The Nick DiPaolo Show - Mike Ritland | Nick Di Paolo Show #1376

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Nick Interviews former Navy SEAL and NYT best selling author, Mike Ritland.   Go see Nick on the road! www.nickdip.com/tour for tickets!  

Ladies and gentlemen, the Nick DiPaolo Show is going to be joining Mug Club on Rumble in a few weeks. When it's time to movie subscription from Patreon to Rumble, we will let you know. You'll get my free show, my exclusive content, and shows by Jimmy Brewer, Brian Callen, Mr. Guns and Gear, and the great Steven Crowder, all for less than what many of you are paying right now. Stay tuned for details. And again, thanks for supporting this show continuously. Welcome Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. Great show today. My guest, former Navy SEAL. I'm guessing always Navy SEAL, like you're a Marine.

You're always a Marine. He's a very interesting guy, works with canines, and very smart, and very, you know, no bullshit. And Mike Ritland is on the show, and I think you're going to enjoy this a lot. My guest today is a former U.S. Navy SEAL, public speaker, and New York Times bestselling author and dog trainer. He created the Warrior Dog Foundation to provide care to dogs that have ended their service in Battlefront and the Team Dog online training community. It's Mike Ritland. Mike, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it, man. Yeah, thank you for having me. And thank you for your service. And I mean that because I'm a big mouth comedian for 35 years and uh nobody appreciates

people who defend our right to speak than comics at least ones that like to push the envelope and talk to the fbi twice a year um by the way my producer my producer mike is dallas who did a couple tours in afghanistan so wow. Thank you for your service, Mike. You guys have more in common than I do with you. First, I'm fascinated with the Navy SEALs because I know what the standards are, and I hate guys like you because you can beat people up and you're smart of them, which there's no fucking need for that.

I did the online course, so I don't know that's debatable okay uh hey if the standards maybe i'm um dreaming i thought i read like all the military they're sort of getting woke and they had to lower the physical standards as far as the tests go but didn't the navy seal say fuck you we're not doing that yeah i mean for the most part yes um you know i will say even since i was in in the late 90s there were i would say constant um there was constant pressure and there was always kind of a pushing from the higher ups going all the way up to washington to get more students through training because they wanted more special operations folks. You know, and they tried every different study you can imagine from, you know,

genetics testing to, you know, observations, psychologists coming in, you know, all, all different manner of, of tests and evaluations, trying to determine what, you know, kind of makes a candidate, make it through training. And, you know, really at the end of the day, it was just like, you know, kind of makes a candidate make it through training. And, you know, really at the end of the day, it was just like, you know, they kind of put their hands up and said, you know, if you want it bad enough and you have all of the different genetic traits, then you'll make it through. But they couldn't really identify what those are because there was enough variance student to student to not really have a high predictability factor. So, you know,

there's always been pressure from kind of the top down to get more people through and whatever. And there's always been a resistance and a gatekeeper mentality from the cadre, the staff, the, you know, people that have gone through and gone to war under the name of the US Navy SEALs that have always kind of fought back and ensured that there's a high level of standards that are still being applied to the training. Yeah, because, I mean, they're looking for brains and brawn, obviously, and that's a rare combination, at least from when I went to school. You had the brainy types, you know, in the chess club,

and you had guys like me who were average students. I probably, I know I couldn't get into the seals, but, um, I think I could get into the Cub Scouts if I. Do they even call it that anymore? No. Yeah. You're right. I think it's, what is it?

The tranny Scouts or the, uh, I don't know. That's actually. Yeah. I think it's just, I think it's just Scouts now, which, uh, which is odd because the girl Scouts still exist, but the boy Scouts are just Scouts. Yeah. I think it's just scouts now, which is odd because the Girl Scouts still exist, but the Boy Scouts are just scouts. Yeah. What does that tell you about the agenda? I'm so fucking tired of it. I can imagine what you are after risking your life to this fucking country. Were you like above average student?

No, I mean, so the, I think, you know, the type of intelligence that's, I would say, necessary and sought after for special operations is more from a logical thinking and problem solving standpoint, which is for fuck sure not taught in public schools. It's the opposite, you know, so I would not say that high marks academically in school, especially public schools, is necessarily reflective of the type of intelligence or a predictor that you're going to do well as it relates to the battery and psychological and intelligence assessment for the SEAL team. So I did not do well in school. I mean, I fucking barely graduated, honestly. I think I had like a 2.3 average maybe or a fucking 2.1. I mean, I was barely scraping by. But when they give you the ASVAB, that's not really a standard traditional test. It's more of a, you know, kind of an intelligence battery, I guess. So, you know, I did fairly well on that. I wouldn't say I was, you know, way above average where they were asking me to join the nuke program or anything, but I was I think zero to 99. And I think you have to have like a, I want to say it's a 73, I think, uh, to join the seals. So it's not like, you know, you have to be some rocket surgeon or anything, but the, uh, you know, the gist of it is that, you know, there's, there's math involved with, uh,

