The Sevan Podcast - #689 - Paul Alkoby

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

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Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws, in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. Great. Glad we could finally make this happen. Yeah, for sure. Bam, we're live. Good morning, everybody. Caleb, what's up, dude? Good morning. Caleb, Paul. Paul, Caleb. Morning, Caleb Caleb how you doing good to finally meet um

Paul Alcobee that is correct did I say it right you did you're one of the rare people who say it right well I cheated I cheated

I cheated I did I dug around and I heard on another podcast you were like man I've heard my name in every way and when your name is Se I've heard my name in every way. And when your name is Sevan, you've heard it in every way too.

Yeah, I'm sure. Al-Khobi. What kind of name is that? It's Moroccan. Oh, wow. Yeah. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that. Are both your parents Moroccan?

My dad is. Oh, shit. Is he a first generation in the United States? Yep. Wow. Have you been to Morocco? Not yet. I was supposed to go 2014 when I was stationed overseas and there was an incident and couldn't go.

Oh, that's not exactly the kind of trip. I heard it's amazing. I heard it is absolutely amazing. I heard it's a great place. That's what I've heard. Yeah. Yes. I've heard there in portugal are fantastic actually a weird uh segue so portugal actually because of the spanish

inquisition is giving jews jews that can prove their sephardic uh portuguese passports so i'm actually in the application process for that so oh that's the best kind of reparations i ever heard that's enough that's yeah perfect plenty yeah i love that and hey and who better to recruit than some jews recruit some jews and some japanese and fuck your economy's up and running there it is no time well seve that's racist i know i can't help it it just is it is that way you bring in the juice it was funny i had this guy on yesterday and um on the show who lived in a um in a in it or he grew up in a projects in bronx right and the projects he was describing the

project is 320 story but it was 14 buildings in totality in the bronx it was like castle hill or something a bad place and it was uh it was 14 buildings in totality in the Bronx. It was like Castle Hill or something, bad place. And it was, uh, it was 14 buildings and three of them, I think were 20 story buildings. And then the other 11 were smaller buildings. And I said, Hey, do you know why, do you know the history of those? And as we started digging in the history, he, at first he was going to go down some sort of theory that they were built to basically experiment on blacks, put blacks in like this really tough situation, experiment on them. And that way you could bring them guns and drugs and just purposely fuck with them. He was going to kind of go down that. But quickly we realized, no, these buildings were built in New York to house Jews coming basically through ellis island basically basically leaving europe

and we all know what happened to those jews i think it was in one of um i forget the guy's name who's that little tiny black dude who writes all those pop psychology books they're really cool he's a runner um skinny someone will say it in the comments. He's tiny. He's like five foot two, super thin. He wrote Outliers. He's the guy who popularized, he didn't create it. Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell. Thank you, Caleb. Okay. In one of Gladwell's books, he describes how basically the Jews came here, poor as shit,

and the only profession that they had when they came from Europe was seamstress, basically clothing, the garment industry. And at that time in the United States, the garment industry was exploding because they found there was some sort of way where they could manufacture cloth faster. Not clothing. I'm not going to say it right, but cloth faster. And so Jews started opening up fucking shitloads of cleaning services, seamstress services, clothing stores, and that was the boom of that industry in the United States. And then those Jews took all that money and made their kids doctors and lawyers and sent them to school. Now everyone hates us apparently. No, they don't. That's just the hype no it's absolutely crazy jewish parents quit quit telling your kids that no one gives a shit that you're jewish could be in so narcissistic there's uh i've had a lot of conversations recently with folks um you know just because i i grew up in this more traditional household and, uh, I'm not practicing, uh, you know, I mean, I, to be honest, didn't even want to bar mitzvah,

but, uh, you know, my parents hate that, but I I've had these conversations with people that just have never, uh, especially being in the military. And, and at one point I lived in Eastern New Mexico and I've met people in my life that have never met a Jew before. in Eastern New Mexico. And I've met people in my life that have never met a Jew before. Yeah. And they had this idea of what like a Jewish person was and, uh, what they aren't. And I'm like, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm Jewish. They're like, we thought you were Italian or Greek or something. And I'm like, I see it. I see it. I see it. I see it. I see the Italian Greek guy in you. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, my mom grew up in South Philly.

So I guess by proxy, I'm slightly Italian. We do, we do, my wife's Jewish. We do the menorah. We light the candles. We let the kids know about the holidays. But to say we're practicing, it's funny. We were invited to the temple in town and they had a vaccine and mask policy so that definitely wasn't going to fly and then recently about a week ago um a lady said who

who uh goes to my her kids go to my kids tennis um clinic invited us again to the temple and i said hey do they require masks there and she she said, this is fucking last week. And she said, yes. And I said, sorry, these Jews don't. These Jews aren't ever going to wear masks. These are non-mask wearing. Crazy. Yeah.

Masks. Living in wild times. Yeah, I don't. That stuff is still wild to me. I was at the VA a few weeks ago and I mean, their whole policy is still back to federal government obviously. And, uh, there's still occasionally places I'll go being on the East coast right now. And, uh, I usually, I'm just kind of like, really, it's two years, uh, and all the data's there, but okay. it's two years uh and all the data is there but okay i went into whole foods now twice in the last week in santa cruz and i hadn't and i i used to love going there with my kids but i haven't been

since and you know in two and a half years since they started enforcing all those rules and half the people in there are wearing masks it is fucking bizarre they're all old people too by old i mean my age and older i'll see people uh masking their kids up because of RSV and stuff. I actually had, so I was a medic and I worked on a pediatric ward for two years and I've had RSV patients in the past, stuff like that. And it's very interesting to me how we're kind of going from pandemic to pandemic to pandemic now, according to the media and, you know, just a lot of those aspects out there right now. You will guaranteed 100% damage your child

by putting a mask on them. And you will also damage your child from having them around people with masks. Every single study that's been done on them i've looked at 12 studies it's 100 conclusive there's no fucking way around it quit fucking telling yourself i heard a really sad story the other day a guy told me that he got an exemption for his kid to wear a mask during the pandemic but everyone else in the school wears masks and now the kid has a speech impediment because it's something like more than 50 of a kid learning words is lip reading so now the kid has fucking speech and because when a kid doesn't

understand a word he automatically just goes straight to the lips and i'm just like holy shit yes yes you never quarantine this the healthy thank you you never ever quarantine the healthy it's on the cdc website you never quarantine the healthy people ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And and scientists know that you never deploy a vaccine in the middle of a pandemic. This is the first time in world history that that's ever been done. None of the other vaccines, not polio, not measles, never deployed during the pandemic, never deployed during the crisis and why is that because those people don't offer herd immunity what are you talking about savon just go back and look a couple years ago when they had the measles outbreak at disneyland do a little research dig around la times most liberal fucking newspaper you can get they they talk about how uh half those kids who got the fucking measles at disneyland were vaccinated well that's weird that's really weird it's fucking all my friends whose kids got the chicken box vaccine all got the chicken pox

that can't be good that's fucking weird we live in weird times we live in um i saw i just saw today this morning that um uh the country of ireland is now suggesting that all pe classes stop the bleep test are you familiar with the bleep test the beep test yeah beep yeah oh beep or bleep beep i know the article said it's like the beep test or the fitness gram pacer test this is this is the test where all the kids line up like there's a 10-yard course or a 7-yard course, and all the kids have their hand on the fence, and you have eight seconds to cross 10 yards, and you do that for a minute. And then after a minute, you only have seven seconds, and then after another minute, you only have six seconds, and it's basically last man standing, right? You have to run back and forth in the amount of allotted time, and the time gets shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. And they're now suggesting that that's bad for kids mentally because some kid has to lose.

Like, go fuck yourself. I used to win that every time. You did? Yeah, every time. Just added, Caleb. He was the only one in the class, though. He forgot to mention that. Hey, I had to do the presidential fitness exam with

the girls i didn't have to they had me do it because i just couldn't do any of the shit the boys could do i think they should just you know incorporate the secret service snatch test for for all grades what's that go what's that uh it's max snatches in, was it like five or seven minutes? I think. Yeah. It's with a kettlebell though. Yeah. Kettlebell snatches.

It's like, is that a CrossFit workout? I think it became one. Yeah, probably. Secret service max. Why do they call it that? I think just because the secret service does it. Oh, it's awesome. Wow. I like it paul i don't know what happened in afghanistan at all i um someone recently told me that it was a massive blunder because that base is so close to uh tactically or strategically

because it's so close to china it was our our closest, one of our closest bases to China. So that was a huge fuck up to vacate that. But other than that, I just remember seeing on the news, my only is seeing those giant airplanes covered with people, which was just fucking weird. And basically I just saw the headlines that basically we left there in the wrong sequence. And because of that, it caused mad chaos. Can you kind of give me the backstory on why we left, what we were doing there in the first place?

Can you give me the history? And what's the name of it? It's the airport in Kabul, right? Yeah, so it was Hamid Karzai International Airport. HKIA is probably how I'll refer to it. Hamid Karzai, and he was the leader of uh afghanistan uh he was the president uh previously yeah okay okay go ahead action yeah so obviously we were uh in afghanistan post 9-11 uh multiple troop surges were there for 20 years. And I mean, this had been talked about for years. And Trump initially had started the kind of like retrograde of, you know, in the withdrawal of getting everyone out. the UAE with the Taliban, stuff like that, where discussions were happening, right? And I think there's this idea amongst the mainstream media still that somehow the Afghans were fit

to defend themselves post-withdrawal, which if you talk to any service member or anyone that had worked in the region, that's just not the truth. Personally, I actually – We couldn't even defend our own Capitol building on January 6th from a bunch of dudes dressed in Halloween costume with no guns and no fire. And they expected those people to protect their airport? They were heavily reliant on U.S. US forces, and especially by this point, special operations, primarily, because of the withdrawal that had taken place. So July 6, 2021, the US withdrew from Bagram Airfield. So, you know, that was kind of our last base in the region, essentially. And after that, the Taliban kind of just rolled through Afghanistan. They took Kandahar, I think, August 5th or August 6th, I believe. And then, you know, August 15th or 16th was when they actually took Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. And what's wrong with the Taliban? They're basically – it's a dictatorship. What's their deal?

