The Daily Stoic - Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman on Having the Courage to Do the Right Thing

Episode Date: September 25, 2021

On today’s episode of the podcast Ryan speaks with Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman about his book Here, Right Matters, the difference between physical and moral courage, the importance of cultivating perspective and confidence, how one individual can change the course of history, and more.Alexander Semyon Vindman is a retired United States Army lieutenant colonel who was the Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC) until he was reassigned on February 7, 2020. Vindman came to national attention in October 2019 when he testified before the United States Congress regarding the Trump–Ukraine scandal. His testimony provided evidence that resulted in a charge of abuse of power in the impeachment of Donald Trump.Pre-orders are available for Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave - check it out at https://dailystoic.com/preorderAthletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. It tastes great and gets you the nutrients you need, whether you're working on the go, fueling an active lifestyle, or just maintaining your good health. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. Uprising Food have cracked the code on healthy bread. Only 2 net carbs per serving, 6 grams of protein and 9 grams of fiber. They cover paleo, to clean keto, to simple low carb, to high fiber, to dairy free to grain free lifestyle. Uprising Food is offering our listeners ten dollars off the starter bundle. that includes two superfood cubes and four pack of freedom chips to try! go to uprisingfood.com/stoic and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. Novo is the #1 Business Banking App - because it’s built from the ground up to be powerfully simple and free business banking that Money Magazine called the Best Business Checking Account of 2021. Novo makes banking easy and secure - you can manage your account in Novo’s customizable web, android, and iOS apps with built in profit first accounting and invoicing. Get your FREE business banking account in just 10 minutes at https://banknovo.com/STOICLinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics. Something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wanderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holloway. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. In Lives of the Stoics, I tell a story about a guy named Rutilius Rufus. And Rutilius Rufus is really interesting because he's a guy at the top of the

Roman political game and he witnesses corruption in one of Rome's provinces. Basically, some other elites are looting this province, mistreating the people who live there. And he essentially, he effectively reports that he makes the corruption public. And you might like to think that he's received and celebrated and rewarded for doing the right thing. But the Stokes knew that that's not how life works. In fact, Rutila's roof is not only not thanked for what he did, but he's brought up on corruption charges by the people who are engaged in the corruption, found guilty by a kangaroo court, and exiled. He's sent away. He loses everything. He does the right thing, and he loses everything. Retillious Rufus not only doesn't complain about this, he doesn't

even utter a word in his own defense, and he basically does the right thing because it's the right thing and is actually received with open arms back to the province that he had helped protect. If you could have asked him why he did it, despite all the negative consequences, why he was fearless in doing the right thing, he would have said because the right thing matters. And that's actually the title of my guest today's riveting memoir, one of the most important books and important figures in recent American political history, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman's new book, Hear Right Matters, about being a whistleblower

that led directly to the impeachment of the President of the United States. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was most recently the director of European affairs on the White House's National Security Council. Prior to retiring from the US Army, he served as a foreign area officer with assignments in the US embassies in Kiev, Ukraine, and Moscow, and for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a political military affairs officer. He's a doctoral student in foreign policy institute fellow at John Hopkins University. He's a military fellow at the Law Fair institute. He served honorably

in Iraq, almost two decades of service in the US Army. And he finds himself staring down the most powerful man in the world, the allies of the most powerful man in the world, enormous media attention, and despite being completely in the right and bringing forth alarming behavior and corruption at the highest levels. He loses his job at the White House, his brother loses his job at the White House and indeed his military career comes to an end because of it. And yet why did he do it? Because as he tells his father, here, right matters.

Right? Doing the right thing matters in America. It matters as a military officer. It matters as a human being, and it matters as a stoic. So I was so excited and honored to be able to talk to Lieutenant Colonel Vinman. We have a fascinating talk about philosophy, about ethics, about standing up for what you believe in. And most of all courage.

So I encourage you to read his book here right matters. Our conversation also dovetails perfectly with my new book, Courage is Calling Fortune Favors the Brave. It's up for pre-order right now at dailystoke.com slash pre-order. You can get a whole bunch of awesome bonuses from me, including actual pages from the manuscript that I wrote signed by me. It comes out September 28th, available everywhere, books are sold, but if you go to dailystalk.com slash preorder,

you get a bunch of bonuses. I'm really excited about this book. And my conversation with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman to me is exactly what I'm talking about in the book. He's the kind of figure that I would have liked to have put in the book. And as we open our conversation, a wonderful example of where physical courage and moral courage come together in a really important way. And so I'm excited about his book, Hear Right Matters, which I read and very much enjoyed. And my new book, Courage is Calling Fortune Favors the Brave. Check them both out. And please be brave. Do the right thing. Stand up for what you believe in. If you see something, say something, speak up. As Mark's really says, just that, do the right thing, stand up for what you believe in. If you see something, say something, speak up.

As Mark's really says, just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. You know, so the book I'm working on right now, actually it comes out in a month, I'm doing a book on courage. And it being the first of the four still virtues. And one of the things I thought a lot about in the book, and you seem to be the perfect person to talk to about it,

because you've experienced them from both sides, we make this distinction between moral courage and physical courage. And you have had to experience both in Iraq and then facing down the most powerful person in the world, the eyes of the world upon you risking your job, your livelihood, et cetera, talk to me about that distinction. And I'd also be curious, like, what's actually scarier?

