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Hey everyone, it's Ria. Before we get started, I want you to give a close listen to this episode. My guest, Ken Harbaugh, is a Navy veteran, a pilot, and he is doing incredible work to make sure that every one of us knows what's going on with a growing extremism in this country. Guys, democracy doesn't defend itself. We need everybody to get involved. I
I hope you'll listen. I hope you'll learn more about the work that Ken is doing and the movie, the incredible film they've created, and that you will get involved in your community however you can to ensure that come November 5th, we don't just win, but we win big. And now, on with the show. Welcome back to The Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Galen. Today, I'm joined by Ken Harbaugh, former Navy pilot and past president of Team Rubicon Globals.
He has served as a guest fellow at Yale University, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Yale Journal of International Law. In 2021, Ken received the National Conference on Citizenship Hooah Award, given annually to the American veteran who exemplifies citizenship through service.
He hosts the award-winning podcast Warriors in Their Own Words and Burn the Boats and is an executive producer for the newly released documentary film Against All Enemies, which is now streaming on Apple TV+. It's number one in documentaries, getting 16th overall, climbing the charts at just past Barbie and Dune and is currently holding strong at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Today, he's coming to us from Cleveland, Ohio. Ken, welcome to the show. Reid, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. All right. So, Ken, I've seen Against All Enemies. You and I were together in Northern California, I don't know, like six, eight weeks ago. And it's the story of violent extremism in
Where violent extremism, I should say, meets the military. So first, give us a little bit of background on your military experience and then how you came to make a movie like this one. Yeah, well, I'm glad you asked because I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be making a
movies, period, much less a movie about how my brothers and sisters in arms have violated their oaths, have turned against the Constitution they swore to support and defend. But January 6th changed everything for everybody. And I remember vividly sitting in the driveway, listening to the radio, realizing that the world had changed. It was like a 9-11 moment for me. And then in the aftermath, seeing
footage of those stacks of veterans working their way through the crowd. And I guarantee you, every veteran knew what they were looking at. And what is a stack? Just so our listeners know. It's a tactical formation that helps you penetrate any kind of barrier. In this case, it was a throng of protesters and it was veterans leading the charge to break down the doors to get inside and
And I wanted to learn more about that phenomenon. And that began this three-year journey of creating this film. And honestly, the deeper we got into it, the more terrifying it all seemed to us. And so...
If you think about it, you know, violent extremism in the military, the one that comes to mind, the top of my mind, is obviously Timothy McVeigh. Was in the Army, was in the Gulf War, you know, blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on the aftermath of the Waco fiasco, you know, the Branch Davidian fiasco. That's obviously a very clear distinction, 168 people, children, men, women. So take us through how...
Someone goes from being in the military to taking their oaths as either soldiers, enlisted, non-commissioned officers, officers against all enemies, foreign and domestic, where you get the title, to a place where a man drives a rider truck up in front of a federal building. Well, we interview a number of experts in the movie and obviously people who are active in these organizations, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers. One of the conversations that really stands out
is one with Kathleen Ballou, who literally wrote the book on this phenomenon. The book is called Bring the War Home about veterans coming home from wartime and becoming radicalized. And it is a documented fact that after every American foreign military misadventure, membership in these extremist groups skyrockets. It happened after World War I, after World War II, after Korea, especially after the
And you have someone like Timothy McVeigh, who leaves the military and is looking for that same sense of camaraderie and community and mission that he had while in uniform. And he finds it in extremist organizations. That is happening again today. And there are many contributing factors, but one of them is certainly the absence of military
that sense of community and that sense of mission that is such a powerful force in the lives of people while they're in the military. But that need doesn't go away just because they take off the uniform. And so, I mean, I guess my question is this, is to your point, we ask a lot of you all are veterans in uniform, men, women, right? I think
