people in the after action were actually there. Almost guaranteed. And they all had ideas and opinions on how it could have been done better, and none of them were there. It was a joke. And I even at one point I bring something up. I'm like, hey, listen, one of our challenges was you were still trying to see to us from 6,000 miles away, and it wasn't possible. Like passed on a plane.

Host 4:33:21

Yeah.

Alex Pelbath 4:33:21

Well, what should have happened is they should have they should have reclassified us to be attached to CentCom. It's called Chopped. Uh forget it stands for. It's like an acronym of SANS for something, but it basically means it's like a transfer of authority. Transcom back home, it's got Air Force Base, controls all C17s. They have they have the C2 authority. I said, you couldn't do it. You guys couldn't do it. You should have transferred authority. And this freaking 06 goes, oh, we could never do that. Then you have to like change, you have to like transfer train. That means they're responsible for training and blah, blah, training and equipping. And I was like, dude, we're there for three weeks, bro. Three weeks. You don't need to train us. We're not doing training, we're already equipped. Like, all it just was like that mindset of a bunch of people who weren't part of it. And it was this like three-day thing, and they came out with like a big report. And my perspective, having been a commander on the ground there, was what a freaking waste of time. It was a joke. There was no accountability, by the way. You know what they don't do? Nobody in that room stands up and says, you know, I could have done my job better. Nobody says that. It's all everybody else's fault.

Host 4:34:26

And what's your thoughts on, I mean, you know, as somebody who's considering running for Congress or you're running for Congress? Uh, I mean, we there was like 120,000 evacuees. You know, I I who was supposed to have the infrastructure, like looking back now, right? You didn't have the we you didn't have the benefit of having the hindsight, but now having the hindsight, like, man, what a what a mess. Like, how did was any of those people getting vetted, or were they just you were just being like, hey, these dudes are going on a plane?

Alex Pelbath 4:34:56

I heard the vetting system to get on a plane was good in Kabul. Meaning you had to have an actual piece of paper from somewhere. I don't know how they got it. But it was like some sort of proof you could apply, and we cross-check your name. Here's what I didn't see was how you verified that they were who said they said they were. These people don't have IDs, they didn't show up with suitcases on our airplanes, like clothes on their backs, nothing. They had nothing. Like they they were empty-handed, you know? And I know the majority of them, the overwhelming majority of them, were actually who they said they were. These were people with little kids. They were families and they were concerned with their families. They'd been working for America, so they Taliban was probably not going to treat them nicely. But I just don't see how we could ever have known whether there were nefarious people. And we're seeing it now. Unfortunately, we're seeing it now. So I don't know. I mean, how do you verify somebody who doesn't have ID? I don't know. These people have driver's license. Like, I didn't see any of that. And then here's what I saw. Then so we take them out of Afghanistan, we take them out of Kabul, we bring them all to Al-Udid Air Base. They're all pretty much going through there. Not all of them, but the majority of them. Then they wind up at Rammstein Air Base in a camp, and then eventually they all get over to the United States of America. They had nothing. And not just that, that you have like 500 people getting off a C-17. Even if they were who they said they were, couldn't they just say they're not that person anymore? I don't I have I would love to talk to somebody who could argue articulately that they were vetted appropriately. Because it sure seems to me that nobody was vetted. When and when we say vetted, like really, actually, like who are you? Type of thing, you know.

Host 4:36:48

Yeah, and I think that's just another cog in the wheel of just the incompetence that that was d on display from you know one of the greatest governments in the world, dude.

Alex Pelbath 4:36:59

Why, why should I mean that problem would have been solved if we just stayed there, if we just didn't have to get out by August 31st, we just stayed there longer and did it right. Do you you know one of the biggest problems we had the whole 20 years in Afghanistan was green on blue attacks? Right? Was these people supposedly on our side then attacking us inside bases? There's tragic stories of our our troops losing their lives to somebody who was in a staff meeting with them, right? So even if they were, even if they did have the appropriate vetting, what does the guarantee that we're not gonna see more green on blue attacks now?

Host 4:37:34

Oh um, take us through August 31st. When did you know you'd be flying the last plane out?

Alex Pelbath 4:37:39

Yeah, when I when I was named the air mission commander, we knew we knew how the formation was gonna go. And and um, and so yeah, as hard as that, that all the frustrations I had with frickin' dealing with all those, with all the people, with all the 06s who who thought they were more important than they were, and and uh, you know, a four-star trying to change the freaking plan on me at the last second. Um I'd known for a few days. And so we flew in in the middle of the night, we executed the mission. It was great, it changed a little bit. Um, one of my one of the cool memories I have is sitting in the jock, like waiting for the go call. All the all the pilots, all the planes are like engines running, like waiting, waiting, waiting. And I'm literally sitting at a desk with a phone in front of me, like waiting for the phone to ring. Phone rings, pick it up, AP, C D go, click. And that was that was the go call from um General Donahue. It was awesome. Um, and so we launched, we flew in there. Took a lot longer than it was supposed to take. You know, we operate on Zulu time. Here's a funny little story. Uh Zulu time, I don't even explain it, but it's the military time, universal time around the planet. That's how we fly, is on Z time. There's obviously also local time. For whatever reason, Afghanistan is on a uh four and a half hours different from Zulu time. Everybody's usually an hour, right? We have East Coast time, Central Time, Mountain Time, Pacific time here. They're all one hour apart. Well, Afghanistan is has a half hour difference. And so they're four and a half hours different from Zulu time. So I'm operating only on Zulu time. We take off at like two hours delayed, because that's just how long it took on the ground, at I think 429 Zulu. In my mind, that means nothing. It's 429. I'm watching the next day, the press conference from Biden, from the president, celebrating how we took off. 429Z was 11.59 p.m. So we took off at 115. I got airborne at 11.59 p.m. on the deadline. So he is now bragging about how look at how good we are. Look at how good we are. We said August 31st was the deadline. We took off at 11.59 p.m. on the 30th. And I I saw that and I was like, is that is that true? I'm like, oh dang, I guess, I guess we did. A complete coincidence. We should have been airborne hours early, complete coincidence, and now it's a talking point for the president that uh that we got off at one minute before midnight.

Host 4:40:06

Describe taxing out. What do you uh what do you remember?

Alex Pelbath 4:40:09

We're leaving. So we're all of our jets are parked everywhere. Uh, I think it was number one, I think it was the lead aircraft, reported seeing some people in white robes uh on the airfield. Hey, there's a group of people clustered on the airfield near the runway. And they couldn't really see, so I I told her to, hey, start your taxi, like do a full 180 so you can do a full scan of who they are. And uh, and she was the lead, the formation, she was the number one um aircraft commander. Formation lead was with me. Um, but she's a great pilot too. She so she does the scan and she sees, she's like, hey, yeah, it's a group of people. Uh it doesn't look like they're doing anything though. So we say, all right, we decide to keep an eye on them, and we taxi out, and I end up taxiing right past these guys. And it's the Taliban. And they are, as we taxi past, I'm looking out the cockpit at these guys, and they're they wave to us. And you know, like obviously we can't I can't hear them. We don't speak the same language anyway, so I'm maybe not a gnome, but you know, you know, like that was not a friendly wave, but that was like that was like the middle, if they knew what the middle finger was, that's they're giving us the middle finger. That was so long. See ya, see America. We won. That was my that was like the second to last image I have. I see that, then we take the runway and freaking take off. Bam. Horrible uh yeah, what a way to end it. Like that, that is like your last image, you know.

Host 4:41:45

You graduated from the academy in 2001, three months before 9-11. Your entire career was spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. What was it like realizing this was the end?

Alex Pelbath 4:41:56

Yeah, I knew it in the moment, you know. Especially for me, uh, I'm not the guy actually at the controls, right? I'm the commander in standing like the command seat or whatever, which is literally standing up in the middle of it, guys. But so this is where I'm taking it, I'm taking like a deep breath, you know, like exhaling. Like, all right, I got them. We got them. They're everybody's like going. And so it I had a couple extra brain cells. And so I was aware in the moment that, like, oh damn, this is it. This is it. This is like, it's it's ending right here. And I'll never forget this image I had. This is the last image I had of leaving Afghanistan. It was we're on night vision goggles, you know, the middle of the night. And so I could see everything. And it was a five-ship of C-17s, we're all taking off one after another. And I could see the entire formation. Like it was a climbing left turn to get out of there. And um, and I could see one, two, three, four, and five. And I was fifth one. I just had this whole picture like of the entire formation right in front of me, and knowing like this is Afghanistan is over, like we're never coming back. And then, like, I'll never forget that image, man. Being aware in the moment, surreal, it's very surreal, right? Like, damn, this is the end. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know how how to describe it other than, yeah, it felt very surreal, and I was aware in the moment that this was the last thing out. And then I actually made there was a radio call where I pass a code word. Uh, once we got out of the um combat zone, and we're no longer we knew we were no longer coming back. Because there, you know, there's some contingency plans where we had to we had to return to the airfield. And so at this point, I may I get on the radio and make a call, and that was the call that officially ended America's longest war. What was the code word? Can you say it? Yeah, it was MAF Safe, MAF, Mobility Air Forces, Math Safe. So we hit the point, I go over the net, the classified net. But look, this classified net people here on computers. You know, you can you can pipe in and listen to it from the internet. And so, yeah, so I passed it. All I said was I think I said our call sign, my call sign, I had a call sign as the air mission commander, and uh and then said math safe, and that was it.

Host 4:44:05

How do you reconcile the cost in American lives with what we achieved, dude?

Alex Pelbath 4:44:10

Here's what I rest on going to Afghanistan was righteous. We were going after bin Laden. We were doing we this was the right thing. This is not Iraq. Okay? This was 9-11 Osama bin Laden. This was the this was a righteous war. But what we killed him in 2012? That was a long time to stay after that. When I was deployed there in 2015, yeah, 2014, 2015, I read a book uh that was it was a fiction book, but a super old book, uh, and it was about uh Alexander the Great trying to conquer Afghanistan and his troops and the not even the city names from Alexander the Great trying to conquer Afghanistan to me being in Afghanistan, not even the names of the cities had changed. Alexander the Great couldn't do it, the Russians couldn't do it, we couldn't do it. That part's very hard. So here's what I fall back on. One, it was righteous for us to be there. We were doing the right thing. Number two, in 20 years, there that isn't it, that's a generation. There is an entire generation of Afghans who know freedom. They've tasted it, they know what it is. If there's any hope for a country like that, which I don't think, sadly, I don't think there is, but if there was, it's from that entire generation who has tasted what else is available and out there to them. And I especially think of all the women who are educated. And there's just tragic stories, right? We know the stories of little girls have an acid thrown on their face just for going to school. But for 20 years, that's a whole generation of girls who got to go to school and be educated and live a life that nobody before and nobody after them is gonna get a chance to live. One of the people I met when we came home is I met a girl, a young woman who was working in the tower the day Kabul fell. And she hid for a couple days in the tower, you know, as the Taliban were like going through. And the Taliban had, you know, surrounded the city and her home was on the other side of the Taliban. So there's no way she could get through the lines. And so she hid for two days talking to her family. The story she tells is um eventually her family just convinced her to go to the American lines and get out. And so she did. She came here and she's never seen her family again. That sucks. But the fact that she was there working in the tower now that she's here, I mean, there is. There's I think of my family, the refugees from communism, the Pelbass escaping Hungary to come here. Like, I just hope. And it and it didn't, it took three generations for for my family to, I would say, like establish a firm foothold and right and to what we're doing now. And and maybe, maybe in that 20-year period, we're gonna see some of them have a similar story to mine, that they actually can achieve the American dream. And I don't we shouldn't hate all the there are some terrible bad actors, and we did it wrong, and we screwed up, and because of that, we are we now have to be extra cautious about that entire group of people. I think that sucks. That that because we did it so poorly, all of the innocence that deserve to come out or that worked for us, or that worked for us, and we you're right. How many organizations did we see of like special ops guys like after we left go back and rescue the people that they worked for?

Host 4:47:39

You know, we personally know somebody who worked with the tier one unit that's still stuck hiding in Afghanistan. Yeah, can't get his visa signed, they've plied, they they've plied through all the legal channels and still stuck. And there's uh a couple Rangers still sending money to Afghanistan because this guy can't get a job, he can't even come out of hiding.

Alex Pelbath 4:47:56

That's exactly what I'm talking about. So that as terrible as that was, that was bad. There, there are. You think of the 124,000 people that came out, there are a lot of them who are those people who did get out and are starting lives here. And I I just, you know, maybe three generations from now, one of those kids goes to the Air Force Academy, right? You know, you know what I mean? And they and they become assimilated Americans. As long as they assimilate, man, we love it. And it's a great thing. We that's what I fall back on is that I know we did some, I know we were there for the right reason. We did get bin Laden, and and we did positively impact an entire generation of people.

Host 4:48:29

Great way to put it, man. Um, how long after that did you retire?

Alex Pelbath 4:48:35

That was August of 2021. I retired in uh early 2023. So I finished out my Tour, right? The agreement I made is that I would I would lead that organization for two years. I did it for two years and then I bounced.

Host 4:48:48

What was the final decision point? I mean, you had already made that decision. I'm sure you know you you ended up getting an award. I mean, I'm I'm sure there was people that would have cheered cheered you on to stay. Yeah. Was it was it the disgust of what happened in Afghanistan or was it just time?

