The Ukraine War Frontlines are Horrifying-Here's Why | Spencer Taylor

Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. Now, by the way, if you guys are enjoying this, especially the documentary is awesome. So we will have the documentary linked down below. Highly encourage you to check it out. You've cited a couple of them today, but you got some amazing interviews in there as well, like people who were agreeing to talk on this and really provide insight. And, you know, I'm not a father yet. You are, but I'm already thinking about this for one and a half kids. Like, you know, you damn well, don't want to be a helicopter parent in any way like that. I don't believe in any of that shit, but at the same time, what is like the system done to make you just say, yeah, I'm sure it's fine over there. You know, like you don't want to just assume it's going to work out. Well, this changed so much, right? Like your mom found out because of the teacher's unions, the teacher's unions have really welcomed in some of these radical, different, you know, ideologies that we have this, you know, in the United States, I think it was 1947, the Supreme Court really, like that's where we officially did the separation of church and state. And I think, you know, there's a lot of benefits to religious freedom, but where we've gotten to, we've gotten to the sticky point where we've invited curriculums like the Soji curriculum that I uncovered. I had no idea what Soji was. Soji. Soji is sexual orientation gender identity, and then you have the LGBTQ and it's really kind of operated as a religion, but it doesn't fall under the religion category. So it's in this really sticky in between where what happened, that's a whole deep dive. If you want to go down it, how Soji even came to be, please, it's messed up, it's wild. So Soji originated in 2006. There was a summit in Indonesia called the Yogyakarta summit, and it was funded by John Striker, who is like the hair to the Striker medical company. Oh, yeah. And he's gay and he's invested a ton of money into LGBTQ initiatives. So he was actually, he's like the number one investor into all this. And he funded, so he created this thing called the Arches Foundation, and they funded the Yogyakarta summit in Indonesia, and what that was, this was really run by the UN. The UN was like, hey, in order to give you Soji people and LGBTQ rights, we need a meeting for all of these different lawyers and psychologists and everybody to gather to kind of codify human rights, human rights law, where they're paid to come to a pre-desire conclusion. Yeah. Well, they were paid to be there, so they were hand selected, absolutely. So we can't really rely on that being very, you know, unbiased research, right? And we're seeing that. We're seeing all sorts of harms that these, you know, hormone blockers and, you know, gender transitioning. We're seeing that, like I uncovered that in the film, there's so many harms to children, and like, a lot of it turns into your grooming kids, right? Kids at the age of 12 are able to make medical decisions. Kids in Colorado, it's the State Department of Education mandates that you teach kids about Soji in first grade. Sexual orientation, gender identity. So you're teaching kids about sex in first grade. That's mad at any sex. Nothing. Right? And this is like something 80% of parents agree on, but why is it being pushed in the schools? Like, that's the question I ask. I have no issue with people being gay, being trans, do whatever you want. If you want to identify as a, you know, Norwegian red squirrel, I don't care. Like, go ahead. You're trans racial. Yeah. Can I be black for that day? I have to. Go ahead, man. I'm not offended. So I don't care, but if you start pushing it on kids, that's where we have an issue, right? And that's what's happening right now is like, a lot of parents are like, hey, you know, pump the brakes. So what happened is in 2006, they codified this and take human international law. It could have been 2009. I might be wrong on the dates. Soji. That was the yoga karta summit where they created the human rights laws surrounding Soji. And what that did is it codified it in a human international human rights law internationally. Internationally. But what happened is the UN took that and they said, okay, let's start enforcing it. And that's where DEI comes in that really the UN are like the enforcers. They were the, you know, OGs of pushing DEI and enforcing that. And then from there, you know, same Arcus foundation, you could trace it's really Arcus foundation, the Gill foundation, and it's like the striker family, like Pat striker. A lot of them are based in Colorado. So that's why Colorado is like the guinea pig. It's like, let's see what we can do here. Let's see what we can create. It was like four billionaires flipped Colorado from being a red state to a blue state. There's just four people. And those four people are the ones that created and funded and established this Soji, you know, curriculum. And so it's anything against parental rights and against, you know, religious rights. And they, they, they attack it. So, you know, they funded all sorts of different, you know, advocacy groups to bring this into schools. And that's kind of like GL, SCN, they're kind of like the main group that pushes this curriculum into schools. And they funded them as well. So I mean, they hit it from top to bottom to get it to bring it into the schools. And I don't know. I don't know if there's like, you know, some nefarious agenda to groom kids with all this. It seems that way. It seems like it seems that way. It seems like that's what you're doing. You're, you're taking advantage of very vulnerable kids. But the issue is, and thankfully, the Supreme Court just ruled with Mammud versus Taylor, I think last year that parents can opt their kids out of any Soji or LGBTQ curriculum because it's a violation of their religious freedom. How did they police that though? Exactly. Right. And the, the, what I uncovered by going undercover inside the NEA, because I actually went to their conference and went into the breakout sessions and heard what they were saying and closed. That sounded crazy. And they are actively subverting parents. There's things called like GSA's, which are gender sexuality awareness clubs. And they on camera are saying, I may, I recommend maybe you don't use this name. Try something different. Right. So they have like 40 different inconspicuous names for this stuff. So unfortunately, I don't want to sound like fear mongering. That's okay. But the truth. This stuff is happening all over the country and it's happening indiscreetly. It's happening behind parents' backs and the only way for you to know if it's happening or not is to really go in the school and go find out for yourself because anywhere where the NEA is, the teacher's unions, which are there's 2.8 million members and they are the largest labor union in the United States. They have a monopoly on education. Anywhere where they are, they have funded this stuff. They've given money to it. They've promoted it. So it's in there. Yeah. And it's textbook group think ideology too when it's bastardized in the worst possible way. By the way, when you were filming that though, because like you said, you have the undercover video in the doc, like, how do you do that without being noticed? You got like a