Correct me if I'm wrong, Ken, but I think that the members of the U.S. military make up, if we're lucky, about 1% of the population at any given moment, right? So 1% of the population, all the accompanying gear and equipment and hardware and firepower and everything else makes up for the other 99% of the country. And obviously, we're the most powerful military humanities ever even conceived of, let alone known. And so how is it that 99% of us are
are continually failing that 1% of us that come home. I think it has to be said, and you and I see eye to eye on this, but we have to say it out loud, that the vast majority of veterans do not join extremist organizations, right? We're talking about a small fraction, but a dangerous fraction. There is a reason
that the Proud Boys and the Yoth Keepers and the Three Percenters target and recruit military veterans to their ranks. It's because they are effective. They are force multipliers. They don't just bring that training and experience they've acquired while in the military. They bring a certain cachet. They bring a certain credibility, and they help amplify the messaging of these organizations. As a society, we have to do a much better job
of providing alternate pathways for veterans leaving the military, for military personnel leaving the military to reenter civilian life as productive veterans. There are some great examples out there like Team Rubicon, which has trained over 100,000 veterans to be disaster responders. That is channeling that energy and that desire to be
part of something bigger than themselves, that need for camaraderie, into helping their fellow Americans. Well, now into helping people all over the world. Team Rubicon has disaster relief missions across the globe. But we're competing with organizations that are very, very good at recreating that sense of camaraderie, at giving veterans that sense of mission. The only problem when we're talking about the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters and others is that the mission they give these veterans is undermining democracy.
Okay, so let's talk about that. So I come home, I'm a veteran, combat or otherwise, you know, if there's the combat arms, right, if the Marines and the Army are more susceptible to this, they're more likely to be in combat on the ground. You were a pilot, obviously, so I don't want to specify a particular kind of veteran. But so I come home, I'm lost.
I'm trying to figure out where I belong. If you've been in combat, as you know, Ken, as I've read, right, it's really hard to explain to somebody who hasn't been there who could imagine that it wouldn't be. And you're looking for that kind of bond that I assume being in a trench, a foxhole, an airplane, as you were, nothing can really recreate that. So talk to us a little bit about the process. How do they identify these veterans? How do they pick them out? And what's the process of recruitment?
Well, so much of this is new because of social media. The cost of acquiring these members has decreased dramatically. That said, this is a phenomenon that goes all the way back to the Civil War. The KKK emerged first.
from the Civil War as a social gathering of Confederate veterans. It started out as that and turned into a terrorist organization. But you have these groups cropping up after every war. The KKK is the most prominent. They've had surges in membership after every American war, but veterans are now
identified and targeted online, and it is so much easier to get them that way. The other thing that's new, frankly, and I think we should be talking about it on this show of all shows, is that these movements now have political cover. We have had extremist and terroristic movements in this country since its founding, but very rarely has a major political party provided cover to these movements.
And you saw President Trump behind a presidential podium on a debate stage name check an organization, the Proud Boys, that Canada deems a terrorist entity. That is virtually unprecedented. I mean, you have to go.
to the South during the heyday of the KKK to find anything comparable. And it's a new problem that we're dealing with. I mean, I understand the Proud Boys, the three percenters, the Oath Keepers. What is it that they're telling these veterans about democracy, their oaths to the Constitution that gets them to take that level of service?
And that oath and twist it into something dangerous and anti-democratic. Well, it's not just them telling these veterans they're getting a ton of help from the former president on down. And I think the big lie is a huge part of it.
When you swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution and have been convinced that the democracy is being stolen out from under you, well, then the only logical action, if you're a trained combat vet, is to take up arms. And what to me is the most tragic aspect of this entire sad drama is the fact that so many of these veterans who have done this, who have fallen into this vortex of misinformation, think they're doing the right thing. I mean-
Congressman Crowe, who did 90 missions as a ranger in Iraq, who we interview in the film, he was one of the members stuck in the House gallery. While the doors were being beaten down, they got everyone else out. They didn't get him out and didn't get out a handful of others. He actually had this thought as the insurrectionists were trying to break down the door. He thought, how can the people on the other side of that door, because he knew some of them were veterans, have sworn the same oath together?