Alex Pelbath 4:49:03

No, it was just time. It was time. I would say it took a toll on us. I mean, because you know, I came back from that and we still, I was still leading this special ops unit. We still had more ops. We still did more things. We were still training and being gone all the time. We were still doing our job. Like that didn't end. Pretty sure we were out flying like two weeks later, you know? Yeah. Um, so yeah, it was, it was just, it was time. I mean, we thought about it. The Air Force tribe, it was the first time ever, you know, I had my whole career of like not being part of like the Air Force's like plan, and now suddenly Afghanistan happens. And um, you know, they put me on TV a lot. I did, I did CNN and Fox News interviews, and I know the Air Force is very happy with that. I had this great line that it was something like um, uh given the given the constraints with which we were forced to operate, the American military did a great job. That was my talking point. The constraints, of course, being like horrible politicians. But yeah, it went well and and I and uh and I got promoted again. So I'm still a guy who'd never gone to school, who probably shouldn't have been a squadron commander. Now I'm now I'm getting promoted to 06 and getting selected for the next level of command, and I still hadn't done any of those schools. I actually got a phone call from a buddy of mine who was a one-star general, and he said, uh, is it true you haven't done school? You know, the the military command school? And I was like, Yeah, that's true. I told you I guys, I'm retiring. And he's like, Well, if you're if you if you're gonna take this command, you need to finish it. And I said, All right, look, if we decide, if we change our minds, I promise I will do school. So um, yeah, so it made it, it did make it really hard. We thought about it. And there were there was a moment, so I get promoted to 06. I'm on, I'm on uh, I'm on terminal leave. So I guess so the decision to retire came before that. I was driving in my car. I remember the decision I made. And I was thinking about this next job opportunity. And I still got kids getting ready to go to college and high school, so we're still dealing with the moving thing of them I didn't like, and and we're home. We live in the low country, it's home to us. You know, I'm not stationed there, like we just really we live there. That's hard. It's I do believe it's the best city in America. And I'm driving in my car and I'm thinking about the job that they're offering me, and it's uh if you're me, it's the best case scenario. It's the best case scenario. Go be an ops group commander in the C17. And I just wasn't excited. And if and I realized if I can't get excited about the best case scenario, time to go. And I made my decision on the spot right there in that moment. And so um I did. I told them we were retiring, and then they freaking promoted me anyway. I don't know why. I don't know why I got promoted anyway. I I actually pinned on my 06 full kernel uh promotion ceremony consisted of me going to the BX, buying 06 rank, walking out of the BX as an 05, standing in front of a trash can, throwing away my 05 rank and putting on my 06 rank and getting in my car and driving home. And the only reason I did it was because I had my retirement ceremony coming up and I wanted to wear my 06 rank for my retirement. The only day in my Air Force career I wore 06 rank was at my retirement ceremony.

Host 4:52:20

Yeah, and I I laugh because you know, you you you told me, hey man, I'm a lieutenant colonel. I all my military guys, I I asked to see their DD 214. It's just a day and age we live in. And I'm like, it says 06, like clearly on all your retirement paperwork, your military paperwork. So it's uh That was barely an 06. Well, you made it. Um, you know, Alex, we've we've just spent the last couple hours talking about, you know, your your entire military career, your life, uh, your leadership, being in part of, you know, all these different spots to understand national decision making, decision making and national policy. Um tell me why like you're interested in running of Congress. What was that decision point and and why did you make the decision to put your hat in this ring?

Alex Pelbath 4:53:07

Yeah. Here's we just we we retired for the right reason. Fam right family reasons. Again, if you know, we were burnt, I was burned out and and uh and I knew it was time for me to go. So made the right decision. That doesn't mean we're done, that I was done. You know, I I'm 46 now. So right, this was two years ago. I'm 44. I'm not done. I'm not ready to like be retired. So I get hired by the airlines, go into that job, but I already know that that's such a great career and opportunity for your family to thrive. It is phenomenal doing that, but it's not the thing that makes a lot of us who chose to wear the uniform so long tick. It doesn't scratch that itch of needing to be a part of something more and do something more. And so I was looking for that from but even before I got off active duty, like I already knew that about me. Like I'm not gonna the kind of guy who can just sit on the couch and be fat, dumb, and happy and earn a paycheck. So, what am I gonna do? So I turned my experience in Afghanistan into a keynote talk on leadership. And it's really cool because I have a lot of pictures and stories told a little bit tonight that people have never heard or seen. And it was very well received. And I start doing this around town. And eventually somebody's like, I started getting this feedback a lot. Oh man, you should run for office. Have you ever, you know, I give this leadership talk and they're like, you should run for office. Have you ever considered running for office? And really early on, I was like, no, not really. I guess we haven't. And run for what? Like, there's nothing to run. Everybody's, I have all these people in these seats. What would I run for? You know what I mean? Um, I live in a Republican area, I'm a Republican, there's Republicans doing it. Not that they're all perfect or you like them all, but what, but that was my early on answer. I think that kind of planted the seed that like maybe, maybe there is more. And I obviously had my own frustrations. I mean, the the day of watching Biden on TV say something, and then 24 hours later having to deal with it, never forgot that. Like this was the first time of my life. We don't usually get that connection in the military from politics to like direct action like that, and just being so frustrated and pissed off. And then now we're gonna get political. You're gonna get my political beliefs. Uh, I hate what I'm seeing from the left. I hate it. It's there's a lot of anti-Americanism going on in this country in the left. And part of that's um, you know what I think about I think there's a lack of a moral compass. They call it moral relativity, right? Which which I don't uh agree with at all. And so I don't think that of all everybody on the left, and of all Democrats, you know, anybody who's served knows that there's Republicans and Democrats serving. And it doesn't matter because we're all doing one of my closest friends, guys, a brother to me, is a hardcore Democrat. Um, but the deal is we both love America. He is one of the greatest patriots I've ever met in my life. I see a path forward for America. He sees a different path forward for America, but at the end of that path is American greatness. Is still America being the greatest country on earth? We just disagree on how to get there. I'll work with those people all day long. That is not what we're seeing from the left. I think there's a threat to this country right now, and it is coming from a lot of a lot of people on the left who don't believe America's the greatest country in the world and want to tear that that aspect of it down. I mean, the open push for socialism that's happening right now that's that's unbelievable, right? It's baffling to anybody who's been alive at all that like this the idea of socialism, which has failed everywhere on the planet has ever been tried, is now being openly pushed by mainstream Democrats. Right? That's not a fringe group. And so I just having realized that and um and having the opportunity now and having the drive and the will to do it, here's the bottom line. I I think there's a war going on for our country, I think the battlefield has just shifted to DC, and I wasn't made to sit on the sidelines for it.

Host 4:57:14

What made you think, I mean, you're not a career politician, what made you think I need to I need to do this and I need to do this now?

Alex Pelbath 4:57:22

A confluence of events. I would say three things. One, um, opportunity. It's the right seat to run for. United States Congress is the right seat to run for. There's an opportunity there. Um if I was satisfied that another person running for that seat would fight for my district, fight for the low country, and fight for America the way that I will, I wouldn't be running. But I'm not satisfied with that being the case. I don't think there's another person running. No knock on them. I actually like a lot of these people running. I just don't think they have the experience or the passion or the drive to understand what is really at stake here. And and the fact that this is a fight, that we do have to fight, that we have to be able to work with the right Democrats and hold the line against those who who hate America. Um, that's part of it. And then, of course, the faith thing for me is really big. We my wife and I feel very strongly that we were, that this door opened. And you know, you we talk a lot about it on our faith that God opens doors for you. We don't just feel like this door opened, we feel like we were kicked through this door. We weren't looking it for it, we weren't seeking it out. People got behind us and really, really, really started encouraging us to walk down this path. And then the the far the more we walk down the path, the more doors kept opening. And you know what's weird? Like, how do you run for office? How do you do it? Like, if you want to do it, I have no idea. Most of us don't have any idea.

Host 4:58:56

Like, how do you think that's what I think that's what I was picking your brain about like last time?

Alex Pelbath 4:58:58

How the heck do you do this? And I and here's one of the doors that get open. Okay, so we're in my district, the Citadel University, you know, it's one of the military universities, very unique place, is um very prominent and very influential. And it's an awesome, awesome university, one of the best in America. And I gave a leadership talk at the Citadel. So, in a really cool coincidence, uh, I flew the last aircraft out of Afghanistan. There is a retired Major General James Livingston, Medal of Honor recipient from Vietnam. One of the greatest Americans who has ever walked the planet. He earned the Medal of Honor on the battlefield of Vietnam. Then he went back to Vietnam later, and he ends up being the ground commander for the evacuation of Saigon. So he's the last guy out of Saigon. I'm the last one out of Afghanistan. We're neighbors practically. We live in the same town. So we meet and somebody pitches this idea to us that we should do a talk together, and so we do. Him and I do a talk together called Last One Out, where he tells his story, I tell mine. It's great. It's just people really enjoy it. It's a free talk to come listen to, but we've just learned that it's so popular. We have to release tickets because it freaking sells out, you know. So I was giving this talk at the Citadel, and uh, and a group of them approached my wife and I, and General Livingston endorsed me on this in there. I didn't know he was gonna do this. He's he says something like, Before Alex talks, I just want to tell you all Alex Pellbest, the guy we need in Congress. And to hear that from a Medal of Honor guy in that crowd was great. And it uh, and so a group of them took my wife and I out to dinner and said, We really think you should do this. Okay, so now how do you do it? I have no idea. I get DM'd like 48 hours later. I get DM'd by some guy I've never met before in my life on LinkedIn. And all he says is, Um, hey, I heard you're considering running. I'd love to help you with your race. Turns out he's a Citadel grad. He'd heard my story, he'd heard through the Citadel network, and he was at the time the chief of staff for a current sitting congresswoman. So he knew the process. So he just held my hand through it all, opened up all these doors, connected me to the right people, and now you're off and running. Otherwise, yeah. How do you begin a run for Congress?

Host 5:01:14

One of the things you said is I'm not walking into this writing my campaign, an enormous check. What does that mean?

Alex Pelbath 5:01:20

One of the things you find out, uh money, it's it is not all about money, but it is a lot about money. Fundraising. Campaigns are so expensive. The reason they're so expensive is you is uh you got to look at it like buying a Super Bowl commercial. How do people know your story? 750,000 voters in my district. How do I reach all 750,000 of them? I do campaign events every single day. Not even joking. Every single day we're doing something for the campaign. I am speaking at events five times a week. I travel all over the district. There's probably 50 to 100 people that come to these events. That's well attended, you know, finding these people. So if I do that every single day, say I've got five days a week, that's 20 times a month, you know, over a six-month period, right? Do the math on it. How many people does that reach? 10% of the of the voting population? And that's like working your ass off. So how do you reach the rest of them? Well, the same way regular guys like us, I'd never been in politics before. So how did I ever hear about it? Right? Ads, people spending money. And so that's what it is. It's like buying a Super Bowl commercial during election time. So you have to raise a ton of money. And the more you can get your name out there, the better chance you have at winning. So I have a couple opponents who um are independently wealthy and they're writing themselves big old checks to do it. And we're not, we're been in the military for 22 years. My family's very comfortable. We're not at that point where I can write a million-dollar check to my campaign. So we're out there freaking working, grinding away, fundraising, calling people, reaching out to people who just love America and being able to tell the story so that we can raise money and be competitive. And what we found, I'll be honest, what we found is it's working. You know, we're if there's only gonna be one reason I lose this race. And it's if we don't raise enough money or some or one of the opponents spends so much money that it dwarfs us. But when people hear why I'm running and they hear the story, people get behind. I think most of us want people like us, just regular people in con. We're all tired of seeing career politicians wreck this country.

Host 5:03:35

Yeah, I know you and I had some political conversations that's gonna come out here in a little bit, but it's why we we agreed to even, you know, have this conversation because we've, again, we've said uh politics are dirty, man. I mean, you and I have talked about that off camera. Um, but I don't think it has to be that way. Maybe it's always been that way. I just feel like there's no decorum uh left. People can't have civil conversations. It's screaming and shouting and and you know, it's us versus them. Where, you know, I I think the far right and the far left are extremely loud, but a lot of us are in the middle, man. A lot of us are working, uh, you know, we we we want to leave our our country in good hands, right? We want our kids to have something to look forward to, to have the same dreams and opportunities that we had. Absolutely right. That seem to be slipping, you know, to your point. Like this is uh I think it's a dangerous time, right? Like I can't help but think about the next election cycle for the president and and what what what that could mean um, you know, with some of the things that have that are happening, not just in America, in the world. When America's strong, I think the world is in a in a better place. When America's weak, 100%, you see the world fall apart. Um, yep. There's something going on in South Carolina I wasn't really tracking until you and I had a conversation about it, but there was a uh South Carolina primary bill of controversy. Can you tell us a little bit about what was happening or what was happening?

Alex Pelbath 5:04:55

Yeah, so we have in South Carolina what's called open primaries. We're not the only state that has it, but what that means is uh you can vote in any primary regardless of your political affiliation. So we're coming up on the Republican primary, June 9th is my primary. That means Democrats can come vote in the Republican primary. Um, a lot of people don't like that because like theoretically, what could happen is a group of Democrats could let's say they don't want me to win. They're afraid that I'm gonna win the general election. So they could come into our primary and skew the voting in the primary to make sure a weaker candidate gets pushed forward. That would be like the theory of why this is bad. Not to not to mention just like on a principle standpoint, you vote for your party, vote for our party kind of thing. So everybody wants this to happen to close the primary. You have to be a declared Republican to vote. This is uh like an 80-20 issue in South Carolina, an easy yes. So the South Carolina State House uh puts forth a bill to close the primaries. There's two of them, two competing bills. They both close the primaries in different ways. Well, one of them, which is being supported by the overwhelming, I would say, uh GOP establishment. Not only does it close the primary, but in typical like dirty politics fashion, they attach something onto this bill that has nothing to do with closing the primaries. Right? We see this all the time. Like, this is really popular, it's gonna get passed, so let's try to get our special interest passed on the back end of it. Well, in this case, what it was was a candidate clause. And what they said was you can't run for public office in South Carolina unless you have voted in two of the last three primaries. What they're doing is there's a Democrat turned Republican in South Carolina. He was a Democrat. He is now a Republican running for attorney general. This would have kept him from running in that seat. I think he's gonna look like he's gonna win, probably. They were trying to prevent this guy from becoming an artery general. Uh, well, two of the last three primaries also prevents a lot of people, other people from running, people like me who have been in the military. I did not vote in two of the last three primaries. I chose to abstain from voting when I was in the military. Um, and and it's a principled thing for me. The military has to be agnostic. I watched a guy like Millie, who's a politician in uniform, in my opinion, cause a lot of problems. I think we should be politically agnostic in the military. And so many of us do. Many. It's not, you don't have to. This is a personal preference thing. But anyway, so I haven't voted in two in the last three primaries. Uh, therefore, and not to mention, like, what if you're just deployed? What if you're like you're out fighting the war? You know what I mean? Like, hey, I would love to have voted in uh in 2020, but things are pretty dang freaking busy for me. You know what I mean? I called the Taliban, I asked them if they would pause the war so that I could rush to the polls and vote because I might want to run for office one day.

