Interview with former U.S. Marine Carlos Zapata

Joey: I'm here with Carlos Zapata. Thank you, sir, for coming on.

Carlos: Thanks for having me.

Joey: You're on the tour? This is.

Carlos: I don't know. Yeah, this is kind of crazy. This is kind of a whirlwind over the last couple of weeks.

Joey: You couldn't have expected this when you went into the county meeting, right?

Carlos: No. I mean, I didn't even want to speak about this deal. I wasn't planning on it. I had a very, very set plan. Alyssa McKeown, I don't know if you've had a chance to meet Alyssa yet.

Joey: No.

Carlos: She's been a great hero in this whole movement. She's gotten so many people to unite and organize and gather together. And she'd asked me to be there, invited me, and I said, "Awesome. I definitely want to be there." But I already knew I could only be there for about an hour, and then I had to go. So I went to say goodbye to her. I was getting ready to leave, and she grabbed me. She said, "No, you're not leaving." I said, "What do you mean I'm not leaving? I have to go. I got people waiting on me at home." She said, "No, you gotta speak." I said, "Look at that line. There's a line of 80 people ready to speak, and I'm not standing in line." She goes, "No, you're going to the front of the line." He opened the door and threw me in, and there I was facing the sups and the rest was history. I think you guys have probably all by now seen the speech.

Joey: Oh, yeah.

Carlos: It's the shot that was heard around the world, I guess, at this point, so.

Joey: Yeah. I saw the video, but nothing came back. You didn't get any feedback from me.

Carlos: No, there wasn't any room for it. I've been asked that a lot. There was no time for it. You had a three-minute allotment of time, and when that buzzer went off, I said, "All right, thanks," and you walked out, and the next guy walked in. So there was no conversation there at all.

Joey: And there's been nothing, no reach out from any.

Carlos: No, nothing at all.

Joey: It's just been.

Carlos: No, it's all been very indirect. Things that I've seen online. I think the next day, there was an article written that talked about how Leonard Modi had contacted or attempted to contact the governor asking him for help, saying, "Look, these guys are getting serious. Things are going to really, really get out of whack here if we don't do something soon." So maybe it was us. I don't know if it was me or the other speakers or a combination of everybody just kind of getting the message out there to light a fire.

Joey: I wonder what kind of help he was looking for. Is it help in like, "Hey, let us open up the county," or help in?

Carlos: Yeah, let's open up the county. I think it was more of a desperate plea, like, "Look, you got to give us something here because the natives are getting restless." And you can feel in your bones, I mean, as you're walking around town, you kind of feel that frustration that people are feeling. And you can tell something is brewing there. When this whole thing started, I think people were a lot more apt to follow the regulations and the rules just to see what was going on. As we investigated and discovered that this thing wasn't as serious, I think many of us said, "Hey, screw this." Guys like me we're like, "Hey," two weeks in, I was done, man. I was like, "I'm going back to regular life." And I think we're feeling that now from many people, where they're ready to return to regular life again.

Joey: Absolutely. There are so many different facets to this. Like when you say something like COVID, you could be talking about many different things. Like, okay, is this a virus or the response that the government's had, the financial impact it's had, the social impact it's had? I mean, this feels surreal. This feels like a really bad dream.

Carlos: It does.

Joey: In a short period of time.

Carlos: It does.

Joey: Everything went chaotic.

Carlos: Really fast too.

Joey: Yeah, really fast.

Carlos: Really quickly. And who thought it'd be this prolonged? I mean, like I said, when it started, it was a two-week deal, right? We're going to flatten the curve. And the whole idea about flattening the curve was that we would free up beds in the hospitals in case our hospitals got overrun. Well, that never happened. Our hospitals here have been open. My wife works at the hospital. My sister does as well. They both work at Mercy, and they'll tell you that plenty of beds are open, and the beds taken up right now are not because of COVID. But you hit on something that we were talking about, the economic impact on businesses in our communities. That's huge, and I think that is where the conversation has to really start and end, in my opinion. And I say that because I'm a business owner, of course, but we cannot kill an economy over something that might be dangerous because it's definitely proven not to be as dangerous as they originally thought. By the news, you would think that you'd be walking down this river trail, there'd be people just killing over, right? Every 10 feet people die from this thing, and that's just not the case.

Joey: The data that's coming out is, it's all over the place, but when it first started, it was a pandemic, and it's fear. People don't know. We've all watched Contagion. I mean, all you have to do is spend a little time with Hollywood and Netflix, and you're scared of everything.

Carlos: Absolutely.

Joey: The boogey man's everywhere.

Carlos: Yeah.

Joey: So, I get it. At first, I was like, "Oh my." But as the data has poured in, it's shifted from medical to political data. And so it's much more has become weaponized in the political realm.

Carlos: It has.

Joey: And then it's flowed over into the entertainment realm. And we're seeing like all these various movements, all these various things happening where they're trying to like to latch onto to this COVID. The energy, the angst, or whatever you want to put it that it's creating, they're latching onto it. I'm hopeful because it seems like now, for lack of better way to put it, the good or what I think the good is starting to latch on it too. Because to me, it was bad. It was the protesters, looters, riots, burning.

Carlos: Sure. Sure. Yeah.

Joey: Saying they had some social justice cause, and that was going to be served by burning a business down.

Carlos: And the social justice warriors have latched on this. They've capitalized on this whole COVID thing.

Joey: Big time.

Carlos: But think about it: without chaos and fear, their agenda gets nowhere. Absolutely nowhere, right?

Joey: Yeah. Of course.

Carlos: They have to create a problem. They have to create chaos and confusion to create the fear they need for you to say, "Hey, I need a savior here." We get to the point where we're so scared that we need somebody to save us, and here comes the government, marching in with the cure, with the antidote to this whole thing. But that's not the case. As you said, as data has poured in, we know much more than we did some time ago. Yet our measures have become more draconian. Our regulations have become tougher, more firm on businesses, and more suffocating to our communities. But no, this is crazy, and I never, if you would've told me, Joey, a year ago that this would happen, I would've called you crazy. I would've said, there's no way this would ever happen in America.

Joey: It's a bad movie.

Carlos: It's a bad movie. And it's not only that, it's how easily people ate this stuff up. And that's what appalls me. It almost angers me that people would eat this up. As we're standing here and people are going by, some are wearing masks, others aren't. It's crazy to me, you're in the outdoors and you're wearing a mask. Why? What's that telling?

Joey: I see people driving down the street alone in their cars with a mask on.

Carlos: Alone in their car with a mask on. That is sick conditioning.

Joey: That's phobia.