fuck. I don't know if I should give away something. I don't know if I should give away my secrets. A lot of us just on my iPhone. You just like, yeah, I just kind of like propped it up. Yeah. I propped it up on my back pack, actually. I couldn't. Yeah, they have no idea. I was saying. Yeah. But my jaw hit the floor when they were like praising the satanic temple and I mean, you just look and like, that's where I come to, you know, I, I wanted to avoid this stuff when I was making the film. I was like, I want to stay out of politics. I want to stay out of this stuff. I just want to make a film about education. But then I realized like, oh, it's all interconnected. You can't separate them, right? Because education is like the battlefield. And I think we're fine. We're at a moment right now too. It's a very unique moment. And I mean this in a good way. It's a fun, dangerous time in the sense that the veil has now been lifted on what I would characterize as like the uniparty system where you have the Democrats, the Republicans at one moment, one sounds crazier than the other. It's kind of flipped that way back and forth my whole life. And then you realize they're all funded by the same people over time. They support the same systems overall. You know, maybe they argue about this, this or that, how to do it. They generally support the same things. And then you see such blatantly insane, depraved, awful stuff like the Epstein stuff we're staying right now, where every administration, every Congress, deer are controlled over the last, probably about 30 years, has put a lid on it and stopped it. So if they're willing to do that for something like that, what are they willing to do for what they don't show you in education, don't ask, don't tell, no pun intended, right? Like that, I don't know, this has been a really, it feels like the perfect time for a bipartisan attack here because we are now realizing that the world is separated between extremely elite people and everyone else and everyone else includes the homeless guy outside and your buddy whose dad's got a great small business that does like eight million in revenue a year and he drives a Porsche. Believe it or not, like that sounds crazy, but like he's a nobody compared to what we're talking about. about and I just, you know, I try to play with this to not get my brain to go too far off the edge, but it's in, once you see it, it's impossible not to see. All right, maybe this will blow your mind a little bit more. Blow it away, pause. So it not one single US president has sent their kids to a public school. And this might blow your mind a little bit more. Horseman, the guy that created this whole system, right, homeschooled, homeschooled as kids. Goddamn it. He had three sons. He homeschooled them. So you're a hundred percent spot on. It's, it's an elitist system. It was built by the elites and they didn't even send their kids to it. Let that sink in. We all went through a system that they did, they themselves created and they didn't even send their kids to it. So it shows. I mean, we we were viewed as like cattle, you know, it's like, let's just create consumers. Let's create people that are going to just obey and follow orders. And I think that's why everybody's having this crisis of meaning right now, where it's like, what does this all mean? We're just consuming things and it's like, no, hey, no, that that's not how God intended it to be. You know, it's just how the system was captured. One of if not the most common DMs I get on Instagram are many of you asking me what my favorite books are. Well, today's your lucky day because if you use the link in my description below to join my newsletter, I'm going to give you my top 10 book recommendations right now. Also, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make money producing content from the show, you can do so via the discord link in my description below. And finally, you can join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes via the Patreon link in my description below. As always, please take one second to hit that subscribe button. If you haven't already, I really appreciate that. Also, the like button's a big help and you can join my newsletter via the link in the description below. You study a lot of history. I like that. That's, I mean, that's the tell you learn things, but it is, you know, and I try to, I'm an optimist, and I also try to like be like, let's pull back to equilibrium and all that. But when you see the patterns as they are right now across every level of society, I don't need to list them all off. You know what I'm talking about. We're hitting on one of them today. But like, if this does not change at some point, and people continue to fall in the spread of the wealth gap and meaninglessness, you will have a French revolution moment. People think that, oh, that can't happen in fucking 2020. Bitch, they were fucking burning cities five years ago, because they were bored for three months on the couch. You know what I mean? Like, and that wouldn't be good for anybody. We could rug the system pretty easily, actually. It's just we've all been kind of pitied against each other. Yes. It's, all of us are paying taxes. If we all stopped paying taxes, they would have no money. Yeah. Right. That's the reality. That this is why, in my opinion, this is why they don't teach kids about taxes. If they taught us about the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and how all of this was all created, and they said, oh, yeah, actually before 1913, your ancestors, they weren't doing a list of stupid shit. Right. If they taught us that stuff in school, we wouldn't, we would be like, oh, this is insane. We're not doing it. That's why they don't teach it. Right. That's my whole thing is everybody focuses on, okay, there's all these crazy things are teaching kids. Yes. What are the things they're not teaching us? Right. They're not teaching us like what happened leading into the American revolution when they're not teaching us that the founding fathers were in their like 20s and 30s and like got together and were like, no, sorry. Fucking rip in hemp and right now like the greatest documents of all time. Exactly. Like sacred geometry and they were just tapped in. So yeah, on a positive note, I do feel like I'm on one side, I'm like, I don't want to push for a revolution. I want to push for a restoration. Yeah. Like, let's just hopped out. Let's just get, let's just step out of that system and it, yeah, it's probably going to die. It's going to continue to die. But if you opt yourself out and you inspire other people around you to pull their kids out of that system and you guys kind of start going this way, we start building like regenerative farms. We start, you know, getting back in tune with the land. We start decentralizing the money. We're seeing that happening. We have kind of the recipe. Like you said, it's, it's there. It's brewing. It's just the awareness has to click. There has to be that, you know, there has to be that kind of critical mass moment where enough people, it doesn't have to be the majority, but enough people are like, this just isn't, this isn't benefiting us. It's not benefiting the world, right? All these foreign wars, like, and I don't know the answer to this, right? Because like, I don't want to see, like, and I ran right now. We're at war. We're in a new