Host 5:07:48

Don't worry, I heard the Democrats had a lot of extra people voting in there.

Alex Pelbath 5:07:51

They did, yeah.

Host 5:07:52

Yeah.

Alex Pelbath 5:07:53

Okay, so I did so I did, so this would have this would have prevented me from running on the ballot. So they put a uh uh you can seek a waiver to run, but you have to get a waiver from these establishment politicians. So take let's take me out of it. Let's just say my next door neighbor, who's like lived here for 30 years and is just a regular person and decides one day he's sick of it. He's sick of what he's seeing from his local politicians, so he's gonna run for office. Well, he didn't vote because he's a regular people. Most people don't get out and vote in their primaries. Like statistically, they don't get out and vote. 750,000 voters in my district, 50,000 vote in the primary. The overwhelming majority of people don't. So let's say this guy wants to do it. He can't run, and now he has to request a waiver from the very people he's running against. Isn't this wild? Like, not unconstitutional and just flat out un-American. What they're saying is uh you uh those of us in government power, we know better than you, average person, who should and shouldn't be a candidate. You are not smart enough to understand who's a good candidate, who's not. So we'll take care of that for you. Hey guys, we're the government speaking, trust us. So obviously we came out pretty vocally against uh that bill, and um, happy to say that that bill's dead.

Host 5:09:13

Nice. Yeah, I thought it was interesting you told me somebody called you and told you, hey, don't worry about it. We're still gonna let you run.

Alex Pelbath 5:09:19

Oh my gosh. So yeah. So after we came out publicly, you know, I put I put out like this selfie video on it, my thoughts on it, and what's happening, and like it didn't go viral, but it had like 12,000 views in like 24 hours. People looking at it, you know, people cared about it. We had a ton of support. And not just for me. There's a lot of people who felt the same way I did who weren't even affected. They're just offended by the unconstitutionality of this thing. So I do, but but because I came out vocally against it and I'm running for Congress, I yeah, I got a phone call from somebody in the establishment, you know? And that's what he said. Don't worry, this isn't about you. Don't worry. We will let you run. Like, what? I don't think this person realized that that is like the wrong thing to say to a guy like me. Like, we'll let you run. Like, who do you think you are? Let me run. No, so I so that just made me fight harder. Get off the phone with that guy. No, you don't. Now I'm now I'm fighting you like on more than just the fact that this bill is unconstitutional. That entire perspective that the government knows better than we do, uh, that's what we're fighting against, man. That's why so many Americans are just ticked off at politicians.

Host 5:10:30

Yeah. I I think that's why I've personally stayed away. I have a political opinion. Um, and I I've kind of stayed out of it because it's again, man, there's a part of me that feels like, does it even matter? I mean, I know it maybe it does at heart, uh, but I'm just like, I've been so disgusted with politics, uh, especially in the last, I don't know, eight years, maybe even a little bit longer, and you're just like, God, dude, what what what is happening? Yeah. It's like the we're watching the moral decay of society in some in some aspects. Um, but I, you know, I have to have hope, right? We can't just give up. That's not who we are as human beings. I kind of want to pivot before we start talking about national policy stuff, just on leadership stuff. Uh, you have a lot of leadership experience. We've kind of hinted at it. I've asked you questions, I've pulled, but I want to be very specific because I think I think it matters for uh for especially for for your candidacy and and if you're elected, what you're gonna go on to do um, you know, for your constituents. Uh I just wanted to start with what what's your definition of leadership?

Alex Pelbath 5:11:27

Um, I said it before. I said it before, do doing the right thing regardless of the consequences. But yeah, obviously there's so much more to that. I I really like that as a definition of integrity more than leadership, but I have found that to be so true as a leader that that is what's that's what separates good leaders from bad leaders is you do the right thing regardless of consequences, not because you're concerned with what your bosses are gonna say, not to try to get promoted, um, but because it's the right thing to do and you deal with the consequences later. I love I I really think, and uh the reason I like that though is because that means anybody that applies to any, anybody at any position anywhere can be a leader. And I do find that to be true, that some of the best and most influential leaders are people who are not in established positions. I learned I learned this as a squadron commander. You know, I I I have 180 people in my squadron. What you find out in a flying squadron, the people who really run the squadron culturally are the captains, right? They're like the 28 to 30, 32-year-olds, like that, whatever. It's the younger folks, right? Who are like the popular kids who are good at their jobs too. And so that's I found that out right away. Like, all right, who's this is what I did. I go into my squadron, like it's Friday. Who's leading the charger on here? Who's like I'm just observing who's putting the plan together for for where we're going tonight to party, right? That's the person I want on my team. Like, that's like influential leadership. So I love I love that from that perspective, and I found that to be very, very true. That hey, do the right thing regardless of the consequences, and you can do that at any level, wherever you are. Um I also do I think leadership is about influence too. So there is a part of it, but I think in order to have influence, you have to have two things. You have to have a position and you have to have credibility. So you can you can be a squadron commander, but you can be a CEO. But if you don't have credibility, if people think you're a joke, then whatever, they'll do what you tell them to do. But right, that's we we all know how that ends up. They do what you tell them to do because they have to, and that's the only reason. Um the same is true on the other side. I I've known plenty of people who have immense credibility, but they're just not in a position of influence, and so it's difficult to actually get things done, right? You're gonna banging your head against the wall all the time. So so being able to have both of those things um I think are super important. I'll ask you a question are great leaders made or are great leaders born?

Host 5:13:51

Oh, I've heard this so many times. I think made. Uh, because I I think you know, de uh we can be born into all kinds of different circumstances, right? Not every some people more fortunate, some people less fortunate, maybe some people weren't exposed to the opportunities. But I think leaders can be made if they're exposed to the right um ideas, principles, mentors. Um, that's that's my my thoughts. I could really expand upon that, but it would take too much longer. But I I've pondered that before. Um You?

Alex Pelbath 5:14:23

I don't disagree with you. I think I think leaders can be made. I do think leaders are born as well, though. I mean, you just see people who naturally have it, you know, whatever it is. I agree. Probably those same guys I'm talking about leading the charge on Friday night, like no formal like training or whatever, younger and do it. I actually asked that question on purpose though. Here's here's what I think. I think good leaders can be made, and good leaders are born. I think in order to be a great leader, you have to be both. And the analogy I always give is an Olympic athlete. No matter how hard I train, I'm not gonna win the 100 meters in the Olympics. Okay? No matter how hard I work and train to do that, whatever. If I'm not born with it, I'm not gonna be, I'm not gonna win the gold medal. Same is true the other way. You might be born with it, but if you spend all your life getting eating potato chips on the couch, it doesn't matter that you were born with it. If you don't work your ass off to get there, you're not gonna be a gold medal either, right? To like be the best, to be great at something, you have to have both of those things. I think the same is true of leadership that that you can work your ass off at it, but it really helps if you're born with something and you find that like, hey, you're born with something and you work your ass off it. That's why that's why we have famous leaders in this country. That's why we read their books, because you know there are they do set set themselves apart as great leaders. And I think it's because they have both.

Host 5:15:43

Good point. Um, how does military leadership translate to Congress?

Alex Pelbath 5:15:48

Uh, getting the job done, mission foot, mission first, right? That's what we do. Mission first. The integrity piece as well. Like we're 22 years of that. Like you you can you can get fired as a commander for telling a lie. Like the integrity matters, right? In in what we do. And so getting there as a having a military background, and we see it from some, not all. Not that people don't sell out, but um, we see it from a lot of good military leaders that who are mission focused and who don't do have that sense of integrity. Um so get not only getting the job done, but doing it in the right way. So that doesn't mean you don't fight battles. Fight the battles, but you do it in a way that for me, what I like to say is I will fight all the right battles. I feel like that God made me a fighter. I can't wait to go fight a lot of these battles. I do feel like we're at war and I freaking put me in, coach, but I want to do it in a way that's gonna make all the people I represent proud.

Host 5:16:42

What are, I mean, you you and I have talked about career politicians uh in the course of this conversation. What are voters uh tired of seeing from career politicians?

Alex Pelbath 5:16:50

Um, a couple of things. One, not getting the job done. Overpromising and under-delivering is like the number one thing. You know, I don't like throwing out the term rhino team. I think that gets turned out thrown out like too much on the Republican side, Republican in name only. But I know what what that sentiment comes from. It's like we expected more of you. Like you said you were gonna do these things. Like, why are you not doing them? And people are most tired of that, number one. Um uh number two, I think they're tired of the lack of integrity. And number three, it's people being wishy-washy. Like without using the term politician, like people are tired of people being politicians, right? I'm gonna I'm gonna not take a stand on, I'm gonna support both of these issues, or I don't support either of these issues. You know what I mean? No, we that's not what we want. We want to know where you stand on things. Like, what are you actually fighting for for us? You can't be fighting for everything and you can't be fighting for nothing. Like, quit being a politician and take a stand. So I think those three things are what people are most frustrated with.

Host 5:17:53

You said you want to bring back leadership and respect to South Carolina's first congressional district. Explain that a little bit.

Alex Pelbath 5:18:00

Yeah, I think uh I especially looking at no no knock on the individuals who are running for this seat against me. Yeah, it's actually weird. I'm actually become friends with these people. I don't know if that's allowed. Like this maybe is like part of me never being a politician, but like I like a couple of these people. Like there's one of these dudes, and I like have drink bourbon together. Like it's you know, I don't know if that's like a normal thing in a political race. Um so that that part I found to be really cool. So it's really not a knock on any on any of them, but uh, but I think the that this job requires leadership experience and national level leadership experience. Um, I think we're tired of politicians. I'm tired of like my local politicians. I'm so frustrated with local politics where I live, especially the fact that as a Republican, we have so many Republicans there, and we still my taxes are out of control. There's just so many things, so many challenges and problems we have where I live, and it's a bunch of Republicans running it. Like we should be able to do what we want, whatever we want, to like do the right thing and get it done. And I just don't see it getting done. And so I'm tired of that. To me, like, there's no, no, we're not promoting any of those people. They can't do it here. Why would we trust them to go do it there? So um there's that piece of it. And then and then for me, it's uh it's um we don't have this feeling of nobody respects our Congressman anymore. Like Congress in general is not respected, right? We don't nobody has a positive view of Congress. There are individual members of Congress who I do true uh look up to and and um want to emulate on an individual level. So, so bringing back like that level of respect and like leadership, I wish I wish Congress was respected that way. And so if Congress is not going to be, I will be. I want to be one of those guys that people say, yeah, Congress sucks, but AP, AP is doing it right.

Host 5:19:53

You've mentioned that this isn't about Republicans versus Democrats anymore. It's right versus wrong. Can you expound on that?

Alex Pelbath 5:20:00

Yeah, same thing I mentioned before. You know, there I served with a ton of Democrats. There's a ton of Democrats who are I'm very close to personally, and they love America just like I do. We're not fighting against them right now. Um, that you can have civil discourse with them, right? You can sit in a room and say, this policy versus that policy is best for America. That's not what America's facing today. Socialism is not best for America, very clearly. This like boys and girls' sports, the transgender battle. I mean, and it's not, look, this is America. Live the life you want to live. If you want to go mutilate your battle, whatever you want to do, go live the life you want to live. Do not make me live the life you want to live. And you certainly better not be influencing my kids to live the life that you want to live. That's what I'm talking about. That is like the evil that I'm talking about. I don't care how you live your life. I will support you. This is United States of America. Do whatever you want if you're a grown adult. Like that's right, go outside of, like, of course, breaking the law, live the life you want to live. That's what's so great about this country. You don't make us do it. You don't change our values to do it either. So I think there's an attack right now, not just on our economic system with socialism coming after us, but also culturally going and this entire faction of left going after our values. I mean, you we saw it at the State of the Union the other day with freaking some of those reps on the left, just they're just terrible Americans. They're embarrassing to be like, they're they're they don't represent what America stands for. And this is different from disliking a politician. You can dislike a politician because you don't like their politics. I get that, I understand that. But like as an American, like I I think that there are so many people who who are actively trying to tear this country down. And we think this because that's what they're saying, right? They're they're actually saying that. So I think that's what we're fighting against, and it's um it's happening, unfortunately, at the youth movement, too, right? There's an entire culture war going on with our youth. Like, why do all these kids, these young people, think that socialism is the answer? It's because they're they're being fed this through this false narrative through social media, you know.

Host 5:22:18

Also, I think it's some of the education institutions, man.

Alex Pelbath 5:22:22

For sure. And the erosion of the family, the family is where, you know, you're really gonna learn, I think, all these things. Um, man, it's tough.

Host 5:22:29

I don't I don't yeah, and I go back to think about when I was growing up, when when I mean we're the same age, uh, you know, even just what you could see on TV. Like it's not very often I can sit down and watch TV with my young kids. There's I mean, there's you know and I like a good TV show, you know, but it's just gone over the top. Like everything. Yeah, you know, the violence, the, you know, even the the sexual stuff, the home, you know, what they're gonna put in movies. It's like even some of the, you know, the and it's on regular TV. Now, granted, we we have all these paid subscription services, but I'm very cautious about what I sit down and watch with my kids, man. Yeah. We are, we're imprinting this next generation. Social media is scary too for a lot of different reasons. Uh the algorithms, yeah.

Alex Pelbath 5:23:14

That's I was just gonna say is the algorithms that's it. They target, right? Yeah, they target with the narrative. It's a it's a it's a um, we're fighting a war on two fronts. We're fighting a war there with our kids and the social media and the algorithms, what it's feeding them and teaching them. Um, and then the other front is is at the grown-up level. It's the people I'm talking about. It's also it's also the immigration problem. So we are a nation of immigrants. My family is a perfect example of it. That is very different from just having a wide open border and and the things that are extremely alarming to me are what should be the most obvious agreements we all have, like um that you should be a citizen to vote.