Carlos: You've been conditioned. It is. It is. And many people out there say you shouldn't judge people if they're wearing a mask or not. Well, I've gotten to the point. I'm getting to the point now where I am judging you because it says a lot about you. If you're wearing a mask in your car driving by yourself, I have every right to judge you because that's ridiculous. And the masks are the beginning of it. The mask is that iconic representation of control, to muzzle ourselves.

Joey: Compliance.

Carlos: Yeah, compliance, absolutely. And I'm not a compliant person by nature. I will always go against the grain. If you tell me to go left, I'm going to see what's going on right. I'm like, "I'll see what's happening over here." That's my nature. But really, that's always been American nature. We're explorers, man. We want to see what other options we have. We're not these robots that will fall into line because you tell us to.

Joey: Yeah, I don't know.

Carlos: But I'm seeing it now, but.

Joey: You know what I mean?

Carlos: Yeah. No, but what I'm seeing differently, I'm being proven wrong right now because we're seeing that people will readily jump into line and obey if you will.

Joey: Well, American, because we were talking before cameras were rolling, we're talking about, we're both talkers, and we get off on tangents, and I'm like, well, that's what talkers do, but people all the time, you say Americans, you're talking about 350 million people. You're going to have all aspects, everybody. Like Jeffrey Dahmer was an American.

Carlos: Was an American. Yeah, of course. Of course.

Joey: So I think that's what we have. I think we have compliance. We have. This is going to be a little arc, but 60%, I believe, of America is considered obese, medically so fat that they're impairing their health.

Carlos: And they're worried about a 99.7% survival rate "virus."

Joey: When I think of Americans, I get. Because I'm a former Marine, you're a Marine. So I loved it when you said, "Hey, I'm not compliant." It's so funny how Marines are compliant but not compliant. You know what I mean?

Carlos: Yeah, and let me say something about this. So, if you think about this, I've read many articles and memoirs about this and how the Marine Corps differs from the other services because people always want to draw a parallel between the Army and the Marine Corps. And Jim Mattis actually talks about this and does a pretty good job of explaining how the Marine Corps encourages a maverick way of thinking, a real cavalier way of thinking, where creativity is pushed down to the lowest levels. If you are in the Army and they say, "Hey, we're gonna go take this city," they're going to open a textbook and say, "Okay, how did we do it last time? Okay, step one, step two, step three, step four." Where the Marine Corps is going to say, "Okay, look, here are some lessons we learned last time, but go make this better," and they're going to give it down to that 19-20-year-old kid and say, "Hey, go take that city." He's got to figure out a real creative way. So, the Marine Corps has done an awesome job of fostering creativity and creating more of that cavalier spirit within their ranks than the other services.

Joey: What's that called when you get in trouble? It's on page 15 in the Marine Corps.

Carlos: NJP. Yeah, Article 15.

Joey: NJP, Okay. So, it's you got reprimanded, you got in trouble. Article 15. Well, Chesty Puller, who's one of the only two Marines ever to win the Congressional Medal of Honour twice, and he's like the Marine for.

Carlos: The quintessential Marine.

Joey: Quintessential, good old Chesty, but he had a quote that said, "Until you've had an Article 15, you're not a real Marine."

Carlos: You're not a real Marine until you've been in trouble.

Joey: Yeah, until you've got in major trouble.

Carlos: I think it was until you've been busted down rank or something like that, you're not a real Marine.

Joey: Yeah, the iconic Marine said, if you haven't caused some serious problems, then you're not a real Marine.

Carlos: No, and that is fostered by the Marine Corps, and it's even celebrated by you.

Joey: It is.

Carlos: Nobody ever talks about the guy that went along with the flow. Everybody talks about the guy who stood up, bucked the system, and stood up for what he believed. That the guy that makes headlines. That's the guy who makes history, changes things and affects change. If everybody fell in line, we'd be doing things the same way we were back in 1915. Here we are doing things hopefully better in some regards or worse in some, I don't know.

Joey: Yeah, I think they're going hand in hand. Both the good and bad, it's somehow in nature where the cobra brings out the mongoose. It's like they. You know what I mean? I remember when I was in junior high school, I took this. This was so funny. One of the electives was. Oh gosh. The name of the course was something like Living Off the Land, and a Native American woman taught it. Took us out, and she told us that wherever there's a poisonous plant, if it's indigenous, its cure grows within 150 yards. Now, if that's true, I don't know if that's true, but then she.

Carlos: I believe it.

Joey: She broke down like, okay, here's poison oak and here's what you can do and you'll find this plant and stuff like that. So it's kind of like, whatever one side brings, the other side steps up and they. You know what I mean?

Carlos: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Joey: And I'm hoping what the left has brought, and these insane protests and these like, "Hey, you're not peaceful, so what I'm gonna do is come in and burn your city to show you what peace looks like," it's ridiculous. Is that hopefully the right, the more conservative voice starts to stand up? I'm a little concerned about how it stands up because I don't want to see violence. I think the powers there are actually making money off of this chaos because there are. There are always people. When the stock market tanks, there are people that make a ton of money.

Carlos: Somebody's winning. Somebody's winning.

Joey: On September 11th, there were people that made a tonne of money by shorting airline stocks. So, there are people that are making money off this chaos. Some people are rising in power from this chaos. And I think they want to see more violence. I really do. And I'm hoping that conservatives can get out and voice their opinion and do it in such a way, like, "Hey, look, we're gonna show you we can protest too." We don't have to burn anything down or smash people's locks.

Carlos: Sure. Sure. Yeah, and I'm not a big protest guy. I never have been. To be honest with you, I don't know that it does much good. If I'm being honest, if you ask me to go to some march somewhere, I'm probably not going to show up. I just don't think it's going to do any good. Two things do good in our political system. Either you influence your politically elected leaders to do what you want them to do, or you have to be willing to go to the next step, armed conflict, which we don't want to do. We will only use that as a last resort. Can we go parade around? Sure. I guess. I don't think anything's ever really been, come of that.

Joey: You and I were talking about another option, which is, in a capitalistic society, you vote with your money.

Carlos: You do.

Joey: You absolutely. Where you spend your money, that business prospers. The other day, I went into a store. I wasn't wearing a mask. I got harassed. So much so that a guy came up to me, and it blew my mind. This guy, who looked like a giant pot-belly pig with a mask and an ammo hat, comes up and starts cussing at me, asking me if I'm ignorant, and I was like, "Okay, I guess we're gonna fisticuffs, man."

Carlos: Yeah, we're fighting.

Joey: And he was shocked that I would be like, "Brother, you just stepped up to a stranger." But anyway, my wife and I said we're not going to go there anymore. That's, that's how. We're going to go to Orchard. We'd shop over there at Orchard.