Why are they such bad guys? I mean besides the fact that they bombed our buildings. Well, I mean the Taliban didn't directly. They were, however, supportive of al-Qaeda, the entity that did. Right. So they carried out those attacks. And the Taliban essentially was looked at as the governing body of Afghanistan at the time, which, I mean, they were harboring terrorists, according to the U.S. government and, you know, NATO in general. So we ended up there. Uh, and they're

the people, they do bad shit. Like if your wife cheats on you, they kill her. They have some, they got some weird rules around boys going to school. They don't believe in women going to school. They don't, they don't believe in women really doing anything. Um, you know, uh, I'll talk about one of the stories, but, um, and she actually reached out to me yesterday, but an Afghan woman, uh, we evacuated, uh, she had been kidnapped and tortured by the Taliban for weeks, uh, before we were able, she was able to escape and we were able to, um, work on an exfil plan for her and get her out of the country. And why was she tortured? Not that there's ever an excuse okay so she was a professor and women aren't supposed to be educated she was probably teaching other women and so she had to be punished yeah and what does torture look like what does torture

look like um so uh this i put this out a little bit and I don't really reveal any, uh, personal information about her, but, uh, she was raped. Uh, she was, you know, tied up. Uh, and I mean, I'm talking, you know, uh, there were multiple people involved in all of this. Obviously the Taliban is a pretty savage organization, uh, no matter how they want to paint it now. Um, you know, all this same stuff that they said wouldn't happen is starting again there. But, uh, she, she was, you know, all this same stuff that they said wouldn't happen is starting again there. But, uh, she, she was, you know, brutally tortured for weeks on end, uh, beat, you know, starved, just locked in a room essentially. Um, and I mean, she suffers the effects of it now, you know, severe PTSD, depression, anxiety, uh, everything that comes with that.

Uh, but she's a fighter and she survived. And I mean, there's, I've had multiple encounters of dealing with women that were in the same situation as her. I did help a family where a professor was kind of, she was much luckier in this regard, because she realized that her students actually dimed her out uh so she was basically just dimed out uh by her own students that she had been teaching and she figured it out i i guess a student had kind of given her a heads up and she was able to go into hiding and they got out uh probably about four months ago and they they made it made it to Europe. So all the, when you say tortured, all the worst shit you could ever think of.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's the, it's, it's pretty barbaric, the stuff that would happen over there. And even during everything going on, I mean, I actually, I planned on bringing this up. There was a, he had just recently separated from the Marine Corps. His name is Mike Wahlberger. He had put out a video during the withdrawal of his units kind of experience there. And the stuff that you see happening in the crowds, you'll actually see the Taliban in the crowds beating people with rifles, beating people with sticks, you you know all kinds of just inhumane things that were going on there uh and i mean i'm talking like you know the

butt of a rifle to someone's head um so there's a lot that that was at play there okay so so so so there were people there were people there that were weren't – that the only thing stopping them from having these horrific things happen to them, starvation, rape, stuff that if someone did to our mom or sister, we would go kill them. Pretty much, yeah. Our daughters. And that was happening to them, and the only thing stopping that from happening, at least openly, was the fact that there was U.S. presence there. Yes, U.S. and NATO, for sure. And is NATO still there? No. So did they leave at the same time the U.S. left or before?

NATO, yeah, pretty much. Everyone kind of bounced at the same time. And whose decision was it to leave and why did we leave? at the same time. And whose decision was it to leave and why did we leave? So, I mean, it was the decision started during the Trump administration. I mean, it was I would say the American public was kind of fed up, to be honest. We were kind of done. And I mean, rightfully so. I, you know, I've lost friends in Afghanistan. I worked on, you know, wounded patients out of Afghanistan, stuff like that. And I, you know, can wholeheartedly say that I think people were just sick of seeing, you know, fellow Americans and I mean, NATO allies coming home in body bags, you know, for 20 years. So especially when the mission wasn't really clear anymore. And so and then how many and then so the current administration is the one that pulled the final troops out?

Yes. So what ended up happening was they sent, I believe it was 6,000 total soldiers, airmen, Marines, sailors all in to do the final withdrawal and actually help evacuate uh allies how many 6 000 i believe it was 6 000 and and how many were there before those how many you send in 6 000 people to evacuate how many people uh the total estimates um i want to say i this is just what i recall seeing were i believe 35 000 total allies that got out and does that include afghanis oh yeah that's afghans uh american citizens stuff like that i saw i saw i saw 90 000 somewhere that could be more accurate um more specifically i mean that could definitely be more accurate. Okay.

I just saw it. I don't want to say what I'm saying is total accuracy. Um, there, I have a lot of numbers going on in my head with this, but yeah, in my country, also girls and women are deprived of many things.

Sex inequality is big. Sorry. I had to edit, uh, for the correct usage of the word. Sex inequality is big. Only small minority of real men know how to treat and respect women. I'm curious what country that is.

I mean for starters, you don't even have to respect them. Just don't disrespect them. Yeah, don't torture them. Yeah, I'm not asking you to respect anyone. Just don't disrespect people. And that's the thing, right rights uh and thank you normal for that i appreciate you uh sharing that by the way sorry go ahead you know the the the lack of human rights there uh is is the biggest issue right and uh these people were essentially made this promise by the u.s government and our allies that we were gonna uh give them democracy, give them education, give them all this stuff. And then essentially we held their hands in terms of how we did things.

And I mean, this is reported on multiple levels now where the military was kind of, individuals in the military, leadership in the military was kind of misreporting what was going on on the ground and there were a you know a few afghan units uh in the special operations realm that could hold their own and stuff like that but the overwhelming majority could not and that's what we saw is that the the the majority of the afghan units just kind of dropped their weapons and were like cool bye we're out uh and just kind of gave their weapons and were like, cool, bye, we're out, and just kind of gave up. And this is prior to, you're talking about prior to the evacuation? Yeah, prior, and that's when all the, you know, like Kandahar fell, all the other provinces fell, leading up to when the Taliban basically rolled into Kabul, like, what's up? We're here.

I'm going to jump ahead real quick and then we'll go back. What happens to our Afghani? Like you hear about how successful Nigerians are who come to this country as a whole, as a demographic. How do Afghanis do once they come here? So the Afghans that have come here are, you know, it's kind of mixed, right? So I'll go off of what I know and the direct interactions I've had. So the first individual I brought over here with the help of his former interpreter, Corey Mazza, amazing guy. He was a Harvard grad, was in the Marine Corps, and Zabi was actually his interpreter. So we got Zabi out. He was a pretty,

I can get into the backstory of that for sure. It was a pretty crazy situation. So we get him out, he gets over here. There were some problems getting him here, whatnot, but he transitioned into a, you know, a decent job. He works in retail somewhere and he's just doing his thing and he's he's able to transition because he already had an education he already you know spoke the language already had this kind of base uh of knowledge there are other afghans that came here and this is directly, you know, from Zabi and when he was

actually in one of the, the, uh, refugee camps that were, I mean, a lot of these folks are from the mountains. Um, there were individuals that were brought here that really had no ties to the U S as well. Uh, so they're a cousin of a cousin who had a friend that was in the afghan army and they basically let them slide and get into h kaya and get on a plane and come here uh so zabi would see these individuals in these refugee camps literally just taking a shit on the floor because they'd never used a bathroom right so you have this this vast difference difference where you had individuals in the major cities who were living a somewhat westernized life for years, and then you have these people that had never even seen a toilet before. Right. So you can kind of get everything in between as well.

And have they found a city like there's a city in Maine, which is bizarre to me, which is like the largest congregation of Brazilians. Is there a city in Detroit and Cleveland were huge for like Armenians and Los Angeles was huge for Armenians. You know, Pakistanis and Indians have come to the Bay Area. Is there a city where the Afghanis are going? Are they Afghanis or Afghans? Afghans. Afghani is the currency. Oh, okay.

All right. All right. Nothing but a dollar to me. Okay. The Afghans. Where do the Afghans go? Do they have a city where they're all, they're, they're huddling up? They're spread out, but there were, there were a good amount that actually, I do know there's a a there was a good influx into virginia uh various

cities in virginia well they still shit on the floor there so that they that's good that's a good training ground for them um yeah i mean there's yeah virginia interesting state but uh no there's definitely there's definitely a an influx there. Uh, you know, and I know a few cities in the Midwest, uh, one of, one of our, uh, really, really crazy stories. He's, uh, he's up in, uh, the, the new England region. Uh, and that guy's story, uh, we jokingly, uh, during his, his whole deal, I gave him the nickname gan wick afghan wick

because uh while we were getting him out he ended up actually having to uh smoke a few taliban that had basically a hit squad showed up to to get him and his family on his way out of the house i heard that i heard that story on one of your other podcasts. Crazy. We'll get to those. Yeah. Okay. So there is a decision to do a final withdrawal from the current administration. Was that a public announcement? What happened? What went wrong? I mean, is it fair to say something went wrong? But when, I mean, is it fair to say something went wrong? Yes.

They basically announced they were going to pull out as fast as possible. They set a date to get to, which was the deadline, and started the withdrawal process. Within that, what wasn't really considered was how many people were going to show up in Kabul and try to get into the gates at the airport because people weren't being evacuated. VIPs were getting out of the country. That, that was, I mean, you know, a given, right? Like there were a lot of VIPs that were able to get out kind of in the early days. And, you know, they were just. Ambassadors, people with money, people who got pregnant from the general's son shit like that

pretty much yeah and then uh once once that kind of uh once and how would they get out a military plane would land or and they would all load onto it or it would be commercial jets uh from to my to my knowledge it was primarily uh military evacuations at that time and then they would get there were still commercial flights to be clear i don't know the the number of commercial flights but there were and then they would get visas um from the u.s government to make it legal when they landed in the u.s so that they would be here and they could they could land and not be deported uh under refugee status asylum status stuff like that yeah did we send anyone back i don't know actually that's a really good question um i've wondered that because i had

people in camps uh they were in the refugee camps and they would tell me that uh especially like the guys from the panjshir region stuff like that they're like hey you know there's taliban here and uh they i mean at one point these guys, Hey, you know, there's Taliban here. And, uh, they, I mean, at one point these guys wanted to basically, you know, kill these dudes that they suspected of being Taliban because they're like, they're here. Like these are fucking Taliban. And I had to be like, Hey, you know, go find a, uh, NCO or an officer and tell them, uh, do not like, do not do this because you will end up screwed over. Why, why not? Um, sorry. i'm just depending on you as the all

knowing why not run to uh turkmenistan tajikistan uh pakistan um uh or iran why not a lot of people did okay yeah uzbekistan these are all bordering countries of afghanistan by the way yeah yep and and people did uh and the other side of it too uh like especially with like tajikistan uzbekistan all that stuff uh the terrain there is is insane um i mean we're talking you know insane mountain ranges that uh like hundreds of thousands of miles of just mountains, uh, and moving, traversing that on foot is, is heavy. And a lot of people did make it out. Like, uh, there are stories of people kind of traversing that, uh, even into the dead of winter. Uh, you know, there were, I think it was like, uh, 80 refugees that were found, uh, and they were like barefoot in the dead of winter, uh, just trying to get into Iran.