war. You guys are well aware of that. It's like, man, it just feels like this is like, we're just repeating the same thing over and over. Like, let's just go drop bombs, blow things up and then it's going to fix everything. Like, I've spent time in the Middle East and stuff doesn't work, man. It just doesn't seem like it works. It might like band-aid solution for a little bit, but it's expensive. It puts us into massive amounts of debt. I mean, I'm sure you've seen the charts of like the debt from president to president. Let's just say that is the can that has been kicked down the road that will blow up at some point. It cannot not blow up. Does that mean it blows up next year, not necessarily, but like in my lifetime, if it is not drastically changed, will it blow up? Fuck yeah. Well, what are we? 39? I don't even know the number now. You can't even keep track of it. It's like 39 trillion or something in debt. Like, yeah, well, just invent fucking paper money. Oh, I think those zeros would fit on this desk. They don't. They don't. Yeah. They're the US debt clot. Wow, I got it. 38 trillion, 800. I can't even read that number out. This is how it's supposed to work. Yeah, like, like, like, what are you fucking math? That's what we should do. This is how you teach math. Kids, you want to see how much your daddy's fucking losing and money count this. If you can count, what is this? This is actually really cool. US debt clot.org. And it's got every variable you could teach a whole class on this right here. So our mutual friend, Mark Agnan, has he told you about his schooling upbringing? No. Oh, so he's what you call a classically trained conspiracy theorist. Yeah, excellent. So his mom homeschooled him. And instead of like, you know, we're going to learn 100 plus 50 today, she'd be like, builder, like, and then like 9/11, building seven. No. Yeah. And like his mom, who's a dear friend of mine, his mom was on it with a lot of things, including stuff that like eight months ago, I'd been like, I don't know, but now it's like, wow, she was ahead of the curve. Yeah. It's like, the quote should be like a conspiracy is Gagnon's mom plus 25 years. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. We're running out of conspiracy theories at this point. Yeah. I don't even, I don't have much information for you at this point. When you look at that, when you look at the debt picture, like, what, how do you think this kind of plays out? So I mean, you look at like, Clinton was the last president to be able to get us in a surplus. Yeah. Unfortunately, he was bad surplus some other stuff, but bad guy made, yeah, for a few things, bad guy. The 94 crime bill act was terrible. Though it was bipartisan. I'll give him that because he lost the midterms. And he repealed Glass Steagall, which set the course quite literally for the financial crisis. These are all horrible things. Didn't get us into too many foreign wars compared to what we do. They had the whole situation in the Balkans, but not a lot of that. And oversaw the best years in American history. And to your point, you know, this is like saying, it's a dwarf among midgets, but, you know, he was the best when it comes to not having our debt be completely out of control. Then you get Bush, Obama, Trump, it all stays the same DRR. They just put it up because they got a win on a Tuesday in November. And everything is just a fucking narrative. And it's just a plot point for some 30 second ad that some billionaires going to spend like 10 million dollars to buy on NBC while we're having our bread and circus watching the fucking Patriots lose. You know, it's not, at some point, I think in society, we got to talk about that. And we got to say, all right, what do we play in that system? What role do we play? How much do we just sit on this all day and accept the never ending scroll and not think about it and be like, you know what, I'm not going to touch that right now. Let's just get it out of here. You know, I think we also do have to look at ourselves too. No. A hundred percent. I think that's we have the power. We the people we had constitutionally have the power. And if you look at the founding fathers for as imperfect as they were, they I think wrote that thing to prevent us from what we're living in. Like we just kind of were born into it. Like there was bad mistakes that previous generation. I heard a quote that I don't remember where it came from, but it was eternal vigilance as the price of liberty. Eternal vigilance is the price of that's that's it more. And was that biggie small? It could have been. It could have been. It really could have been. I don't know who ripped that one. Maybe it's another Keanu Reeves quote. And Irish order. And Irish order. Okay. Oh wow. But that that's slapped. Yeah. Is that from 1852? Yeah. Wow. John Prestig here. Probably didn't like the royal family. family. I'm a question. Yeah, right. Yeah. That is an Irish thing to say. Yeah. I do feel that's what it is. We have to be Berti. It's really God. He's got me. That was great. He's just whipping again. Is that down and saying that? He's like, wow. Yeah. I spit right. They're not gonna lie. And here we are repeating it. Yeah. Ben Franklin has similar quote. He's like those who. What was it? Those who want those who want protection safety, safety, safety and exchange for liberty and freedom deserve neither or something like that. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. They were, they were, they were dialed. Yeah. He's my favorite. I study the shit out of him. He was way ahead of his time. Like just a genius. So do you feel? What would it take? Because I mean, I look at so many things that are happening today. And I'm like, oh, like we already have enough of an excuse to not pay taxes. But like, do you think there's like something where, do you see a point where we could get where everybody kind of looks around? It's just like, yeah, let's just stop paying them or maybe not stop paying them in full. But like, you know, do you see that being a possibility or could that just destroy everything? Could that, could that make it way worse than it is? Do you want me to tell you what I want the answer to be or what I think it is? Both. What I want the answer to be is say, yeah, fuck the system. Let's all just piece out to our mental fingers and it'll all work out. The reality is we've been the empire for a while in America. So that means you have no friends, even your friends are like, you know, you think the British don't remember 76. They still do. They're like, hey, that was us. We had that. And now they got it. You know, so like this, I love our British friends, obviously. But the governments of governments, you know, the system crashing all at once would probably, you know, would you want to rule over ashes or would you want to like rebuild where you do the Phoenix part before the ashes? I'd want to do the Phoenix part before the ashes, which means you probably couldn't just all be like, you know, let's all not pay it. However, the spirit of that and rebelling against at least some of it that we can all agree on. Now that, that, what's that, that middle ground right there? That might be something because I mean, how many billions of dollars are we going to spend on Ukraine? How many times am I going to see 10 million of my tax dollars have a senator signed fuck Gaza and send it into