Yeah. Now, that's a, first of all, thank you for having me on. I'm glad I could have this conversation with you, Ryan. But I'll tell you, I've talked about this same theme repeatedly, actually, at one point I was asked to do a TED talk, and I didn't do, I ended up not doing it because I was still in uniform, and I didn't want to kind of fervor the boat and all that kind of stuff. But it was after I was drawn into prominence. And the themes I started thinking about were exactly the central theme of moral versus physical courage. And how physical courage is easily identified,

often prized with metals, award people get award, metals, firemen running into a burning building, policemen conducting you know, conducting a hard road action. On the battlefield, it's easy, you know, people get a word and metals for that kind of stuff. But moral courage is much harder to identify. It's also too often undervalued. But I think in my view, it's moral courage that tends to really drive change and be most impactful. And I guess I was thinking about like, you know, folks that displayed moral courage that changed the course of history. Mahatma Gandhi with, you know, nonviolent protests,

Rosa Parks with civil disobedience. same thing with Martin Luther King. These are folks that I'm not by any means comparing myself to, of course, but they're the whole kind of elevated forms of moral courage that are extolled, but more common forms of moral courage are not, and they're kind of overlooked. And sometimes I'd say they come with a much higher cost, right? Sure. There's, there's, there might be a personal danger associated with physical courage, but it's like, you know, you survive it, you're good. There's no, no, nothing, not as often an enduring price to be paid. Well, that was one of, that was one of the things I was thinking about

is it's interesting that you bring up Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks because as much as that's moral courage, there's also a profound physical element to what they did both sort of putting their body in danger. So when I was thinking about it, I sort of came to this definition that it's actually there's only one form of courage

and that's when you put your ass on the line. Sometimes that's literally, sometimes that's figuratively, but it seems like in both cases whether you're in a rock or you're testifying in front of Congress, you're having to put your ass on the line either reputationally, the future of your career or you're going out not knowing if you're going to survive and come home. In your book, how do you judge, then how do you identify, we'll turn this back on, I'll interview for you, but how do you, I guess, differentiate between, you know, what's prized in physical courage, which is, which is versus what's not so kind of recognized in moral courage.

Well, again, we don't have to make this about your book or about my book, because I loved your book and we're gonna talk all about it. I guess I'm just saying that the distinction may be arbitrary and without, it's a distinction without a difference, right? Like at the end of the day, both society needs both, they both matter.

And what I think is really interesting is how often we see people who are capable of physical courage and not capable of moral courage and people who are capable of moral courage, but not capable of physical courage, when probably ideally they should defuse together. I think that's right. And I think that it's the only difference might be in the fact that how society kind of app of prizes and reflects them. So, and the answer to your question is which one was more difficult?

I think, you know, I guess I would say that the Ukraine scandal and testimony was a lot more difficult because in terms of Iraq, you know, you get trained to respond to certain things in certain ways, including in combat. And I felt, I quickly kind of fell back on my training. I alluded to this in the story in the book. And I fell back on my training.

You know, there was no, don't get bogged down. Yeah, don't, you know, there's no like, you know, there was no kind of overwhelming fear in that moment. They're, you know, not to say, not to discount the fact that, you know, there's like legitimate rational fear in that moment. They're not to say, not to discount the fact that, there's like legitimate rational fear in combat, but that wasn't the case then. And I think it's probably not the case

for most soldiers in contact. They're doing what they need to do. But this was a much more mindful kind of activity. Even if the first report was, you know, with some minimal danger in mind, maybe some, you know, kind of extra scrutiny at the White House of losing my position at the White House. I didn't think I was going to lose my military career. By the time I was testifying in front of Congress, I knew, you know, what I was getting into, but I also wasn't going to be cowed. I wasn't going to be weak need. I wasn't going to kind of lose composure.

I was not going to, now I just wasn't going to be bullied into taking less than what I thought was a proper principle stand. Well, yeah, maybe that's an interesting distinction too, is that physical courage is often very brief, punctuated with violence or danger, but the Ukraine scandal, we're only a year out from it now, it's still ongoing for you, there's still ramifications and consequences, and it's like you leaped, but you're not even quite sure where you're going to land yet, right? You're still falling. That's exactly right in terms of both consequences, because people now believe on politicizer,

or on my hot potato, and most people are kind and open to talking to me, but there are people that are apprehensive and don't want to be denounced by truppers. There's a lot of ambiguity with regards to, you know, next steps, even though I'm engaging in some really pretty awesome work, working on a doctorate, working on a think tank, you know, having this book come out, but there's long term kind of uncertainty.

And in a lot of ways, I, you know, I had a software lending because of how prominent my position was that most whistleblowers that show, you know, moral courage don't get and have to deal with these challenges in a much, much more significant way. Right, yeah, you didn't have a 20 year court battle to finally get your chance in front of the cameras.

You weren't being followed by private investigators for years, et cetera. In some cases, yours was the whole thing compressed down into a year that some of these whistleblowers would read about endured for decades. Right. Right. So yeah, I think this, let's go back to the idea of why, why if a person is capable of one, do they seem to struggle with the latter?

And I think it's particularly interesting in the military domain. Where you see people who fought in wars, who fought in battle. I just got this one, Alpha, about at a Gallagher. And somebody that was physically courageous, but obviously lacked moral courage. And there's too many of these types of things. Yes. And so why is it? I guess I'm so interested, you know, someone who can face down bullets

is then, is not even afraid to stare down the president in an impeachment proceeding as you are, but it just, just doesn't want to be like lightly out of favor, right? Like it's interesting how soft the landing would be for most of these people and how petrified they are of even the slightest deviation from being on the inside of things. That's exactly right. The only thing I could think of is, again, you could train somebody, you could build a muscle memory to react kind of combat. And you could train somebody to be a physical specimen and kind of, you know, run through fire and stuff like that. But it's a much, much harder thing to train current moral courage

to instill values and ethics. And we don't exercise in the same way. You could actually, I have this line of reasoning that I've laid out, especially when I talk to younger folks, about exercising moral courage like a muscle, and building muscle operate. You could do that. You could do, if you're an infantryman,

you train on reflexifiers, stress you to all that kind of stuff, you could train how to do that. It's much, much more difficult to train leaders to display moral courage and adhere to ethics and values when the stakes are kind of a lot of ways higher, not to life, limb, or eyesight, but to kind of prospects, and successes, imagination, and imaginings of where you might end up. And my simple answer to this is, you public service often engenders a duty to something other than yourself. Yes.

And you can build your kind of your ethics and values muscles through service, through service externally oriented, and train yourself to respond in the way you'd like to respond in smaller challenges and progressively tougher challenges. And then when you're faced with really pivotal moments, critical junctures, you have all the tools in play

then you just need to trust yourself that you've built all that muscle memory, moral muscle memory to respond accordingly. Yeah, it's so interesting, someone will be willing to run into battle and potentially lose their life. But then they're like, I don't wanna say something, I might lose my job.