Wow. I did, I did yesterday try to map routes out of there using Google maps and everywhere I chose for them, it says no route available. And then I, and then I started looking for road. There's definitely no routes. Yeah. And I was looking for road networks and shit, 7-Elevens and nothing. Yeah, definitely no 7-Elevens.

Nope. They had McDonald's before. I don't think they're there anymore though. Okay, so then – so this is where the story gets really, really bizarre. Then – so this is where the story gets really, really bizarre. This is one of the most fascinating stories ever because there's an element to it that you can't even believe is happening. I'm trying to think of an analogy for it or a parallel to it that's happened somewhere it's kind of like i don't think a lot of people realize this but when apple released um final cut pro in the early 2000s all of a sudden

what took millions of dollars to do because before if you wanted to edit video took millions of dollars you needed to get equipment that cost millions of dollars and now all of a sudden overnight you could plug a laptop into overnight literally people you could plug a laptop into – overnight, literally, people. You could plug a laptop into a cigarette lighter and start editing with this software. And then you could start making your own movies, TV shows, news stories, whatever. who did the job of i don't know whose job it is but i let's say just for lack of a better term that these people did the job of the fucking u.s military and of the u.s government you would have to think that the the ability to organize and move people that there's no greater organization in the world than the u.s military you have i think it's – I mean, I'm thinking maybe it could be some sort of cruise ships might have some ability to do something crazy like that, some cruise ship company. But I can't compare to what the U.S. military can do.

They can move people with aircraft carriers, with planes, with vehicles they can protect them and yet a bunch of dudes just sitting around on their computers in the united states using whatsapp technology and guys on the ground and iphones and androids organized evacuating people and saving their lives and these people weren't i mean you weren't paid for this right no no i was on uh i had a corporate job at the time i was doing video for a company in florida and i was on paid time off just did the u.s government ever offer you money after the fact where they were like hey here's five hundred thousand dollars for your service no we were uh recognized in a a bunch of the organizations involved were recognized by Senate. Fuck you. I don't know what that means.

Doesn't mean shit. I cannot believe they didn't retroactively pay you. I cannot believe they didn't pay you. I mean, none of us did it, obviously, for money. We just kind of did it because we saw a need to help people survive. And it affected a lot of people close to us or people directly. So everyone got involved. And I mean, I have no regrets on it at all.

I think my only regrets are the people I couldn't help in anything. But no regrets on time or anything. Are you going to write a book? I've definitely, I've been writing. Uh, I don't, I don't know if it's going to turn into a book, but, uh, I, I've definitely been writing a lot. And, uh, I recently, I thought I had lost, uh, all my transcripts of everything because I had changed my, my phone and my laptop out and, uh, signal it kind of once, once you, since signals encrypted, uh uh once you change over if you don't basically archive everything it'll disappear and i screwed up and lost everything on

my phone so now i have all those transcripts fortunately so i found a way to get them back yeah yeah so okay so i want to go back to this moment. So basically what happened is we're going to pull out, and the people who were panicking for their lives because of their affiliation with the new regime and the US way of life, not raping and torturing women, flooded the airport. And you spent four years in the US militarys military as a medic air force medic yes okay and and how long it had been since you'd been out uh well i got out in 2016 and i was a military contractor for three and a half years after that that's that by the way that sounds like that could be its own show uh some aspects were aspects were fun. Um, for the most part, I, I was an instructor, um, one side of things, and then, uh, worked in some other stuff after that. Uh, but you saw, but you saw crazy shit. You saw, you saw the, you speak of the contract world. I think your word was, is murky.

There, there are murky contracts for sure. side of it uh definitely wasn't i got to actually support some some very legitimate stuff and when it was very fortunate to have had that opportunity okay so so you're out of the contract space you have a corp you had a corporate job can you tell us what your corporate job was yeah so i was i was doing a full-time video for a firearms company. Okay, cool. Yeah. Like out of Florida. Yep. Okay.

Meaning part of their marketing team, part of their team to let people know that, hey, these bullets exist, these guns exist. Okay. Yeah, these guns are decent in quality. I say that very skeptically now. I say that very skeptically now. And so then when you – tell me about how you get involved in the evacuation. No detail is too small from the earliest. Like you're sitting around.

You have your feet up. You have your arm around your girlfriend, your dog. You just vomited on the carpet, and you're like, shit, should I clean it up? And you look over at your phone and – on the carpet and you're like, shit, should I clean it up? And you look over at your phone and. Yeah. So I'd been watching everything kind of, uh, unfold on some of the like open source news, Instagrams and some other pages on Instagram. Uh, and I started kind of getting concerned. Uh, I was definitely just watching things and, uh, my really deployed over there. Sorry. As a medic where you deployed. No, I? No, I was never in Afghanistan. Yeah, never. And I was actually just very disgruntled at my job. I was like, let me use my paid time off for this. So my really good buddy, Chris, hit me up and he had told me his good friend, JT, his interpreter's wife was still stuck there and she needed help getting out.

So that kind of pulled me in the door because Chris, Chris knows me very well. And Chris knows like once, once it's like, it's for the cause it's for the cause. And I jumped on board and started kind of helping to get them out. And i started you know even where to start like if someone were to tell me hey a friend of mine stuck in afghanistan what should i do i'd be like get a fucking map and start walking uh i kind of just reached out to my network um the first person i reached out to was actually on a uh like a psd like protective protective detail for a high ranking general. And I knew he had just been in the country. I knew he still might be in the country. So I shot him a text. I'm like, Hey, man, do you happen to know anyone that might be able to help me? And he got me in touch with a guy who

was still at the airport. He was he's you know a conventional army dude he's not like special operations just you know he's just a regular just some kid from georgia who wanted to get away from his stepdad who was beating him and and join the military probably maybe yeah yeah um and now he's working the airport in kabul with a gun over his shoulder, hanging out with his buddies. Dude's an absolute stud. He ended up being an absolute game changer for us throughout the entire operation. Like he, this, this dude put his life on the line so many times. And I, you know, I, I would, if it came down to it and I could get this kid the recognition he deserves, I would 100% do it.

So spoke to him, spoke to a few other assets that I thought might be going into the region and kind of got stuff in motion. The problem ended up being that the people she was with, I literally had them 30 feet away from the gate to get pulled in. with. I literally had them 30 feet away from the gate to get pulled in. And the guy got spooked and basically took everyone and ran away. So we couldn't get her in. Okay. Let me paint this picture again. Someone calls you and says, Hey, Paul, uh, uh, your buddy, your buddy, Chris calls you and says, Hey, Paul, my buddy, JT, who had an interpreter in Afghanistan has a wife who's stuck there. Can you get her out? You said, let me see.

So you called a dude who does protective service for a high-ranking general there who happened to be inside the airport. So then what do you do? They had left. What? So they had left. They evacuated the country at that point who had because you know the the general oh the general had but left his duty yeah no no he went with them they all they all bounced another friend of that friend oh so another friend of that friend

okay his friend happened to be there and so you get that dude's phone number and you're like hey dude i know this is fucking batshit crazy but I'm gonna send you a picture of this fucking chick when she walks up to the gate can you open the door that's basically what was happening this is fucking nuts this is fucking nuts and meanwhile he's got to pick her out like it's fucking

like it's fucking Walmart and fucking Virginia on Black Friday it's like fucking everyone's descending to get their PS3 and you're like yo you how do you even open the gate and just let one in you don't it's like the videos i mean the videos kind of show it pretty accurately and i mean this at this point uh it was still pretty like stuff was getting chaotic. Right. So you had all these people just converging. Yeah. So that, that's a perfect, so that's Abbey gate. Um, that's actually the same gate where the IED went off and, uh,

that's pretty much what was happening was these people would be getting pulled over the wall and that's a sewage ditch covered, you know, so you got razor wire there. That's poop. That's poop. That's poop in there. Oh yeah. Yeah. From the airport airport like you take a piss and shit people yeah no like people i mean a lot of people were just there right so there you have these like thousands and thousands of people no porta potties no porta potties um not up to code that evac wasn't up to code what do you mean pull people over the gate? I see razor wire. Yeah, there's another photo.

There's not even a gate to open there. So these dudes, these are the PJs that, and I'd love to get more into this, but these are Air Force PJs. So they're a special operations component of the air force uh guy in the center is a crow so he's an officer the other two are pjs uh they were and many other you know marines corpsmen uh soldiers were all pulling people up and basically vetting these people before they could get in um so that's could you've gotten in trouble for this paul could you've like were you for this paul could you like

were you ever concerned that the fbi would or cia would show up to your house and be like hey asshole you're interfering in uh international shit so i i was definitely concerned about that uh there were points where i was like okay there are lines that i cannot cross here there are things that i could not do um you were basically using the u.s military for your own personal benefit i mean i'm using fucking like something like some asshole lawyer would say to you who are you to save people's lives over there well so what we ended up doing uh my my philosophy on this and the team i was working with so i'd been in these signal chats and been dealing with primarily I would deal with Americans on Signal because Afghans use WhatsApp, which is a beautiful Andrew Scholl's reference because third world nations use WhatsApp.

But so what we would end up doing is. Third world nations and Australia, by the way. So go figure. You figure that out. I mean, Australia almost became a third world nation. It is. Yes.

But pretty much what we would do, we would intake any of these allies or American citizens information. And we would then work on vetting that information, make sure that the people that were going were the right people, make sure they had the correct documentation. And then we would use some type of call sign

that the individuals on the ground could then reference to get these people in. Essentially trying to make it as safe as possible because these people were already there. We weren't doing anything of like, I would say utilizing the government for personal gain or anything like that. These people were already going to the airport. We were just trying to make sure it was as safe as possible. Names. So the guy you would be trying to get into the airport, Ahmed. Ahmed Muhammad Ali. He would he would you would tell him, hey, it's you're going to do two middle fingers and then touch them together. And then they're going to call you over and then you hand them this paper and that's how they're going to know it's you. Similar. Yeah. Or we would have them hold. There's I don't know if I posted a photo of it, but we would have them actually hold up a. Yeah. Stuff like that. Oh, I like that. Yeah. That's actually a pararescue call sign. call sign. And I just want to continuously say this, the pararescue and the rescue community that were on the ground at HKIA are still severely under-recognized for what they did during these efforts. And flyers, a ton of airmen, 51 in total were just awarded

distinguished flying crosses for their efforts. the guys that were actually on the ground pretty much received no recognition whatsoever so i just want to really put a ton of respect out to those guys um how many american soldiers were inside those gates uh to my knowledge a little over 6 000 i wonder if were, and how many people were outside the gates? Were there estimates on the crowd outside? Impossible to even know. I do know that someone that was working with my team, uh, they did work for a defense contractor that they were able to kind of have better estimates and see what was going on. And it was, I mean, a sea of people, like if you have any of the over, if you can find any of the overhead imagery from during that, it was a sea of people. Did you guys get in any trouble? Hundreds of thousands of people.