kill kids, you know, on the rocket before they do it? Like, that's not what I'm paying for. What I'm, what I want to pay for is that the bus picks up the kids and takes the kids to a school where they're actually going to learn something and not be fucking brainwashed, you know, the trash gets taken to the proper place and it's not asbestos in the fucking system. Like, these are very simple as, but we don't, we don't get them. So to your point, yeah, at some point, there should be some sort of collective like, yeah, this isn't going to fly. That's beautiful. Do you feel the boomers are kind of like once they're gone? Do you feel like our generation stepping in is going to have that kind of social awareness? That's the one thing I'm very interested to see. What do you think? It's going to be a mixed bag. I'm sure because the issue with institutional power is they have so much money now and so much influence and you know, people don't want to give that up once they have it. But I do see, you know, people like Thomas Massey, I think are a great example, but they're all also getting pushed out, you know, you think he's going to win? Yes. Okay. I hope so. I think actually, I think that's a great argument for hope here. I think people are seeing through that like what? He tried to release the Epstein files and said no to A-pack money and you're trying to get him out of there. Go fuck yourself. That'll be a huge win. I think bigger than more people maybe realize if he wins that. What are the polling numbers? Let's turn that out. I'd love to, he's tweeting like right now to me, him and Rokhan are like a protected class. For me, I've never said that about politicians, but I'm like, yeah, y'all are the least two worst among us right now. He's tweeting like he's scared, which scares me. Maybe that's just on purpose to make sure he wins by fucking 75%. I hope that's what it is. But, you know, I feel like a lot of people in Kentucky, you know, they're not, they're not too worried about Israel. I feel like they got bigger fish to fry down there. Yeah. And when some guy comes out and says, you know, I'm going to make sure that I'm a great fucking friend to Israel in Congress. They're going to be like, what? Yeah. Now, I'm going to stick with this guy, you know. I got to go take care about chicken. Yeah. I've got time for this. I mean, this is the same state that has Rand Paul that's been elected forever. So, I mean, I think that's a good one. Can we have anything deep? The only thing I got is calcium. So they're suppressing the polls. That's what they're doing. Okay, good. Only by 59 to 41. Yeah. That's pretty, pretty decent. All right. If you're listening from Kentucky, get out. Yeah. What? And by the way, Thomas Massey in. Look at this. Look at that, look at the calcium polling since the Epstein files were released right here. He's at 76%. Uh-huh. And now he's down to 59. He is on an upward spike now, which is good. Yeah, that's good. But, I mean, come on people. This isn't hard. Yeah. Yeah. I am optimistic, though. I am overly, overall, I'm optimistic because so many parents are choosing to educate their kids now. And so, I think we're going to have way more critical thinkers in the world. And especially with AI, we're going to have this gap where you're going to have kids like at Alpha School or, you know, different solutions like notion that I focused on in Mexico. You're going to have kids that are creators that know how to use these technologies to create. And then you're going to have consumers. So my, my prayer, my hope is that we have a lot of kids that are creators that are engaging in society and not victims, right? We do not want to teach kids to be victims. I think there's a lot of that going on right now where we're kind of teaching kids, oh, you know, this is a racist country, this system's oppressive, you know, it's important to, you know, know what happened like we've been discussing, but we have to solve problems. We have to, you know, change things, create change. So I'm optimistic that that's going to happen. Maybe I'm crazy for thinking that, but I, and I hope you're right. I hope you're right. I think we also need to normalize other types of heroes too. So I think it's awesome when you grow up and you know, some heroes who are athletes, surrendered trainers and stuff like that. And, you know, maybe they're really good guys too. And they do something really impressive. I don't, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water here. I think that's great when kids like that. But I think it'd be really cool if more kids grew up and looked at, you know, like a navy sealed David Goggins as a hero and stuff like that. Because, and he's an extreme example because he's the ultimate, you just got to do it. He got to be hard, motherfucker. Yeah. Right. But still there is something in that. And he lives it, by the way, like we've seen all these, I mean, you've seen it up close, but you saw a lot of people come up at the dawn of the internet and they claimed all these things and they look like this thing. And now we're far past the point where we realize, ah, he wrote some checks, his ass couldn't catch. David Goggins is still, I watched a video of him like three months ago, like finishing some hundred and seven mile race with his fucking knee falling off in the middle of the night. And it looks miserable to me. But like, that's what he said he was doing a decade ago. That's what he's still doing, you know. And I think, I think who our kids look up to and the types of attitudes that those people have about life is extremely, extremely important. Yeah, we, I mean, we used to call that the rugged individual, rugged individualism. And it does seem like you need a little bit more of that, um, you know, like the warmth of collectivism. I think you're, well, not yours. The York's government, or Mary's, that's, that's kind of his slogan. Yeah. The more safety nets we provide in society, the safer we make it, um, and the less risk, you know, the more you can just sue people for anything, it creates comfort. And it's expensive. Yeah. All these welfare programs, all these social programs are very expensive. But if you can empower people to be rugged individuals, that's where we come from. Like the pioneers, like the early settlers here, that was not easy life, not easy life. And I'm not, I wouldn't want to go back and have to live in those conditions by any means. But I agree with you, that mindset, you know, being built for whatever can be thrown at you. I mean, do you crane more is what it is? I spent a year in Ukraine and it really taught me. You're in Ukraine. Yeah. Yeah. I spent a year in there. All right. Tell me about that. How the fuck did you end up there? I was originally going to go for 10 days. And I went, he's like, I didn't tell my mom. Did not tell mom on that one. Like, oh, yeah, how you doing? She's like, what are you, where are you at? You crane? What? But I was, I had done some work with a humanitarian organization check out Global. empowerment mission. And they're based in Durral, Florida. I had done some stuff with them in the Amazon, more natural disaster stuff with the Amazon fires in 2019. And that kind of like planted the seed for me to start doing things greater than myself. I was like, I want to try to contribute to something greater than me. So you went down there while the fires were