both dive physics and, um, as well as like explosive weight calculations. And, um, you know, you know, so there's certain things that you have to kind of know what the fuck you're doing to keep you and your teammates from getting blown up or uh or nitrogen narcosis you know what have you so and then there's you know land navigation and there's other other things where some sort of kind of you know basic arithmetic and standard education is required to be able to do it. But the biggest thing is, you know, if pressure is coming from all sides and you're panicked

and it's just pure fucking chaos, can you still calm the fuck down and make logical decisions and think your way through problems in an unconventional way? And that's, you know, the biggest thing that they're looking for. You just listed 10 things that i don't know any women are good yeah keep it keep it keep in there cool mention that so historically women were not even allowed to uh to try out you know for the training but i guess we should take one step back and say what what is a woman uh you know great great point yeah so so i mean you know so to me like if you can't define that how do you determine whether or not they can go through training i

don't know that's a whole nother fucking podcast but there have been that so the seal teams have opened up the uh the qualification pool to females uh there's been, to my knowledge, a handful that have tried and have not even made it to the main training portion of buds. There's a pre-training phase where you go through boot camp and then you just go across the street at Great Lakes to a prep phase. And I want to say it's somewhere between eight and 12 weeks, I think. I'm not even sure. They change that shit around pretty frequently too. They change that shit around pretty frequently too. They didn't have any of that when I went through. You basically went from boot camp to A school straight to SEAL training. But at any rate, so during this pre-phase,

it's kind of a gradual kick in the nuts to get you used to going to SEAL training and what have you. And so there's been a handful of women that have gone to that and to my knowledge none of them have even made it past that to actually go to uh two buds or seal training but what do you think of uh admiral levine uh well i think he uh has a lot of issues is what i think um you know i mean that's the gist of it i mean that's that's just how i feel about it period i mean i think you know if you look at that statistically the you know the 21 major mental disorders that are classified from western medicine um that's one of them you know and and if you look at the other 20, you know, they affect, you know, around, you know, between

0.7 and 3% of the population across the board, you know, and so does gender dysmorphia. So, you know, to me, it's not a stretch or a reach to say that it's a simple but significant medical disorder or mental disorder, you know, that frankly should be treated like any of the rest of them. I don't think that anybody that suffers from that, I certainly don't wish that on anyone. I'm goddamn glad that I don't have that. But I would say that, you know, that they shouldn't be treated any better or any worse. It should be identified and treated similarly in line with with any other major uh medical or uh sorry mental disorder so uh you know that's my take on it i don't know why it

gets uh you know why it gets so much bandwidth and attention uh especially comparatively to the rest of them you know we don't normalize any of the other ones we don't rearrange our entire society and educational system and social uh way of life to accommodate schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or any of these other things. I don't know why we've cherry picked, you know, this one thing to to grab onto and fucking die on. Yeah, that's been my question for the last couple of years. Why is that the hill they choose to die on? years why is that the hill they choose to die on like i said they they make up a sliver of the general population and we talk about them fucking non-stop yeah it's 0.7 percent you know i mean the entire to me the other thing like the the entire lgbtq uh you know if you want to call it

a community i mean to me that's that's's a strange thing to call a group of people. And I also think it's, it's, it's a strange entity to, to put all of these people into one group. You know, because to me, if you're putting some chick in college, that's curious into the same group as, as a guy who thinks he's a 13 year old girl and wants to go into locker rooms like that to me, that's not the same category, uh, you know, but, but either way, um, you know, the entire LGBTQ plus,

whatever the fuck else you throw in there, uh, is 3% of the population and maybe change less than four, uh, gender dysmorphia, trans transgenderism is 0.7 percent right uh you know and so if you think about that as a statistic right if you look at it purely from a data standpoint like on on what fucking planet do we take 0.7 percent of the population and rearrange everything for that that group like you we don't change ship for 0.7 percent of anything you know like that's right that's an outlier like like for like as an example a uh an automobile automobile company you know would say oh only 0.7 percent of our seat belts are failing we'll leave it the fuck alone

then you know so i mean it's a great analogy to me yeah i i've been look i i have a um i have what was my niece now my nephew and like you said and i have the same take i wouldn't wish it on anybody because it's a difficult thing to go through um and it didn't bother me um until he started winning the fucking football pool every sunday um yeah i mean to me the like the name change thing is, you know, I've got no issue with it. You know, Prince changed his name to a fucking symbol. Like, hey, knock yourself out, whatever. No, but I'm saying my niece transitioned.