Carlos: And that is a way to fight. But you were saying earlier that we want peace. We all want peace. I don't want violence. We want peace. We don't want our kids to grow up in a third-world country where people are fighting in the streets and shooting each other. That's terrible. We would never wish that upon our kids or our grandkids or anything. But I wonder if that will eventually be a way to get the peace we want. I wonder if, eventually, we're going to have to fight these guys. I mean, and you're saying these guys want violence. You're right. But they only want violence if they're in control of that violence. They want to be able to burn businesses. Why are they going and burning businesses? Because they know that most business owners aren't going to fight back. They're not going to fight back.

Joey: They can't.

Carlos: They can't. No, they have their hands tied. But if people were to fight back, like these couple of guys that got shot by this kid in Kenosha. I don't know if I'm allowed to say how I feel about that?

Joey: Of course you are. It's America, man.

Carlos: I think it was a great shoot. Should that kid have been there? Probably not. It makes me sad that a 17-year-old kid had to do the job grown men should have done for their businesses. If the Palomino were under siege, I'd be the first one there, hopefully with some of my buddies, but I'll definitely be there as a grown man defending my property. So this kid, what I've read is that he'd gone there with a first aid kit, with a first aid mindset. He was going to go there to help people that were hurt.

Joey: There's video of him cleaning graffiti.

Carlos: No, there was, and that night, I think he'd gone to some. No, he was a lifeguard. That's what it was. He was a lifeguard at a pool in Kenosha and said, "Hey, well, I'm gonna take my first aid kit and my gun and go help people if they need it." But you're right. He'd gone to clean graffiti off a building with some friends or something like that. No, I'm not saying he was a bad kid. I think he was a great kid, and I think that was a really good shoot.

Joey: Me too.

Carlos: I think he did a great job in shooting those guys. And it just happened to be that those guys were shitheads. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that?

Joey: Of course.

Carlos: But they were. So, I wonder if, eventually, these people will realize that once we fight back, they're not going to win, and maybe eventually, that'll lead to the peace we want. Maybe then they'll back down because we're not the ones who are going to go out and loot and pillage our cities. We're not just those kinds of people.

Joey: To me they are a terrorist organisation.

Carlos: 100%

Joey: I mean, that's the whole idea of terror.

Carlos: And the president should say that. I think the president should say BLM is a terrorist organization. I wish he would say that.

Joey: Antifa is a terrorist organisation.

Carlos: Yeah.

Joey: Yeah, absolutely.

Carlos: Oh, I think BLM is just an arm of Antifa.

Joey: I think it is also.

Carlos: Or vice versa.

Joey: I don't know. That's another thing with the whole Black Lives Matter and the idea of, like, no, there's an organization that has a charter as Black Lives Matter, and they have the Communist Manifesto that they promote.

Carlos: Yeah. It's a malist organization, at least.

Joey: Totally. Absolutely. And it reminds me of this might be a stretch, but it reminds me of No Child Left Behind. Where you had this name, you're like, "Well, who would vote against No Child Left Behind?" And then you pull it back, and you go, "Wait, you're lowering all the education standards." So this is perfect, like, "Let's name it this. "

Carlos: 100%, because none of us are going to say, "Well, Black Lives don't matter." Nobody is saying that.

Joey: No, of course not. No, of course not.

Carlos: And I think it's ridiculous. When you say, "All Lives Matter," I understand. They're like, "Well, we wanna bring attention to our and the black community's issues." I think that's great. Listen, the black community has a lot of issues they need to deal with. Let's be real. Let's call it what it is. They have been held hostage by a Democratic party that cares nothing about them and only wants their vote. What have they done for their neighborhoods? What have they done for their education, for their schools? What have they done to make good entrepreneurs and businessmen out of these people, to educate them? I mean, they haven't done anything for them. All they've done is perpetuate this vicious cycle of a fatherless society within a black community.

Joey: 75%.

Carlos: That has led to where they are. But if you say that, you're racist. If you point out the faults in that community, you are racist. But I'm not pointing out their faults because I want to put them down. I'm pointing out their faults because we need to deal with them to improve America because they're part of our country and history. And they're part of our communities, our friends, our neighbors. Listen, I want your people to be better. I want the Asians to be better. I want the Latinos in this country to be better. I want the blacks and the whites to. I want everybody to get along. I hate racism. I want to eradicate racism completely, but we don't do it by ignoring the issues that we need to face. And Black Lives Matter, I think, is an organization that is not actually addressing the issue. All they're doing is igniting a fire really for no reason.

Joey: I'm trying to remember the lady's name. It's like Sandra Rosenberg. She was a domestic terrorist whom President Clinton pardoned, and she's one of the co-founders of BLM.

Carlos: Oh, is she?

Joey: Yeah.

Carlos: Yeah, I've heard the name. Yeah.

Joey: She was a left wing terrorist that was prisoned. I can't remember; I did some bombings or something like that and got pardoned. It shouldn't have been. But, no, the organization, what they've done is they've put a name on a very. This is their name, and this is their agenda. Like I said, No Child Left Behind. Okay, cool. Everyone's going to have a horrible education.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: And that, you couldn't fight with that. That's politics.

Carlos: And I don't claim to know you're plight. I don't claim to know the plight of a young black man. I don't claim to know the plight of.

Joey: Anybody.

Carlos: Anybody other than myself, my experiences. But I can see what common sense tells me should be and shouldn't be. And it's our responsibility to use that common sense to hold each other accountable. So if I see you doing something universally wrong, I should tell you, or you should tell me, "Hey, you probably shouldn't do that because it's ruining the rest of the community." And this is the way we need to act. People are afraid to say anything, right? What we've done, we've been silenced our whole lives. Oh, you can't say that. Oh, you're going to offend somebody. I grew up in Sonoma County. In Sonoma, at Sonoma High School now, you're not allowed to wear any shirt or clothing with an American flag on it because you might offend.

Joey: That's insane.

Carlos: You might offend the foreign students in that school.

Joey: That's insane.

Carlos: That's how far we've gotten. Again, if 20 years ago we'd have talked about this, we'd be like, "Nah, that's not true."

Joey: It's a book.

Carlos: Yeah, it's a book.

Joey: It's a bad book.

Carlos: Yeah, it's a bad. It's never going to happen. Not here. Not here. That's somewhere else. But here it is.

Joey: But I bet you can wear any other country's flag.

Carlos: Oh, you can wear the hell you want. Yeah, I'll bet I can wear something.

Joey: Just not the flag you live in.

Carlos: Communist China shit. Yeah, 100%. Sorry, I cuss.

Joey: You can go ahead, brother.