going on. We went down there and we did a cool program where we like bought a bunch of fire fire gear for a bunch of indigenous people that were like just needed stuff to fight these little fires. Where in the Amazon Bolivia. Okay. That's on the Bolivia side. And in 2022, I saw the the war. I saw the invasion and it really shook me. I was like, just from a purely humanitarian perspective, I was like, man, this is like messed up. And so I went out there in July. So just a couple of months after it had started. And I went to a city called Bucha, which was just outside of Kiev. And that was where the Bucha massacre happened. So the Russian soldiers basically came in and they killed and they put a bunch of girls, like really young girls, like some of them were like eight, nine years old, 13 years old. They killed like over 500 civilians, just mass graves. And I saw all of it. And I was interviewing these people. I mean, it was insane. And so I saw the mass graves. Yeah. Yeah. So the battle that had happened. I mean, just like houses blown up, bullet holes everywhere. I mean, it was just like a game of call of duty, like headdress rolled through. It was the most insane thing I've seen. What's it like though? You know, it's not like you were a special force of soldier who'd seen like 40 tours of duty or something. What's it like to come upon a place where there are civilian, I mean, the regular army men bodies too, but like women and children just dead by the hundreds or thousands. I can't, I can't fathom that. No, I mean, that's why I stayed. I was like, I'm staying here. I'm not going home. I'm going to like help these people because they don't deserve this. Does it desensitize you a little bit once you see that so much? Uh, yes and no. I think it's more of like you learn how to maybe hand a little bit more. So yeah, I guess it can desensitize you. Because yeah, I mean, you have to, I mean, human, the human nature in us has to normalize whatever environment we're in, right? Like when I'm in Ukraine, there's people walking their dogs while the air raid sirens are going off and there's like shaheed drones flying into the city and I had to do the same thing, you know? Like I would just be like, I can't stay coward and fear while these alarms are going off. So who are you there with? Um, with the nonprofit that I'm, that I'm working with. Yeah, but like, how many people are we talking? Um, well, so we, it's cool. I like the org that I work with because we don't import a bunch of foreign volunteers. So, um, the guy I work with Michael Kapone, he's the founder of global empowerment mission. And so he, um, I went in with him, um, but he travels a lot. And so I started going out to the Donbass, which is like the eastern part of Ukraine. And I spent a lot of time out there kind of helping because the war had shifted from Kiev to the Donbass. And so I went out there. I was kind of like on the first teams to go out there and start assessing just like, Hey, what's going on? What are the needs? Like just seeing what's, what's up? You know, what did the people say there in the Donbass? Like, what was the fight? Were there people? Because that's the one region that people talk about. Like, well, there's Russian speakers. Do they want to be in Ukraine? Do they want to be Russian? Like, there's so much propaganda there. Oh, yeah, the propaganda is crazy. Well, I found that there's a crazy amount of propaganda. And, uh, the vast majority of people want to be Ukrainian. They, yeah, because they, after the Soviet Union, life was tough, but it was way better in Ukraine than it was Russia. I think from the Western perspective, we look at like, Oh, Ukraine's super corrupt. Yeah, they have their issues. Russia's got way worse issues. You know, Ukraine is definitely more leaning towards being European, obviously, especially now. But yeah, by and large, people wanted to be Ukrainian. I, I maybe ran across a couple people that were just like, I don't care. But the vast majority of people like, no, we don't want to go back to that. We do not want to go back to the Soviet Union. So that's why they're fighting. They're fighting like hell to, you know, prevent, prevent Russia from taking their land. It's also wild, though, that you're talking about a war that has estimates of like two million casualties, like a million, whatever it was, we looked at the other day. If like a million dead and the world, the world continues funding it and continues. And I've had guys in here who are, you know, from the military side who have been there on the lines as well, who can at least also speak to the style of war fighting and everything. And they're like, these motherfuckers, they're fighting for two weeks over 14 yards. And there's hundreds of bodies stacking up. Oh, yeah. And this is happening all over the country. And at some point, you're like, people talk about like bankers, wars and population control, you're like, are we just watching this happen in real time? Yeah, it's tough. It's, you know, what's the solution? I think if I had the answer to that, I'd probably be in a different position. I don't know what the solution is. It's tough. I love the Ukrainian people. They're beautiful. Their spirit is incredible. I feel like the Ukrainians have a lot to bring to the world too. So I do, their skill, their grit, their abilities. I mean, you look at the drone technology that they've developed that alone is phenomenal. I mean, they had a really strong tech industry before that was emerging. They have an immense amount of natural resources. Do we want that going to Russia? Do we want that staying with Europe? I mean, these aren't the questions that I want to answer, but it's like, you kind of have to answer some of those questions, you know, with geopolitics. So judging by Russia, I don't know if we want to see a really strong Russian empire again. Yeah. And that's, and that's the other thing too. It's like kicking the can down the road, right? We already dealt with that. And like, do we want to deal with it again? Do we want to let them regain the Soviet Union? And that's part of the reason I think you got to stop this war because they have a GDP the size of Italy. No offense, but they're not like that. They could become like that. If you allow them to fight a perpetual war, gain more ground, potentially get access to resources strictly because you kept the war going that they wouldn't had access to. And now you play it 50, 60 years out and maybe suddenly they have a GDP the size of China. I mean, I'm taking a lot of leaps there, but like it's not all the realm of possibility. Whereas if you just, I mean, the West is funding the war too. You can go in and be like, all right, let's make some sort of a little compromise here. You could, you could take what would feel like a, all right, we're letting Putin live. I don't like that. But people aren't dying, which I feel like they don't care about. And also, sadly, and also you have controlled growth of where Russia is. And now there's a clear red line. Like if they try anything, they're gone. That'll be the world won't give them a second time for it to be like, well, what about the people that would, it would just be like, nope, you come over, you're getting invaded. That's it. Yeah. This is why I think it's like, hopefully it's the final war, you know, for them. Not looking good, bro. We just fucking