And you're sort of like comparing the stakes. And yeah, for some reason we're much more afraid of the ladder than the former, even though it's fundamentally objectively irrational. Fourth thought, I think the difference is fourth thought. The moral courage recovers fourth thought, whereas I think physical courage doesn't, does not. It's in the moment. It's in the moment in its self-preservation. It kind of feeds to the most basic instinct of survival, whereas the other one requires kind of higher reasoning and forethought.

So that forethought is really important then because you talk about this at the beginning of the book when you're talking about some of your critiques of American policy vis-a-vis the Russians. And then you talk about at the end, you should hear your wrap up lessons. You talk about this idea of self-deterrence, which is basically we know what we should do. We know what a good response would be, but then we talk ourselves out of it. And so it sounds like what you're saying is

fourth thought is often us convincing ourselves that we have a good reason to not do what we know we should do. Or a fourth thought could be the fact that we recognize, we have some perspective. In my case, I had the perspective that this is, a historical moment, I had the fourth thought that this was kind of our democracy in the balance in certain ways with the president

trying to undermine free and fair elections. I had the fourth thought of geopolitics and what this might mean for kind of US national security with undermining Ukraine security. I had all this. In that case, my fourth thought drove me similarly to the idea of upholding my duty as opposed to talking to myself out of it. But the lesson on self-determances, it's not, it's more complex than just kind of your own actions.

And your own biases, it's the fact that adversaries in often cases understand those biases and feed those biases. In the case of Russia, they breed self-determines. They have a whole doctrine around it, reflexive control, they do something that kind of, provokes their kind of like a, almost irrational response because they're doing saber-rattling

and threatening nuclear war. When in reality, they have no greater interest in a war where they're going to be annihilated also. So it's being mindful of your own circumstances but also the environment around you. Like I could, self-determined could have been bred by the fact that it's notoriously vindictive administration and that they're trying to convince people to not testify because they're going to get retaliated against. So it's all of that and it's pretty awesome that they're trying to convince people to not testify because they're gonna get retaliated against. So it's all of that. And it's pretty awesome that we're having this conversation.

I can't, it's hard to believe that we're still breaking new ground. Like this is the last thing I've got my plate for like two weeks or a week and change. So that's good. Well, I wanna nerd out with you, Batic. So in my book, Stillness is the key. One of the people I was fascinated with is Kennedy

and I talk about the Cuban missile crisis and you as a Russian expert might be able to tell me if I got it wrong or not. But to me that was such a profound blending of physical and moral courage in that he was both deterred and not deterred, right? He was able to think through what the enemy wanted him to think. He was able to think about it on moral levels. He was aware of what their response is and what his response should be. And he's able to think it out and be strategic. So he proceeds, but he doesn't proceed

in the way that we often mistake courage, which is sort of a fit of passion or bravery or an aggressive clapback. He sort of goes, okay, here's what the enemy did. Here's what the enemy thinks I'm gonna do. Here's what people want me to do and sort of playing that multi-dimensional chest into a measured but firm response

is to me a good example of physical and moral courage together. I think that's right. And there have frankly been very few examples of people effectively managing the Russia relationship because they don't understand the Russians and they don't go through those kind of layered calculations of addressing the urgency that are being driven by US constituencies, including the defense establishment,

pressure is being applied by the Russians directly, the threat of a full-scale war, and taking it really up to the brink, and managing to navigate. That was obviously a phenomenal navigation of a very perilous event. I think in a lot of ways, I don't know if Reagan was quite as sophisticated, but he was as successful, I'd I think in a lot of ways, I don't know if Reagan was quite

as sophisticated, but he was as successful, I'd say, in a lot of ways. And George Bush maybe in certain regards also, but that's really there, there are not that many examples. I mean, maybe Nixon with regards to China and the town, but we don't, we're not very good at it in general, I think. but we don't we're not very good at it in general I think. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownleur, we will be your resident

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the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. There's a great quote from Marcus, and he's writing it in his journal, but he says, not what the enemy hopes you will see, but what's really there. And I think that, so I think when we're responding to stuff,

you have to see through both the real dangers and the fake dangers, and then sort of land on what you think is right. Yep. I have. We're jumping ahead though. And I want to come back to some stuff, but because you brought it up, I think when people think about whistleblowers

or they think about moral courage, even I guess sometimes physical courage, they often just think like, is this right or wrong? And obviously the title of the book is Here, Right Matters, but I thought it was really interesting towards the end of the book. You, you, yes, right matters, but you also talk about a need to be strategic about it and intelligent about it and think through your options just because you were on the side of, right, doesn't mean you're going to be successful and it doesn't mean that the world is going to

receive you with open arms. I think sometimes I particularly think about this with my generation. We just think that, you know, might makes right and that's not, or right makes might and that's not really true. You know, what's interesting about it is sometimes people would think that I'm kind of naive in that statement of here, right matters. But I think if you read the book, I hope that it comes across that. I'm pretty damn thoughtful at every single turn and I didn't fully uncover every kind of nuance of the way I thought through things. But I was very thoughtful about understanding

that this was a vindictive administration about selecting council that would not necessarily kind of Republican council that would not telegraph or overly alarm White House council because it had direct rapport with them. Some interactions with the White House that was being belligerent and sending out talking points and say, we're out of the thing as much as I could as a uniformed officer in my own.

I thought was very calculating about how to do these things, but always falling back on the basic principle of what is the right thing to do? How to do that right thing in the right way? So, always focused on doing the right thing, but the right way also being a critical component of that equation. Because there were any number of times where I could have really stepped in it. If this report was done not through proper channels, but through report to the media and I leaked something.

That whole, it would have undermined the whole legitimacy of the report and my credibility. If I had kind of, you know, if I decided to take a more public position outside of where I had to, which is in public testimony, you know, if I had commentary in addition to that, that probably could have destabilized the situation. Anywhere along the way, I could have tripped up.

And it's frankly almost a miracle that things kind of unfolded the way they did. And the way I rationalize is I strung together enough right things in the right way, simple kind of decisions, frankly, transactional and str strong enough of those together to navigate something that was, you know, unforeseeable and extremely complex. It is a great quote about the Gaul, and I'm, I don't have it exactly, but he's saying,

like, people see the courageous stand, and he's like, you don't understand how manipulative I had to be behind the scenes, how many conversations I had to have, how many people I had to recruit, you don't understand just this sheer sort of maneuvering required to do what to the public just seems like, you say what you think and you give a public testimony and that's the end of it. That was, I don't wanna say stage manage, but you maneuvered yourself into a position

to have the impact that you had. That's true. The single point where I'd say the complexity doesn't really exist in the seminal moment, my complaint, that one was like, the only fourth thought was that I recognized the gravity of the moment. I say that when I make that point very clear, when I walk into my twin brothers office and say if the president, if the president's actions are disclosed as going to be impeached.