Carlos: Sorry. But I cuss a lot, but I'm trying to contain it. But that's how far we've gotten, right? So, if we think for one second that these organizations aren't meant to take our identity and patriotism, we are 100% mistaken. I saw a sign the other day. Somebody was holding a sign that said, "Patriotism is racism." Think about that for a second. Racist is the word that everybody uses. That's a game-stopper right there.

Joey: Oh, yeah.

Carlos: That right now if we're having a conversation and somebody says, "You're racist," everything stops, and we all take a deep breath, and we sigh.

Joey: It's meant to shut down the conversation.

Carlos: They know this. They know this. They use that. So when you say patriotism is racism, what's that eating at? It's eating at our patriotism. It's eating at our. It's eating away at our love and our respect for our country. And once we lose that respect and love for our country, we've lost our identity, and then we're nothing. In 20 years, we won't even know what America looks like. We're still determining a man or woman's appearance in 20 years.

Joey: Okay. The marine thing here. Remember when they taught us about Charlie?

Carlos: Yeah.

Joey: Charlie is your enemy over there.

Carlos: Charlie is your enemy, yeah.

Joey: But who's the worst enemy? Jody. Jody. Jody was the. So they taught us, they said Charlie is the enemy.

Carlos: So, for those of you guys who don't know what Jody is, Jody is Sancho. Sancho would be the civilian term for a Jody. Jody is a guy who, when you're gone, doing your country's work, he's a guy who's sleeping in your bed with your wife, who's watching your TV, eating your food out of your fridge, drinking your beer. That's Jody.

Joey: So they always taught us, Charlie's, you're going to go meet Charlie on the battlefield, and there's respect, there's respect for your opponent, right?

Carlos: Correct.

Joey: We don't. People that don't understand that, if you've ever been in the sport and you see those martial artists that respect each other, like, "Dude, I wanna take your block off. I wanna respect you," like Anderson Silva, right?

Carlos: Of course. Of course.

Joey: Just respect. And then there's the guy that's always got to be. That's at least Charlie. That's the person who's willing to meet you in the ring on the battlefield.

Carlos: Sure. Yeah.

Joey: Jody's the one that's going to go behind your back.

Carlos: Behind your back, absolutely. 100%

Joey: Telling you, "Hey, man, you're the best. I love you, Carlos. You take care. I'll look after your stuff while you're gone." Well, look at what we have now. We were so afraid of the enemies that were outside the country.

Carlos: 100%.

Joey: Look at the ones that are really affecting us.

Carlos: 100%. No, you're right.

Joey: And politicians. I mean, we have. I need to learn about politics better. When we hear that the president has this executive order, they can or cannot do that. The governor has this executive where they can. People start arguing. No, it's not constitutional. I don't know. Sounds good. I mean, but I don't know enough. I'm not educated in that way. But looking at what I hear some of these politicians say, that should be treason.

Carlos: Yeah.

Joey: That they are inciting violence and riots. They're yelling fire in a movie theatre.

Carlos: 100%. And if you want a voice in this conversation, if you want to sit at this table, it's got to start with patriotism. Because we can't have a conversation about how to make this country better if you don't even love this country. And I feel like the left, call it the Democrats, and listen, I was a Democrat. I was a Democrat for a lot of years. But when that party lost its patriotism, when I felt like they lost their love for this country, I had to leave and go to the other side. Based on a few things, but mostly on the fact that I thought they just didn't love America anymore. They would rather have seen America on its knees, bowing to other countries, than leading the world like we always have. So, at that point, I pulled chocks and went. But we can't talk with them anymore because I don't believe they love this country enough to make good decisions. Their idea of an America is an America where we have equality, not equality that's like you and I would think equality where we all have equal value, but equality where we're all the same, we're all robots, where we're all very compliant, very subversive, very submissive.

Joey: It sounds like communism.

Carlos: It sounds like a lot like communism.

Joey: Yeah.

Carlos: And I've seen this playbook. My parents came from Peru and left Peru because of what socialism had done to that country. People fled in droves from South America because of what was happening in the countries down there. Look what happened in Venezuela, one of the wealthiest, most beautiful countries in the world. The people were eating off the streets, trying to find food. And that's only a function of the communism and this society. And we could argue communism or socialism. Let's use them interchangeably today for the sake of where we're going. But we're on that crash-collision course with that kind of life. If we don't stop this now, we will be them. The people in Venezuela would've said, "No, that'll never happen here." People in Peru and Chile said, "That'll never happen here." And it did. It ravaged their countries.

Carlos: And so, what makes us think it's not going to happen here because we're eating it? Because it never gets sold as what it is, right? If they sold you what it is, what they want, we would never buy it. And look at Castro in Cuba. He sold it from the center. He sold it as he was a centrist. He was for everybody. He wouldn't even admit that he was a socialist. He said, "No, I'm a Roman Catholic. I believe in freedom. I believe in all these things." And he made all these empty promises to people, who died because they believed them. And people continue to die for the promises that we believe here today. And it could be a better deal.

Carlos: So people say, 'Hey, Carlos, why do you wanna fight so bad? Why are you so outspoken and adamant about this cause?" Well, it's because we must leave our children and grandchildren some semblance of what this country should be. I would rather my grandkids put flowers on my grave than ask me, "Hey, grandpa, why didn't you fight? Why did you let him do this to us? You could have fought. You could have gotten your buddies together and gone and fought for this, but instead, you were compliant. You were subversive. You laid down. And now we live like every other country in the world. We're nothing special."

Joey: Man, that's powerful stuff.

Carlos: Sorry.

Joey: No, that's good. It's like, I'm taking it in. I'm not waiting my turn to counter so that I could have had a better. I'm just like, wow. That sounds like there should be some music playing in the background.

Carlos: No.

Joey: I love the sentiment of what you're saying here. Here's the issue I have. How can we activate these people? Not everybody can. I would vote.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: I mean, that's the no-brainer.

Carlos: But you can't vote your way out of socialism. Remember that.

Joey: No. Agreed. So we have to vote now. But we have to get more active. I am still determining the exact way to do it. I know that the people can pass laws. The people can get enough signatures to get a bill.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: And then they vote. I know that it's more challenging than just having a congressman. You know what I mean? You may have to skip one of the episodes of your favorite TV show.

Carlos: Yeah, of course.

Joey: But we're a little too soft. Apathy is the thing that scares me. That's the.

Carlos: That word you just said, we are very soft.

Joey: Yeah, we're very. 60% obese. Come on, man. You don't get obese by hitting the gym every morning, brother.

Carlos: So I'm going to invoke the spirit of Chesty Puller again since we brought him up earlier. There's a famous quote by Chesty Puller where he said, " Chesty, for you guys who don't know, he is the most iconic Marine ever. I mean, he is the guy that we all look up to and bow to and pray to. So, Chesty Puller said, "if we stay as soft as we are now, a foreign soldier will invade us, take our women and breed a hardier race."