Did you guys get in any trouble for using the name Pedro, that it was considered racist? Like, it was some sort of Mexican reference. So that's actually a pararescue call sign. Oh, Jolly Pedro. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So Pedro is, you you know the rescue crews and then uh

like yeah so they uh i think vietnam they called them jolly green feet uh because they use a group the power rescue and rescue communities green feet um as their their symbol essentially so so that guy would hold the sign and then they would some so they wouldn't open a gate because that would be too crazy they would just start pulling people over through some sort of gap in the razor wire the u.s soldiers would cut a gap in the razor wire and god they must have been terrified because if for some reason someone showed up with a jackhammer or something and drilled that wall down or ran a truck into it you you would have a situation where yeah uh and that was a fear right like they they knew there were active threats um and we ran into some encounters that

we were uh definitely worried of of other attacks um specifically uh when we were trying to evacuate laura bush's school children um that was a real thing uh tell me that story what are laura bush's school children these are these are people laura bush um sponsored afghans yes yeah so uh i laura bush has a program for school children um an individual named rob so sorry so this is why it's so bizarre dude everyone who's listening this is the former fucking first lady and instead of fucking using the u.s military to fucking land fucking a chinook and fucking send in special forces to get her kids out they got a dude who wants a fucking break from his corporate job and is on his fucking ps3 just saving people this it's so bizarre to me my underwear yeah

seriously you were huh you were in your living room's so bizarre to me my underwear yeah seriously you were huh you were in your living room in your underwear literally in my underwear i didn't just look like the coffee maker on full blast yeah i ran out of food at one point i forgot to eat uh ran out of food it was it was i i yeah yeah it was pretty hectic um but yeah so this whole you have a girlfriend at the time i didn't know thank you yeah she'd have been pissed okay she should have been real pissed but uh my imaginary girlfriend was pissed we'll go with that all right all right okay so laura bush laura bush did laura bush thing how did that happen well laura bush didn't contact me directly i don't know if she contacted anyone directly, to be honest. So Rob, shout out to Rob.

He is a legend. You know who that is, Caleb? What Rob he's referring to? He does. I think so, yeah. We worked together in a few of the CrossFit events. He helped volunteer for the medical coverage. He's a really nice guy.

Wow. Small world. Speaking of CrossFit, I don't know if you remember this, Sivan. Wow. Small world. Speaking of CrossFit, I don't know if you remember this, Siobhan. 2017 or 2018 East Regional, the guy that gave you coffee. That was me. I don't know if you remember that. I do remember that because I thought that was so fucking nice.

Yeah. I think we were like interviewing Ben Bergeron or Katchen or something. We'd set up like a makeshift interview thing at the top of the stadium in albany right and you would come over with some coffee yeah that was crazy fucking generous of you that name that coffee company was alpha brew yep alpha brew coffee are they still around we're still around it's a little bit of a hiatus at the moment we're trying to restructure some stuff but yeah all right well thank you to alpha brew and and i think maybe i think maybe i i went buying and took advantage of you guys and maybe got like a free coffee. I mean, we would have given you free. We gave you free coffee all weekend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I appreciate me and the whole team. Yeah, that was cool. Yeah, that was a good event. But yeah, no. So pretty much the way this would work.

And this happened with numerous politicians and people that should not have been calling American civilians and asking for help. That would kind of leverage, they would say, oh, my constituents have this request. It's like, well, your constituents don't even know this person. So that's just how it went. But the story basically, from this one was Rob reached out to me. Rob was a former military contractor. He's a firefighter now. He was like, hey, you know, Laura Bush's school children are stuck on a bus. And there are like 60 of them, I believe, stuck on this one or two buses.

And there were a few different gates. And one of them was kind of run by the Afghan, it's called NDS. They were like trained by the CIA. They're kind of like a special operations force. And we had to get them in that gate. We were encountering issues because the only way to get American citizens in at the time was to have an american escort those citizens in there were no americans at this gate uh so we basically had the buses sitting there trying to figure out how to get an american over to the gate but uh the the government american could it be a soldier or had to be a citizen soldier or a contractor

okay well there's 6 000 guys in there why couldn't why couldn't someone just walk over there and be like yo no one could move oh so what ended up happening there were active threats uh and it came down to a point where no one uh basically was able to move because the uh state department i, put down an order that no one could move due to threats, which I understand in that logic. But at the time, it was endangering American lives as well, especially when those operators, you know, soldiers, airmen, Marines, contractors, everyone that was in that facility was ready to move to go help people. That's what they wanted to do. That's what they were there to do. Um,

and there was a total disconnect between like the, basically the organizations on the ground and in DC. Uh, and that's, you know, I, I, that's how it goes, right? That's how, like, this is a real world operation that was happening real time. And they were doing what they thought was protecting people. And to all to my knowledge, it could have. Right. Like it very well could have saved lives. But what ended up happening was this Afghan bus driver, this contracted Afghan bus driver is calling us and saying, hey, a isis spotter looking at us uh we need to leave and we're like how do you know it's isis he's like i've lived here my whole life that's a fucking isis guy and uh he basically just bailed he took these like 60 i think it was like 62 school girls and just dipped bounced out of there um and there were some american citizens on that bus uh

and and this was kind of a frequent thing. So they could have got in anyway since there were American citizens on there. In hindsight, they could have come in. Well, no, they couldn't because it had to be an American that had to escort them from the gate. Oh, so it had to be someone already inside the gate had to vouch for you. Was it that simple though as long as there was an American who said – so if I was there as a soldier and I just saw some lady and I thought she was cute, I could just be like, I vouch for her. No, because you would have to have the correct documentation, right?

Oh, okay. So it was like these American service members would be able to go do a grab, grab that person, whatever, get them in, but they had to have the right documentation. Are you single now? Yes, I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You heard it right. Great question. Are you single now? Yes, I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You heard it right. Great question.

Thank you. Sorry, I only picked the important ones. I only picked the important ones. And, you know, I don't want to put this on any of the commands or any of the agencies there. I think there were just a lot of disconnects between. So like CENCOM saying one thing, SOCOM saying another thing, the State Department saying another thing. And that was kind of the problem.

What happened to the bus? They eventually got in. They did. Yeah. So to backtrack a little bit, what ended up happening? So I was on these, these signal chats and I was working to get people out. And this former Green Beret, John Reed reached out to me and a super nice guy.

He was a special forces medic and reached out to me and he's like, Hey man, it looks like you're doing a lot of good work. I, you know, I think we both kind of have the same interests and we both have good networks. Uh, it looked like a lot of the groups we're involved in were kind of being infiltrated by, uh, state actors and other things because they're just letting everyone in. So John reached out to me. He's like, Hey, do you want to state actors? I'm sorry. I was going to try to pretend like we don't know if they were, we don't know if they were Taliban, if they were Russian, if they were Chinese, we don't know.

Okay. So in, inside of this ragtag group, you started thinking that maybe you'd been infiltrated by some bad actors. Yes. So we, and that, that was in various different components because we were watching in these, these signal chats, just all the information that was going into those chats would somehow basically go to shit, right? So we're like, what is going on here?

So John hit me up. We decided to kind of form our own task force of sorts and bring in only vetted people that we knew. And this is what you guys called the network. Yeah, Yeah. So, uh, we were jokingly called it the network, uh, because we just, we weren't concerned with putting a name on it at the time. Right. Uh, like jokingly, someone else called it Al peyote to someone at one point. And, uh, you know,

we, we've just kind of, we were just worried about getting people out. Like I had multiple requests for interviews. Uh, John did as well. Like CNN had contacted me. Uh, you know, it just wasn't on our agenda. We were worried about people on the ground and getting them out. Um, for those of you who don't, I'll say this, I don't know how Paul's going to respond to this, but from the little bit of research I did, Paul, um, is estimated to have gotten a saved a thousand people's lives, gotten a thousand people out of Afghanistan who would have otherwise not got out of Afghanistan and that he was the most successful person in the world at that time at organizing being part of that team that Paul

was. Would you say you were the hub for sort of the comms hub? So I don't want to – I definitely don't want to call myself the most successful. Well, I saw it in the Washington Post. I saw it in the Washington Post. They called you the most successful at doing this. So I'll say it. The Washington Post can call me that. I'll take that. Even though they're fucking liars.

I wish someone else would have said it. They are liars of the highest order. But I'm going to agree with them this time. I appreciate that. That's a huge compliment coming from you yeah i'm gonna grab my ankles for you buddy so yeah so the the best way to kind of explain the way it transpired was we would be kind of that that that middleman. So we had people reaching out to us, whether they were, uh, it was their interpreter, uh, an Afghan soft, like special operations type that they worked with, uh, or other, and then, you know, politicians, celebrities at some points, just random phone calls that we would get.

And we would take that information, vet those people. And then if they needed to, the perfect instance of this was, was Gann Wick. We would facilitate some type of extract, whether it was vehicle movement or just them somehow getting to a specific point to be picked up, stuff like that, uh, to the airport and then get out. So that, that was kind of how we, we played that role. Uh, we didn't want to, we had people on the ground, we were utilizing them. We weren't trying to, you know, do anything crazy in terms of getting people killed. That was our biggest goal. Were there any, um, did you have any American soldiers or contractors who were outside the gate? Uh, there were people at points outside the gate.

And how crowded was, was the airport getting? Was there ever a concern that too many people were going to get in? Was it ever getting overcrowded inside the airport? Yes. I mean, there were multiple times where the airport was – I mean, even in the early days, the airport was overrun. That's what – those images you saw of people falling off the plane, stuff like that, that's because the airport was completely overrun. Imagine how scared you'd have to be for your life to throw your, was that throwing the baby shit over the fence? Real? Yes. Uh, imagine throwing your baby over the fence, being so scared. That's some Auschwitz shit. That's like some Jews on the train shit.

Like here, and that was, uh, that video I told you about, uh, Mike Wahlberger, I'll actually send you guys a link to that after, um, a lot of so he actually was was gotten some shit because of that video but uh they they used a lot of that footage in an hbo documentary that came out recently um it's you know it's pretty crazy the stuff that was the i can't even begin to imagine uh what the those folks on the ground were seeing um and especially obviously you know 13 american lives were were lost on an id blast at abbey gate but uh people you know people were desperate uh every you know people were there to to run for their lives escape uh a regime change that they they were certain they were going to die right so the thing the thing with the raping of the women ma'am yeah it's like it's too much yeah and i mean uh and was there ever was there ever a gun battle at that airport was there ever a fight

during the id blast um there were uh i i've i've talked to people that were there during that and uh they explicitly told me that they had rounds flying at them but but did the u.s military ever fire back or they couldn't because they didn't know they did fire back i mean there's reports of that where i mean they had that id blast com and i mean usually that comes with an attack that's you know um that guy was the guy that blew himself up uh wearing a suicide vest was at the most congested point he was at a checkpoint how many not how many other people died how many people died in totality do you know i i don't know offhand uh but there were like women and children there clearly women and children

every everyone under the sun was at that gate that was uh there were a few other gates that were operating uh imagine shooting your enemy imagine shooting someone in the back or killing someone who's trying to run from you who actually has never done any harm to you like i'm trying to understand like like what mexico is doing is they're just letting their bad guys come over the border i would think that the taliban would have been like yeah we'll help everyone get out who wants to get out you You know what I mean? Their belief system is that they're going to basically handle that because those people don't believe in what they believe in. Fuck, let them leave then. It's like having a bad guest at your house and they want to leave and instead you kill them.