Host 5:23:51

That's wild.

Alex Pelbath 5:23:52

I'll never understand that. How could you how could you ever how could you ever say not? Or, you know, President Trump, the one of the best nights from the state of the or the best moments in the night of the state of the union was when he said, stand if you believe the government's job is to protect the American people first. And not a single Democrat stood. Like that is absolutely wild to me that that that is so so that's like the second front that we're fighting is like this adult war where the people want to tear down America and part of the part of the way they want to reshape America is by allowing anybody in at any time. They don't care because all of those are gonna be votes and for them. They're not gonna vote for us who who don't want to, right? I'm actively saying I don't think you should be in this country. And then they come into this country and get to vote, they're not gonna vote for me, they're gonna vote for the other side. So I I really think that's what it's what it's about. It's like this big, you know, it's about sustaining power for them. But that that is do it right. We're not we're not Republicans aren't trying to repel immigrants or immigration. It's not about that. This isn't something we want to do. This is something we have to do because of the situation we've been put in by the previous administration, I think.

Host 5:25:03

So well, and the in the the immigration thing is definitely a sticky issue because the the immigration thing has been going on through multiple presidencies, Democrat, Republican. Uh, you know, that this this has been a problem for years and years. Why do you think the immigration thing is so hard to tackle?

Alex Pelbath 5:25:20

Uh be only for only one reason. Here's what I'll dispute what you said a little bit. So Obama deported more people than Trump has. This is a new thing in the Democrat Party. I mean, go just go watch all the clips of all the Democrats over the years being being firm on immigration and closed borders. This is a new thing. And I and I think it's really because of voting. This is how they win elections. They're not going to win if Americans don't. Look, by the way, the border issue is an 80-20 American issue. 80% of Americans, not American, not Republicans, 80% of Americans believe in a closed border. And yet the Democrats are pushing this 20% issue. It doesn't make sense.

Host 5:26:05

Other than there's some like nefarious. Any other country in the world, if you overstay your visa in Mexico or uh Costa Rica or anywhere, dude. My we just had a podcast guest. I lived on a boat for four years. They went everywhere. They could only stay in certain places for 30 days or 60 days. It's like I I'll never understand, you know, any other country. You'd why overstay your visa in Mexico, they'll put you in jail.

Alex Pelbath 5:26:31

Why why it didn't used to be this hard of a problem. We we we've always, you know, I would say had illegal immigration as an issue here. And it just wasn't a huge problem because the numbers weren't overwhelming. And and now they are overwhelming, number one. So there's there's the criminal aspect of it, the danger aspect of it, just how many violent crimes have been committed. You know, these tragic, all the tragic stories that are out there, they're very real. And I don't understand why the the Democrats just kind of push it aside as if like it's almost like, well, it's such a low percentage that it's that it's okay. Well, I would argue that not one of them is okay. And that's a wild take that because it's such a low percentage, we're gonna keep letting it happen. Well, a low percentage of a really big number ends up being a really big number. So just what a bunch of nonsense. I do think it's nefarious. I think it's about them staying in power, getting the votes. And you know, let's not forget the fact that uh it impacts the census. So it's not just like votes today for them, but it changes the voting block based on the number of bodies being counted. It changes the census, right?

Host 5:27:39

So yeah, and I think that's why people are running the droves from New York and California. I mean, you know, those places are becoming unlivable. It's uh, you know, uh, I mean, they're just raising the taxes in New York and California, man. I mean, just a gallon of gas out there is five, six, six bucks a gallon.

Alex Pelbath 5:27:56

What's happening in Virginia right now? Virginia, Spanbarger ran on like a moderate ticket. She's anything but moderate. She's just wildly crazy left. And we're gonna see it happen there. It's gonna watching Virginia collapse is gonna be great because it's like happening right in front of her eyes. It's like New York City, except Virginia's gonna be a whole state. I mean, Mom Donnie's such a clown. Um, and and part of me is like they get what they deserve. You know, they're they they like I seeing all the trash on the street of New York City. I'm like, good.

Host 5:28:23

Here's my problem. Here's my problem with that. They get they get what they deserve, they got what they voted for. Yeah. Uh like Southern California has a lot of conservatives, but you know, uh, and and a lot of the the voting, I mean, we're both from Southern California. I know tons of conservatives in San Diego and Orange County and even up in the north, but you know, illegal voting, what however you want to put it. So, you know, uh it is split. And so my heart goes out to the people that live in those states that didn't vote.

Alex Pelbath 5:28:50

Yeah, there's you're you're that's a great point because they're 6040. Uh like Connecticut's like 60-40, New Mexico's 60-40. And I think Connecticut and New Mexico have zero Republican representation. So you're you're 40% of your state is Republican, you have zero percent representation. So obviously, yeah, there's a problem with all those. And and you bring up a great point. It is. We we have it's the same reason like we fight, um, we always fight for the little people, is because they can't fire for themselves. And there, and there's a I think a take to be had there in places like New York and California that, hey, we're they're still Americans.

Host 5:29:22

So what's right about I think about the great people that still live there in New York, in California, you know, people that just can't pick up and move. Like, yeah, you know, especially the older folks, man, like uh that they can't move for whatever reason or their family's there or whatever. I mean, you know, I just I really think about that sometimes. Um, and and maybe this is why I've steer steered away from political conversations. I don't, you know, I'm not some traditional conservative that only believes what I see on Fox News or whatever. You know, we we the whole news we could we could are we could have a conversation about just the news in and of itself. But yeah, I mean, I I I do think we're in a mess, man. Um, and I'm I I guess I'm thankful for people that are willing to throw their hat in the ring to try to make it better. Um, you know, but we've seen this before where good people, you and I talked about a few in the car yesterday. I don't want to name them here on the podcast, but people that you've seen go to Congress with good intentions, and I don't know what happens there, man. People either forget where they came from or special interest groups, or I don't know.

Alex Pelbath 5:30:20

It's definitely I don't know what happens either. I mean, you're right. I actually hear that. I'll be honest, I hear that a lot. I hear that a lot because I because I say this like, hey, I'm not a politician. I'm a leader, not a politician. I care about policy more than I care about politics. Those are true statements. And people say, that's great. So why does everybody what's gonna happen to you when you get there? You know, are you gonna change? Yeah. I hope not. I hope, I hope not. You know, vote me out. This I'm really rooted in my faith. I think that is the key for me is to stay rooted in my faith, to not to not give in. Um, I don't know if I told you this story, but my wife wrote me a letter right after we decided that we're doing this, that we're running. And like the campaign got off to like a really hot start. And like, not we're not just like some guy running, we're like we're a front runner right now, you know? We're one of the front runners for this thing. So it's like very real. It started becoming very real to us. And so she wrote me this letter, and um she quoted the Bible, Daniel, ch uh, the book of Daniel, 327, chapter 3, verse 27 in Daniel. And here's what's happening in Daniel chapter 3 is this is, you know, Daniel and the lion's dan right is famous for Daniel, but he's got three buddies, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And the king at the time had had made a law in the land that at certain times of the day, there's like this huge statue of the king that, like, when the chime goes off, everybody must bow to this statue of the king. And these three guys, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, are um men of God, and they say, We're not gonna bow to these men of God, to this idol. And so everybody in the town bows down to the idol and they're left standing, it's pretty obvious. So immediately they get seized, they get arrested, and the punishment is death. And so they get thrown into this burning pit of fire. And the king looks in after after a few minutes and sees that not only are they not dead, but they're in there walking around. And there's a fourth person walking in the fire with them. And so he calls them out of the fire. And as they come out, here's what Daniel 327 says not a hair on their body was singed, and they didn't even have the smell of smoke on them. So my wife says, We're getting thrown into the fire. The goal is not to survive it and exist up there, it's to come out. Without even the smell of smoke on us. So that's what we're taking into. So when people ask me, like, how am I going to get up there and survive? That's how. That's how. We know what we're walking into. Stay rooted, stay rooted in my faith, and and we'll come out. And here's another way I'm not going to fall into that trap. I'm not going up there to be there for 40 years. I'm not going to die in a congressional seat. I don't understand it. I want to go up there. I want to wreck a lot of stuff. I want to, I want to disrupt things. I want to fight for my district. I want to fight for America. And then I want to get out and go about living my life.

Host 5:33:16

Yeah. To see 36, 40-year politicians is disgusting. Terrible. They're not representing anybody.

Alex Pelbath 5:33:23

But people used to give up lucrative careers to go serve the government and then go back to their lucrative careers. Now people go to the government for a lucrative career.

Host 5:33:35

Yeah, I think her uh AOC, man. I mean, what was her net worth before she became a congresswoman? And what is her net worth now? And I don't even know if I'm pretty sure she's not sitting on any committees. She never really had a real job. She's never been in charge of anything. And she's making decisions on, you know, that could affect this country.

Alex Pelbath 5:33:52

That's I don't think she's the dumbest person in Congress either. Um that's obviously savvy. I'll but she's but she's she's definitely she's definitely one of them. You know, actually, who was it who said uh I forget which which politician said it, but is such a great quote. I'll use it on her. Um I don't think she's the dumbest person in Congress, but she better hope the dumbest person doesn't die.

Host 5:34:19

Joint base Charleston, you got the Coast Guard, the Marine Corps at Bufort, you got all almost all services represented uh where you're living in your district. How does that shape your priorities?

Alex Pelbath 5:34:30

Yeah, I mean, obviously we what we do for America, I think is of tremendous value. So yeah, MCAS, Marine Corps Air Station Bufort. Uh, they got F-35s there, it's cool, it's a kick-ass base. Paris Island, where a lot of Marines start. So obviously the Marines are super important down there in Buford, that area for us. And then Joint Base Charleston is the Air Force side, the naval weapons station. We have, I think we're about to have the largest Coast Guard base in the country who's gonna be in our district. And then we also have the port of Charleston, which is the port is enormous, fast-growing port on the East Coast. So, this is a this, what we do for the United States of America is of tremendous value. And that obviously impacts the way that I think in a lot of ways. These are the people that I want to serve. We're incredibly proud of all of those things too. I think one of the challenges we have is that all of those things that that we're proud of that we love to have in the district and that um are doing so much for America, there's a cost for us. And it's an infrastructure. It's like our port alone. When you have a port that big, that brings in a lot of trucking. Well, no, they've none of our local politicians is one of my frustrations is we pay the highest taxes of any state in the southeast and we have the worst roads and the worst traffic anywhere around. And how how can those two things be true at the same time? I don't understand. That sounds like what Democrats do. So the challenge for us in this district is um is we're very proud of doing all those things for the United States of America. That that's tremendous. Everything we just listed is for the country. And yet we're kind of bearing all the cost for it right now. So that that impacts the way that I think about what I need, what the job in Congress, what one of my responsibilities is do is to help America believe understand that that the first congressional district of South Carolina deserves investment from America. Like, hey, if we're gonna do all these things for America, America should be investing in us. We shouldn't, I've got guys right now, people in our district. This sucks, man. Because of those infrastructure challenges and which leads to some affordability issues. We have affordability issues in a lot of areas, um, housing, like specifically, but I've got guys working at bases, you know, our young military guys who have to commute an hour to work every day, to and from work every day, because you can't afford to live anywhere near the base. And it's really not just about like distance, it's about time of travel because our freaking traffic is so bad. Like you live 10 miles away, but it takes you an hour to get to the base, you know. I've never I've never been stationed anywhere that had those challenges. And so I am passionate about the fact that when I get to Congress, I need to solve that issue for the district.

Host 5:37:09

Boeing has a major presence there as well. What does that also mean for the district?

Alex Pelbath 5:37:13

Same deal, a ton of jobs. I mean, that's what's great about Boeing. There's it provides so many jobs to where we live. And so there should be an equal partnership. They have a massive footprint. So a similar story. Um, as long as Boeing is is I'm all I'm all about like expanding and continue to provide more jobs. It's an economic boon to the district. It matters a lot. Boeing does a lot of good stuff that obviously I flew a Boeing airplane. I'm very passionate, actually, about what Boeing does. I fly a Boeing airplane now for Southwest, man. Boeing does a lot of awesome stuff. So let's make sure that that partnership is solid and great in our district and what and what they do. We want them there, need them there. They should be there. I get what they want to be there. It's the best place in America to live. So yeah, so let's um let's just make sure we do it right. Um, and really what I again I'm talking about there is like the infrastructure challenges. I love they bring all the jobs and they help us out tremendously. Let's make sure that that we're matching the good and the bad, you know.

Host 5:38:05

South Carolina has abnormally high taxes for a red state. What's your position on that?

Alex Pelbath 5:38:11

It's insane. What are all these politicians doing in my state? How can that be possible? Why do we do it? It's that in, you know, we see there's a big, there's a big governor's race going on right now. Just about every governatorial candidate is running on a on a zero taxes, a zero state taxes platform. Like everybody knows it. So it's uh to me, it's like my message on that is like, wait a minute, one of these, one of these people responsible for all of our high taxes and infrastructure challenges is now looking for a job promotion. That's insane to me. Nope, you're bad at your job there. We're not gonna promote you to the next one. So for me, it's it is uh it is I'm a constituent when it comes to state taxes, right? Congressman, federal office, you're not gonna impact state legislation. So I just am a constituent and I'll just shout from the rooftops as much as possible. What are you guys doing? Why are we paying so much money in taxes? Not just state taxes, but freaking property taxes, personal property taxes. Where's all my money going? It's crazy. Ukraine, probably.

Host 5:39:14

That's a whole nother topic. I'm just kidding.

Alex Pelbath 5:39:16

I mean, I don't know that much.

Host 5:39:17

There's just, you know, when you see the fraud, waste, and abuse uh that's going on, you know, you know, the Doge task force when it I was super interested in that when, you know, when Trump first got in office and just seen like, look, man, we we knew there was corruption in the government. None of that was shocking. But the level of corruption was almost unfathomable. Yeah. Uh and you're like, man, you, you know, God forbid you you miss your, you know, not let you owe the IRS something. Bro, they'll put a lien on your house. Uh, you know, they'll take your stuff, but you know, then you see where our tax dollars are going and it's yeah, it's it's criminal sometimes, not always.