It's actually he's a male now, you know? Yeah. So to me, like where I draw the line is, is where like name lies, you know, if you want to say my name is now, whatever I'll call you, whatever you want to be called. Uh, but when you say that I'm actually not this, I'm that to me, like if you're born with the ability to produce sperm, you're a guy, you're right. You know, if you produce eggs, you're, you're a woman, like it's really that fucking simple, you know, and, and no amount of wishing or deciding or changing or drugs or surgery is going to change that. So, you know,

to me, it's, and I, you know, to me, where I where I have an issue with it is a lot of people would say, well, you know, what's the big deal, right? Like, if that's how they want to choose to identify, like, why not just let them have that? And to me, the reason why I think it's a big deal is it's like, it's like saying two plus two doesn't actually equal four. I feel like it equals five. And so that's how I'm going to view it now. And it's just not the case. You know, to me, I think that's where our society has gotten to how fucked up it is right now is because of that.

It's because of the, well, it's not hurting any, like, yes, it like yes it is you know now like when you hear people say i speak my truth like it's not your truth it's the truth or it's not the fucking truth you know and so like you don't get to pick and choose what's correct or not you know um and i think that's why we're at where we're at but yeah uh all of a sudden the truth is subjective and um yeah i don't know where we're headed and and it just seems to be this obsession i've been asking people forever why this is the way that i don't know maybe it's uh marxist was that part of marxist uh you know their plan back in the day to to focus or is it because our country's so upset? We're an experiment.

We have tons of ethnicities and colors. So if you wanted to conquer and divide and you had some of the elitist assholes in power, this would be a perfect country to do it, right? We can pit so many different people against each other. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, nobody knows except those who are behind it, if there are people that are behind it. I don't necessarily subscribe to that theory. I think very simply, we're in the, you know, great times have created weak men for a long enough period.

And we've been too successful for too long to where that's what we're worried about is because we don't have any bigger, more like, democracies or constitutional republics, you know, places that you would largely consider free. You know, I can tell you, like, there isn't, you know, transgender rights rallies in fucking Iran, you know, or in Indonesia or in the Philippines, you know, like when, when half the population is struggling to just fucking make ends meet and put food on the table and survive, there's very traditional, historically biological roles. Uh, and they're that way for a reason, not because some magical patriarchy appeared out of nowhere and decided that this is how it's going to be, you know, for millennia, things have been the way they have been because biologically that's, what's been necessary for human beings to fucking survive. Right. You know, and if you look at, say, transgenderism, like if that was a thing and was normal and,

and was a big part of the human experience, human beings wouldn't fucking exist. You know, being transgender or even gay for that matter, you know, does not lend itself to the primary cause and focus of a species, which is to perpetuate, you know. So, like, to me, like, it's really not that complicated or, and I don't know why we overcomplicate it as a society, except for, like I said, the fact that i think we just don't have any any bigger real bigger problems to focus on except uh fighting with each other because china isn't invading us yet uh or you know nobody's starving and and even though homelessness is a problem it's not a big enough problem uh you know the opioid epidemic is a problem but it's not a

big enough problem to make the entire country collapse. I think, you know, if you saw something like that, like a true depression, like a true economic collapse, like the Great Depression, or, you know, an invasion from a monstrous world power, or let's say China and Russia got together and decided, you know, let's hit them with, you know, some electro EMPs and, you know, then invade and collapse, you know, their power supply, their water supply. Let's choke off all of their, you know, medicine, antibiotics, food, et cetera, and starve them out, wait for everything to fucking collapse and then invade. Then, you know, at that point, then ask yourself, like, how many people, how many kids are going to be saying, hey, these are my pronouns, and here's how I would refer, or prefer you to refer to me as, you know, but. Yeah, I'd stick a gun in the first person's face, you know, they is hungry, excuse me, they, no, that's exact, well, what we are is Rome, and the final, that's what it looks

like when you think, when you read about the history of Rome. Like you said, we became too fat and lazy and rich, and you're right. That lends itself to getting away from survival tactics, and I blame the beanbag chair in the NFL. I'm talking to Mike Ritland, former United States Navy SEAL, best-selling author and dog trainer. I want to get into that because he created the Warrior Dog Foundation to provide care to dogs that have ended their service in Battlefront and the team, Dog Online Training Committee. You have something, a company, what's it called, Tricos? Tricos.