invaded Iran. So. Well, I'm saying the final war between Ukraine and Russia. Hopefully this is kind of like draw the lines and you enforce that. I hope so. You have outside, you know, we were supposed to enforce that when Ukraine gave up their nukes. We, we kind of had a little deal with them. Yeah. We also broke promises to Russia to in the 90s that cannot be denied. Yeah. And there's been a lot. It's a messy. It's a lot of like one is kicking. Like over and over again, they're like, how will kick this Putin guy again? He won't care. It's like, well, he just killed two journalists and fucking Britain. I feel like he care. Yeah. We'll kick him. Oh, now he killed his political opposition. I think he cares. And we'll kick him again. No, now he invaded Ukraine. It's like, what do you expect to happen? Yeah. You know, yeah, it's tough. It's tough. I'm not the geopolitic expert. But from a purely humanitarian perspective, I think it's, it's pretty clear, like who's on the, on the right side, if you will. Yes. I think the Ukrainian people don't want this war. Right. If, of course, if, if it was up to the Ukrainian people, the war would be over today. If it was up to, and you know, they would exist. If they gave up right now, they wouldn't exist anymore. So it's a, it's a war for existence. It's not their fault. Not their fault, for sure. But you were there for a full year. So what, what was, you know, you said you wanted to be there for 10 days originally, and you're there with the guys that headed the humanitarian foundation. But like, who are you? Are you with specific people in the Ukrainian military? Are you with specific people, civilians who are fixers? Like, what does it look like? And what, what, what did you end up doing on a day to day for a year? So I was with a ex-special forces guy in the Ukrainian military, and then some active special forces guys as well. So the military would kind of take us around. Like we went to Bachmoud, Avdivka, Volodar, Kupyansk, like all of, all over the frontlines from Kursant to Zapereja, all throughout the Donbass. And we would, we would go. So our primary mission was to bring food to essentially what happens within, you know, at the time when it was just artillery, now it's drone warfare. So I mean, if you're like anywhere 10 kilometers near the frontline, like FPV drones, you're literally whenever we're driving, we're like looking out, listening, no music, because those things are lethal. When I was out there in the beginning, it was primarily artillery, but they had destroyed all these grocery stores, they were attacking. all the power plants. So these people wanted to stay and if they flee, they become refugees and we don't want that. Nobody wants that. In Europe, nobody wants that in the world. You don't want a bunch of refugees that creates a crisis. So our job was how can we keep these people here? They want to stay here. Well, they need food. They need water. They need windows to be repaired that have gotten blown out, you know, when it's the winter. So that was our primary focus, going village to village and, you know, it started with just a small team and now we have, you know, think the Howard Buffett Foundation funds our whole operation out there. So we have, you know, we're doing, I think like 800,000 people a month receive food from our organization. That's making a big difference. It's, yeah, it's a massive, massive humanitarian operation. And we're, we're an NGO. So we're performing what it's, and I don't say it's a brag. It's just, it's kind of, I think it's cool. We only have three percent overhead. So when you look at other nonprofits or like you look at UN agencies, I mean, they have immense amount overhead and they're doing a fraction of what we're doing. So they have an extra zero on their budget and they're doing less than what we're doing. So that's been cool to work with an organization that's disrupting the space. So you going back? Yeah. Yeah. I'll be back. When? June, I think. June or September. How long are you planning on staying? Not that long. Thankfully, you know, our model is empowerment and they're empowered. Like they're all Ukrainians. Like we have like 3000 Ukrainian employees. We don't really send any Americans there. I see you're making jobs too. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it's about. And, you know, the traditional models like send your staff in there and you do it all. And then when you leave, you leave, like that's not our model. Our model is like, let's empower victims of that disaster. Let's give them the tools they need to help. So I don't really need to be there anymore. In the beginning, I kind of needed to be there because I needed to help, you know, and oversee things, make sure it was going to the right places. I didn't have anything to gain, you know, so you got to kind of make sure people are, you know, doing what they're saying, you know, doing what they're saying they're going to do. Were you ever in situations where you were genuinely like afraid for your life? Yeah. Yeah. I can send you a video. I have a GoPro video of if you want to watch it. Send away. Yeah. Give it a deep. Let's go pull it up while we're talking. That's wow. See if I can find it. My friend Katarina Schultz was actually just there too. And you talk about the drone warfare. We've done a couple podcasts recently. We're really talking about drones as well. So it's like kind of top of mind. But she had to change. She was there. So she does like a lot of cartel reporting. And she had to change the tree line behind her using AI. So it looks fake behind her behind where a bunch of these these Ukrainian soldiers who were mercenaries that they were hiring had their face blurred. So people were like, oh, this picture's fake. She's like, it's not, but the background is changed because the military mandates that you have to change the background and everything because it allows for geolocation targeting of drones and people get taken out. And it's like, Jesus Christ man. Oh, yeah. I mean, I do remember for what it's worth. I remember like when they were even when I was a little kid when they were chasing bin Laden and he would do a video. He would always have to make sure at the beginning he was like doing videos with rocks behind him. And even back in like, Oh, too, the CIA would be like reading for the structure and makeup of the rocks on this on the 480 p video and trying to determine the location of it just based on the rock. So it's like imagine what they can do now. They're probably like, all right, he's at this longitude and latitude in front of this place because we see that scar and that tree and out of the fucking 12 billion trees in the country. That one's like, I wouldn't be surprised if they could do that for sure. Oh, they definitely geolocate. We had to turn off our, I just texted you the link. So maybe you can send that up. Yeah, send it to deep. Go ahead and download that. But yeah, you have to turn off your phones, location services. There's a lot of protocols that we had to go through whenever we were getting near the front lines. Just you, they can pick that up. They pick up the cell service and they can just like send a drone right away. We've had a couple close calls with our team. Thankfully, we've got, you know, everybody's been safe so far. So now this video, you and I are going to watch it. Is this something we