Alex Pelbath 5:39:52

It really is. Yeah, I think regulation, over-regulation is part of it. People don't talk about this enough, but um I just saw a report from Heritage that uh regulation in this country costs taxpayers $1.5 trillion. That is just another tax, right? When when companies have to pay more to produce something, they don't just eat the cost, they pass it on to the consumer. So that so regulation is just another tax on Americans. And I think there's a lot of fraud in these regulations, right? Oh, you want to you want to create or build or do something? Well, here's some red tape you have to get through. Write us a check and we'll let you do that. And in and President Trump is getting after the regulation too, but that's what I want to see. D freaking deregulate everything. Let us just live. Like freaking get off our let us live. You know? What's your uh what's your thoughts on big pharma? Massive problem.

Host 5:40:41

Yeah.

Alex Pelbath 5:40:42

Uh probably the reason healthcare is a complete disaster is what we treat we don't treat um problems anymore. We only treat symptoms. Right? This is what you do. My wife is in healthcare. My wife's a PA. We've we are keenly aware of this. It's so incredibly frustrating. Um, my wife's super passionate about this, about other ways to treat people. You know, you go you go to the doctor's office and with a problem and they give you a pill to treat your symptoms. But you can live with the problem forever because now you're gonna have to take those pills forever. How do we not see the conflict of interest between these drug manufacturers make money on us taking drugs, therefore, they are incentivized for us to take these drugs, which means they're disincentivized from curing us.

Host 5:41:32

Yeah, I won't name them specifically, but some of these drug companies have been around for 120 years and they've never solved a single, you know, a sickness, dude. It's uh yeah, that's uh it's it's pretty wild. Um, we've talked a little bit about immigration abortion security. Uh, I mean, you you've said in the past all states are now border states. What do you mean by that? Well, we we've shut down the border.

Alex Pelbath 5:41:52

President Trump shut down the border. It's good. There's like no border crossings right now. We're killing it. It's amazing. It's awesome. The problem is all those millions and millions and millions of people who already came across the border now live in all of our states. They live everywhere. So we we wonder why there's a problem with people getting jobs, and we wonder why there's a problem with housing. We wonder why there's an eight-hour wait in the emergency room. This is part of the problem. So every state is is um bearing the burden of a decade of open border policy, certainly the last four years under Biden's open door policy. So that's what I that's what I mean when I say that. It's like we have it in South Carolina that they're that we have we have a problem with this. And, you know, back to what I said before, like this isn't we don't hate immigrants. We don't hate immigration. This isn't something that we want to be doing as Republicans. It's something that we have to do because we care about Americans first. We don't not care about those people, but we just care about Americans first. It's not, to me, it's not at all about not being empathetic to the plight of the immigrant. It's about the fact that it the system has gotten abused. And we have to fix this, we have to fix it now before we can re-look at how the how the policy works. So, and every single state we're seeing it has these challenges with um illegal immigration. So it's pretty easy to get after the criminal illegals. The harder thing to do is the fact that there are um unintended consequences all the time of just ego illegal immigration, period.

Host 5:43:21

Yeah, there was a major raid in your district involving prostitution, drugs, and child trafficking. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Alex Pelbath 5:43:26

Yeah, it was wild. Shocking to hear that. Like, I didn't know that was going on, that that happened. Yeah. And it amazing how like quiet everybody was about this. So they they they raided this place. Uh, they found out there were some nefarious activities there, and they found everything you've just mentioned going on right there in South Carolina's first congressional district happened friggin' right there. To have it hit that close to home, just a reminder that that we have to just stay after it. We just have to stay after it. You know, that that, I'll be honest, look, that is that is a horrible story, but that to me is the easy part. Like if you can't get behind that, getting rid of child traffickers and violent criminals, then you're in that camp where I'm not interested in talking to you, not interested in working together with you on a policy if you can't get behind getting rid of that part. I think the harder part is there are illegal immigrants who are not violent and trafficking in children, but are still a tremendous challenge for us to deal with mostly economically.

Host 5:44:25

Yeah, and I don't, I mean, I don't want to put you, well actually, I do kind of want to put you in a tough spot. You know, how do you deal with that, right? This is this is something I speak fluent Spanish. Um, you know, I I I lived and worked in a border town. Um, you know, I I spent a lot of time, a lot, a lot of my years of life fighting crime. Um, and I've had to wrestle with this idea. I'm all for getting criminals out of this country. There is, you're I I don't understand how people argue in defense of that. My question always becomes is, man, what about the people that are here that are doing, you know, that have been here for 15, 20 years? Yes, they came illegally, they haven't committed crimes, they are, you know, potentially they're adding to society. You know, why not give them some type of status to where they become taxpayers? Um, you know, I but I think this this is a really great area. And I'd just love to hear your thoughts on it.

Alex Pelbath 5:45:19

Yeah, there all of those people you just mentioned are getting screwed over by the Democrats. The Democrats screwed them over. Ten years ago, we weren't talking about this. They all those people you just mentioned were here, and it wasn't that big of an issue. They have been screwed over by the Democrats because they let too many in. Now it's a problem. Now it's all of them a problem. And I have two issues. Like one, why do they get a free pass? There's this huge line of people trying to do it right. I mean, my grandparents lived in a refugee camp for a year just to come to this country. Why why do they get a free pass? So back, you know, once again, I just keep saying this isn't something that we want to be doing. I'm empathetic toward the people, the families that want to live in America because they recognize it's the best country on the planet. They have been screwed over by the Democrats, letting millions and millions and millions in. And now American families also are being punished because of that. So you you go to everybody knows this, you can't go to an emergency room. You're gonna be there. You better like block off your entire day if you're gonna go to the emergency room. It's gonna take you eight hours. Because we as a society have decided a long time ago it's the right thing to do. We're never not gonna treat people. Doesn't matter if you have insurance or not, whether you're legal or illegal, if you show up in an emergency room, we are going to treat you, right? This is what we decided a long time as Americans. That's how it works. Every hospital's like this. This is what we're gonna do. It's the right thing to do. The consequence of that right now is just worse than it's ever been.

Host 5:46:56

Oh, medical insurance is, dude, it's wild.

Alex Pelbath 5:46:59

Like, yeah, so so why should Americans have to suffer? This isn't like Democrats love to like ring this bell about like these innocent people without ever acknowledging the fact that there are actual American families suffering. There's poor American families in this freaking country, too. Every for every family, illegal immigrant family that we can mention that's doing it right, there's an American family like that as well. Why does the American family not get all that? American families would be better off. Some of them would be better off under Democrats if they were illegal. That is wild. You would get more money. This is true, you would get more money, more benefits if you were an illegal alien under the Democrats than if than being an American. So that's what I have a problem with. Not something, once again, it's not something we want to do. We have no choice. The Democrats have screwed over every illegal immigrant in this country.

Host 5:47:52

Uh, as far as you know, Trump's agenda and your congressional role, what does supporting Trump's mandate kind of mean to you?

Alex Pelbath 5:48:00

With the the mandate to Well, I mean, you know, he's been tough on the mandate that that he was given by Well, we say he was the that President Trump was given a mandate because America overwhelmingly voted for him and all Republicans in 2024. That mandate was to clamp down on DEI, get the wokeness out of our schools and the military, by the way. Freaking the tree training I had to do in the in the military for that stuff was just so dumb. Um, and it was close the border, right, and fix the economy and get out of endless wars, like all those things. And yeah, I go back to um, I am policy over politics. When I look at policy that's best for America, it's all coming from President Trump. I don't like blindly follow President Trump because he's President Trump. I believe in what President Trump is doing because of what he's doing. And we have a year now of just incredible results. Like what the Democrats came out and said about like the fact that the economy is so much better today. I've seen two responses to that. One, trying to take away the credit from President Trump and like put it elsewhere, which is wild. Uh, or just straight denying it, just like straight lying, like getting on camera and saying that's not true. And it is true. Housing is more affordable today. Uh inflation is 50% of what Biden's best day in office was. And that's what it is like permanently right now. We actually have GDP growth. We haven't had GDP growth like this in certainly in four years that Biden was there. We didn't have it. Um, every price is coming down, like four years of a disaster. And if you really think about Trump's one year in office, it's less than that, right? He's not like he makes a change on day one. You don't see changes on day one. These things take a lot of time. So what are we talking about? Six months of progress, and we have closed borders. We have like the lowest murder rate in the history of the freaking planet. We have um ridiculously low inflation now, and it's probably going to continue coming down. We have GDP going up. Like, all like I just look at those things. I don't care who's doing it. How do you not look at that and be like, damn, America's in a pretty good place today? This is like the golden age of America. And the only reason the other side of the aisle hates it is because he's winning.

Host 5:50:20

Yeah, it's really wild to watch what's happened with Trump. Like, look, man, we talked last night. I I'm not some blind loyalist. Uh, there's things he says and way he talks sometimes. I'm just not a fan of. But good God, people hate him for the sake of hating. I mean, what they did to him, you know, in in between before he ran again, uh, is it it should be scary. Yeah, uh, people should be scared because they did everything, literally, indicted him on charges they wouldn't have brought up on anybody else. Uh, and then again, anytime, I mean, that guy could find the cure for cancer tomorrow. Yeah, the Democrats would try to turn it into, you know, that he is the TDS is a real thing, man. Yeah, man. It it it really is wild to me. Um, and look, man, you know, he he's a he can be a polarizing figure. Um, I often think of him sometimes as like the the uncle at the the you know, the family get together that says everything that everybody's thinking but's too scared to say. And that's who he is. But you start looking I mean, just in the last six months, I mean, we're we're we're back on the world stage. Uh, and it's kind of a good feeling.

Alex Pelbath 5:51:22

I mean, to what I think he's killing it pretty much across the board. He's killing it. His I thought his State of the Union speech was one of the best ever. It was amazing. It was for all all the you know, all the reasons, like whatever people with TDS want to complain about. He was in his speech so celebratory. He was not, he, he was not at all what what people say they don't like him for. It was, I thought, such a great speech of just celebrating American exceptionalism. And he did it through pointing out great Americans specifically, right? This wasn't this was like, look at all the great things that are happening in America and demonstrated by this great American, this great American, this great American, this great American. So just I I am I I don't argue with results. Um and in this case, I even think the the path is good too. It's not this isn't ends justify the means at all. I think the means are also pretty fan freaking tastic right now.

Host 5:52:24

You've called 2026 the most important Congress. Why?

Alex Pelbath 5:52:29

This election in 2026. If the Dems flip the house, if we lose, if we lose the house, they are going to be obstacles to everything that President Trump we know this already. They're gonna try to impeach him. They're all the things. There's part of it is they don't care about America, they hate him so much, they don't they don't care about American goodness. They will lie, cheat, and steal to do whatever it takes to get this. And if they flip the house at all, it all stops. And here's why it's so important. Not only does like everything come to an end, but you know, you can't he can't pass any laws, then it's going to slow the economy. And we're gonna get to 2028, and it's gonna look like his last two to three years in office, nothing happened. And they're gonna say, look at his last two to three years in office, nothing happened. Even though they're responsible for nothing happening, they're gonna point to that and say, Oh, Republicans couldn't get it done. Trump couldn't get it done. Look at this. And then they're gonna win the White House as well. That is why 2026 doesn't just matter for 2026 and continuing to push President Trump's agenda through now. It matters for 2028. If we lose in 2026, we are going to lose in 2028. So that's why people need to. I wish, I don't think it's gonna happen just watching the way Republicans are acting right now. I think Republicans are so happy with everything. Happy people don't complain. And the way we complain in politics is by getting out to vote. That's why we saw it in 2024. We were so unhappy, so pissed off at the left that everybody came out to vote in record numbers. Well, everybody's happy right now. So trying to convince them to come out and vote, I don't think it's gonna happen. But what I wish would happen is the same record numbers would come out and vote in 2026, that that we as a nation would double down on the mandate we gave President Trump in 2024 so that we can really get these next four years through. I think if we just continue on this path, we get to twenty twenty eight and it's the best economy we'll have ever had in our lifetimes. That's the way it's trending. And then we'll win in twenty twenty as well. So

Host 5:54:41

You said that the Republican the Republican Party is now becoming the party of facts and science. Explain that shift.

Alex Pelbath 5:54:48

Oh, just transgender. Ask any Democrat if a man can be a woman. Or or just, you know, ask him. We just, there's so many clips on TV. You don't need to ask him. Don't do it. Don't ask. Don't stir up trouble in your life. But just go to go to TV and ask all these freaking politicians. You see it over and over and over and over again. What's the definition of a woman? They can't do it. Well, yes, you can. Scientifically, you can. They don't want to do this. Ignore science. Fine. Um, I would say the same thing about when it comes to abortion. Like, if wherever you stand on abortion, how the entire country is not united in partial birth abortions. What? Like, that's wild to me. Like scientifically, scientifically, that's a human. Scientifically, a man is a man, a woman's a woman. Scientifically. So that's what I mean when I say that. Like, we have science on our side. It's freaking awesome. You know, same thing with facts. Like, we don't we don't um try to change the narrative on our end to fit a new narrative, right? You deal with facts. You don't what what they love to do on the left is um come up with like take a stance and then find things to support that stance rather than look at the facts and develop a stance based on the way the facts are. So I think it's pretty obvious. And I love it. I love being on the side of facts and science and truth. It's great. We don't have to make stuff up.

Host 5:56:10

It's great. Trump's tax cuts are set to expire. What's your thoughts and we're going to do that? We better freaking renew them. We better renew them.

Alex Pelbath 5:56:20

We have to. It's uh and we're going to. As my friend, we're going to. Like I'm really not worried about it. I think everybody knows what'll happen if we don't. Um why why would we ever want higher taxes? We want to give the government like this is like the argument of the left, is you you gotta pay higher taxes because the government knows better how to spend your money than you do. Trust us, guys. We know how to do this. We want to trust me, bro. Trust me, bro.