And the time it took me to walk from the situation room up to my third floor offices and in a legal shop, that's it. There was no like deliberation on what I knew I had to do. It's everything afterwards, trying to see if I preserve my, preserve the possibility of a career, reputation and all those other things that end up becoming far, far more complex and really required in certain ways,

maybe more kind of clarity and courage and that initial behind the scenes report. I loved your brother's role. And I was particularly impressed with your wife. She seems like one heck of a lady. Yeah, she's pretty awesome. She's the troll slayer. You know, if you, I think you mentioned that you,

you know Arnold Schwarzenegger, when we were over at his house, I mentioned that I refer to my wife as a troll slayer, so he brought out his cone in the barbarian sword. And he basically showed her how to kind of wield it to trace the troll, a slason troll, so. I read a good book called Crisis of Conscience and I had the guy in the podcast last year,

but do you know who Ernie Fitzgerald is? He was a guy in the Pentagon who was a whistleblower about waste inside the Pentagon in the 80s, in the 70s and 80s, but he was asked in one of his, after this testimony that cost him a promotion, stuff you're all familiar with. And they said, you know, so why did you do this?

And he said, they asked his wife to, and she said, I told him that I really didn't think I could live with a man, I didn't respect. And if he went out there and lied, I'd have no respect for him. And it struck me that your wife was probably a bit of a backbone for you and all of this in moments that you might have doubted yourself

or wondered if it was all worth it. I think that's true. Ultimately, I knew my dad, my twin brother, I knew they all had my back. I would say at times, without parsing who said what, there was discussion about more moderated approaches to do to kind of testimony, doing what frankly what it would have made the army in the Department of Defense more comfortable, which is yes, no answer is in kind of lies of omission and stuff like that. That's what have made my senior military leadership more comfortable and would have in their mind kept me apolitical, strange enough. And ultimately I determined I was going to take my own counsel on this. I would have to live with my own actions.

I alluded to the fact that I would have to kind of look my daughter in the eye and justify my actions when she gets older and I did what I thought was right. But let me ask you about that because I think that's something that holds people back. So obviously, for instance, the 300 Spartans, they go to fight it thermopoli. A lot of people don't know. They were chosen precisely because they all had children, right? Each one was the father, at least one living son. The idea being they wouldn't let their children down by being cowards in battle. But you could also see the same argument that that's who you wouldn't pick because they would want to get home to their children, right? So that I think a lot of people, you know, they go like, I know what the right thing is. I know what a courageous person should do in this situation. But they go, it's not fair to my spouse,

to my kids, to the collateral damage of this decision. And they so they're not saying, well, they're saying like, I would do it if it was just up to me, but I don't want to do it because I'm too selfless, right, or something. I would talk ourselves out of it for what feels like a good reason, but where does that leave us? So walk me through how you think about collateral damage to a decision.

Yeah, the Carolionic's book, I alone, where is it known? What is it now? Sorry, I should know this title, let's say. I can fix it. Sorry. I alone can fix it. I alone can fix it. I just clicked off of something here.

But that's exactly it. That there's a psychology around folks that think that they're the guardrails or that they need to maintain position in order to kind of avert even a bigger catastrophe. And it's, I think it's probably more ego and hubris than appropriately just thought, especially in the military hierarchy, where we habitually train fallout drills, if the commander goes down, they act so step up and stuff like that. And there's always somebody as competent, or we failed in our mission to step up and do the same thing. So I think it's, I think that's just the rationalization mechanism to allow

people to, you know, allow people to not, not follow through and do the right thing in the right way, rather than really substantive. Yeah, I guess, but I mean, you didn't, you didn't have to walk through like, hey, this is the right thing to do, but now I can't afford to send my daughter to college, right? Like, did you have to think about how the consequences of your stand are, the burden of that is also borne by people that you love? I did. And I think for, you know, maybe for even too long, I thought that my, my military career was going to be able to continue. But I also wasn't, when I realized it wasn't, and it was in the middle of the pandemic,

and you know, people were looking for security, I didn't stick around for the purposes of just collecting a paycheck, you know, and hope that I was going to get promoted. I had the confidence that I was going to the lend on my feet. And part of that is the product of, you know, my family history that I talk about in the book, you know, the fact that my family, my father kind of restarted his life on multiple occasions, most recently at the age of 47 coming to the United States and calling furniture, passing a civil service exam, becoming an engineer. I think that's another thing about self deterrence.

You know, there's all these things, what I guess I described is all of the tools I assembled in my life up until that point came into play. And that's the way the book is written. It's a series of lessons that came together for me to now manage the ferrets, starting over, keep starting over. Don't self-deter. It's trust your equipment, the fact that you have accumulated all of your tools. It's everything coming together in that right moment. No, I think your father's story is fascinating and it's so strange where we've gotten as a society that we've like to me one of the ultimate acts of moral courage is to immigrate.

Like we know they're not sending their best people. Immigrants are the best people. They're the people who had the courage to start over to face danger and risk to provide a better life. One of the people I've been reading about for the book is Frank Cervico, the whistleblower in the NYPD. When you read about his mother's journey to America, she gives birth on the boat across the Atlantic, lands at a charity hospital. She loses the baby. The people who are supposed to meet her don't show up. And she basically makes do as like a nanny for this family for like two years before her husband comes,

not speaking a word of English. I then try to think about what would give someone the courage to challenge the entirety of the NYPD. It's the example of his mother. Sure. And was that for you with your father? That's right. I think that's right. I think there were some very foundational lessons I learned from my father. First, he's a tough guy. You know, in ways, suffered and had more challenging experiences than I did through World War II, through losing his own father who died in combat, through having to work hard and start over,

and still some foundational values, foundational values about kind of being truthful. I learned a lot of stuff from my father. Another Serpico thing I thought you might have some thoughts on. He talks about how publicly he was persona non grata, but privately all sorts of people were like, especially in the department were like, great job.