Tricos. And that's an international company, provides uh working canines to celebrities uh private individuals and government agencies um who okay let's start with the celebrities since they don't deserve to be protected um just kidding what who are some of the celebs that you've worked with anybody that we know amandaes running naked in the street yesterday in L.A.? Yeah. So I will say most of them have me sign an NDA and would prefer I not disclose that. But there's been a few that have said, you know, hey, have at it. So Larry the Cable Guy has been a client. Know him very well.

Winona Judd, the country music singer, is a client of mine. As well as one of the Beverly Hills housewives, Erica Jane out in California. She she has a dog for me as well. But the rest of them that, you know, are names that people would know, ask that I not, you know, share that. So I got to be respectful of that. But let's get that's that's a, you know, about half of what I do as far as, you know, dog sales, training, et cetera. about half of what I do as far as, you know, dog sales training, et cetera. The rest is either online training or, excuse me, working with police and military units, government entities, et cetera.

So it's kind of a strange mix, you know, it's kind of two, two polar ends of the spectrum as far as our society goes. But, um, what, what, what makes the best, well, you have a specific story about when you were seeing action in Iraq, Operation Freedom, was it? There was a dog that saved you and a bunch of Marines, explosive detective dog? Yes, so not me specifically. So when we were up in the northern part of the country in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. We were there with an entire Marine division. And so while we were there, there were groups of Marines operating in and around where

we were at. We were posted up at Saddam's palace, actually, in Tikrit. But at any rate, there were operations going on all over the city, you know the same time and so uh basically it was it was an instance where there was a an explosive detection dog that uh saved a group of marines near the area that we were operating and for me that's that's when i was like holy fuck like we've been in that exact same scenario that they just did i don don't know how many times, uh, and we never had a dog with us, uh, you know? And so that was kind of the wake up, uh, that, that light bulb moment for me. But what's, what's the, um, like when we, when Biden exited Kabul with that horrible strategy and, um, we left, uh, did we, don't they, they left a lot of uh u.s military dogs behind

and like afghanistan and and they get mowed down don't they uh so in that case there was a story um that was stating uh that that happened and it was incorrect there were not to say that it was uh it was good that these dogs got kind of left hanging, but they weren't U.S. military working dogs. In fact, they weren't even American contracted working dogs. I want to say it was a European company or there were ties to a lot of different foreign entities. At any rate, what happens is whether it'sq afghanistan other places that we are either in or have been where we're using military working dogs for explosive detection checkpoints etc you know once we leave or the presence is kind of sustained for a long period of time

just like with security contractors working for you know government agencies and you know civilians like former military guys will get out, other contractors, things of that nature. And so it works the same way with dogs where they, like the U.S. government will hire, you know, contractors to fulfill a need for, say, 20 dogs at this point, you know, or what have you. So, you know, it ended up being a group of contractor working dogs. Not that, you know, they're still dogs. You know, it's, it was still a fucking travesty to see, you know, a group of dogs that were left behind and, you know, kind of just let out and were roaming. Some of them were saved. Some of them who knows what happened to them. I don't know, you know,

the specifics once, you know, the, the, the last plane leaves at that point, you know, your, your information and your conduit to information that's reliable and credible is pretty limited. So, uh, you know, the short answer is, you know, there's very few people that know, uh, you know, what, what ended up happening to all of them. But I want to say, I think there was around 20 dogs that, uh, that were, you know, for a government contractor, uh, we're working with slash for a government contractor

that got basically abandoned there. And people just kind of took them and farmed them out, and they just kind of disappeared. It's the last time I get my information from the Iraqi Post. Yeah, well, they're usually pretty accurate. I don't know what happened. What's the best? It seems to me, I don't know that much about cane but

is it german shepherds primarily that's what it looks like to me or what's the best breed is for this type of work there's you know there's three three breeds there's german shepherds there's belgian malinois and dutch shepherds um i would say that a hundred years ago it was all basically the same breed and it was just a paint job and i would i would say that still for malinois and dutch shepherds that's still largely the case uh and even a good working german shepherd uh you know the traits are what they are you know breed is a good overall generic starting point but the the actual genetic traits that make up a good working dog if you have all of them that you

need for them to kind of pass selection at that point whether it's a shepherd a malinois a duck shepherd whatever it doesn't really matter because it's all basically the same same dog i mean it's really no different than saying you know with the nfl combine it's like you know if you know whoever the top five running backs are like it doesn't matter what what race they are you know i mean like it's it's whoever you know has all of the skills and tools to do do what they're doing so um you know that's really the best way to look at it if you're doing it right i mean there are certainly uh trainers and and departments or entities that that have a preference that will only buy german shepherds or that will only buy dutch shepherds or whatever i think it's a very narrow way of thinking uh to me i don't give a shit what the breed is i mean even if it

was a completely off breed not that i come across those uh really ever but if i came across a fucking 65 pound golden doodle that had all of the skills to do the work like i i would take it uh you know if it has has everything it needs to do the job, I'll absolutely take it. You know, they're hard enough to find as it is. I think kind of keyholing yourself into, you know, relegating to one specific breed, I just think is a mistake. Is there anything you want to plug, Mike? I got a couple more questions for you. But as far as your company, and I know, you know, people are very interested in that.