Kenneth, the lab said a bunch of Marines died. That's what I was talking about with the 13 service members. So it was 11 Marines, a corpsman, and a soldier that passed away that day. Crazy. And, you know, that was a very tense moment cause the teams we're working with were at that gate. Uh, one of the conventional soldier I'd mentioned earlier, um, he was kind of floating between gates and I actually was dealing with him quite a bit because he was at uh it was called black gate and that was a gate run by uh more agencies yeah so those those are the 13 um you know and and that that was an incident that they

unfortunately knew was coming uh there there was they were told of the threats like that everyone knew there was a serious threat. You don't like this part of it. No, I that that your speech gets all yours. Yeah, because your speech gets all weird when you talk about this part. You know, yeah, you don't like this part. Yeah, makes sense. You know, there were a lot of life lost that could have been prevented, I think. Meaning what? With a better system at in country to come and get people out in horrible conditions with no real semblance of a plan. Let me play devil's advocate here for a second.

Part of me wants to be like, hey, they should have never announced the withdrawal and they should have just withdrew. But then if they would have done that, then people wouldn't have known that, fuck, it's time to leave. Yes and no but also the way it's so uh obviously afghan culture is much different than ours and uh we encountered this throughout um it's basically you know whisper down the lane so we would have people that would somehow get a hold of our call signs somehow, you know, or families would like we'd be under the impression it was going to be two people and families would show up with 13 people. And like, well, you know, I got to bring my cousin, my neighbor, his wife, the guy from across town that, you know, sells us shoes, whatever. And that's just the cultural there, the cultural difference there. And that's what would have happened even, I mean, I still think this, I think over a year period, if they had worked, I mean, and I'm not, you know, by no means am I claiming to be an expert here

on logistics or anything like that. Just my thought process is if they had done things slower, I think this could have been preventable. I think a clear sign that something went completely fucking wrong is, is that Paul is, Alcabee is even involved in this story. The fact that some random dude is saving a thousand people, you should have never been put in that situation. I mean, I'm sure you, I mean, I'm glad you did do it and I'm glad you got the opportunity to it. It's on a, if you take the a hundred thousand foot view, what a great life experience you had. Like what a cool fucking thing to say.

You know, you go apply at Facebook and they're like, can you, can you work quickly with a large group? Oh yes, actually I can. Maybe the best in the world at it. Fuck. They need you at Twitter. Elon should fucking hire you to work at god you'd be fucking amazing at twitter you should be an executive at twitter someone set that up let's go i'm gonna be good right now it's kind of oh my god it's a moment so let's go fuck you would kill it twitter oh we're gonna build a wall around here i'm not gonna get too into the tim kennedy uh piece um that's a a touchy one for a lot of

people and uh if any of you want to look into that yourselves you can why don't you want to get i don't know about it but i i know that there's two groups of people there's people who love him and there's people who can't stand him um is that why did something go weird with him i don't know anything about him i all i know a couple of guys i have on the podcast are friends with him and i know he's involved with building kids schools he was an amazing fighter well yeah and he was a great fighter yeah fuck what a fighter and i i thank him for his service so did he go over there he did yeah and um and there were and you're saying that there's some controversial mixed reports. There's a lot of controversy surrounding that. Yeah. And yeah, there's a lot of controversy and a lot of people that were supposed to get in or could have gotten in definitely suffered because of the situations that presented themselves once Tim Kennedy showed up. Okay.

Uh, and the reason why you don't, you don't want to talk about it and then I'll leave you alone is because why you don't want to say anything negative about the situation. Listen, the past is the past. Um, I just know that it directly affected a lot of operations that were going on

the ground. Um, there wasn't a lot of communication with other people that were there. Okay. And it became a total shit show at Blackgate. Yeah. Um, and Hey, I commend the guy for going to help. You know, if, if I, if he helped as many people as his organization claims to have helped fantastic. Um, I, you know, great. Uh, I personally, personally i mean i would be very open to a conversation with him uh to kind of understand further um but i yeah what happened at that gate definitely screwed things up for a lot of people uh that's inside a plane

yeah that plane takes off like that no seat seatbelts, no masks. Are those people vaccinated? I mean, during the evacuation, I mean, they might, maybe they, they wrote vax cards and crayon. Maybe. I don't,

I don't know. I cannot. Have you ever been in one of those? Good questions. Have you ever been in one of those? I've pulled patients off the back of them. Caleb, have you been in one?

Yeah. You flew in one of those? I was in the Air was in fly much sadly it's not super comfortable it's like you ever been in one that's that crowded let me see that picture again absolutely not but did you sit on the floor when you were in there no there's like little like net seats on the sides. They're not installed in this one. Yeah.

I don't remember if they like install them or if they fold, but it's like a like cargo netting and you just sit on it and then you're just on that for a while. And that guy behind Tim Kennedy, what's he doing? He's just standing watch. He's like eyes and ears for what's going on inside the plane. Yeah, he's probably a load master or yeah chief or something paul are all these dudes tripping is are all the guys in the u.s military like what yes they're all mushrooms are all the guys who work for the u.s military like they don't prepare you for anything like this ever no no i mean i i i i think being a medic i was prepared for like humanitarian stuff and like

mass casualty incidents stuff like that uh but i i don't think anyone was prepared for anything like this is that what you are caleb you're a medic yeah we have the same job yeah and caleb's gonna hate me for this and are you in the air force caleb yeah shit i figured it out after a year i'll have to ask you again don't get carried away we're not space force no it's so weird that that's a branch now i can't believe it do you know anyone who's in the space force i do yeah oh both you guys do wow yeah okay they're kind of oddballs honestly oh they're like weirdos they're weird yeah there's only one guy that i've met it's not he's in the space force and he's not weird everybody else is like a calm guy

like cyber so they're just literal nerds it's hilarious um i i can't let it go. Meaning this guy who originally contacted this guy. So you started this operation with some other guys. Someone reached out to you. And then after going down the road a bit, another guy who had a good network said, hey, let's bring our teams together and let's find a way to secure our comms. And so you went with them. find a way to secure our comms. And so you went with them. And then what you're saying is, is that when other people tried to come in and help like Tim Kennedy and that they were outside of your group, it may cause.

I'm going to stop. I'll stop you. I'll break it down. Okay. So, so we don't get any of this misconstrued. So, uh, all right. So, so Tim Kennedy, uh, there were a few other organizations that were on the ground. Um, and like I said, you know you know great great effort helping people i wish there was more communication um and and less leverage uh you know i i it's taken me a lot to even really open up about this stuff and start telling the story more um how come how come i never wanted it to seem like it was a personal game uh i talked to someone well it doesn't come

across like that at all we're just all curious as shit by the way it doesn't come across like that even this much okay yeah i appreciate that yeah um i spoke to someone that was on the ground and he did multiple interviews and uh he pretty much uh we were talking about i was like yeah cnn he had just interviewed with cnn i believe and was like, yeah, CNN just hit me up for an interview. He's like, why didn't you do it? I was like, well, I don't want anyone to misconstrue what I'm doing and what we're doing. Uh, and additionally, I didn't feel like I had anything important to say. Like he covered everything I thought I would have said. Um, and he was on the ground. Who's he, Tim Kennedy? I thought I would have said, and he was on the ground.

Who's he, Tim Kennedy? No, no, Jericho Denman. Oh, okay. And that dude's a stud.

Okay. Absolute stud. Okay. So kudos to him for everything he did. Hey, by the way, people, if you're going to name your kid Jericho,

he's going in the military or he's going to own a bow or say he's going to kill something. I mean, he was a Jericho. He was a Ranger. I think his brother is a Ranger and and his father was a ranger as well. So dude's got a lineage of just killing shit. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, that's him right there. So, okay. Okay. And so, so where, where was the confusion when other people started jumping, jumping in? Like it was just bad comms? Yeah. So for us, we were noticing all this stuff. That's why we kind of broke away and did our own

thing. And it became very apparent. So we pulled all of our resources together, we started this thing called the network and within signal built out different groups, so to speak, right. So each operation for we had like an op send, so like an op center? So each operation for, we had like an op center, so like an op center. And then from there, we would just break down whether it was a specific operation or a specific task. And we had different people allocated to different groups. So we kind of created, basically, the people that needed specific information had that information. No one else had that information. Uh, and that's how we, we ran our operation, uh, successfully. And our goal was to make sure no one got killed. And, uh, I think we met that, uh, and, and all of us were, were

very relieved that that happened. We did have a close call. Um, but you know, fortunately that, we did have a close call. Um, but you know, fortunately that, that panned out, but, uh, yeah. So just within these other groups, there, there was a ton of, of weeks, right? So perfect example is, uh, John. Um, so I, so I basically got put in charge of this, this overarching, uh, called this group called the network and john and i uh along with tristan who at the time was an active uh green beret he's out now he actually uh fortunately moved to philly so we see each other occasionally um he he and i so john and i had began to move this one family and we had a oga operator who uh they're like contractors so oga oga yeah so other government other oh yeah thank you so basically a you know military contractor he was moving to this family to grab them. We had briefly mentioned to another organization that this was going on.

Well, this operator got there to meet this family. This family was waiting for this operator and like 500 other people showed up. You know, so that put us in a pretty precarious spot. Literally 500. Literally 500 people.