We support you. We're not corrupt either. Thank you for doing this. And he would always say to them, well, why aren't you standing with me publicly? And they, and they, the reply was inevitably, and what be an outcast like you. And I, I've got to imagine that you heard many messages of private support from people who you could have very much needed in your corner that weren't there. What is that phenomenon?

So that's very interesting. I'm looking forward to reading this book. But I would say that I received a great deal of support from peers, curls, and below, but I heard absolutely crickets from senior leaders up the chain. Even folks that had been close to, there was one individual I referenced in the book that was kind of managing me to kind of make sure

I didn't go off the reservation or something like that, but that's really about it. And then, no. The voices that would have been, that would have indicated that I was still in good standing, never kind of chimed in, frankly. And it's a little bit different than, I guess, in CERPCO standard or CERPCO scenario where he actually had folks kind of coming out and tell him and he could challenge him on that. I don't know if I even have- Interesting. Quite a lot.

kind of level of support. Because I think part of it at that, at the general officer level, they're kind of bureaucratic politicians. And they saw risk potentially in offering that kind of support. Isn't that a big part of it? Why, you know, we go like, why isn't the president or the CEO or the senator? Why aren't they more outspoken about this, taking this risk?

It seems to me that so much of that is because, to get where they got, they had to be really good at not stepping in it along the way. So I think about that admiral captain I'm forgetting, the guy who's in charge of the Theodore Roosevelt during the pandemic. Yeah, the COVID outbreak on his ship. Like, if he had not said anything, he'd still be in the Navy and probably have been promoted. So, and what's almost more impressive about what he did is, you don't get in charge of a battleship if you're the guy who's always spouting off,

never thinking of political consideration. So, it's a balance, right? When you're political and when you go to the mattresses on something, that's, I think that's a difficult balance for people. That is very, very astute. I would say that one of the issues that we have with the officer core right now is that they are competent officers, but they never risk too much, you know, that would rule it's really kind of like and you could see a play out in like combat. They've never really truly risked too much that would have potentially upended their career and they've never really misstepped. So in it's kind of damning to say they're kind of, they're better than mediocre, but they're not the best. Because the people that have maybe risked more,

may have even made some mistakes, were cast aside and the force breeds these types of officers. And you saw, you see it come to bear. In my situation, you see it come to bear, and in Kevin Crowder's situation, you see come to bear, frankly in Captain Crowder's situation, you see come to bear frankly in the consequences in Afghanistan where you know people weren't entirely, were not forthright in providing the best military advice to the political leadership, failed to really accomplish the mission,

but cast their service in a way that allowed them to continue to advance. Yeah. Do you know what the Peter principle is? I'm sorry, you broke up. Oh, sorry. Do you know, like, to me, that's an illustration of the Peter principle. Okay. Do you know what that is? Remind me. The Peter principle is that you get promoted to your level of incompetence, because then you stop getting promoted, but the problem is the

people who are hyper competent usually into believing are going on to do other things, and your ranks, whether it's at a company or the military or politics, get filled with the people who are at their just level where they can't get any better handle anything more difficult than what's on their plate. I think Sun Su would have, there's a highly appropriate Sun Su quote here to what we experienced in Afghanistan. Strategy without tactics is a slow road to victory. Tactics without strategy is a sure road to defeat. And I mean, basically that's what we had.

We really didn't have a particularly effective strategy that was being run by the senior leadership. And I think that kind of plays out in the bureaucracy at large. And then you might argue the moral courage is nobody is speaking about that and escalating it up to a place where someone could do something about it. I think that's right. The, what may have been demanded at some point in the past

is an officer corps that was willing to sacrifice their career. I mean, their political appointees at the three and four star level and sacrifice their career based on their conviction. Like, I had a conviction about what I thought was right and I stayed with it, but I had a conviction about what I thought was right and I stayed with it, but they had a conviction that they kind of sacrificed that, you know, maybe the theater wasn't going the right way. Additional resources were required and they sacrificed their conviction for, for, for

careerism. So, what is it where, like, I can almost understand, like, let's say I'm listening to the call or whatever, and I can, I can maybe understand not like, let's say I'm listening to the call or whatever, and I can maybe understand not doing something about it. People try to go, it's not my problem, it's not my fault. People don't, they don't have the courage to be in the hot seat that you step in. What's always fascinating to me in these situations is the people who then decide to attack the person who was in the in the in the hot tea. I think Biden's comments on some of the governors here in like where I live where it's like, look, if you don't want to fight the pandemic, fine, but at least

get out of the way, right? And so when I watch the test, when I watch your testimony, what I'm struck by is the person who decided to walk to wake up that day and be like, I'm going to try to fuck with this guy who is doing the right thing. You know what I mean? Yeah, well, that's really, I mean, that is, in certain cases, their partisan actors that know where their bread is buttered

and basically know what they need to deliver in order to keep themselves in favor. So I think that accounts for a large swath of these folks. But I also didn't really deliberate about who was going to report what. It was squarely in my portfolio. I was the responsible officer. I had requested coordinated staff and done everything for that portfolio. So I really didn't pay that much mind.

I mean, I've looked up to see if anybody else took note, but I wasn't going to wait for somebody else to kind of report it or build a consensus. As a matter of fact, even when Fiona Hill was in position two weeks before, I refer to this meeting on July 10th, where Gordon Sondland first proposes the quick pro quo saying that the instructions, he did this based on a conversation with Mick Mulvaney, right? I didn't wait for Fiona to report it. As soon as I told Donald Sondland, not Donald,

Gordon Sondland, no, I wasn't gonna do it. This is inappropriate. I't gonna do it. This is kind of inappropriate. I went and reported it. Turns out that that was exactly what Ambassador Bolton and feeling a hill wanted it, one tab happened, but I knew what my responsibilities were and I was going, I think at some point, especially at 20 years,

you know what the right thing is to do is, you don't need somebody to tell you what the right thing is You should just do it. That struck me as a Flashback to your experience in Iraq where you said you come under fire. There's the ID You just felt a sense of calm in that moment and you kind of as Groose them and violent and bad as it was you knew what you needed to do It struck me as when this call, you knew what you needed to do. It struck me as when this call happened, you knew what you needed to do.