Yeah, so about two years ago next month, we launched our own food, treats, and supplements. It's under the Team Dog brand also. We're available on Chewy and Amazon as well as Mike Ritland Co. If you just Google my name, my website will come up. You can order it from there or, like I said, Chewy or Amazon. But that's really been kind of the big push for me is that and then the online training, which is teamdog.pet, the Warrior Dog Foundation, warriordogfoundation.org to help support. We always have a full kennel of 30 dogs and usually an extra one or two that, you know, that we're rehabbing or quarantining for some reason or what have you. But, you know, that's been a passion of mine that's been going on for over a decade now.

We've saved over 300 dogs. Um, you know, and these are all dogs that would have been put to sleep otherwise that have, you know, served their country and, and, uh, you know, are, are now kind of where they're at. So, uh, those, those are the main things that I have going on. I have my own podcast called the mic drop podcast available on, uh, uh, iTunes and, uh, and a YouTube channel as well. Uh, just, just under my name. But that's it. One more final thing I wanted before I let you go. And this is when I, boy, you made me laugh my ass off.

I was watching Jesse Waters that night. Oh, yeah. I never hear the end of this. I know, but God, I laughed so goddamn hard and said, I looked you up right after. I said, I like this guy. He was on, if you guys didn't see, he was on Jesse Waters and at the, you were about to exit, I guess.

And you threw in Jeff, what did you say? Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, I just, I threw it in at the end of what I was talking about. He had me on there because it was because it was on the tail end of, I want to say it was the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi raid where the ISIS leader was killed and a high level special operations dog was used on the raid and was injured and what have you, but was a big part of why he ended up blowing himself up and then whatever, because the dog was at full tilt headed towards him. he ended up blowing himself up and then whatever because the dog was at full tilt headed towards him and so i did a round of interviews just kind of talking about the one oh you know the 101 if

you will of the basics of uh special operations working dogs and and unfortunately you know stories like that they kind of glamorize romanticize and highlight the breed and the reality of it is a really good strong working dog makes a terrible house pet usually you know you can find the unicorns and that's you know the ones that i sell for personal protection to high net worth or to business folks or what have you are kind of those anomalies that that have the best of everything but but generally speaking you know a high level police or military working dog is not a good house pet and a lot of times people see these stories and they're like oh let me buy a malinois puppy out of the paper or whatever and and it just ends up being a fucking nightmare so it was kind of a at the tail end of the interview i was just trying to do kind of a

public service announcement of saying like hey i know they look cool and you see them doing all this fancy john wick shit don't go out and buy a puppy and wind up you know eight months later getting you know your kids bit and thrown in the pound and whatever, uh, that, and, and, uh, Epstein didn't kill himself. You know, I just threw it in at the, at the end of it like that. And, and it caught him, you know, off guard. I was surprised. I mean, we, we didn't do it live. Uh, you know, so the fact that they kept it in there was pretty cool, but. I was thinking the same thing. I'm like,

that's something they could have snipped very easy. Uh, and I'm glad they didn't props to fox on that one uh yeah i just like that type of uh that type of uh honesty and have you been back on the show since i haven't i haven't been invited anywhere since not surprisingly but yeah but that's all right because uh you know that stuff's usually it's usually such surface level anyway. Yes. Uh, you know, it's, it's kind of not even worth doing. I mean, you don't have enough time to get into, into doing any, any real discussion of anything. So exactly right. Whatever. That's why it works so conveniently well for them, uh,

and all those networks to pit us, you know, put that message out there real quick before you can think about, look over here, Look over here. Mike, I can't thank you enough, man, for your service and for coming on the show today. And hopefully we can do it again sometime. My pleasure. Thank you for having me, and keep up the good work. Thanks, Mike.

That's it, ladies and gentlemen. I want to thank my guest, Mike Ritland. Man, that's a guy's guy. You don't mess with guys like that. And he's smart on top of it. And I want to thank you guys for tuning in once again. You guys think that I'll say it? You're very welcome. We'll see you back here soon.

Take care. Hi. Good night, everybody. Good night, everybody. guitar solo Bye.