It's a fucking full mob yeah so like we have this one guy sitting on a bus with a rifle like waiting to pick this family up uh and you know all like this flood of people shows up and luckily it panned out luckily you know no one got hurt um and you know we were managed we managed to get the people, uh, and get in. But yeah, there, there were situations like that where, uh, you know, information was just being passed out way too easily. And, uh, a lot of lives were put at risk yeah i was gonna say at the end of the day the is that dude in the van an american yes yeah it's fucking nuts at the end of the day that guy's doing something that's completely out of his fucking uh call of duty right i mean there's no requirement yeah i mean he's completely he's threatening the happiness of the fucking hundred people who know him at home, his wife, his kids, his mom and dad. And yeah, it's fucking nuts. There's a component of massive selfishness to it in the, in the component of massive selflessness and no one,

no one should be jeopardized. Everyone should be doing something to help support those people, not put those people at further risk. Yeah. And I mean mean it became uh there were people involved with other organizations that should have never been involved and and you know i'm thankful those people wanted to help and and give their support and stuff but uh you know i'll say yeah it's the mother-in-law scenario it's when your mother-in-law comes to your house and she thinks she's helping and she's just fucking causing chaos she's interfering in

every fucking routine and protocol in the house and everything's getting fucked up yeah i hope that resonates with a lot of you that that was kind of where it was going right so like it it got pretty crazy um i, most of us had minimal sleep. I remember, uh, I was talking to Tristan. I'd probably been up for about six days at this point and maybe, you know, a 45 minute nap here or there, if I could. Um, I, it was around five 30 in the morning and I was talking to Tristan. I'm like, all right, dude, I'm going to try and get a few hours of sleep. I'll talk to you later. and this guy calls me it's an abghan number and i'm like what the fuck so i answer and then he starts sending me like i can't really hear him

he starts sending me uh voice notes on say on whatsapp and this guy sounded like he was about to die like he was getting just crushed by people at Abbey Gate. I still have all the voice notes. I was certain the guy was going to die. I called Tristan. I'm like, this guy is fucked. Did you know him? Was he a guy that you guys were working together?

He got my number from whoever, pretty much. That could fuck everything up if your number got passed out. That guy, yep. my number was passed out you know i was getting called my like people were calling my mom at one point you know like no this guy had someone this guy had someone take a picture of him and then sent it to you and said no no he was taking pictures he was just showing me where he was oh so i told him i wish i, I wish I had posted more of that. But I had shown, so he had sent me photos of himself. I sent him the green feet.

How did you know to vet him? How do you know he's not a guy with an IED on him? So that's the thing, right? So I had to talk to him and get all the specific stuff from him, all the specific information beforehand. And I did. I have no idea where where in the world this guy is now but uh he was convinced my name was charlie uh because that was

the call sign for the day yeah so yeah uh he ended up getting to the pgs on the ground they grabbed him got him in um and he was he was very lucky but wow i can't imagine doing that by myself. I would, I would, I would definitely, I mean, I guess I have a wife and kids. I also can't imagine being in that situation with my wife and my kids. Yeah. I mean, you know, you think about it, uh, the service members that were there, uh, a lot of them weren't they weren't in country they were flown in specifically for this it's not like um and i mean they had no idea what was going to transpire um can you tell me the story about the close call uh there were a few of them so um close call what are you talking about from the text no i just earlier you had mentioned we got all the people that we tried to get out we got out safely but there was a close call

yeah i mean you know like the bus it sounds like everyone was a close call yeah to be honest yes uh everyone was a close call um but uh, I would say Gannwick is probably the, uh, the epitome of a close call. So, uh, basically what ended up happening, uh, I'll mention Rob again, shout out to Rob. Um, he got a phone call from a, uh, a allied, like a, one of our allies, you know, a special operator over there. Uh, he got a call from him saying, Hey, we got this our allies, you know, a special operator over there. He got a call from him saying, Hey, we got this, we have a joint asset for the US and that country. And we need to get him out. He's like, you know, high priority from the top need to get him out. Okay, so like, so someone in the NATO forces, like a French guy, let's say,

calls and says, Hey, this is an important asset to both France and the U.S. Can you guys get this guy out? Is it one guy or multiple guys? One guy. Okay. What makes someone a valuable asset, Paul? He was a special operator who also supported various intelligence agencies. But he was an Afghan?

Yes. There's Afghans that get the title special operator. Yep. Yeah, we are, you know, so I mean, that's that was kind of the special forces mission set over there. And then I believe Naval Special Warfare also was in that role, pretty much every special operations task force from from the u.s at one point or another was doing that where they were training um you know afghans in those roles so whether it was true or not someone cared enough about this guy to vouch for him oh it was true this dude was he's he's a hard motherfucker and he knows some shit he's like's like a double agent Taliban guy. He never did any like double agent shit to my knowledge, but he did some shit.

Okay. And he's born in Afghanistan and he's born there. He's a local. Yeah. He's a very wanted man. So as this is all transpiring, you know, that call comes in. transpiring. That call comes in. He's across the city at an airport or at a house rather from the airport and they have no vehicle. So we're trying to figure this out as this is happening. And this is how it would work, right? Like the universe kind of just delivers as this is happening. One of my buddies who was involved in the group who works for a defense contractor hits me up and he's like hey uh i have a contracted bus i really uh everyone on it is um either a vetted you know afghan or an american citizen uh and i need to get it into the gate but at this point no one had gotten a bus into the gate uh so i started how the fuck do you open the gate without everyone storming in right there were yeah exactly right so you basically have to utilize american forces at that point to hold the line get the vehicle in um so at this point no buses have gotten in

uh i made some phone calls uh this was that conventional dude I'd mentioned. He came in, dude's an absolute legend for this. I knew that I could kind of leverage this guy's position of being, you know, a very high profile individual that both these governments needed. And I started talking to that guy's command, I talked to, uh, this guy's handler and basically an operator was supposed to come grab him when the bus got there. Uh, that was kind of the deal. So you told these people on this bus, this, these people on this bus were like, Hey, we need to get in. And you said, yeah, but you got to pick my guy up first. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, yo, you know, this guy and his family need to get on your bus

and i'll make sure the bus gets in oh and his family and his family so him plus his family yeah and uh what ends up happening um and can you uh can you pull the photo of him up uh it should be i think you know which photo but uh what ends up happening is they're at the house getting ready to leave to go meet up with this bus at a rally point. And this Taliban hit squad shows up. So, you know, now Gamwick had to do what he had to do and ended up engaging them with his personal rifle and kind of schwacked a few. And then they basically rolled out and just left, went to the bus. Can you Matt?

And then that, and wow. So that's them. Um, Oh shit. He's got a big family. I think that might, he's got,

he's got four people with them. Yep. Yeah. And like a sequined shirt, which to me is, is always amazing. So he has to kill some guys and then say goodbye to his house for the last time. That guy never went, is that guy in the U S now?

He's in the U S yeah. Yeah. Um, and he, he's, uh, I've been trying to help him find the job. I actually got to reach back out to him. I haven't talked to him in a, uh, about a month, but, uh, you know, we're trying to help him get employment. Um, he's a great dude. And, uh, yeah, he's super thankful. Like he sends me photos of his kids and stuff. And yeah. Is that inside the airport? That's inside the airport. So that was actually, that was basically their proof of life photo. So the dude who got them in, um, and his, his page is a scope set culture. Uh, that. That's his brand that he runs.

So if you guys want to support, he does some amazing work. So he was the conventional soldier at that gate that really saved a lot of lives and just super selfless the entire time. I met a website that says Softscope Culture. What's he sell? Oh, shirts. Yeah, shirts, patches, hats, stuff like that. uh it says i'm at a website says soft scope uh culture what's he sell oh shirts uh yeah shirts patches hats stuff like that um see that vehicle in the background that thing that looks like a some armored vehicle is that the kind of shit we left behind uh those were left behind yeah uh basically they're rendered as inoperable as they could be by whoever was on the ground most

likely but i mean who knows if you know i'm sure uh china russia iran probably got their hands on them to to understand the technology better that would be my guess why did they just blow everything up uh they did blow up a lot of stuff for sure why Why wouldn't they – why wasn't it part of the plan to evacuate the goods? Too much work? I feel like that's always built into the budget too. It's just like, leave shit. God, it's so weird. Is that story really true?

god it's so weird is is that story really true like you know like the stories you hear like the the equipment we left would build like the you know the 22nd strongest army on the planet or like did we really leave that much shit there did you ever did anyone ever tell you like holy fuck i saw a row of helicopters as far as the eye could see i don't know i don't know personally yeah i mean i'm sure everyone's gonna have some type of opinion on it, but there we go. There's – The Afghans military – But honestly, who really wants a Humvee? Let's be clear here. I don't. So only four helicopters were left behind and two tanks? Yeah. And I mean, so here, weirdly, so if you look at this number, in terms of helicopters, I feel like they probably had more Russian-made helicopters that were utilized by the CIA and stuff that probably aren't listed there.

Could you look up, Caleb, what was left at Harmeet Karzai Airport? Was the airport considered a military base, a U.S. military base? Not leading up to it. No, okay. So was the equipment that was left, was it left there at the airport? There was a good amount of equipment left there uh for sure but i mean we're talking like multiple bases like uh you know bagram uh kandahar you know various other so it wasn't just one base we left we just picked up and left the whole country we evacuated several bases yeah and and they congregated at the airport yeah like uh bagram they just like

dipped out in the middle of the night they're like all right see you bye like the afghans were pissed like some afghan general came out he's like they just left in the middle of the night absolutely absolutely nuts absolutely nuts um um hey are you are is any of this like hard on you like do you struggle with any of this did you see things hear things is there any is there any how is your life um i definitely struggle with like uh the people i couldn't get out um there was a guy I worked with for a long time after, and it became very taxing. And unfortunately he couldn't get out.