I think that's right. I think that's right. I mean, it's interesting how like somebody could dissect the book and see what lessons kind of, the way I constructed it really, but what lessons, how those lessons kind of played in to the various decisions I made in those faithful months in 2019.

Yeah, it's, Mark Srelyas has another good line. It says, just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. He says, tired or well rested, despised or honored, warm or cold, just that you do the right thing. And do you think if you had known the consequences, it might have... I don't want to say change your mind, but was part of it that you didn't think about what might happen? Do you know what I mean? Obviously, you knew he might be in peach because he said that. But did you think about, hey, I'm going to lose my job. My brother's going to lose his job at the White House. I'm going to be a, you

know, widely hated by this group of people. I'm going to have to find a new line of work. If you had thought about all of that, would it have caused you to lose heart, do you think, or it would have affected your calculation? No. I mean, it sounds kind of as if it's easiest, but I'll tell you, there are certain things that I, you know, you could imagine all the conversations that we're going on behind the scenes. My attorney's telling me, look, just, you know, offer minimal kind of, if you want, you want a military career, kind of like give your, your, give the kind the most, don't offer too much. My dad also, telling me that I need to come to an accommodation with the president, understand counseling me that you don't go up against power without consequence.

It's not like I was blind to the events. I was hopeful certainly about the fact that the military would act in accordance with values. But I also wasn't going to be deterred based on some self-serving calculations. The hardest thing of all of these things, looking back and thinking about my behaviors, I puzzled over what I would have done if the president was successful in his enterprise, which he in certain ways was very close to getting his investigation.

You know, it's not really widely known, but a couple days before, the House committees launched their investigation into the Hold on Security Assistance on September 11th. I think only a couple days after that, Zelensky was scheduled to have a press conference with CNN to report an investigation. And it's because things unfolded the way they did, the president was unsuccessful at enterprise. And I kind of asked myself,

what would I have done if using the proper channels wasn't effective? If making the reports, if all this stuff, if the president could continue to obstruct lawful aid to, directed by Congress. And based on my follow-through, I guess, in testimony. I have a belief I would do the right thing, but it's one of those kind of unknowns because it didn't unfold that way. Yeah, like when I think about moments in my own life where I took risks, like when I dropped out of college

and I think other things where I saw things or I was a part of things and I maybe should have spoken up or should have spoken up earlier, my regrets both when I was successful and when I fell short was that I didn't have more confidence in myself, right? And I think what I saw as the theme in your decisions is you believed not just that right matters, but you believed that you would be okay, whatever happened, right?

You sort of, I'm going to do the right thing, come what may. And I think that when a lot of people are afraid, they don't want to speak up, they go like, well, I don't want to lose my job. What's interesting is, and I wonder what they could accomplish if they sat down and thought, you'll just get another fucking job, right? Like, you're not gonna end up, you're almost certainly will not end up under a bridge somewhere, right. You know, and so it seems like your confidence was a really integral part of you being able to get through this. I think that's right. And I think that, again, that's a reflection of my, you know,

family's experience starting over. I had all the things that my dad didn't necessarily have. I had an advanced degrees. I had a, you know, decades-long military career. I had a network of friends and supporters. You know, that I could fall back on even if I had to start over. And, you know, I guess I had that confidence. Yeah. And probably seeing your dad survive on so much less made you aware that you did have quite a bit of privileges and advantages that you could fall back on here that even if you didn't have you would be fine.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's some perspective that you could just look at the worst case scenario. You could look at kind of the costs. And that might deter action, but I guess I always try to take a step back and have some perspective on things. And that always kind of helps. You talk about Joshua Chamberlain at the end of the book. And it's not that you're likening yourself to him,

but it did strike me as you were making a statement that I think people are afraid to make or believe in, which is this idea of the great man of history theory, that like an individual can make a difference, right? That feels like not cool and maybe a bit naive. And I wonder if people are afraid to do that. It's this is a critical point. I think sometimes we are complacent because we either think things are going to work out or we're complacent because we think that we can't have an effect on events.

And I frankly, this is something that I want Americans to know, is that they actually have a voice and they can have an impact. Every person that chooses to want to have an impact can do that. And I just, this is something that I believe in because individuals that would otherwise be unremarkable have had kind of distinct impacts on history. Well, the converse of that is also true. If you don't believe that an individual can make a difference, it's true. In your case, you will not be the individual that makes a difference. Very true.

And I think we want to think about, and I think this is, it's like, if you don't do something, who are you seeding the fields to? There's a rabbi, rabbi, hello, very prominent rabbi, and he has this, uh, there's a line. If not, if not you, then who, if not now, then when, uh, and I remember, you know, my rabbi kind of mentioning it to me, and those that thought, there were a couple of like mantras that were going around my brain. It was that, it was, do the right thing in the right way. You know, don't self-ditter, don't be afraid to start over. These are the things that kind of like every now and then army values, loyalty due to respect, selfless service on our integrity personal cards. These are things that kind of like every now and then army values loyalty due to respect,

selfless service, honor, integrity, personal courage. These are the things that like, you know, I would kind of, I don't know if there were explicit in every case, but these were the thoughts that kind of would would rattle around when I had to make a wavy decision. And it didn't have to be something that kind of like I labor over to, you know, I had nauseam, but something that could, you know, weigh pretty quickly through those filters and make a decision on. Yeah, Congressman John Lewis had that quote in his office as well. And you want to talk about an individual of moral courage who makes a difference. I mean, he was a kid. And he changed the course of American history by stepping up and getting

on a lesson being beaten. Did you, so you thought about, like, if not me, then who? That's one thing I'm not totally clear on. So somebody else also reported the call, right? Well, so you know, it's something that I didn't like, I made it, you know, it's something that I thought of afterwards. After I talked about this with my rabbi and he kind of offered some counsel to kind of like, you know, to provide some support for me. But I mean, I made the point early on that I didn't really have to delivery on the first series of decisions at all, where I just knew it's thinking of what to do, but afterwards thinking about it made perfect sense.