Host 5:56:47

I'm from the government, I'm here to help. Yeah. You've talked about growing the economy to tackle the deficit and not raising taxes and not raising taxes. What what's the math on that?

Alex Pelbath 5:56:56

Yeah, so we I think we all agree that spending is too high. Um, Republicans and Democrats agree on this one. You know, it's comical to me to hear Democrats complain about how high our debt is, considering they created the debt. President Trump's been in office a year and they're like complaining about his debt. It's wild. Typical. Um, but we all we all agree the debt is too high. We have to stop spending as much as we're spending. Um the easiest way to do that, I think, is to get after the fraud, waste, and abuse. There's so much of that. So stop spending, stop, stop the earmarks. There's still just so much crap that we're spending money on that we don't need, and it's true in the government too. I saw this in the Pentagon. You know, spending money on projects we don't need because some congressmen, we talked about this earlier, because it's in a congressman's district. Like, we gotta stop that stuff. That part to me is it's gonna be hard to stop the spending, obviously, but it's not hard to make that argument. That's the easy part to me. I think the hard part is making people realize that just as important to cutting spending is growing the economy, growing our income. So you talk about this like a regular person like me. I have debt. I own a home, I pay a mortgage on my home. As long as my income is more than my debt, I'm doing okay, right? We're okay. That's where we need to get America. It's the deficit that is so devastating to us because we continue to pay so much in interest on our debt that we can never get out from under it. So, just as important as cutting the spending is we have to grow the other side. We have to increase our income. And the way income is typically measured is through GDP, gross domestic product. There's a lot of factors that go into it. Taxes are one of the ways to grow GDP. Um, it's one of the one of the variables. This is why Democrats love raising taxes. The thing though is another variable of GDP is consumer spending. And higher taxes results in lower consumer spending, higher interest rates, lower consumer spending. It hurts the economy. So what Republicans do, always do in tout, is we have to grow the economy by reducing taxes so that we can all spend more money. That's what grows the consumer spending is good. We're all living a better life. Interest rates are lower. And now our income is going up while spending is going down, and this is how we can actually tackle it. I actually saw a report, it was actually spelled out, it was amazing. Uh in person, I saw this in person. This economist was um explaining to it to us that if we can get GDP around 5%, if we and if we just keep spending where it is, don't cut it. Okay, we're not even talking about cutting spending. This is how important GDP is. Grow GDP to 5%, then in 40 years, our deficit is zero. That'll never happen because we're going to keep spending, of course. But that's just how powerful growing the economy is and the importance of GDP. What are your thoughts on tariffs? Every economist on the planet will tell you tariffs are not good for the economy. Every economist on the planet has not taken into account that President Trump is his own variable. That tariffs plus President Trump do work for the economy. And I would say two, you know, there's there's one that a tariff is a tax on a good. Companies don't bear those costs. They pass them on to the consumers. So that's why tariffs are bad, because we're all going to pay more for a product now. If it takes more to create the product, we're going to pay more for the product. That's really not what we're seeing. The tariffs have been so effective in foreign companies that it's caused them to come to the bargaining table. One, move jobs back into the United States, right? Bring jobs home. That's fantastic. It's really leveled the playing field too on our exports. So you look at this holistically, maybe a good goes up, but holistically, we're seeing leveling the playing, because we pay tariffs on everything to export. We've been getting taken advantage of for years. So by the fact that we're leveling that playing field is helping our economy. And then the most important thing about tariffs is I think we should look at it from a national security standpoint. President Trump is using tariffs as a national security tool, not just an economic tool. But he is leveraging our influence in trade via tariffs to help us stay more secure. NATO's paying more of their fair share over there, right? We're getting out of endless wars. People don't want to be tariffed to death by us. So they are listening to what America has to say. I think he he his tariffs are keeping boots off of foreign shores. And so, just from a national security standpoint, tariffs have been amazingly effective. I think you can also then tie that directly to the economic value because how much does it freaking cost for us to have be in war? To be sending boots on foreign shores. Whatever. He's Trump has ended every war on the planet so far except for Ukraine and is still working on that. That is saving Americans money too. So maybe we're paying a little more because of tariffs. Um but I think net we're winning because we're not spending money in these foreign wars. And let's regardless what the economists are saying, the freaking um inflation is down to below 3%, even with the tariffs. So man, the frickin' numbers speak for themselves.

Host 6:02:17

Yeah. Um you've been vocal about DEI in the military. What's your stance or position on it?

Alex Pelbath 6:02:25

My stance is we don't care about that in the military. We don't need it. We don't care. Nobody cares what you look like, what you believe, gay, straight, none of us believe, none of us carry that. Only one question. Will I go to war with you? Do I want you fighting next to me in war? The answer is yes, don't care. So why would why would this external force put that on us? I and look, I I in the in the special ops unit, when we went to Afghanistan, five C-17s, my lead aircraft commander was a woman. We had the first ever black female awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. There's diversity in that. We didn't pick them because of the diversity. We picked them because they're freaking awesome at their jobs. Because they're both amazingly awesome pilots. That is why they were there. Like the system works. Like if you are awesome at your job, you're gonna go do awesome things. Like we want to go to war with you. Nobody, you look, you I look at the diversity at some of these like units that we have, like that. It has nothing to do with diversity, has everything to do with the fact that they're freaking awesome at their jobs. And so I just I hate the fact that, like, you know, I wondered, do they, do they? I've actually heard this. I know this to be true for some of them, that that if you're a minority, you hate it too. Because now you're wondering if everybody's questioning if the reason you're where you are is because of these DEI programs. I don't think all of them feel that way. And I'm not speaking for everybody, but that is anecdotally something that somebody has told me before that they dislike. And I see with my own eyeballs that that these super high performing individuals are where they are because they're super high performing individuals, and they happen to be minorities. So it drives me crazy that that they would that we would force it on us. We we don't need it. Not not that there's not like issues. I asked one of my best pilots um was getting out. He was a weapon school graduate, one of our one of our top gun guys, and he was leaving the military. And uh and I like, why are you leaving, man? We need we you're awesome. We need, you know, I need you here. And it's the same same reason everybody leaves. He's a pilot. He had a lot of he had family, great job, you know, great opportunities elsewhere. Maybe tired of moving, maybe getting burned out of being at war all the time. You know what I mean? Like it's no different for anybody else. So I just uh I don't think you put that on us. You just let the organizations the only thing that matters in the military is warheads on foreheads. Don't don't get in the way of us doing that.

Host 6:05:02

How do DEI programs make the military weaker? I mean, you you serve during some of that that stuff.

Alex Pelbath 6:05:08

Yeah, uh easiest, easiest way is like people asking questions, wondering if you're where you are because of your results of a DEI program. Number one. Number two is a waste of time and training. We all done the thousand CBTs and training and the training days and the kinder, gentler, like whatever crap, bringing people in to like educate us on this stuff. Yeah, like these whole days on uh whatever, just like a waste of time. We should be training on killing bad guys or doing our job well, becoming a better pilot, and instead we're forced to do these other things. So just a waste of time and money. And I am not saying the military is perfect and that folks don't experience um have individual anecdotal experiences of maybe experiencing race. The the military is a microcosm of the United States of America, see cross-section. So you're gonna have good and bad apples everywhere. But uh, but in my experience, none of us care about that. All we care is, you know, how good at your job are you? That's it.

Host 6:06:06

America doesn't like home games. We prefer away games. Explain that philosophy.

Alex Pelbath 6:06:11

One of my favorite quotes of all time. This is the purpose of the United States military. We don't like home games. Pearl Harbor was a home game. 9-11 was a home game. We don't, we as Americans prefer away games. The job of the United States military is to make sure it stays an away game. So while I love President Trump's not while I love peace through strength, it's freaking working. It's so amazing. The Peace Through Strength initiative, what we're frickin' home, all the wars are over, it's so great. Um, let's not forget that peace through strength means you gotta have the strength part about it too. We better be we better be the one on the block carrying the biggest stick. You know, this build-up that's going on with Iran right now, this is the strength part of peace through strength. And if that what I don't want to see is endless wars. What I do love seeing is Midnight Hammer, a couple B-2s dropping bombs on Iran. I do love seeing the special ops mission in Venezuela. Freaking badass. Neither one of them did we lose any troops at all. So wildly successful. That is how you keep it in away game right there. I think tariffs are keeping it in away game too. Just keep just keep the trouble off of American shores. The only problem we have that's a home game right now is the illegal immigration problem. That's it.

Host 6:07:27

Yeah, I mean, I I would even go as far to say Mexico's become a real problem. Uh, I mean, most of the drugs uh that are coming through. I mean, I worked drugs for years. Uh, I I worked and lived on the border. I um I dealt with the cartels very my my story's not well known, but but very close, up close and personal. It is amazing to me that we have not dealt with Mexico. I mean, we just saw what happened uh, you know, it's still going on right now. Puerto Varada? Uh yeah, but that's actual spread to other places in Mexico. Yeah, uh the cartels have destabilized that government.

Alex Pelbath 6:08:00

Yeah.

Host 6:08:01

And they're our southernmost partner. They're running 87% of the narcotics into North America. All the fentanyl's coming in through Mexico, you know, most of it, all of the, you know, a lot of the human trafficking. What's your stance? Not on Mexico, right? Because it's not that I I love Mexico. I like to go visit Mexico, I speak Spanish. Uh, but but why are we not dealing with the cartels directly?

Alex Pelbath 6:08:25

Yeah, I've heard I've heard some special ops guys talk about this, um, and how difficult that would be. That the cartels are not like just untrained thugs. Like I've heard, I've heard pros from our military talk about how challenging that would be. So maybe that, maybe that's part of it. I don't know. Uh, I I mean we have tackled part of it. We close the border. Like that is part of it. Like the fentanyl crisis, to your point, has come from there. We close the border. We know we're stemming the tide there. So maybe this is just the first step in it. I don't think what we want to do is have boots on the ground and be in a frickin' war in Mexico. I don't want to see that. I don't want to see a single American soldier die fighting frickin' Mexico. Uh in Mexico, you know what I mean? So um, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know what the solution is there. Let's let's continue to um do what we're doing with the border and be in, you know. I love the I love the taking out the frickin' drug boats. I love that. That's a small step. I know we know that's just a small, small step, but you know, that's part of keeping it in a way game as well. That's why I love it. So we can do more of that, but I don't know what the I don't know what the solution is with Mexico, you know? Yeah. I know what the solution is not. It's not go invade Mexico and go to war with Mexico.

Host 6:09:43

Well, and they're a sovereign country, right? I mean, and they don't they don't want us there, but when I see the you know, the president of Mexico as the cartel is all out murdering people in an airport and lighting airplanes on fire, pretty much saying, hey, you know, we don't want to go against them. That would be um, you know, a problem for us. And you're just like, good, good God, you guys don't have a handle on your country, which explains why, you know, we we have this never-ending problem of cartels running dope in our country. So I mean, yes, securing the border is definitely a part of the issue. Um, but I just wonder strategically if if there should be more. I it's just very interesting to me.

Alex Pelbath 6:10:20

I don't know. Yeah, I don't just don't know what what more would be because we just we don't have an appetite. Americans don't have an appetite for going to war again for somebody else's problem.

Host 6:10:30

Yeah, uh, you and I talked about this. I don't I don't know. I mean, I think you and I are both kind of stumbled on it, but uh Ukraine, right? Like uh the war between Russia and Ukraine and how vested we are over there into that. Um what's your what's your thoughts on that?

Alex Pelbath 6:10:47

Russia's the bad guy. But what are we supposed to do? Just spend all of our freaking money till the end of time fighting this? No? America first to me means Americans first. We got our own problems over here. Um I I don't think I'm tired of it. I know a lot of people are tired of it. Um you hate watching what's going on over there. I hate it. I the number I heard the other day was like 25,000 people per day are dying in that war.

Host 6:11:17

Oh, you see that drone footage of just soldiers on both sides of the stuff. What are we supposed to do?

Alex Pelbath 6:11:21

Go, go like send all of our troops over there and go to war and like end it? I don't know that no. Why should we go die for that war? I don't think that's the answer either. You know, I I don't I I don't know. I don't, I don't, I mean, I think the reason the war has lasted so long is because it's such a complicated problem. Like we hate watching it happen, but we also hate spending money on it, and we certainly are not gonna not gonna settle for Americans dying in that war. So what does that leave us to do?

Host 6:11:46

The problem I see is we're giving them now or arming them or teaching them, giving them deep strike capabilities inside Russia. We're seeing it consistently, and eventually that's going to escalate that conflict. And as somebody who doesn't want to see his sons and daughters go over there and fight, you know, it's it's it's an issue. And I I don't and look, I don't know you'll have an issue.

Alex Pelbath 6:12:06

I think we have our own influence with Russia, though. So I'm not incredibly worried about that spilling over to us, you know. Um, I would like to see NATO do a little bit more. It's on their freaking doorstep. If they're concerned about it, where's it's time for them to step up and do something about it? You're you're afraid of like NATO was what exists to counter Russia, right? So um, yeah, what are they doing with this? Maybe, maybe that's the answer is where we put more and more pressure on NATO to do something to end that. But yeah, I freaking know. It's not, but what I do know is it's not on American troops to go die, and it's not on American families to spend money.

Host 6:12:40

Well, I mean, we've talked about like the deficit, right? Uh, and we've sent over a hundred billion dollars to Ukraine. I don't know the exact it's it's either it could be more than that. Uh, I mean, should we continue to fund this or or I don't know.

Alex Pelbath 6:12:53

I'd like to see, man. I haven't seen what we're spending money on. I'm not a yes or no. I think the answer to that question is it depends. It depends. What are we spending money on? What are we getting for our money by sending them stuff? You know, are we is this limited? What I what I think would be dumb is the way that we love to do wars because our politicians are so afraid to take a stand as we do like this limited involvement. That's Vietnam, right? Like this limited, limited, limited. Next thing we know, we're in a freaking all-out war. It just took us like five years to get there. So not an advocate for that either. Um, so the answer is it depends. I don't know. I would like to see what we're spending our money on and what our return on investment is, so to speak, for spending that money.