How do they believe so deeply that they're the ones upholding the oath? And it's because a president told them. It's because virtually an entire party told them that your country is being stolen from you.
You know, there's a lot of stories about Donald Trump. If you go back to when he was president on a trip to France, when, you know, he didn't want to go to the military cemetery because, you know, they were a bunch of losers. And this was to John Kelly, his chief of staff, whose son was killed in combat. Or, you know, the story out of the Atlantic of former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley.
that there was somebody singing at his investiture who was a wounded combat veteran. And Trump said, I don't like that guy. Those guys look like losers that make us look bad. What makes so many men, I assume mostly men, but some women too, want to be loyal to someone who so clearly has and so clearly expresses disdain for them? I think not enough of our buddies have gotten that message. And I think that's where veteran messengers
Come in between now and the election organizations like vets for responsible leadership need the support to get the word out that Trump is not pro military. He's not pro veteran. He's not even pro America. When he says things like people who died are suckers and people who serve are losers. When he told Millie that he never wants to see another wounded vet at one of his events because they make them look bad.
I don't think enough veterans are hearing that and believing it. And they're only going to hear it and believe it when it comes from a fellow veteran. So we need help as veteran organizations. And I'll plug VFRL again, veterans for responsible leadership, getting that word out to our fellow battle buddies, to our brothers and sisters in arms. Well,
Well, and if you remember, and I remember sitting in a room back in 2015, it's hard to believe it's almost nine years, Ken, in a room with a bunch of national political reporters the day that Trump said, I think he was in Iowa. He was asked about John McCain and said, I like people who weren't captured.
And we were all sort of like, well, that's it, right? Like the guy served, you know, in the Hanoi Hilton, right? He was tortured. You know, I worked for Senator McCain. I was like, well, look, the guy's a hero, right? He's an icon of the U.S. Senate and of the military and of the Navy. You know, if you go after a guy like John McCain, that's got to be it. You know what? His poll numbers went up. Yeah, I don't have an answer for you. It shocks me every time he does something like this and the base rallies. I think that is more...
of an indictment of the party he has corrupted than it is of him. The fact that there's literally no wrong he could do. We thought he was being hyperbolic or metaphorical when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't hurt his poll numbers. I think he actually meant it. I think if he did that, his poll numbers would go up.
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Let's talk a little bit about the movie. So in the movie, the filmmakers interview a gentleman from down in Texas, and he is, you know, as someone who went to high school in Dallas and college in Austin, you're the guys out in the country. He's got a cowboy hat on. He's got his boots on. He's got his jeans on. He's got, you know, a nine millimeter on a hip and a Bible in his hand.
So take me through, and this is part of the veteran piece, but also of the extremist pieces. You know, a lot of these people are heavily armed, you know, if they come for me, et cetera, et cetera. But the one thing, and I know that I'm asking an intellectual question, not an emotional or psychological question. If you've been in combat or you've been trained to use weapons of war, you know, you have to know that like you can have 800 guns in your house, like you can use only like one of them at a time.
So explain to me the psychological makeup of someone who's like, I'm going to be heavily armed for when, quote, they come for me. Is it a sense of security? What's going on? Yeah, I don't know that I can do the full psych profile, especially when it comes to the fetishization of guns. That has always mystified me. I think it might. And this goes well beyond the scope of the film. But I think it
might have something to do with the perceived emasculation of the modern American male and overcompensating. And it's always the guy with the biggest gun. And you see the politicians, especially in their Christmas cards, right? The ones with the biggest guns are the ones that we actual vets laugh at the most. And, you know, one of the co-producers of the film is a Navy SEAL, founder of Veterans for Responsible Leadership, who did
More deployments than anyone I know. He was in SEAL Team 8. Dan Barkoff, friend of the Lincoln Project. Friend of the Lincoln Project. Did more deployments than just about anybody and has observed that sometimes the most dangerous veteran is the one that didn't get to see combat, right? Because they have this romantic notion of it.