In terms of other people reporting it, well, so you know, it turns out that Tim Morrison also reported, but he couched it in a completely different way. He reported because he was afraid there was going to be a leak and he just wanted to alert the proper legal officials, which is frankly a bunch of bullshit. Because he was just covering his ass, basically. He was an attorney and he's good at covering his ass and he covered his ass in this case. In addition to that, what's funny is that actually before

we even had this phone call as a K-Tim, why don't we bring the attorneys into this? This might be a lively call. You're familiar with the background, this incident that occurred with Ambassador Bolton two weeks before, and he kind of gives me a quizzical look, he's kind of an asshole.

Gives me a quizzical look as like why? And then he does this bullshit line on the back end to cover his ass saying he just report it because he didn't want any leaks or something like that. It's kind of the way he is. So that was the other person who also reported it. So you were the only one that... So you were the only one that. Well I guess I'm the only part, I'm aware of the fact I reported Tim mentioned that he reported it in his testimony.

I don't know who else reported it. Interesting. Yeah, it's just funny how something could happen in multiple people see it, but everyone sort of hoping, it's the inverse of Hillel's line. If somebody else does it, then I don't have to do it. Brian, I'm not sure where you're getting at. What are you trying to say?

No, no, I'm saying in all situations, this is what we do. We hope at no time. You think about kitty genavis, right? No, you're right. I'm joking. I'm joking about whether or you're leading me down the road of like, are you so wet?

Are you, are you, are they, are they guy or something? No, no, I'm, I'm just thinking about like, I am fascinated with that kitty genavis incident. Hundreds of people hear it and everyone thinks, well, I hope someone else will do it. So I don't have to. terrible. And, and so I mean, some people, if they trying to impune you are trying to say, Oh, it's ego,

you know, it's it's him wanting to so is but is there ego and being like, I'm the I'm the individual to make a difference. I'm the one that needs to do it. Like how does one balance between like, this is the right thing and I'm just making this about me. So there's there was there was probably some ego in, you know, my strong desire to want to serve on the NSE. It's a prestigious position. There is no ego in wanting to put yourself out in the middle of fire. You know, challenge the president of the United States, become a public figure. That's just not the world kind of that I come from. There is no real interest in there. But I guess, you know, I think your question is actually a little different. Is there a desire or urgency to kind of say, you know,

take it on my shoulders that if it wasn't for me, this would never have happened. I think that's if you were to make, if I were to make a statement like that, it's probably factual, frankly, based on what I know and what I learned, it's a factual statement, but saying it sounds egotistical. So that's just not something that like, you know, I guess I would naturally say it has come up as a kind of counterfactual before, as a matter of fact, I think Susan Page went in her awesome interview, kind of raised it as a counterfactual. And it brings clarity to kind of, I guess, my role.

But it's not the way kind of Byron York, whatever a knucklehead paper he writes for, far right paper, saying that I was a driving force. I just did what I thought was right. Well, I was just thinking we, for instance, we'll do this like with whistleblowers. We often do it with like victims of sexual assault. We go like, oh, this person's just after attention or this person wants to be famous. And it's so preposterous because it's like nobody wants to be famous for this. No, no.

I mean, it's, it's funny that like, you know, I do feel a great deal of support for America, but I also am reviled by other segments of America. It wants to put, I mean, it's better to be like in your own little neighborhood, you've got your close circle of friends or something like that, people that you know, nobody else knows you, at least that's in my world. I mean, I guess we live in a world now where like, you know, nobody else knows you. At least that's in my world. I mean, I guess we live in a world now where people want

that kind of attention, but that doesn't resonate with me. I'd rather not be reviled by millions of people that have been lied to and convinced that elections are stolen and that the president is a hero. That, when that last president was about as harmful a figure in U.S. history as we've probably ever had, frankly. And I'm not saying that, like, kind of whimsically, you know, that we were able to, you know, even,

you can, who kind of let us down towards Civil War, was enormous tragedy, he's responsible for some 600,000 deaths in part because there are a whole other sequence of events. But this president is equally culpable in mismanaging a pandemic that magnified many times the amount of debt we have. And how is he walk?

I don't, I just don't understand how he could walk away from that. It's his mismanagement that resulted in six hundred, you know, what could have been tens of thousands of dead to 600,000 dead. Well, I was going to ask you about that with your study of the Soviet Union and Russia, your experiences with Trump and Giuliani. What happens to a person's soul and their personality

that takes them down that road? Is it that power corrupts? Is it, were they always like that? Is it evil? How do you end up where these people have ended up? So I think Giuliani and Trump are two different figures. I think Giuliani notoriously had a huge ego, even when he was an honorable public servant. was justifiably kind of lauded and elevated for his service to as a the mayor of New York

during difficult times. He really kind of undertook some serious reforms and then he was corrupted by power and you know desire for wealth and who knows what else is you know He might be from. I don't think Trump at any point was like that. He, he didn't, doesn't even understand the concept of public servants. He thinks public servants and, you know, military service members are suckers and losers. He does not understand the concept of serving anything but himself. So those are two different kinds of figures, figures. One's corrupted and the other one may have been rotten from the very beginning. Yeah, it's, and I think this goes to the point we were talking about earlier of why you have to be strategic and why you have to be intelligent when you decide to step forward about something

because you're not playing against people who are playing by the rules. Absolutely. I think there's, I've got a world press panel discussion in a couple of weeks and we kind of, I'm going to talk to a reporter that basically has covered whistleblowers for a swath of his career. And it's interesting, you know, he asked me if I thought I was a whistleblowers for a swath of his career. And it's interesting, you know, he asked me if I thought I was a whistleblower. And we kind of ruminate on this idea. And he said, you know, traditionally whistleblowers feel like they have no other recourse but to go leak, go, go to the press because they can't figure out a way to kind of navigate the system. In a lot of ways, I navigated entirely from within the system

to effect. I mean, I wasn't the sole actor. We also had an intelligence community with a blower that recognized the the paroles to this country and spoke up. But I didn't, I didn't, you know, lead to anybody, I didn't do anything that was kind of outside of proper procedures at frankly any point, which is, I think is pretty amazing. Yeah, I would agree. To me, that's a testament to what you did. It's not just that it was right, but you know, you talk about execution. It's also how you execute on the mission that you're embarking on.