Host 6:13:30

Yeah, one of the things my head goes to immediately too is I think it was Teddy Roosevelt that said beware the industrial complex, the the industrial the military industrial complex, right? Like that's who really makes money off all these wars, the endless supply of ammunitions. You know, Ukraine's asked for F-16, long-range missiles, tanks, once NATO membership. It's like you can't help but wonder, you know, one, you don't want to see Ukraine fall. But two, it's like, where do we draw the line? Yeah, I guess these are rhetorical questions. Um, but as somebody who's gonna run for Congress and represent South Carolina, yeah, I can't wait to get there.

Alex Pelbath 6:13:58

Like, this is part of the thing. Like, we just don't know. You know, so many of us don't know the actual details of what is happening behind the scenes. Man, I'd love to get there and like find out. Like go into a closed door meeting and really read and find out what's going on. And then I'll let you know, you know, yeah, what I think we should be doing. But just to like based on supposition and what's going on, we don't I think the answer, yeah, it just freaking depends. There's bad outcomes all over. I don't see a good outcome. I don't see a good outcome. I just see bad, a whole bunch of bad outcomes.

Host 6:14:26

Yeah, I mean, I uh to your point, I I I was really uh thrilled kind of with the Venezuela thing. One, because it was such a badass mission, but two, you know, we didn't go in there and try to topple the government. Exactly.

Alex Pelbath 6:14:38

We didn't stick around. Hey, we just helped you out tremendously. Figure it out yourselves now.

Host 6:14:43

Uh yeah, I mean, you know, and there's we you and I were talking about Cuba yesterday too. I mean, you know, essentially, it looks like we're Trump's gonna eradicate communism in the in the Western hemisphere, which uh, you know, I think that's good because I think our enemies have exploited that. Iran, um, you know, Venezuela, China, uh, Russia, they've all been heavily, heavily invested in our southern hemisphere. Um, and I'm keenly familiar with what's gone on in South America. It's I'm surprised it it hasn't been talked about more in the last couple years. You know, you and I were talking about last night at dinner. Um, but kind of shifting a little bit, what uh what's your stance on Israel? I know this is controversial.

Alex Pelbath 6:15:17

Not for you, but just not controversial for me at all. I'm very pro-Israel. Um, I I think like from I think you take this like a very United States selfish perspective that Israel is good for us. Uh because they're there and we're not. They're there and we're not fighting. If if I don't think, like I wish like the especially all the, you know, this growing like anti-Israel sentiment in the Republican Party, um, think about what life would be like without Israel there. And it's Republicans are smart enough to not. I remember like the whole Democrat stupid talking point from our wars was if we leave them alone, they'll leave us alone. Right? The these Afghanistan and Iraq and all the and the terrorist organizations. If we leave them alone, they'll leave us alone. No, they won't. Their whole purpose in life is to to kill us, right? They they hate Western society and civilization, they'll kill us. So um, so what happens if Israel is not there on the front line doing that? They're a great partner for America in in fighting that. They're the country on the front war against all these countries who want to kill America and kill Western society, kill Westerners of every of every sort. So uh I think very selfishly it's a good thing for America. Second of all, it doesn't cost us a lot. We're giving them money. They have to spend most of that money on American. This is it's also it's like a win win for us that they're You know, um, by law, have to spend the money that we give them to defend themselves on our products. That is helpful for us too. So I don't see. I also think I think Israel is like just very overt in what they care about, and that's the survival of Israel. I don't think there's any like nefarious. I think every person who who is trying to wield influence in America is doing it for that purpose, the survival of Israel. I don't think it's like this hidden agenda. I think it's a very overt agenda. They care about the survival of Israel more than anything else. And their right to do that. Because these countries over there who are trying to get rid of Israel aren't, they're not just like bad guys. They're not just like we don't get along. Like their stated intention is the annihilation of Israel. Like, you know, they're not hiding it. I don't know why. I don't understand that part about it. Like, if you're a country who who is surrounded by countries who want to destroy you, you would have a very vested interest in getting other people to support you in what you're doing. So I think Israel is a great partner to us. They have been and are the most important strategic ally we have in that region of the world. I like like if I'm gonna draw an analogy to it in other places, like Japan is a very strong ally we have in that region of the world. And the fact that Japan is there is very helpful to the United States of America. How is this any different with Israel?

Host 6:17:57

The Hamas conflict. Uh what do you think our role should be?

Alex Pelbath 6:18:01

I think be just be anti-Hamas, they're a freaking terrorist organization. Be anti-Hamas. There's not gonna be any. They they if that if if what happened to them happened to us, we would have not rested until Hamas didn't exist on this earth. If a country and came into our country, raped, murdered, and kidnapped people, we would go to war for 20 years against that, right? Or until like they were completely eradicated. We would have just annihilated them. So I think it's pretty easy to to take a stand and say Hamas is freaking terrible. They're a terrorist organization, they are sacrificing their own people for the for their agenda. They're awful in every single freaking way. Hamas is bad. And we sh we should be standing with Israel to be anti-terrorist uh in general, and Hamas like fits that mold. Should we put boots on the ground to go fight Hamas? No. But we can sp we can be anti-Hamas in a lot of other ways.

Host 6:18:58

What's America's role in the Middle East peace?

Alex Pelbath 6:19:00

It depends. That's not a wishy-wash answer to, that's really the answer. That's the right answer. It just it depends. What threat do they have with us? We've seen what happens when we do nothing. They get stronger and they attack us. We have seen what happens when we get too involved. We be in wars for 20 years and we accomplish nothing. So the answer is it free is it depends. Uh who in the Middle East? That matters. Like the Middle East isn't just like one big giant country, right? That's a threat to us. Iran is different from everybody else from Saudi Arabia. So, what should our role over there be? Our role should be it depends on the threat to the United States of America and our interests. But I but we shouldn't be passive. But we shouldn't go to war for 20 years. So there's got to be something in between there where we're doing the right thing. Right now, we're doing the right thing. Like tariffs are working. Like the fact that we sh we people are not afraid that America's gonna strike. What President Trump says he's gonna do, he does. And the world knows it. And America is safer because of it.

Host 6:19:56

Yeah, I mean, I you you do see that in the world right now. Uh, I mean, it's it's uh people are on their toes. Our adversaries are on their toes. Um, and I think that's good. I mean, especially when you start looking at uh, you know, Iran's funded Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, they've attacked our ships, and you know, for too long we sat by idly. I remember the largest sponsor, state-sponsored terrorism on the planet.

Alex Pelbath 6:20:18

Yeah, Iran.

Host 6:20:19

I mean, what the Biden administration, or maybe it was the Obama administration, they landed a uh C-17 or C-130 just full of cash, gave them money that I'm sure they again used uh against us and our allies. It's it's it's been uh pretty wild. What's your what's your thoughts or what's what's your thoughts on Iran? I mean, there's a lot to talk about there, but uh I don't know.

Alex Pelbath 6:20:37

Yeah, we can't ever let them get a nuke. They're horrible, they're the enemy. You know, we used to have this, uh we used to call it the in as part of the national defense uh strategy was um we called it the four plus one, America's big enemies. This is like how we built our military trained and planned, and the four were Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. And the plus one was a violent extremist organization of some sort, like ISIS. Like we were going to be prepared to keep pace with all of those four plus one. Somewhere, I think, in like 2020 or 2021, Biden administration um for sure, we changed that from four plus one to three plus two. We took Iran out of the state actor mold and we made them, we put North Korea and Iran together as like we're not really concerned with them. That I thought was a huge mistake for us to do that. Then we saw them start developing a nuclear prop program, like getting more bold, sponsoring more terrorism, as soon as we like said they're not as big a threat anymore. And that's a mistake. We need to acknowledge that they are a significant enemy and and make sure they don't get a nuke and freaking keep them in their place. While at the same time not getting involved in a frickin' 20-year war, not not send American troops to die for that type of thing. So, more midnight hammers, maybe, is the answer.

Host 6:22:04

Um, let's talk about something that's on everybody's mind these days. Uh the Epstein files, dude. What a what a topic that it's kind of exploded in the internet. And I think as stuff continues to get released, it's been pretty eye-opening. Um, have you dove into any of that and looked at any of that stuff?

Alex Pelbath 6:22:20

A little bit, a little bit. It it's getting so hard because there's so many lies out there on the internet, too. There's so many wild things. Like for how many pages there are, people are just like believing everything they see on the internet. It's like so terrible. So yeah, I'm getting it. I'll talk about it like principally. One of the reasons I love being Republican. Who are the loudest voices for the Epstein files? It's freaking Republicans. I love that. Like, we don't the entire Democratic Party buried their heads in their sand and lied about Joe Biden's declining mental health. Like we knew it. It was like so obvious, and they all just got in line and pretended like it wasn't happening. Republicans don't do that. President Trump ran on the Epstein files being released, and Republicans are now the ones shouting, do what you said, right? We are the we're the party of facts, science, and accountability. I love that. And so I I love that we are some of the loudest voices in getting the Epstein files released. I think it is an absolute travesty that nobody has been outed or gone to prison for it. It's wild. Unbelievable to me. I I at the same time, I'm not gonna listen to a freaking word a Democrat says about it because they had the Epstein files for a lot longer than Trump has had them. They had them the whole time. And if there was something in there that would have benefited them, I guarantee they would have released it. So Democrats can shut their mouths about the Epstein files. You had your shot and you missed it. All right, President Trump, Republican Party, it's time. So like release them all. Like I would like to see them all not redacted.

Host 6:23:52

Yeah, Pam Bonnie made an interesting statement that you know basically said that if she released all the names or if they prosecute everybody, it would topple the system. Good. Which I thought was great.

Alex Pelbath 6:24:03

Yeah. Hey, it wouldn't you know why it wouldn't topple the system? Because there's a lot of people who don't have their names in there. And we could all just step in. I mean, that's a wild assumption that like it would topple the system as if every single person in the government's not replaceable. Yes, they are. Good. Put them all in jail. All the people who who weren't in the Epstein files will step into those roles and it'll be just fine.

Host 6:24:24

Yeah, because it's not like the whole country was involved in that. Exactly. You and I talked a little bit about this probably a couple weeks ago. I know you weren't super spun up about it, and we talked about it briefly last night, but what uh what's your thoughts, or do you have thoughts? Or uh will you at least look into it in the future about psychedelics for the treatment of PTSDs, TBI? Um Have you had a chance to look into any of that?

Alex Pelbath 6:24:45

Or not really, just what you and I have talked about, but yeah, anything that anything that'll help, especially like troops. I mean, 22 a day, the fact that that number hasn't changed, and in some cases you can argue it's higher now is wild. We have to do something different to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again and just hope that we get a different result. Um, not effective. So yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There's a smart way to do it too. I don't think the answer is just like let everybody do drugs, but but there's a right way to do it. So absolutely, um you know, you remember what I said about being a budget guy is you want to know what somebody cares about, is look where they spend their money. How much we hear about how much people care about vets? And then we see no changes. I haven't seen any appreciable changes in the VA in the way the VA does business. People still hate the VA, dealing with the VA as much as they ever have, or maybe even more. So people are not putting their money where their mouth is. We are not doing anything to actually change and take care of our veterans. And so, yes, I would love to see something new and different happen, and I am open to anything if it is going to save people's lives.

Host 6:25:50

Love that. Um, would you be open to clinical trials and research for veterans? Yeah. If it was controlled. Why aren't we doing that already? Yeah. I think we are doing it in some places. It's just not, you know, and again, I think it goes back, right? And I have to be careful what we say because we put this on YouTube, it'll completely get censored. But there's no money in the cure, right? I mean when we're handing out mental health medication or candy, when one of the main side effects from that medicine is suicidal ideations. Yeah. But we can't correlate the fact that there's this decline, yeah. Uh, you know, and and veterans are killing themselves all the time. It it's pretty crazy to me.

Alex Pelbath 6:26:24

They are. I mean, there's just there's still so much to it. I see this in the pilot space when it comes to mental health. If you're a pilot, uh having PTSD, acknowledging PTSD is a disaster. You can't, they're gonna, they're gonna keep you from flying. So pilots don't do it. So if you're but it's probably not just us, it's probably anybody who's doing anything in at a high-end level like that are gonna keep their mouth shut and then quietly deal with it and quietly suffer from it, and then we continue to have 22 a day. So yeah, we gotta freaking do something new and different, man.

Host 6:26:58

Um, we just went through like a big government shutdown fight, and it's God, it seems like it happens, I don't know, man, all the time, six months, a year. Like, why the heck can we not pass a budget? Like, isn't that Congress's job?

Alex Pelbath 6:27:10

Yeah, it is Congress's job. Um, two different things. So the government shutdown, let's be clear, the last government shutdown in November. This is how little Democrats care about Americans. They're willing openly, this was part of their narrative. Part of their narrative was Americans must suffer for this to work. Therefore, we are gonna make Americans suffer. So in the government shutdown, let's remind everybody. What the Republicans said was we want to pass a continuing resolution so that we can continue to work on the budget with our counterparts across the aisle. The continuing resolution is a continuation of the previous year's budget, which was the Biden budget. So here's what the Republicans said. We will continue with your budget, Democrats, while we all work on it together. And the Democrats said, no. No, we don't want our budget that we passed to continue. We would rather have Americans suffer so that we can make Republicans look bad and fight for these things that we want that are never going to get passed, which never got passed. They lost anyway. That's what that's actually what happened with the government shutdown. Like that, that is, that is different from not being able to get a budget passed. That is Democrats sacrificing Americans, the altar of their own power and egos. It's terrible. And they openly said it, right? We're not even like guessing that that was their motivation. They said out loud that was their motivation. So that's one of the things that we're fighting against that we're dealing with. Democrats don't care about the American people. They don't care about the American people. Their actions certainly don't support it. So that's one thing with a government shutdown, why the government shutdown happened. Why we can't pass a budget is because I don't know. They're because it's politicians trying to pass the budget. That's why we can't pass the budget, is because politicians are doing it. So I don't know. Ask me again when we get there and I'll and I'll tell you why they can't pass it. I mean, you got to compromise on some levels, so so we we feel like we should be able to. I don't know, man. I don't know. I'm I feel like just like everybody else does, just so frustrated with our politicians and with politics. This is why I advocate all the time for not quit electing politicians. Like all of us should be running for office. Like everybody, all of us should be running for office and getting elected, you know?