can have on screen now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You guys could show us. Okay. It's not going to show like people dying now. No. Okay. I might show some gore. So you might have to. All right. So we'll just make a note of that if we have to like blur out some stuff. Fortunately, and this is a little bit like this, like a three minute video. If you want to watch the full thing you can or you can just where do you want us to cut it to if you don't want us watching the full thing? Well, you could play a little bit from the beginning just to get context and then you could get a little bit. And what this was 2022 or 2023. This was 2023. A re I believe. Who's that in front of you? That's just a, so we were given out humanitarian eight boxes here. So these people that are here, apartment just got hit by a missile. So you can hear the background. There's like a full-blown tank battle that would happen. And that's just it's like in the middle of a regular town. Yeah. It was one day with normal. So we saw the smoke rising. So we, I was like, I just pointed. None of the guys know what could speak English. So I just pointed at the smoke. He's like, oh, let's go check it out. And this is my buddy here today. He pulled off and there's this guy. There's a soldier in that. Basically lost his So it's just insane. We're like, well, we can't leave him. So we just like through a lot of stuff. Loaded him up. And the GoPro's on your head. Yeah. And this is insane. My heart was like oh my god. And then now this other soldier saw us and he messed up his friend real bad. And our killer was coming in while we were here. Like towards you? Yeah. Around us. Yeah. How they're supposed to hospital or doctor. We drove, I want to say maybe like 15 minutes to like a front there was like a little front line under cover. So yeah, they basically the Russians like launched a bunch of grad missiles in and they like blew up. These guys got hit by. Yeah, that was that was probably the most gnarly. And then we had other situations where we just had to get out but did you know, there's so much happening. And you're also capturing to tell the story. And you're also helping normal civilians who are getting hurt. But you know, you're you are in the middle of a war quite obviously. Like do you have your moments where you're like, all right, might not come home today. That one was one of them. Because as we were extracting that guy, you might not be able to hear it, but like stuff was coming in. And I was just like a week. Like there was just this moment where I thought it in my mind. I was like, Oh, I could die right now. But you have two options. It's like, you're either, okay, I'm in a panic or let's go. Let's get this guy out of here as fast as possible. So for me, that activated. You know, it's like, let's let's get get it done. Yeah, I mean, that's great to you guys to get him out there. But like, I don't know, it's impossible to know what you would feel like until you're in that moment, right? And knock on what I've never had to be in a moment like that. That's insane. But like, is there so much adrenaline going that you're like at peace with it too? Where you're like, you know what? You know, I even on the video, maybe I wasn't on that clip, but on the way out, I was just like, man, what are we doing? Like, this is war. When you experience war like that, like I think any politician that's pushing war, their kids should like somebody from their family should have to be involved because it changes the game. I'll take it a step farther. I think anyone with like if we had to codify it and law anyone with a following of X number and above who's openly advocating for war, they should have to send a family member. Yeah, or go. Yep. Yeah, it's a war as hell, man. It's here that all the time, but it is. And when you see the human costs, thankfully that guy survived. He lost his leg. But when you see the human costs, like I've been to some of the hospitals out there and some of the stuff I've seen in Gaza as well, you just see all this. You're like, oh, man, this is like the last thing we want to do. We do not want war. And it's easy for all these politicians like Lindsey Graham, like, hey, - Buddy, I would love to see you put on a tactical vest. - He's got a gag out of his mouth first. - I didn't say it. - Listen. - Hey, no, it's true. - It's true, if you actually went to the front lines and you had to risk your life and you had to be in it, you at least, even if you still supported it, you would at least be a lot more humble. Like the hubris would not be there. Like, you'd be like, damn, I have to make a decision that people are going to die, it's a tough for them. - I have not. - And I think you see our politicians, they're so far removed from that. Like, you look at George Washington, that home he was ripping. - He was in it. - You look at Theodore Roosevelt. I didn't know that about him. - He was in it. He was in Cuba, like storm and trenches. I'm like, bro. - Dude, Theodore Roosevelt, when he was a politician, can we check this, Steve? I want to make sure I'm not making this up. I'm pretty sure it was him. He was literally shot in an assassination attempt and fucking finished his speech. He did, you're right. - You're right about that. - He was about that life. - Yeah, they were about that life. To some credit, I mean, Trump at least got shot, but it was just a little left. - I will give him that though. Like, I had a lot of special forces, guys. Like, dude, you find out who people are when the bullets are flying and I'm on the fire. - He was about it. - He was about it. - He got up and like, yeah, that was epic. That was epic. - It was epic for sure. - You can hate on him, but like, that was gnarly. - 100%. - When he got up, it was like, fight, fight. - Let's chase, bro. - I'm saying. - Yeah, Lindsey Graham has just been one that I've been abusing on Twitter, like crazy, and I'm gonna continue to do it because here's the thing. He has been to the front lines and stuff. There's crazy video, I don't know if you'll be able to find this, Steve. There's an insane video of Lindsey Graham and I think John McCain talking to Ukrainian soldiers in like, 2014, through a translator, surrounded by all these guys saying, like, stoking war. Being like, we gotta kill the Russian. You guys are gonna save civilization or whatever. So, they go there and they propaganda as people. Like, we know him many times. The fucking guy's going to Israel. I think he should live there, you know? But it's like, I just want to know what kind of tapes they got on him. And the thing is, is you had a lot of politicians like going to Kiev, but Kiev's different than Avdivka, you know? - They're going to the presidential palace and Kiev with Vogue and Trump or Putin purposely doesn't shoot rockets when our politicians are there. He doesn't want to risk anything, so. - He's not suicidal. He is not a suicidal guy. I'll give Putin that. He, I think people, when they look at someone they don't like, especially, you know, leader of some country or something, they tend to throw out. They tend to underestimate their mind. And that's a big mistake. Putin is not a dummy at all. - No. They were doing some dumb stuff in the beginning, but that's just because of their old tactics, but they've learned. They've adopted, they're, they're dialed. Yeah, I don't know how that all