Not to say that there aren't some hardened combat vets who want to apply those skills back at home, but what I've found is that in a lot of cases, the ones who are strapping on body armor and strutting and talking tough are compensating for something. They missed the war. They want to get a piece of the action. But in the case of the Texan that you're talking about, one of the things that struck me again and again in the making of the film is
was just how engaging and charismatic some of these characters were. They really do believe that they're in the right, that they're the ones defending the Constitution. They're wrong. But if anything, what that signals to me is that the real onus, the real blame lies with those who know better. The Eric Greitens, the J.D. Vance's of the world, the Josh Hawley's who from a safe distance
fist pump the insurrectionists, send them to the barricades and then run like hell when it gets hairy. Well, yeah, I think that all goes together, right? Which is it's really easy to be the tough guy walking across the plaza with the fist in the air, right? But then he's literally like running. We're talking about Josh Hawley from Missouri. He literally runs away. The difference between a guy like Hawley and a guy like you is
you both like you're both well educated you both understand how the world works the difference is is that like when push comes to shove he's going to run right because he wants to be fed he wants to be celebrated for being a tough guy and maybe even encouraging others to do violence but when when the time comes ken he does not want to be accountable or responsible for it and i think that's one of the things too is a member of the military right is that if you command
Soldiers Marines Airmen Coast Guardsmen right I don't know how you how you refer to Space Force members but you understand my point is that you have a responsibility and accountability isn't it guardians I'm just off the top I think it's maybe it's guardians also also a Cleveland baseball go guardians.
But you have both, you know, a responsibility to your soldiers and an accountability for their actions and for the, you know, for the conduct that they present in, you know, while in uniform. But, you know, if you've never served or you're so shallow like a Hawley or a Cruz or any of these people, it's a game. It's just a big joke. Well, I think one of the things that Trump has taught his party is that accountability is not just overrated. It's
Like there is no accountability when you foment an insurrection, when you assault women. There is no accountability when you talk about terminating the Constitution or mock veterans or, you know, have your staff try to cover up the name McCain on the back of a destroyer so you don't have to see it. And I think that has been contagious. And you see that utter shedding of accountability, that complete lack of shame, negligence.
Now, throughout the party. So let's take someone like an Eddie Gallagher, right, who was a Navy SEAL and was I don't know if he was convicted by a military court, but he had serious misconduct while in the field, made himself sort of a cause celeb.
And Trump basically said it's OK, right, that he didn't do anything wrong. You know, I guess the SEALs, the trident, the pins that the SEALs wear that they've earned right after they go through their training or they join a team. Right. The SEALs, I guess, get to decide whether or not you've deserved, you know, that decoration, that honor. And Trump basically said, I'm commander in chief. Give it back to me. What does that mean?
right, to the rank and file when they see that, okay, well, he did something he wasn't supposed to do. Does the chain of command even matter, right? If you know that there's somebody at the top that you can just basically scream to the mountaintops, and if you get his attention, and we've seen this, you know, we've used it to great effect politically, Ken, that, you know, if I can go all the way to the top, I'll just do whatever I feel like. Well, it's utterly demoralizing, and I wasn't a SEAL. I was a pilot, so I don't want to speak out of turn, but the act of
of restoring his trident after the community, after his fellow SEALs has said, you don't merit this anymore. From the SEALs I know and talked to, that was a demoralizing act. But I think it goes beyond that. I mean, we're talking about the president restoring this honor to a disgraced SEAL, but he has brought this
of ethics to his entire approach to governing. And I think the direct analog is the pardon power. And that terrifies me even more because, you know, we're talking about a potential commander in chief with, at least per the constitution, the power to pardon anybody. He has intimated that he would pardon people who shot protesters or immigrants trying to find a better life. Uh,
And when you return to power, somebody like that with the executive powers that the Constitution grants, if they don't have the best interests of the country at heart, the guardrails just aren't going to be there the next time. Well, and I mean, you talked about the pardon power. Let's talk about, you know, bring that back to January 6th, which is...