Joey: Wow. Sparta.

Carlos: Yep. That's what he said because he knew we were getting soft. Are you kidding me? This is part of why I left the Marine Corps: When we were young Marines, we used to drink black coffee, and that's just how it was. We drank motor oil, ate donuts, and went to work. Now, you go to a Marine Corps base, and you go to Starbucks, and at Starbucks at 09:00, 9:00 AM is full of Marines drinking these foofy latte drinks with whipped cream on them and chocolate swirls and all this crap. I'm like, look how soft we've got. Are you kidding me? The Chinese would come, and they would rape us, literally. They'd kill us all smiling if they saw what I was looking at. Shit, their kids would kill us. It wouldn't take much, I'm telling you. And that's how soft we are. And I'm looking at these guys. I'm like, "Dude, why at 9:00 am when you guys should be training and working, becoming better Marines, better warriors? Are you sitting in Starbucks on your phones like this, slurping on some sugary soft drink?

Joey: You touched upon so many things there like.

Carlos: Yeah, I could go off.

Joey: I wanna go back to the party system because, well, I don't. Both parties are a facade. The two-party system is a facade. They are both. We have these lifelong politicians making $170,000 a year, yet they're worth $90 million. How does that work?

Carlos: We all come out millionaires. 0:28:21.6

Joey: They pass laws like if you and I learn about some stock information and we do some stock trading, ala Martha Stewart, we go to prison. So they just made a law that says, "No, if we do it, it's not illegal."

Carlos: Yeah, absolutely.

Joey: I mean, that's like a bunch of prisoners saying, "Hey, you know what? Rape is not illegal if we do it. You do it, you're rapist. But if we rape because we're prisoners, we pass. " I mean, it blows my mind.

Carlos: What was a deal?

Joey: It sounds crazy.

Carlos: And I might get this wrong, but there was some deal a while back when the COVID thing started. Didn't Diane Feinstein and some other senator dump a bunch of stocks or something like that?

Joey: Yeah, 'cause the closed-door meetings, they dump a bunch of stocks. The next day, it's announced the stock's plummet. Yeah, but that wasn't illegal. That's my point. They passed the law, so it's not illegal.

Carlos: Yeah, that treason to me.

Joey: I agree. I agree.

Carlos: That's treasonous behaviour.

Joey: Yeah. That's an enemy behaviour.

Carlos: Okay. But we put up with it. It's our fault. It's not their fault. It's our fault because we put up with it.

Joey: Apathy.

Carlos: And we say, "Well, there's nothing we can do." But there is. Imagine if we all. Now, I'm going to go to the other extreme now to make a point. What if we all got guns, went to the Capitol, and said, "Hey, you're not doing that." There's more of us. There are more arms in American citizens' hands than in the world's top seven militaries. More arms. There are 6 million registered hunters, avid hunters, in this country. That's an army that's bigger than the army. You're going to tell me that those people aren't going to fight? You're going to tell me those people can't take over a State Capital somewhere and put a gun to somebody's head and say, "No, you're not doing that. We're not allowing you to do that. This is our country." "Well, you can wait two years, four years, and vote."

Carlos: No, that's not it. I didn't vote for you to do whatever you want. I voted for you to represent me and for me to keep you accountable. And this is what we don't do. We don't keep our politicians accountable because we have no teeth. And this is why I always go back to the gun thing. People will say, "Oh, 'cause he's crazy. He's a domestic terrorist. He's threatening violence against American citizens. He's trying to invoke civil war." No, I'm not doing any of that stuff. I'm saying that our voice has to have teeth behind it. There must be a bottom line if we're having these conversations. What's our bottom line? Our bottom line has to be that we are American, and by definition, we're all militiamen. Even if you belong to a militia or not, by definition, every American citizen is part of the American militia. This is why we have the Second Amendment: we can all own and keep guns.

Carlos: So, that's there for a reason. That's the teeth to our argument. So if we sit here and say, "Hey, this is what we want you to do, you don't do it. We ask you when we vote, and we ask you when we vote, we ask you when we vote, and you're still not doing what we want, and you are, not only are you not doing what we want," because that's petty, right? "Well, they're not passing those bills that I want. I'm going to go shoot them." No, that's not what I'm saying. When they are trampling on the Constitution, when they are taking away our constitutional rights and going against the Constitution that they also raised a hand to defend, then that's when we have to come in and say, "Look, we got to pull our teeth out now and bite."

Joey: Well, I'll come around to that. So, let me counter that. Take that energy and the motivation you're talking about, and how about we start passing. How about we start putting bills on the docket and we start passing laws, and we start taking away the rights of Congress? How about we make it so that when they get caught dumping that stock, it's the same federal felony that imprisoned Martha Stewart?

Carlos: Absolutely. 100%.

Joey: How about if we say, "Hey, you know what, two terms and you're done." How about we say, "And after you're done, you cannot be part of any lobbying group for 10 years?"

Carlos: But these are all ideas that have been out there. These are ideas that have been for generations.

Joey: But here's the thing. If we can't sign a piece of paper and we can't vote, I'd say anybody that can't sign a piece of paper and can't vote isn't gonna get an arm and march.

Carlos: Sure..

Joey: See what I'm saying? I'm asking for the same energy that you're saying, but I'm saying we can change the law. We have mechanisms to change the law. We're not victims. We're giving them the power. We're giving them the keys to the front door and asking them not to come in.

Carlos: We are.

Joey: It's time to take it back, and we can do that through legislation.

Carlos: But these mechanisms are broken. These mechanisms, it would be.

Joey: Well, let's fix them.

Carlos: Yeah. That's easier said than done. And listen, I'm not hopeless here. I'm not saying we're already here. We know our only option now is to march on with guns. That's not what I'm saying. But we're very close to that, and we need to figure out how to fix that mechanism that gives us those rights, so I know. It's going to be a really, really gnarly road ahead.

Joey: No, I think it's going to be a gnarly road no matter what. I don't think there's. I always love to quote a good Rocky song, but there's no easy way out.

Carlos: There's not.

Joey: There's no shortcut home.

Carlos: No. No, no, no, no, no.

Joey: No, there's not.

Carlos: But we have to be directly involved. How many people know what the Shasta County Board of Supervisors actually passed in the last meeting? Do we know?

Joey: I don't know.