I was very lucky. I'll take you. I'll go ahead and like, I need on luck. All right. All right. That's the non-egotistical way to look at it. But is it strange to go up like, you know, you talk, clearly you have a sort of a reverence for America. It means something to you. What does it feel like to be inside the core of, you know, American government and come to the conclusion that you came to, that the president may be rotten to the core or that this is a corruption of those fundamental values?

It was not easy. And I think, you know, this may have been kind of like a a misstep of sorts. As I watched these events unfold over the preceding months before the phone call, and certainly, you know, it was clear that Giuliani was involved. I'd learned that it was Gordon-Sanland, Mick Mulvaney, all sorts of other folks that,

initially, it looked like it, you could say, this was completely outside of government, then it obviously came back to government actors being involved. But my brevarence for the office of the president in certain ways, didn't allow me to kind of like hang this on the office until that phone call. Because in a way I rationalized that these might be people that are traditional kind of totty figures that look to elevate themselves and appreciate themselves, but there was no

way that the president would be behind something like this. Or at least, even if I suspected it, it's not something that I was going to kind of like, you know, land on firmly without something more concrete. I remember when I brought this, the hold on security assistance out of the shadows, when it was initially, it was a hold by, by Mick Mulvaney, using his kind of levers over management and budget.

And it was extra procedural. And I brought it into the national security process. I ran it through kind of what we do, these policy coordinated committees and all these things and I ran it all the way through the deputy deputies, which is cabinet level officials, they're deputies. Number two guys in all the departments and agencies.

And people are telling me that it's coming from the office of the president. I never, I actually didn't put that in a report because I'm not gonna put down the president was responsible for the hold on the security systems. I know that it came from Mick Mulvaney, but I'm not gonna attribute it to the president. Sure, the president's hand became clear in that call when he was the one that said,

I need you to do us a favor, though, and proceeded to lay out this investigation. And that was I think that kind of shattered penetrated my reverence for the office of the president. I still hold an office in a high regard. I hate the idea of the president, I still hold an office in high regard. I just don't, I hate the idea of calling Trump, you know, president Trump. He didn't deserve that honorific. Well, that's something I'm struggling with, and I, you've probably thought about it. What, what does it say about America, not just that it could happen, not just that a lot of people were involved in it happening, and not just that only, you know, the vote to do something about it happened on very clear partisan lines with one exception of Mitt Romney, I think a bit of an act of courage.

But what does it say that a huge percentage of the American people, when asked about it, also decided that it didn't bother them. What do we do? How do we come back from that? What do we do that we've lost our ability to be outraged about these things? Well, I think with each transgression, especially under the previous administration,

the bar was set lower for government and we stopped kind of being shocked by presidential abuse. You think the president, you know, talking about roping women would have affected his ability to get elected should be immediately disqualifying. Yeah. I think there's actually a firm that this should be in law. If you can't get a majority of the votes in your own constituency like a New Yorker, then you should be excluded. Those people will know you. There are people who know you. Then you should be excluded. I think that should be a kind of like, you know, you get the majority, you get the electoral college, but also you have to earn the electoral college, but also you have to earn the majority in your own constituents. So, you know, that's absolutely true that the, you know, the present one 74 million

plus votes, but he also lost by 7 million votes. And that's telling that margin is unprecedented. and that's telling that margin is unprecedented. He lost big Lee in the electoral college. And I think right now there's a bit of a struggle over not the tyranny of the majority, which is what our constitution was designed to protect. But the tyranny of the minority, that has kind of been, you know, led down the Primrose path and has kind of lost their way.

I know our holding this country hostage. And I think, you know, these are arguments about filibuster, whether it makes sense in this current context, whether we've crossed them sort of threshold where the majority needs to assert its rights to properly govern. I think frankly, we might be there, especially if voting rights are in jeopardy.

The attorney of the minority minorities trying to hang on by disenfranchising people. But I think there's a bigger issue in play that has both an external and an internal component. External, our adversaries are always looking for seams, are always looking for avenues to kind of so disinformation and magnify it. You know, that's a consistent pattern, but there are internal actors, political actors that see it in their interests to also not advocate for, you know, for many, one, not for unity, but for division and maintain power through division. And I think, you know, accountability, unfortunately, is going to have to come at the hands of the electorate that just cannot forget about these transgressions.

And that's a starting point. I think there's also not to belay with this point. There's also an obligation for this very, very busy administration that's focused on, you know, an enormous amount of challenges domestically and overseas moving forward to address challenges from the previous administration, accountability. Because there's a lot to be learned about the weaknesses that, you know, the president exploited. It was a stress test. It was a stress test. And if we don't do something, if we don't take the proper steps,

if we don't build in kind of a solvency, we're gonna be, or next time we face a challenge, from a much more competent actor, the president wasn't a competent actor, we really could be in danger. No, I think that's right. And I think your point about laying it at the feet of the voters is right.

It's going to require some ordinary acts of courage from voters to put aside the issues that you care the most about to deal with this unpleasant situation and face some truths about your own party. I'm speaking of my own father and people I'm close with. It's like, look, I get you care about your own party. I'm speaking, I'm thinking of my own father and people I'm close with. It's like, look, I get you care about all these things. And I get that you have very strong partisan affiliation

against this or for this. And it's going to require you facing some of that to come together and deal with what is, I think, the sort of the governing crisis of our time. Absolutely. Sir, thank you so much. This is a complete honor. I loved the book.

And I thank you for your service, not your military service. Of course, thank you for that. But the service that you did, that you detail in this book, as you said, it was a narrow run thing. It could have gone in another direction if you hadn't stood up and done what you did. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to your book. I love you calling out. I'm going to have to start listening to this one. I love you calling out quotes and stuff like that. So that's good stuff. My newest book, Courage is calling Fortune Favours The Brave is now available for pre-order.

We've got a bunch of amazing bonuses. You can get signed copies, of course. I'm so proud of this book. General Jim Mattis is called a superb handbook for crafting a purposeful life. Matthew McConaughey also a father. He called it an urgent call to arms to each and all of us. I do hope you check it out. It's my first in the four virtue series Courage Temperance Justice Wisdom. Courage is calling fortune favors the brave. If you want to pre-order it, I'd really appreciate your support. Go to dailystoic.com slash pre-order. Hey, Prime Members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.