People like Stuart Rhodes, right, who was the head of was he the head of the Oath Keepers? That's right. Yeah. And Enrico Terrio, the head of the Proud Boys, they're both serving, I think, a decade plus in prison for their roles in January 6th. And Trump has now said loudly and proudly from every stage he can find that he will pardon anybody who was involved with convicted, indicted for their actions on January 6th.
He plays an anthem, you know, whether or not it's them singing the national anthem into a cell phone or some sort of horse vessel song, right, of, you know, the J6 hostages. So, I mean, again, to your point, I think it gives dangerous license.
To a lot of people, not just veterans, but a lot of people who might be willing to do violence to say, well, if I do violence and he wins, there's a pretty good chance I'm going to be OK. Well, let's talk about the implications of that rhetoric calling the J6 convicts hostages or martyrs. Even with the convictions, even with the jail terms handed down, membership in these organizations has gone up.
The total number of organizations seems to be decreasing, but that's because they're consolidating. What we need to be worried about is the number of people being drawn into the extremist movement. And that number is growing because they look at January 6th, in spite of the convictions, as an overwhelming success. It showed what a small group of committed people could do, almost prevent the transfer of power.
And it was an incredible recruiting tool. When you have the president of the United States talking about your standard bearers as hostages and martyrs, it is incredibly emboldening and it has just added fuel to this fire. Let me ask this organizationally to your point. You said the number of groups has shrunk, but the recruiting is up.
I mean, are there groups like this who are in the woods of northern Michigan or northern Idaho, you know, conducting close combat drills in formation? Are there hierarchies? Are there chains of command? Is it an overall network or movement or organization? Or is it disorganized?
disparate small groups who, if called upon, would all appear and do something? It is mostly disparate small groups. This idea of leaderless resistance pioneered by Louis Beam, Grand Dragon of the Texas KKK, who we profile in the film. But that shouldn't give us any reassurance. I mean, stochastic terrorism is every bit as dangerous. I worry the most about
about, you alluded to the militias in the forest, right? The ones that we haven't heard about yet. Stan McChrystal makes the point. Stan McChrystal led our counterterrorism efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he has observed that the ones you have to be the most worried about are the ones you don't know about for the first six months of an insurrection.
I look at the attempt to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, which was really a farcical plan. I think about how that would play out if it was a serious group of committed, hardened combat vets. And I think that is absolutely on the table between now and the election. And honestly, one of the nightmare scenarios is a close election that Biden wins, which
You know, Trump's not going to concede. You know, he's going to pull every every lever he can. He already told the proud boys to stand by once. I don't think any of us would be surprised if he did everything he could to foment violence in that situation. And we know that these groups are out there preparing. I was thinking about this earlier today, Ken, is, you know, for our Republican friends who listen and watch and we talk to.
As you noted, he's already done it once. And if this were on the table, if it's a close election or Trump refuses to concede, why would you take the chance? Right. Why would you take the chance at extreme violence, lethal violence that, you know, again, it also could be sort of a contagion. Right. Which is you could, you know, one individual or small group of these people could do this and then.
A bunch of other people sort of gear up, arm up and, you know, go to work. And you mentioned stochastic terrorism, right? Which is like, you know, go out and get those people. And we've seen evidence of that, as I've noted to the listeners before in Buffalo, New York, at a grocery store, at the Tree of Life synagogue. So like we've already seen this, right? This is not new to the United States or to Americans anymore. But yet somehow we're still not as a country, I don't think, getting it. And what is it that we can do now?
You know, I don't want to I guess I don't want to scare people. Can maybe I do want to make them aware? Like, how do we do that without, frankly, sounding alarmist? Because it's hard, I think, for Americans to understand what's happening. First of all, we have so little lack of history, education anymore. And certainly the history that we need to accommodate the
The time we're in is not adequate, and I'm not sure I would have been able to come up with the curriculum to be prepared for this anyway. But how do we communicate to our friends and fellow Americans? You got to be ready for this. You have to see what's going on. And the vote you cast in November makes a real live difference. And I don't know who said it right, but you hope that politics will leave you alone, but it never does. People say they don't care about politics, but politics cares about them.