Carlos: Nobody does. That's what I'm saying. Nobody actually reads the dockets. People need to read the transcripts of what they're passing. And if they read them, it's too late. They've already passed it. We need to know what's on the docket, what's going to be voted on, what votes are coming up so that we can affect some change, and we can actually. Because these guys, otherwise, they're just going to vote. If you elect me and never hold me accountable, you never have any contact with me. I'm going to vote my conscience, what I feel is best. And eventually, that becomes what's best for me and not for you.

Joey: Or what's best for my party, not necessarily America, because my loyalty is to the party first.

Carlos: Yeah, absolutely, 100%

Joey: So do you know much about the constitutionality? I don't know if that's a word.

Carlos: Constitutionality.

Joey: It's got a lot of syllables in it, of the mask mandate. I looked it up this morning. Could the governor? And it was like, "Well, if there's a pandemic."

Carlos: Yeah, the kneejerk answer is like, oh, it's unconstitutional. It's kind of like the racist word, right?

Joey: Yeah.

Carlos: The new word on our end is, "Oh, it's unconstitutional." But people need to learn what that means and what it is.

Joey: I like calling everybody a pedophile. That's my counter. When they call me racist, I say, "Pedophiles always say that."

Carlos: That trumps it every single time, right? So, the constitutionality of the mandates. If you talk to three lawyers, they'll tell you three different things.

Joey: That's what I think too.

Carlos: And none of them know. And they're all trying to ask each other.

Joey: It's uncharted territory. 0:34:17.9

Carlos: I have a really good attorney, and he's even, like, it's hard because there's always an underlying state of emergency. That is like the catchall.

Joey: That was key.

Carlos: That's catchall to everything, right?

Joey: Yeah.

Carlos: So if there's something I want to do, I'm going to have to declare a state of emergency and give myself a carte blanche to be able to do the things I want. That's what we're seeing now.

Joey: That's what it sounds like.

Carlos: So who know? But they're enforcing it. They're enforcing the mandates as if they were laws. That's the issue. So this brings me to my next point, whose enforcement it lies upon. It lies upon law enforcement officers or court enforcement officers, who are local people. They're people who have to come to Joey's house or Joey's place of business to talk with you, issue you a citation, a ticket, or a warning, or educate you as they say they're doing. And those are the people that we need to influence because they actually have a choice. And now we're starting to get into some new territory here. This is the next frontier.

Joey: Well, you see it at the state level, different states. I mean, overwhelmingly, the Democratic states are seeing the biggest outbreaks and mandates, and they're going together. On top of that, then you have it broken down by county. And I mean, I read a great article about all these Sheriffs in Texas that said, "I'm not going to enforce. " First off, it's unenforceable. You can't, by the way, it's very written. And then I was talking to Ryan Denham last night, and he was talking about in Siskiyou County, that they went around handing out fines to people or telling people they would fine them. They went door to which I would've thought Siskiyou County would be even like.

Carlos: Absolutely. And nobody ever got into law enforcement to do this. This is bullshit. Nobody ever got into law enforcement.

Joey: Glorified metre maid.

Carlos: Yeah, nobody got into law enforcement to go shut down a hair salon, or a restaurant, or a bar. They got into law enforcement because there are actually bad guys out there, and the bad guys are winning. I think that they're literally jumping over a dollar to get a dime right now.

Joey: Yeah.

Carlos: There's some real bad stuff going on. Instead of focusing our resources and efforts on catching the bad guys, will you come after somebody like me who's put everything they have and worked for into a business? Come on, man. I'm not asking for anything. I'm simply asking to be able to open my business, and that's it. And there are a lot of other business owners asking for the same thing, maybe not as vocal as I am about it. But listen, we need this, or our economy will fail. We're broke. I mean, this state is absolutely broke. This state cannot afford for people like us not to be paying into the tax system, not to be paying for our schools, not to be paying for our roads, not to be paying for our infrastructure. And I think Newsom himself said it: there's no money left in the piggy bank.

Joey: And, again, I don't know the specifics, but he was given, I think, $19 million earmarked for Shasta County. The way he was given the money, $19 million was supposed to come here from the federal government.

Carlos: Yeah, $18.5 million, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joey: But they were given the money, and he's like, "Oh, sorry, that money's gone." So, wait, how are you not held accountable as, a governor that you accepted the money and then you say, I'm going to put it over here?

Carlos: And that's why I hold our local elected officials accountable and responsible for that. I see the future of this country going back to a very agrarian society where we live in smaller communities that care for each other. We grow our own food. We make our own products. We import and export based on our needs, and that's how it should work. That's how this country was supposed to work. We weren't supposed to be under the same. I'll use dictatorship because I think that's what Newsom is, as San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and the rest of the states are.

Joey: 'Cause we always lose the vote to them.

Carlos: We always do.

Joey: Well, we do some state votes about how we should handle the Shasta Dam and the water, and guess what? LA said they'll take it all.

Carlos: Absolutely.

Joey: Shocker. Shocker.

Carlos: Of course, they do. Of course, they do.

Joey: You know what I mean? And in there, Governor Newsom letting out, I think it's 18,000 prisoners. I'm like, how do you tell churches they can't meet, and you force care facilities for the elderly to take in COVID-positive patients, and yet you're saying, well, we've got to let all the prisoners. This is out of a movie.

Carlos: It is.

Joey: This is surreal.

Carlos: And we watch him do these things and we accept it. Again, we accept it.

Joey: We feel powerless to it.

Carlos: We feel powerless. And what you just said is key: we feel powerless and are not. We need to remember who we are. We need to remember that. We actually do have the power. We can stop him. And you said there's a mechanism for that, and I've seen petitions going around. I've probably signed that petition eight times or whatever. It only counts for one.

Joey: That's how I'd like to do it.

Carlos: We did it with Gray Davis, right?

Joey: Exactly.

Carlos: We recalled Gray Davis quickly.

Joey: Yes. So see, it can be done. I'd like to.

Carlos: Yeah, but Gray Davis didn't have this machine behind him. I don't think Gray Davis was a part of this great big, I'll say, deep state.

Joey: And I think Newsom is absolutely being groomed for president.

Carlos: Deep state picture.

Joey: Yeah.

Carlos: Oh, he's being groomed.

Joey: So deep state. You brought that up, right? You want to tell me what the deep state is?

Carlos: I just think that there's another force. I won't get into the details, but I think there are puppeteers above what we see.

Joey: Of course.

Carlos: I think that every politician at that level, at a high level, is beholden to somebody. And I think they have really deep, dark secrets that are being held against them.

Joey: Well, it's like the stock market. If you just study it a little bit, it's so illogical the way it flows and what happens. And then you listen to some case studies on someone like George Soros and what he could do with the British Pound and manipulating currency, and you hear about these people doing the same thing, manipulating stocks. And so this idea of conspiracy theory is one. That's one of those labels that like to dismiss people, right?