His family, he and his family are still there. He's a amputee. He was a Afghan special operations, lost his leg in a targeted attack, and he was directly supporting um u.s special forces and we couldn't get him out and that definitely uh definitely you know i carry that with me for sure um was this more traumatic for you than your four years in uh it's a different kind of trauma i'd say right like uh this was completely unexpected and i mean i i think the weirdest moment during it was maybe traumatic's not the right word harder to process

i'll use the word process i think it's harder to process for everyone because it was a total clusterfuck that none of us expected uh in terms of being involved in. But, uh, I think one of the weirder mornings, and again, I'll say this, I was never in Afghanistan and I woke up that this was actually the same night where the dude, I helped that guy get in and I finally went to sleep and I woke up, I like three hours later, I went to sleep maybe around like eight in the morning, woke up around 11 and I thought I was in Afghanistan. Oh, it was fucking weird. Wow. Wow. And I had to like snap out of it. I was like, where the fuck am I? You know, like that, that was, that was how long I had been like sleep deprived. Like, you know,

I was like, I remember I was on phone calls with people like snapping, just like yelling at them because like i uh this one uh congressman's aide who um wouldn't allocate he basically wouldn't allow us to speak to the congressman after uh multiple phone calls and numerous other things uh and he he kind of had the audacity to tell us how he was a veteran and john and i fucking lost it on the phone we're like fuck you like just lost it on the sky because we're like dude like you're talking about being a veteran but you're not willing to to actually put it on the line right now and help these people and help us well we're you know or like um do you think that they didn't want to talk to you to keep arms distance in case that something went sideways and they could most likely have

plausible deniability yeah yeah yeah and that i, that's that's what it was throughout. Right. Like I remember, you know, and again, I don't have any I got to be very real with this because I just like I don't have any animosity. Like no one knew what the fuck to do during the situation. Right. But I do think there was a level of, uh, I remember calling a very high ranking individual's office and, uh, it was a Saturday night and his aid was like, yeah, he's out at dinner. And I'm like, oh, I fucking wish I could be out at dinner too, because I'm a fucking civilian and I should be out at dinner right now. Right. And this dude's out at dinner and me and a bunch of other veterans and, you know, other individual, even some active duty military folks were actively engaged in this in our free time. And I think that was that was hard to process. And again, that's not the government. that's just individuals you have to deal with like it's it's so unbelievable it's like um it's like you know you hear about startups like you know

microsoft or apple starting in a garage and it's cute this isn't cute this is like a startup to save people's lives that someone else had massive resources didn't do. Right. Yeah. It's like, it's like, you're standing out there with your hose putting out your neighbor's house as it burns down while the fire department's just off like cleaning their truck. Like there's a piece of it that just does not make sense at all. It's so, it's so, uh, and then on the other hand, God, you gotta be so thankful for technology. Yeah. And that's the biggest thing, right? I mean, the fact that we were able to coordinate

these, these efforts through literally WhatsApp and signal, um, and big shout, like seriously, the signal, the folks that, that work on signal, uh, I've, you know, that is the encryption and everything there. Cause obviously WhatsApp's not the best, uh, in terms of that. Uh, the folks that are working over at signal are really doing great work, uh, especially when it comes to like humanitarian side of things. Who owns signal? I don't know. I think it's, it's this, like, uh, I think it's actually like humanitarian side of things. Who owns Signal? I don't know. I think it's, it's this like, I think it's actually like a volunteer run thing.

Because God knows WhatsApp isn't, is as corrupt as their parent company. I have to assume. I tried to get my Instagram account back this morning again for the thousandth time. Signal is now developed by Signal Messenger LLC, a software company founded by marty uh marlon spike and brian acton in 2018 which is wholly owned by a tax-exempt

non-profit okay so it is just owned by one person yeah i'm sure there's all sorts of conspiracy theories that that's really just an fbi or cia Just an FBI or CIA. Maybe company, but what is it anymore? Right, right, right, right, right.

He sold the company now, though, Eric Utley. God, there's a smart group of people in here. Much smarter than me. Thank you for that information. And then,

and then it sounds like this thing never winds down because you're attached to these people for eternity. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, now it's, uh, you know, uh, you're kind of bonded to them, I think in a lot of ways. And I mean, it was hard to, to really separate myself from it. Like, uh, I think there, there were some like weird ones too.

I had a photographer reach out to me, uh, you know, based on my background, he had followed me, I think for a while. And I tried to help him get out and he had no, you know, just a young photographer that had no, no, he wasn't, he never worked for the American governments or any, you know, NATO governments, nothing like that. He's like, dude, I just need to get the fuck out of here. I was like, well, like, let me, let me see what I can do. Right. And, uh, you know, trying to help this dude. And, uh, he was worried because he's a decently followed photographer on Instagram. I'm like, okay, let me, let me see what I can do

here. And, uh, it was really funny because I, his sister had, you know, been to the Netherlands and I'm like, Oh, let's start reaching out to some Dutch people and see if we can, you know been to the netherlands and i'm like oh let's start reaching out to some dutch people and see if we can you know organize something here and this dutch photographer hit me up and he started making some phone calls and uh we ended up figuring out that we could get them out because his sister had a dutch visa but everyone was like yo you need to say that you're her son oh they get to the gate and she goes he's my brother and the dutch soldiers like threw him off the gate and he like falls down like breaks his arm he's like his sister left just left dipped out of the country he's like stuck there still but i mean he's he's still post photos like you know stuff like that and i mean holy shit yeah yeah like it's crazy right stuff like

that happened you know i'm laughing about it as like a nervous reaction but yeah that type of shit happened there um there were some weird stories where you're just like, how? I just typed in Afghanistan into Google just to see what the headlines are. Student killed as bomb blast hits Afghan school. At least 15 killed in Afghanistan school bombing. 24 wounded. Biden spokesperson on Pentagon's new findings on Afghanistan exit as a disaster. Would you sum it up as a disaster? I would, yeah.

I mean, in terms of what it could have been, yeah. A year in the Taliban escalates its war against girls and education. Talked about that early on. White House pushes back on bombshell. Department of Defense report on Afghanistan withdrawal. Bruce Wayne asked a question about what does he do now? Are you referring to me or to the photographer I mentioned? You, you.

What are you doing now? Yeah, you, what are you doing now? Yeah, I know what you're doing now. Well, I work in a marketing gig for a great company called Edgar Sherman Design. So I do that mostly, trying to get my freelance business back off the ground, maybe, we'll see. But that's about it.

And you're in what state? Well, I'm in Philly, but i've been actually living in my truck for the better part of the year so i was out west you weren't living in your truck in philly were you no i wouldn't do that no way yeah yeah hard pass on that um yeah but you're in philly now why are you in philly of all the places to be? So I'll break down the story. Please tell me there's a girl. Please tell me there's a girl. There isn't a girl.

Oh, that's a nice way. Wow. Yeah, man. So that's home. And I'm super thankful I actually built that when I did. Because basically two weeks after all the Afghan stuff, I lost my job. I was never given a reason, just lost my job. Uh, on a Thursday night, I got a text, um, from my, my, or I didn't even get a text.

I got an email and I wouldn't have even seen it. Um, so I get this email and I text him and I'm like, yo, am I getting fired tomorrow? And he's like, just bring in your stuff. And I'm like, so I'm getting fired. Cool. Uh, so the next day I go in and lose my job. You don't know why you were fired. I don't, I mean, I had, I, there were internal issues at the company. I'll be clear on that. Um, but no, I was never given a reason. Internal issues with you. Like you've been fighting with someone. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So okay so um is what it is uh you know

no no bad blood anymore but uh i so lost my job uh kind of bounced around for a bit the same week my my apartment because i was living in florida they raised my rent like nine hundred dollars a month um because florida things so californians were coming in and fucking your shit up new yorkers mostly perfect but i'm from philly so it's not much it might actually be worse so but uh you know and so that was your rig you had that set up and you're like fuck it i'm hitting the road uh yeah so once i kind of like turned in my keys, uh, my mom had COVID weirdly, uh, but she's susceptible to actually having a severe COVID because she had COPD. So she ended up in the ICU for, uh, seven or eight weeks. Um, and then now it's she recovered uh miraculously she ended up in a rehab facility uh which almost

killed her um but she was i believe the most severe case of covid at that hospital that recovered and uh i ended up at home for four months taking care of her uh with my father and then basically just decided uh late, late spring, I was like, screw it. I'm going to go on the road. And I lived out West, just in the back country, mostly. Uh, so, you know, Colorado, uh, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, uh, Oregon, Washington, just bounced around. It was, it was really dope. Wow. That is cool. Just by yourself. Yep. By myself. And then came back to help family for a little bit. Do you have a dog? I do. Yeah. Did you take the dog on the trip?

You know, I wanted to, he unfortunately is not the best, uh, adventure companion. He's a hundred pound pit bull. That is unfortunately scared of the world. Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. No, he's like, he's way too friendly for that. That's what you all say. That's what you guys are. Oh, God, here we go.

I still got a little liberal in me. I don't like a pit bull. I believe the pit bull propaganda. I don't believe the COVID propaganda. I believe the pit bull. I don't know, man. This dog will cuddle with you for hours hours here's the thing with those dogs i have the number one biting dog in the world it's the chihuahua more bites per dog than any other dog the thing is don't judge my pitbull if you have a chihuahua we can't no the thing is is that a chihuahua bites

you and runs i used to have danes they're very similar pitbulls once they grab you I used to have Danes. They're very similar. Pipples. Once they grab you, it's to the death. Have you ever seen your dog fight? No.

Cause he's not fighting anything. All right. All right. Fine. I'm going to put it right here. I'm going to put a note. Pipples are nice on your pit. You're going to put a note that says,

do not engage. Pipples are nice. There. I, you've convinced me. Um, I really appreciate you coming on and thank you for what you've done. It's cool. How old are you? 31. Yeah. You're going to, all of that stuff you've done. I, I promise you this. All the stuff you've done is in your life and all, all those things, they will, they will flower.

Like right now it's just shit. It's just fertilizer, right? But those memories and those things in the next 10, 20 years, you'll draw from and bounds of creativity will come from you. I mean, so much creativity is now going to spawn from you from the life experience you have and so and in all those skills that you acquired i mean i know you know all this i don't i hope this isn't coming across as a lecture but no i appreciate this yeah it's going to be um it's it's going to be fucking nuts and it's no it's no joke it i i mean it with a

hundred percent um conviction that you would be an amazing executive at twitter they need companies that need to be fucking agile and they have tremendous impact need need people like you and so i mean just to someone with a brain they're going to realize that there's no Harvard MBA. There's no Stanford MBA. No one has the experience you have. And someone smart is going to see it and take advantage of you and let them use you. You're an amazing tool and an amazing asset and let them use you. That's the greatest thing in life if you can find someone to use you so many people are afraid to be used you want to be used depends what context i guess right well as long as you just just be honest and stay with your integrity context or yeah yeah i just i just i just love friends that just know how to use me and uh and someone someone's gonna figure it out someone's gonna figure it out and Someone's going to figure it out. And it's going to be awesome. Just like how we met through Alpha Brew, right? Right.

You know, Ricky, the founder, he's my best friend. What's Ricky's last name? Doyon. Okay. Is he Armenian? No. What's his last name again? Doyon.

D-O-Y-O-N. Oh. Oh, my mom's going to fucking rip me for that. I didn't know how to spell that. It sounds like it could end in I-A-N. Doyeon. D-O-Y-I-A-N. It could be, yeah. But it's not.

He's Korean. Apparently, Heidi wants to use me. Yeah, Heidi would love to. Heidi would love to use you. So yeah, Heidi, Heidi, Heidi would love to use you. All right, brother. Yeah. I appreciate your time.

Yeah. You can have me on. Yeah. You have my phone number. Stay in touch. For sure. You're a great dude. And I appreciate you helping out the podcast by coming on and giving your

time and helping me grow this thing. Oh, you guys are amazing. And I, you know, I can't wait to see where this goes. Awesome. All right, dude, stay in touch. All right, guys. Have a great day. Ciao. See you, Paul. See you guys.

Doesn't even seem real. It's insane. Doesn't even seem real. Just looking around at all the stuff that we have here yeah and then just imagining trying like trying to move all those people and all of their shit are you fenced in where you're at yeah is it a good fence you trust it no no No. No. It's not like it's not 48 inches of cinder block 20 feet high. No, it's like razor wire. That's probably about waist high in some places. You know, what's funny is you I always look at airports.