Look, I am ready to sound alarmist. I think that's where we are at today.
as a country. And this approach by these extremist groups of leaderless resistance and stochastic terrorism, you referenced Tree of Life and the Buffalo mass shooting. This is part of their MO. This is thought out. There's a book called The Turner Diaries, which I know you've talked about before, and it lays this whole plan out. The idea isn't to have a top-down, hierarchically directed,
battle against the government. It's to have a thousand different incidents that create this conflagration. And you have the other element in American society that you don't have in America historically, or frankly, in most places of the world is the ubiquity of guns. I mean, we got 400 million guns in this country. Anybody can now get a weapon of war. And
You add that to the mix and we are facing circumstances that the vast majority of countries, even those that do deal with internal conflict and terrorist movements, don't have to deal with.
Right. And look, I mean, remember back in 2020, a young man, Kyle Rittenhouse, I think he was 17 at the time, right? Crosses state lines, kills two people, wounds a third and is acquitted, which still boggles my mind. But there could be 10,000 Kyle Rittenhouses out there. Right. And he's just one, you know, kid who went to too many rallies and was radicalized. But you have other people who actually understand how to do this stuff. So let me ask you this. So in the film,
There's a terrific guy who I'd love to meet someday named Chris Goldsmith. He's a combat veteran. He comes home. He actually gets sucked into this.
But I believe he's at community college and some fellow veterans realize what's happening and they start to pull him out. So tell us a little bit about Chris's story and how we, you know, help our friends in like you in the veterans community, you know, help you recognize your friends who are headed down this path and start to steer them differently. Yeah, well, Chris's story is extraordinary and I've gotten to know him well through the course of.
making this film. And just a little bit of the background, he came back a shell of a human being. I mean, he was sent to Iraq as a teenager, as many are. His job was to document mass graves and war crimes with absolutely no preparation for that kind of job. And what kind of preparation could you have, right? Well, not just the preparation, but the support afterwards. Didn't have any of that.
And the night before his second deployment, he told himself, I'm not going back. I'm not going to do that again. And he tried to take his own life in a military cemetery surrounded by buddies of his that did not come home alive. And instead of waking up surrounded by a counselor or a chaplain, he woke up in a military hospital handcuffed to a gurney under arrest for missing his deployment.
If that doesn't send you into the arms of an extremist organization that is promising you'll get your chance at revenge, I don't know what will. And that's the path that Chris was on. He was as angry as you can be at the country he felt let him down. And he was ready to lash out.
You're right. At a community college, though, hanging out at the vet center with his head down and his hoodie pulled over his face were a couple of vets who recognized what they were seeing, intervened, and they got him on a positive path. But he was well on the way to joining one of those extremist groups. He was fully bought into the misinformation about grandstands.
Grand conspiracies that were out to get him and things like that. But it was fellow vets that pulled him back from the brink. And now he's doing incredible work holding accountable extremists around the country.
Yeah. And, you know, I've seen him in the movie. I've seen him in a couple of movies, actually films about this kind of stuff. And, you know, saw him on a zoom and a thing that you and I participated in. And, you know, it's it looks like now that he you know, he still spends time in pretty dark places, but it's rooting those people out as opposed to joining them. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I think for me, the most instructive part of his story, though, is that it was fellow vets who saved him.
It's fellow vets who recognized what was happening to him, who saw it in his eyes and who cared enough about him to bring him back from the brink. And it's going to be conversations like that in the case of someone on the extremist path. I'd even apply it to people in like deep in MAGA world. It's not, frankly, it's not going to be you and me read. It's not going to be the facts we marshal or the political arguments we make. It's going to be loved ones arguing.
who care about you, pulling you aside at Thanksgiving dinner or at the ballgame and saying, you know what? Do you really think that all that stuff is true? I mean, think again. It's going to be those kinds of interactions that bring people back from the brink.