Carlos: It's very dismissive. You're right, absolutely.

Joey: And the idea is like you don't think that powerful people are getting together behind closed doors going, "Hey, look, here's how we're gonna make a ton of money." You don't think the pharmaceutical companies can come in and say, "Hey, look, if we spend $30 million with the right members of Congress and Senate. "

Carlos: Yeah, absolutely.

Joey: "We can get this law passed."

Carlos: Of course.

Joey: "Well, how much money are we gonna make?"

Carlos: Of course.

Joey: "We're looking at $1.2 billion." "Spend it."

Carlos: Spend it. Do it.

Joey: Spend it.

Carlos: Yeah, punch it.

Joey: Let's do it.

Carlos: Yeah.

Joey: You know what I mean? Of course, that stuff happens all day. That's called marketing in the regular world.

Carlos: It's naive to think they're not doing that.

Joey: No, super.

Carlos: It's very naive. I think there are people up there who are way more powerful than the people we elected. They're put in place.

Joey: Come on, this whole Jeffrey Epstein thing.

Carlos: I know.

Joey: If you look.

Carlos: Why hasn't that blown open yet? Why have we not captured the scores and scores of pedophiles that are within our government? And this, again, and listen.

Joey: Well, former President Clinton, 26 flights.

Carlos: I'm a Trump guy. I'm wearing the hat. I'm voting for Trump. But I'm also holding him accountable. I'm also a critic of his, and I say, "Look, all these things that you said, all these people you said were going to be in jail, why aren't they in jail yet? Why isn't Hillary Clinton in jail? Why isn't Bill Clinton in jail? Why aren't all these pedophiles locked up?" I'm hoping that it is happening, it's just happening slower than we'd like. I'm hoping that he's working on it.

Joey: No, absolutely.

Carlos: 'cause that's number one, right? Let's protect our children first.

Joey: Absolutely, it's the Underground Railroad.

Carlos: Nothing else matters. Yeah, nothing else matters.

Joey: I went to a ClickFunnels' Conference a few years ago, and that gentleman started this, I believe he's a Navy SEAL, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but they're an organization that goes and finds kids that are being trafficked for sex.

Carlos: I've heard of it, yeah.

Joey: And they get them, and they get them out. And he gave a presentation. We were bawling. There are 20,000 people at this conference there to learn how to do marketing, and then we're all crying as he's. Real stories, and they had real footage where he's wearing a GoPro where they kick open the brothel, and it's a bunch of little children, and you're just like.

Carlos: That's God's work right there. They're doing probably the most important work you can possibly do.

Joey: Or I think he's an Army Ranger, but Tim Kennedy fought at UFC, that's what he does. He does that now. He's in this program where they go in, and they help children.

Carlos: That's a scary, scary individual, right? I mean, talk about a guy who's hard to kill. That's that dude. And I love what he said. That's his message: just be harder to kill today. How many average American? Yeah, he's a great decorated veteran.

Joey: Yeah.

Carlos: But how many average Americans are becoming harder to kill every day? We're becoming easier to kill every day. And going back to the obesity thing you discussed, that's a matter of national security. And I said this years ago, well, we can no longer find qualified young men, I'm going to say young men and women, but young men to fight our wars. Think about that. So either we have to shrink our military for the qualified applicants, or we have to do what? Drop our standards and let people in that maybe aren't as physically able.

Joey: No soldier left behind?

Carlos: Yeah, maybe. Yeah, something stupid like that. Nothing surprises me anymore. I wouldn't be surprised now if they got rid of height and weight requirements in the Marine Corps or any other service because you might offend somebody for being a fat ass. I don't know. The whole fat-shaming thing, bring it back. If you're on a plane, you're taking up two seats. Pay for two goddamn seats. If your rolls hang over to my seat, you're paying for mine, too. But you can't say that.

Joey: No, you can't.

Carlos: You wanna charge me for my 52-pound bag, right? I think you should weigh into the plane, to the airline, where you're checking in to get your ticket, and weigh in with your luggage.

Joey: Years ago, we went to Disneyland. We've gone there several times.

Carlos: You get on the scale. Not your luggage. You get on a goddamn scale. Anyways.

Joey: We went to Disneyland a few years ago, and I don't know if you've been to Disneyland, you're waiting in these monstrous lines. And we get to the front line, and there would be this morbidly obese because obese isn't a strong enough word, person in a cart that would pull up. We're talking 400 pounds. And they get to go right to the front, but here's the deal, them and their entire entourage, literally there was this guy, and he had like nine or 10 people with him, and everywhere we went, I'd sit in that line for 42 minutes, and here he just rolled up and hopped on.

Carlos: Yeah, he rolls up.

Joey: And I thought, you think, "Oh, don't be mean to that guy." I'm not being mean to that guy. I didn't say anything to that guy. But here's what. The system came up.

Carlos: He got there by being a piece of shit.

Joey: The system came up and said, "We're going to reward you if you'll just not take care of yourself. You know what I mean? We will reward you. And it was similar to when I went to the store the other day and a guy is looking at me and he was giving me crap for not wearing a mask. I'm like, "Brother. " And then he walked up to the pharmacy. I thought the irony was that he is 50-60 pounds overweight here. Hygiene didn't look that good. He's probably there to get a couple of meds for his blood pressure.

Carlos: Sure. Sure.

Joey: Rather than go for a walk and eat vegetables for six months, it's like, "No, I got just enough energy to tell somebody they're a piece of trash."

Carlos: Absolutely.

Joey: And then get my prescription hot back in my.

Carlos: I posted a meme about that the other night. I never post things. I actually hate memes, but I posted one. It was the person in a wheelchair with the McDonald's bag or whatever point at the person saying, "You're killing me." Apparently a person's not wearing a mask saying.

Joey: Yeah, that's what it was. That's what the guy basically d,id.

Carlos: And that's what it is. Yeah, 'cause this isn't about our health. This isn't about keeping Americans healthy or safe. If they want to do that, they'd shut down every McDonald's. And I don't want them to do. I love McDonald's, so I don't want them to do that.

Joey: But the point being.

Carlos: But if they really cared about our wellbeing, that would be it. They wouldn't be taking this avenue with this COVID, whatever you call it, China virus.

Joey: Now, you're going on tour, right?

Carlos: Yeah. I just got invited by Dr. Cordie Williams, who's an awesome American, also a Marine.

Joey: I didn't know that part.