Host 6:29:22

Yeah.

Alex Pelbath 6:29:22

Insider trading for it against it. I laugh because like because you imagine being like, oh, I'm for it.

Host 6:29:30

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it sounds great. You know, you've seen, I mean, even the Republicans, man, there's Republicans that you know they they get in office that got his good intentions, and all of a sudden you see their net worth rocket, their stock trading.

Alex Pelbath 6:29:40

No, I'm obviously against it. You know, back to what I said before, too, about like this used to be a job that people went to to go serve America, not to get rich. They left lucrative jobs to go serve, and then you came back out. I mean, there's so many opportunities to leave government service and make a lot of money because of what you learned in government service. Cool, go do that. Why why are people getting so rich on a job that doesn't pay $200,000 a year because this insider trading stuff? Wild, that it's okay. No, we have to freaking pass it. President Trump, the State of the Union. This was another one of my favorite parts. If you saw this, this was so freaking great when he basically threw down the gauntlet on everybody in Congress, including Republicans, to pass an insider trading ban in Congress. Loved it. And then if you remember what he said, he's like, we got to pass this insider trading ban. Where's Nancy Pelosi? Is she where's it was so great. It was so great. She's obviously yeah, man.

Host 6:30:37

They made a couple AI algos, just algorithms just following mid. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

Alex Pelbath 6:30:43

And of course, that's like so far delayed, you'll never be like her. But what was what was her statistic statistic for her time in Congress? Is she beat Warren Buffett by like a thousand percent? That's crazy. She outperformed Warren Buffett by over a thousand percent in the market over the same length of time.

Host 6:30:58

That is why Martha Stewart went to jail, right?

Alex Pelbath 6:31:03

Yep. So yeah, let's let's ban insider trading and make sure people are up there doing the job that we asked them to do. Go serve. The job is about serving America. Not, I mean, how about that? How about that? That here's another reason. Not just because none of us like the idea that they're all insider trading and getting rich on the position they have, but how much that opens them up for unethical practices, like, yeah, hey, let's pass this law and then we could all go buy that, right? Don't you see like the conflict of interest like right there?

Host 6:31:32

Again, man, it's kind of like one of those other things, like, you know, the whole immigration. Like, why, you know, watching people argue that you don't need a driver's license, I mean you need a driver's license to do anything. You can't get on an airplane, you can't come in the country. There's so many things you need, your driver's license.

Alex Pelbath 6:31:46

Uh and it's so obvious why. Yeah. It's so obvious why. Right. There's a whole thing in Mom Donnie, like, if you were gonna get a job shoveling snow, you needed two forms of ID to get hired in New York City. But but obviously he's the one of the biggest crybabies about not showing ID to vote. Um, that guy's awful. That entire group, him and and all the people who are there.

Host 6:32:05

There's an interesting picture of uh him and his mom uh with Epstein. Any questions I didn't ask you on uh on politics? Again, man, this is kind of our first foray into politics. Like anything else, any any other messaging you think that's important for your upcoming race?

Alex Pelbath 6:32:18

Uh yeah, whatever, whatever side of the aisle you're on, elect patriots, man. Right? It's it doesn't matter what side of the uh the aisle you're on. Like, I think it's good for us to have civil discourse in America. Charlie Kirk was an expert at it. But as evidenced by what happened to him, there's this entire faction of the country who doesn't want it. They don't want civil discourse, they don't want the best for America. And so let's let's not elect those people, please, on either side of the aisle. Let's elect leaders and let's elect patriots and let's stop electing frickin' politicians.

Host 6:32:53

How uh how can people support your campaign?

Alex Pelbath 6:32:55

Pellbathforcongress.com is the website. Pellbathforcongress.com. Follow us on social media. Um yeah, that's the best way is to promote the campaign as much as possible. We need to fundraise. Look, if there's anybody out there who, yeah, who wants to contribute to the campaign, freaking donate money. We need we need we need to stay competitive with these with these people who are who are trying to buy their way into the seat. So um that's helpful. But spreading the message, everybody who hear everybody in my district who hears our story is one less dollar we got to spend, right? On that. So both of those things help tremendously.

Host 6:33:29

Can you just take two seconds and explain? I'll probably take longer than two seconds because I asked this because I don't understand, right? It's like, hey, give money to the campaign so we can get elected. But I I was asking you, you know, yesterday, like, where does the money go? Like I heard you're really curious.

Alex Pelbath 6:33:41

Marketing. All the money goes to market. I mean, you're paying costs too, because there's people running the campaign, right? I have people helping me with this campaign. You can't do it by yourself. So there's literally people helping me with all of that type of stuff, like professionals. I mean, just think about you're a business trying to grow your brand, trying to get people to buy your brand. That's what we're trying to do. So it takes money to market, a lot of money to market. And the way campaigns are, when campaign season rolls around, it's airtime, the cost of airtime goes up. It's like the Super Bowl. Super Bowl commercials cost so much more money than regular commercials because so many more people are paying attention, right? So it's the same thing with congressional races. Like when there's congressional races going on, the the jack up air prices, airtime costs go way up. So that's literally what you're spending money on is just marketing. The more people who can hear the story, the more likely I am to win this race and get elected. And the fact is, if I don't reach a significant portion, and there's other ways to do it without spending money too, we're doing all those, knocking on doors, meeting people where they are. But with 750,000 people in my district, I literally just don't have the time to go meet all of them. So you need to have marketing, not to mention people like to be fed. We like to sit on our couch and be fed information. And so you do that on airtime, commercials, ads, TV, billboards, signs, right? Inter social media social media, all that stuff. We're just that is what we're spending money on. And so if you got one guy spending a million dollars on ads and another guy spending a hundred thousand dollars on ads, like the million dollars is gonna win. And it's not about the the message being better, it's about the fact that more people are reached. That is why it is so expensive to run campaigns. And especially like when you get the bigger the election, like if you're running statewide, you gotta raise more money because that's more people you're trying to reach. If you're running for freaking president, obviously it's pretty obvious. No, you know, they're spending how much money they're spending on airtime and ads and stuff like that. So I do think, look, don't get me wrong, it's a freaking problem that we have that it costs this much money to run for office. It is a problem in America.

Host 6:35:50

Well, that's why wealthy people keep getting elected instead of you know true representatives of the people.

Alex Pelbath 6:35:54

Yeah, you're exactly right. We it is so cost prohibitive to run. You're a military guy like me who served for 22 years, instead of being on the outside, like getting rich, doing like whatever. Like it for me, for me, the the money that I'm spending on it is like is literally like retirement money, right? It's like money that could be going to my family. I have two kids in college right now, too, by the way. So this is this is uh we're we are working our butts off to connect with like-minded Americans and patriots who feel that we do who who are willing to support, right? And think about that. Think about this. Uh a hundred people donating a thousand bucks. I can find a hundred people around the country to donate a thousand bucks. That's a hundred thousand dollars. Bam, it's not, it's great, right? Donating a thousand dollars is like people can do that. It's like within you know, the realm of I would say a regular person's ability to contribute. So that's what we're trying to do, is we're trying to just meet meet as many people as we can who are willing to do something like that. And that just makes us competitive. And I'm not trying to raise a million dollars to compete with the people trying to buy the election. Well, we just need to be competitive. Our story's gonna win.

Host 6:36:59

You know, no, you're very authentic, dude. That's again why we agreed to have you on ours. Um we'll make sure we put all the links to your social media and and your and your stuff in the description. I I I do wanted to kind of follow up. Uh, I want to talk about your wife for a second. You've been married for 22 years. Um, with kind of the life that you've lived and and and many of us, that's that's kind of a big deal, man. Um, especially being deployed, you know, your wife raising two kids in your absence, why still, you know, being a boss lady herself. Yeah. If you could, man, can you just say share maybe one or two secrets on kind of how you guys have stayed together, other than she just puts up with you? Um, like kind of maybe, you know, man, because there's a lot of dudes that are married out there, a lot of dudes that are divorced and remarried, whatever. Yeah. Like what is what has helped you guys through the years as you guys were separated? What are some of the things that that kind of helped stabilize you guys?

Alex Pelbath 6:37:50

Yeah. Um, yeah, first and foremost, our God is a God of miracles. It's a miracle. It's a miracle. I mean, we have problems just like everybody else does. We've had we've been through it, just like so many couples. Uh, the reason we stay together is because our marriage is rooted in Jesus and and his word. So when we got married, there is no divorce. This is so significant. Breaking up is not an option. We're not dating, we're married. So for us, breaking up is not an option. So when when getting divorced, when breaking up is not an option, man, that's a lot of motivation to get through a fight. If you both know, if you both you both know, right? Like we're not breaking up, no matter how bad this fight is, like we're not breaking up after it. So we can either choose to like live in this misery of being mad at each other, or we can like reconcile sooner so that we can go on living our Life happily. So being rooted in that, we've both always known her and I have talked about it in some of like the worst times. Is like we both knew, even how no matter how bad it was, we knew that we were coming out of it on the backside. And just knowing that in your heart that that's going to be true helps you get through and be empathetic for the other person, you know. So that's one part of it is we're we are truly rooted in our faith. And um and then God is does miracles, and and it probably is a miracle that we're still married all for all these years. And we believe that too. And then um the other thing is we did the right thing we got married, and that we both married our best friend. She was my best friend when we got married. She's still my best friend today. I like hanging out with my best friends. Like we like hanging out with our friends. You know what I mean? It's like a cool thing for us to do. So I like hanging out with my wife. That is very helpful to a marriage. So you just like like kicking it, doing nothing. Like whatever it is you want to do with your best friends. Oh, I got one right there. She's my best friend. And she would say the same thing. So, you know, as like the romance evolves over time, you still have the fact that you're best friends and like to hang out with each other all the time. So um and then man, I have a huge advantage in that she's smoking hot. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I have this like tremendous advantage over other marriages that my wife's a smoke show. So so all those things put together means 24 years. And we and two amazing kids. Let me talk about them real quick. Both my kids are freaking phenomenal. They're 18 and 20 and in college. My daughter is uh just started college in Florida. She's gonna start on the journey. She's a theater major, she's freaking amazing on stage. And um my son is uh he's about to graduate college. He's graduating college in three years. He's at Liberty University, which I think is the best university in America. And uh faith is all four of us, our faith is strong, independent, uh independently, independent relationships with Jesus, all of us. And and I think that shows through. We're like a family that serves. So my daughter has done multiple mission trips. She's super passionate about mission trips. She's been to Africa and South America, and like this is what she does. She leads mission trips. She's so great. My wife, too. Lyndon, is um, she's a PA by trade, and so she has done mission trips with our church, and then she is also now leading medical missions. Um, she's been to both Kenya and um uh where did she go? Liberia, leading medical missions to Liberia. She's super passionate about it. Like this like service thing, like getting out there and doing stuff that man, my family's passionate about it, and my son too. And my son, Jake, has a call to service on his life. I like to say it's just like mine, but a different path. He's about to enter the ministry. So he's graduating college with a degree in pastoral leadership. He's a six-foot, 220-pound wrestler and catcher from his high school baseball team, Jim Rat, yoked dude, and he loves to preach on stage. He wants to, he wants to freaking have his own church and preach and go bring the gospel to people. So, like, I look at my family as just this amazing unit of people who just want to get out and serve and like do these awesome things. And um that's also helped our marriage too, because we're to like I feel like we're far from perfect. We're actually, as Christians go, terrible. We're terrible. Just like all of us are. We are far, far from like doing all that we should do all the time, but we are rooted in our faith, all of us, and we're actively living out our faith. And so that matters too. And that is why I think we've stayed together for so long and why we're still best friends and hang out and and on this new journey together.

Host 6:42:24

Awesome, man. Well, as we close, I mean, we we talked a lot today, we covered just a lot of ground today. Uh, not only your career, which is pretty amazing, um, and you know, you're probably overqualified to be in Congress uh compared to what I've I've seen out of some of the not all congressmen, but um, so man, we're we're rooting for you. Um and so I appreciate it. I wanted to thank you for taking the time, dude. I you've been busy. Like I picked you up early from the airport. You went straight to the Airbnb. I mean, you took calls all day. Uh, I didn't, I mean, you know, I picked you up last night, we grabbed dinner, and so you were still hustling. But I I really wanted to sincerely thank you uh for for taking the time to dude.

Alex Pelbath 6:43:03

Thank you. Super fun, man. I love I love this. I love uh, you know, hope, hope, hope. I mean, I know you and I are gonna stay in touch, but I hope like more comes of this. You know, you get to meet so many more people on this path. The only part about politics I like is meeting people who love America. I'm just on this trail of like America loving, meeting America loving people. So I hope more more.

Host 6:43:19

Even in spite of all of our problems, dude, we're still the greatest thing out there, man. And I think we I think it's real easy to lose sight of that. Damn right, you know, why we're in our comfortable houses, living our comfortable lives, bitch, bitching about everything. So yeah. Um, yeah, for all those uh out there, uh I I hope you guys enjoy this. This is was something different from our channel. Um, you know, I I don't love politics, but uh, this was important. I I hope that we can inspire some people in South Carolina to get out there and vote and to really make a change. Um and you know, hopefully this'll this will lead to to something bigger and better, man. We're yeah, we'll definitely be watching for you uh in the coming months, bro. And we'll be cheering for you from the sideline. Everybody, um, yeah, support the channel in any way you can. Uh like, subscribe. Uh if you're on YouTube, leave us a comment. I read all the comments off the main channels, uh, off the main podcast. It's really hard to keep up with all the shorts. Uh, but I just wanted to thank everybody for the just nonstop continuous support. We wouldn't be able to do this without you guys. Everybody be safe out there. And if you can't be safe, be violent out of here.