All right. So, Ken, what are you doing? And I'm going to put this in the context of the election because I think that there's an end date to it, at least officially. What are you and VFRL doing for the next seven or so months to help make sure that, A, we're aware and, B, to the extent that we can mitigate or deprogram, I hate to use that word, but I'm not sure another one, enough of these...
you know, obviously hurting men and women that, you know, we can get through election day and, you know, we could feel safer for it. Yeah. Well, the film is a fantastic tool in reaching some of these veterans. We have, uh,
In-person screenings, we have virtual screenings, and obviously being number one on Apple TV helps a lot as well. But for example, we're doing an in-person screening in Oklahoma City on the anniversary of the federal building bombing with veterans and law enforcement personnel. And having a conversation afterwards about the kind of misinformation that put Timothy McVeigh in the headspace that he was when he decided to kill 168 people.
Americans. VFRL is also doing a ton of work over social media and other channels to reach veterans and get them to think hard about their choice come November. The fact that the former president called our buddies suckers for dying, called us losers for deciding to serve our country in the way we did, every veteran should know the truth of that. And it's going to have to come from fellow veterans for them to believe it.
Well, and listen, everybody, I have seen Against All Enemies. If you have Apple TV Plus, watch it. If you don't, get it so that you can watch it. Drive this story up the rankings so that more Americans see it, more Americans understand the threat that is out there. I mean, I think, Ken, you can probably appreciate this. You know, I call myself your fellow neighborhood Cassandra, right? Because sometimes it feels like, you know, we talk about this stuff and we're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
am I crazy? And then you realize like, no, no, no. We live in times that, you know, again, maybe we've seen similar times in America, but this is our time to deal with this. And it
It's not enough for everybody to say, no, you know, I don't care about politics. It's not I'm apolitical. No, you are political, whether you believe it or not. That's what a democracy is, is that every citizen has a responsibility and that democracy. I know it almost sounds trite. Ken is, you know, it isn't a spectator sport if you're not going to defend it as
as you did in uniform or all of us can do simply by voting, if that's what you're willing to do, or volunteering, or even just being a good member of the community, right? It doesn't stand up by itself. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. It takes all of us. And, you know, at the end of the day, we need to deliver a resounding verdict in November.
It can't even be close, because if it's close, Trump is going to call out the militias and that's not going to end well. No. And, you know, I don't know if I mentioned this on one of the other episodes, but I was listening to Steve Bannon's podcast the other day, which I do occasionally because it is brain melting, Ken. But, you know, in the first five minutes I was listening to it, he said the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. There is empirical evidence he didn't and there isn't.
And that Joe Biden is an imposter. And, you know, we live in an occupied country, basically. And there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans who are getting those messages every single day. And I do believe, Ken, that there are more of us than there are of them. But it only matters if we show up. Yep. All right. So, Ken, tell us where we can find you online. Where can we find your shows and where can we find the movie? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Reed.
I still call it Twitter, not X. So on Twitter at team underscore Harbaugh, the film is on Apple TV. It's going to be on Amazon very soon. You know, Reed, I hate that we have to have conversations like this, but the one thing that I'm going to take away from this era when we win is that I've gotten to meet incredible patriots like you. So thank you so much for doing this. And for those who are still with us,
There is a link on against all enemies, film.com to help veterans see the film for free. So if you want to give a little bit, we have a campaign so that any veteran who wants to see the film and can't afford to can watch it for free. We'll aim into that as ever, as always, everybody, you can find me on Twitter and Tik TOK as long as both are functional and or
legal at Reed Galen on threads and Instagram at Reed underscore Galen USA new handle there gang and over at Substack the home front I hope you'll sign up Ken Harbaugh thank you for your service to our country and your continuing service between now and election day and beyond thanks Reed and everybody else we'll see you next time thanks again to everyone for listening
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