I'm like I and I'm like none. No airport is ever secure. Like I used to always drive right by the San Diego airport when I live down there. I'm like fucking any Tom, Dick orry could just walk out onto the tarmac absolutely it's not secure yeah it's nuts beep test not being advised not to be used in ireland you never had to do that oh i had to do i had to do beep test but i would but i was a pussy i would just i was i would just tap early i was like the first kid out like some fat girls out and then me

and then that's it that way you don't feel bad about yourself no just like she truly probably couldn't run and i could run a little bit there must be a good beep test app i'm gonna start doing those with my kids i have my kids run line sprints at the tennis courts but beep tests are cool that'd be perfect for them yeah they would love that uh oh shit paul saladino released a statement on Liver King. Oh, let's go look at that. I have said from the beginning, I don't give a fuck if that guy's like what he's on. I don't care. And I don't care.

I never was. I still take a handful of those pills every day. And I got his protein powder back here. Which is tasty as all get out. And I was never taking those pills thinking I'm going to look like the liver king. His issue of lying about it, that's on him. I still like brian johnson like i told you as soon as that video came out i called him and actually and i thought the except for that whole thing about him being a charlatan what a charlatan was other than that i thought the the piece the guy did

plates and dates guy i thought it was pretty respectful and i thought the piece Hiller did was respectful. Just hating on people for shit. I mean, okay, let's see. My response to liver King steroids. I'm deeply disappointed. Integrity is everything. By the way, these guys are good friends. They're like family members. And it appears that Brian has not been truthful

as his friend for more than five years, long before social media presence. I feel misled and disappointed like so many of you. I don't. It's not on me. I don't have trust issues because it's not a metric I use. Yes, if I found out my wife was sleeping with another guy, I would fucking break my heart. At the end of the day, I don't have any fucking control over that. It's not how I live my life. It's not how, I hate to be so fucking arrogant, but it's not how I live my life. It's not how, I hate to be so fucking arrogant, but it's not how enlightened people or people who are on the path to an

enlightenment live. Though our message has have been similar in the past. They have always been distinct. Yeah. I don't come on, Paul. It's your homie really is now the time to say that. I love Paul too.

I continue to believe deeply in the power of dietary choices, like an animal based diet to create health in humans. And I believe this message is far too important to be sullied in any way by untruthfulness or lack of integrity on brian's part my mission has been and will always because brian's a huge advocate of that right but liver king is like like i think the plates and dates guys said and everyone said it like his message is is clean his message is cool. His message is healthy. My mission has been and will always be to create content and share knowledge that helps people heal from illness and find fullness of life. I will always remain truth. So because he doesn't feel obligated to tell the truth about what kind of drugs he takes, I don't know i i i tell you guys non-stop not to eat sugar and i purposely hide

from you my kid's birthday party where we're eating an ice cream cake let it be known i purposely hide it from you i do not want you to see it doesn't mean that doesn't happen of course and if you're and if yeah and if you're disappointed that you be that that you can't look like liver king like you're you're never going to look like anyone even if you did steroids you're not going to look like liver king you'd have to be doing twelve thousand dollars a month worth of steroids i wonder if i wonder good morning susan i i wonder if i i know they're such close good friends i wonder if paul passed that by liver king before he posted it or if he said

liver king will you write it for me i i hope it i hope it's something like that hey it's the same thing along the lines i'll never forget when uh the the jo video came out, that compilation of him using racial slurs came out. And Jocko Willick made a statement that was supposed to be defending him. And I'm thinking, God, who needs enemies when you have friends like Jocko? Like, fuck off. It's like when people post in the YouTube comments, I don't agree with everything Sevan says. I hate that fucking or or yeah he is creepy but i really like his show like hey go fuck yourself like like i like

you post on reddit you post on youtube like you attack like shut the fuck up like i don't i don't i don't need you to post anything i really love my wife but those globs of hair on the side of the shower really pissed me off by the way my wife doesn't do that but it's like fuck off at this time we're rethinking our relationship with him you know why i'm sensitive to that too is because my my my dad my dad's a great guy by the way love my dad to death so fucking cool she shows me unconditional love but my dad's the kind of guy where every no matter what something has to be tweaked so if i have him over for dinner and he's eating he's like this could use a little more garlic this is great it's never just like

that's just him though you can't you can't you can't internalize that even if you did solve the problem you wouldn't be you wouldn't be satisfied all these say that again that even if you did solve the problem you wouldn't be satisfied yeah hey you know what i mean you made me think you know what i'm gonna do because that is my dad's thing this could use more garlic next time he's over i'm just gonna have a handful of garlic like behind my back and say this could use a use more garlic. Next time he's over, I'm just going to have a handful of garlic like behind my back. He's like, this could use a little more garlic.

I'm like, no shit. Wow. Look, I have more. It's your world, dad. I'm just living in it.

Yeah. What a great line. Not just that. That's a great idea. Should I grab you some more? No, just solve the problem here. Don't even ask questions. Bam.

Fucking garlic. The thing too is it's like we had someone on the other day, and it's like – it's actually talking to my sister about this last night. She was telling me that Jesus spent a lot of time by himself and but but he did but he also did hang out with like you know some some shady element and i've i've hung with oh there's my sister right there and i've hung out with a ton of shady element i hung out with a ton of shady element i mean but but you do need time by yourself. You need a lot of time by yourself.

By the way, great. We had that guest on the other day, and I can't remember. He was a Christian. I was like, yeah, but what would Jesus do? Like, I don't think he'd be hating on those people. He'd slap them around. Didn't he flip a table over once at a bar mitzvah at a bazaar you did um uh hulk hogan went around saying train say your prayers eat your vitamins didn't say i'm terry bola acting for the ww oh is that his name yeah he's a billboard

i i am really glad that in that breakdown of the the plates and dates guy in that email he did show that he takes all of his own supplements and by the way i was on the phone last night with hillar and we're like you know how like um these actresses release these tapes where they're taking the cock and they they leaked you know what i'm talking about so what it does is the number one form of media on the planet is pornography by far hands down there's nothing there's no second place and so what you but people in that business are ostracized what a trippy phenomenon right so you're the number one form of downloaded and consumed media but if you you're in that, you can't make the jump to mainstream media. You can't be sucking dick on PornTube and then be reporting the news on CNN because they're hypocrites, even though all those people, after they get off work at CNN, are going over to their PornTube.

The whole thing is – yeah, that is what hypocrisy is. But anyway, so what they do to get around that is they release the tape about themselves on purpose so that they're not a pornographer and they can stay mainstream but play the victim. And so you got screwed. So it's kind of cool. You now get to have the most downloaded piece of content in the world. You bang in some basketball player but you don't have to be ostracized it's it's it's a it's a masterful so hillar and i were like maybe that's what the liver king did like release those on purpose i mean he's being talked about now more than probably ever right

yeah and one thing that was interesting in those emails i think you already talked about now more than probably ever right yeah and one thing that was interesting in those emails i think you already talked about it was that the fact that he actually follows the regimen that he preaches other than the fact that he may also be taking steroids right the first thing i thought is does he really sleep on that piece of wood like that's the first thing i thought we'd have talked about his sleep like him him waking up multiple times throughout the night. Is that what you were referring to in those emails? When you talked about that to his doctor? He's like, I sleep like shit. I was like, yeah, well, you're on a

freaking pallet. I just thought if he's lying about the steroids, is he lying about the wooden pallet? Oh, wait. And Liver King reached out to MPMD. More plates, more dates. The guy who did the hour-long investigative journalism.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. The whole thing is interesting, right? Yeah. It's all conspiracy. They work together. Anyway. I'm just glad that those pills, I looked at those pills,

and I was just glad to see that the Liver King did at least take those pills and he still takes those pills. Cause I don't want that. Like, what if I find out like, that's really just sawdust in there. Hey, if it matters, you believe it, it works. And we got to call it a couple of minutes. Oh yeah. At nine. Yeah.

That's why I jumped on here, too. Oh, okay. After the show finished up. Get a little. Okay. Just a little. Then we should go. I got to.

I'm going to. I need to eat. I need to have like a half a banana before that meeting or something. Y'all said it. A banana. Oh, my God. Do you guys know? I was talking to Hillary yesterday about what persimmons are.

Maybe we should just have our meeting live. I was talking to Hillary about what persimmons. Hillary didn't about what persimmons are. Maybe we should just have our meeting live. I was talking to Hillary about what persimmons are. Hillary didn't know what persimmons are. I have so many persimmons. I've been eating like two persimmons a day right now. Do you guys know what those are? Oh, no, Caleb. Looks like a tomato.

Oh, shit. I guess it's a California phenomenon. I've never had one, but I know it exists. I've only heard of it like they're so good. Don't let anyone tell you how about if anyone needs to know how to eat a persimmon, talk to me. I will tell you all the fucking secrets of how to eat them, how to make them soft so you can spread it on bread like jam if you want or or how to eat them hard. So it's like an apple. I can tell you how to make them sweet or how to make them not sweet.

I know all the tricks. Freezing them, unfreezing them, putting them in the refrigerator. Oh, they're amazing. They're big. They're like the size of an apple. They're everywhere in California now. If you just drive around and look around, yeah, the trees are like that. And they lose all their leaves and they just have these orange balls on them everywhere.

They're so good. Yeah. And they lose all their leaves, and they just have these orange balls on them everywhere. They're so good. Yeah. And they're expensive. They're expensive as shit. But around my house, there's just – I think they're probably like $3 a pop. But around my house, there's just thousands of them for free, tens of thousands, millions. They're so good. Come to – where was this? they're so good. Uh, come to,

uh, where was this? Uh, come to Indiana. Any grams within 300 miles can, can make you some, Oh, that's cool.

Any grams. That's a grandma. Yeah. Okay. I have two minutes to prepare for my next meeting. Uh, love you guys. See you tomorrow.

Oh, let me see. I don't know who's on tomorrow. It's a programming show right now oh and that's in the evening okay so caleb are you around tomorrow uh maybe we'll see okay are you around tomorrow morning uh what's your name suza are you around tomorrow no coaching mother okay i'd like to do a live call-in show at some point tomorrow we We'll figure something out. I'll talk to you guys later. I'll be on with JR and Taylor tomorrow self.

Maybe some other surprise guests. I know you guys' favorite, John Young, maybe might be coming on. We will be batting around. We'll be talking about the Dubai Fitness Challenge. Hopefully, tomorrow morning, they'll release the workouts, and then JR and Taylor can tell you how great they are, how shitty they are. OK, see you guys later. I say bye, Caleb.

Bye. No bye for Sousa.