ends. I'm glad that they're at least kind of at the table, but in order to end it, what, what Russia wants in order to end it is just like laughable. So it's like, geez, it's like one step forward, two steps back, sometimes it feels. There's gotta be that middle ground. There's gotta be that thing where you're giving up something you don't like, but you're not giving up all they want. And there's a clear red line now in the sand that it's like, you do this, you're done. Yeah, 'cause we didn't, we didn't have that last time because the back and forth botched diplomacy on both sides. For effectively 30 years at that point, you know? But when were you, when were you in Gaza? How recent was that? Gaza was 20, 20, four in March. Now how did you get in there? I think I had gotten in there through Egypt when the Egypt crossing was up. Now you can't go in through Egypt. Israel's got it fully sealed off because there was a lot of tunnels and stuff under Egypt. So when I went into Rafa and then we kind of went up into like deer Abelah, like the middle Gaza city. What was that like? I was just saying in the beginning it, before we jumped on it was kind of like a game of battleship because we were staying in a house that's on the deconfliction notice. So basically we would tell the, you know, there's like an organization that kind of coordinates things with the Israeli military and you have to tell them, hey, we've got humanitarian aid workers here in this house so that they don't like send a missile and blow up the house. But just days before the World Central Kitchen or after actually the World Central Kitchen workers had been killed. So and they were driving in a humanitarian marked vehicle. It was just an accident, total accident. They were driving at night and they were mistaken and they got, all got killed, rest in peace to all of them. And so yeah, it's just, it was, you know, the windows would rattle anytime it was like an explosion and you'd hear some gunfire 'cause there's like gangs competing with each other. It was just like Wild West, but-- - Wait, gangs competing with each other? - Yeah, there's all sorts of like inside Gaza. There's like warring gangs. There's like families that are fighting each other. Well, Israel's also attacking them. It's like, it is messy, it's very messy. But through, you know, one of the beautiful aspects of it was the, you know, Palestinian people were incredible. Like our Palestinian team, they're amazing. They're incredible humans. The vast majority of Palestinians do not support Hamas. I think, you know, they just want peace. Just like most people in the world. So it was really cool to like get to meet and interact with people like that. And just, I got to like walk down some of the streets and like meet a ton of people, hand out food and water and blankets and stuff. So it was a, you know, I felt very grateful to be able to do that. - Were they, I don't wanna ask this. - Were they angry? - Angry. - Big time. - What was happening? - Yeah, of course. - It's kind of an obvious question, but the reason I-- - Yeah, we got yelled at a little bit from a couple of people and I like totally understood, you know, just like a couple younger girls, they were like really angry and they were like, we don't want your aid, you know? Like this is your fault, this is your government's fault. And that's heartbreaking to hear. Because it's like, I don't support it. If it was up to me, I would not have allowed that at all. And to hear that and then you're trying to help. And it's like, it's tough. - Yeah. The reason I ask is just because the, you know, $10 trillion question is if it stopped, I mean, it's technically stopped right now, but is it really like if it actually stopped and they were able to have meaning to Palestinians, were able to have their own place before even, we get to the two country solution, which I've always believed in, you know, would they be able to forgive? 'Cause it's a massive, massive murder that's occurred. - Yeah. Yeah, I believe so. I don't, I can't speak to everyone. I'm sure there's a lot of people that, you know, you wipe out 36 people to get one guy. Like I know stories, well, you know, that's happened. And you create a lot of trauma, you know? These wars create so much trauma. And it's like, it creates more perpetual generational trauma and issues that you have to solve down the line. But yeah, I do believe a lot of them can move on past this and, you know, they just want peace. That's it. - I hope so and I hope I see it in my lifetime 'cause the whole situation's really sad. And unfortunately, you know, because we can see things, it's not like the old days where it was, you know, 50 years ago, there were three channels that told you whatever it was for the day and that was it. Now people can see things, including stuff that is not real on any side of any war. So that's always tough, but like, you know, when you see that the intelligence in Iran is so good that they knew where the fucking Iatola was taking a shit through traffic lights. But then the same Israeli government claims that oh, we have no idea what those tunnels are in Gaza and are fucking backyard that have been there for 20 years. Come on, come on, you tell me you got to take out a city block of 185 people for the one guy because you don't have good enough intelligence. I don't buy it, I don't buy it. And my buddy Eric Zooliger has an amazing quote that I cite all the time where he says, people are not their governments and he's absolutely right about that. And I do try to really separate that. I think, you know, I think sometimes we will demonize all over the world an entire group of people. You pick who it is because of something that's happening. But the reality is it's like, how do they do our cancer drugs? They kill everything and ideally we'd have cancer drugs that maybe could actually cure it by just attacking the disease. I think that's what we got to try to figure out as humanity, too. Like how do you attack the disease of dictatorships and tyrannies and you know, maniacal governments and stuff like that without discarding all the people, too. Because that's what happens in these struggles. And in this situation, we've seen the people in Gaza discard it and it's horrible. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's why for me personally, I come back to, you know, my faith and Christ. I think, you know, Christ is king, and I feel, you know, when you look at that, that territory, Jesus, Yeshua was a Palestinian Jew, like he was both, and I feel like we have the answer. He was based. He was based. Before based exists. Yeah, he, he invented based. And I feel like we have the answer. We have the answer of like, hey, we have something to unify, to follow. It's just these extremisms. Our, like you said, it's like, can we surgically remove those extremes on both sides and, you know, make sure if we are wielding our military, it's only used to do just that and then to protect people. And yeah, I'm with you, man. I think the only pathway we can have is optimism. Thank you guys for checking out this clip. If you haven't already subscribed, please subscribe and hit the like button on this video. It is a huge, huge help. And if you'd like to check out this clip, full podcast episode, that link is in the description below or right here. 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