Carlos: To go on this pretty cool tour. And I've been posting it on my social media. It's called the 1776 Forever Freedom Tour. And it's pretty. There's five stops. There's St. Louis, Missouri, there's Sacramento, there's Colorado Springs, Fort Pierce, Florida, and then finally in Washington, DC, on October 17th, before the election, a couple of weeks before the election. So I'm pretty pumped about that. I'm pretty excited. Listen, when this whole thing started, I'm not the kind of guy who's ever wanted fame. In fact, I've always tried to go the other way. I've always tried to be the guy in the shadows, just influencing people I need to influence and helping people and mentoring people. But here, I've been kind of slung into the limelight, if you will, and although I don't like it, I'm comfortable here. I'm comfortable enough to be effective and realize the importance of a platform now. So I'm going to run with it and take it.

Joey: Absolutely.

Carlos: So when I get invited to things like this, I figure if I have a voice now where people can hear this message, I think it's important not to sit by, but to participate, so.

Joey: I think it's real important. I'm a little concerned about the platforms because they are held by people who are very far left. YouTube is under Google.

Carlos: Oh, I'm already on it. They took down my video on YouTube on Twitter.

Joey: Twitter.

Carlos: If you go on Twitter and you. So, I went from zero followers to 13,400 followers in one day on Twitter. If you go to Twitter now, you try to find me, you can't find me. People are like, "Oh, I can't find you." Because they know what my message is. Are you kidding? We're being censored.

Joey: Facebook.

Carlos: Like you would not believe. Facebook, same thing. We are being censored and shut up.

Joey: Which is really, to me, helping the left, because, for example, it would happen, Kenosha, I've seen two videos. I've seen the short video where you see a kid shooting some people, and you're like.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: Oh my goodness. Then there's a longer video where he's attacked once, and he's.

Carlos: In his skateboard, yeah, and they don't show that part, though.

Joey: And he's running, and they're hitting him, and the one guy's got a gun in his hand. And it's like he's running from them, and he hits them. They hit him and he falls, and then he starts shooting. And you're like, but they really are manipulating that first message, and that's part of the problem. The left took over all of our media. First, they took over almost all the TV, which is junk, but now they have. I don't understand why we don't have conservative billionaires saying, "Hey, we need to build a platform that's. " There is one, gab.com, and you'll see the worst of humanity if you go there.

Carlos: Sure. Sure.

Joey: But the idea is it's First Amendment. So you can say, "Look, I don't want to hear your Hitler stuff. Get out of here. I don't wanna hear your Antifa stuff," those people, but it says anybody can post.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: It's something that's. And I'm not. I care less about that one. I'm saying we need more like that.

Carlos: Absolutely. All the information that we have is manipulated, right?

Joey: Yes. All of it.

Carlos: All of it. All of it. Even what I'm telling you is manipulated to fit my narrative.

Joey: Sure.

Carlos: And what you told me is the same thing, right? But think about it, when you manipulate something, from their end, I feel like they are manipulating the natural order of things because everything has a very natural. I have a very natural law kind of guy. I think less laws, more nature. I think, like, if you come to my house, I should be able to kill you.

Joey: Wow.

Carlos: And not ever.

Joey: I'm not going to his house.

Carlos: No, no. Let me rephrase that. If you break into my house. If you break into my house. And you don't have to come.

Joey: Hey, we meet at Carlos'? No.

Carlos: You can come to my house anytime. No, If you break into my house in the middle of the night, should be able to shoot you.

Joey: Agreed.

Carlos: And not for one second think about the recourse or the ramification of that. I'll say this, the world hates the alpha male. The alpha male has been under attack forever. All of this is an attempt to bring the betas and the gammas, the people who would never be in charge, who would never be leaders, up to our level. That's what they want. They wanna make everybody equal, everybody the same. They wanna disrupt the natural order of things, to the point where they want the alpha male to be silenced. The guy who's out there saying, "No, we need to fight." No, you're silenced out. The guy who's out there saying, "Hey, we need to be patriotic." No, you're silenced. The guy who's out there saying, "I wanna be a leader, I wanna lead something." No, you can't. Which is why we have participation trophies now. In sports, nobody loses. Oh, no. Nobody can be a winner. Nobody can be an alpha. Everybody's got to be the same. It's okay to tie. It's okay to score as long as they score too, but it's never okay to win.

Joey: These hierarchy structures that they attack, it's funny, they don't attack them when they suit them. Like, for example, why isn't anybody mad about professional athletes and the amount of money they make? These are people that got to the top of.

Carlos: I don't watch sports, so yeah, I won't give a.

Joey: What I mean is, they're not. If they want equality of outcome, why aren't they mad at LeBron James?

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: Why aren't they mad at these professional athletes that are making millions of dollars? Because, well, that's okay, because I like that. That's my hero.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: There's a completely double standard.

Carlos: There's disparity there.

Joey: Yeah, or when Oprah Winfrey, a billionaire, starts to lecture people on how to raise their kids. Wait a second, you don't have any children. How to be a good marriage? Wait, you're not married. And then I see you're giving a lecture on white privilege.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: I'm like, you're a billionaire for God's sake. Oh, but you don't know what it was like. She had a tough time.

Carlos: Yeah, are you kidding me?

Joey: How are you. Because that mindset knows no bounds, the victim mentality.

Carlos: Nobody ever told her she couldn't have her business. Nobody ever shut down her business because of a virus. And here, guys like me are sitting going, "Hey, all we wanna do is be able to sell some beer at my bar. I wanna be able to sell some food and have people dine in." Are you kidding me? And here we are. We can't do that.

Joey: The mindset that the left permeates it has no bounds. And it is the very. It is the mindset that this is what Hitler, the National Socialist Party, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, the biggest.

Carlos: It's a playbook.

Joey: Mass murderers that the world has ever seen have all started from this.

Carlos: Absolutely.

Joey: The very argument that we're seeing from the left.

Carlos: Yeah, yeah.

Joey: And the audacity of it.

Carlos: Security, safety.

Joey: That a billionaire can sit there and give a lecture on privilege. Look down at me and go. What did I do wrong, Oprah? What did I do, Oprah? Well.

Carlos: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Joey: Skin colour.

Carlos: Yeah, exactly.

Joey: And I can tell about your skin colour; you're a racist. That's what I know. It's like.

Carlos: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Joey: That's crazy. But that's what. It knows no bounds. I loved Will Smith. Always. Dude, I had Rock the House, the first album.

Carlos: But he got beat down by his own race. He was called an Uncle Tom because.

Joey: Well, I stopped watching his movies when he didn't get nominated for an Academy Award, and he said Hollywood was racist. I said you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars. If it were racist, how did you.

Carlos: But before that, do you remember before that, years and years and years ago, he was called an Uncle Tom. They said he was white-washed because he spoke well, something as simple as that.

Joey: I never heard that one.

Carlos: Yeah, something as simple as the fact that he actually spoke well. He was articulate. And he was called all these names by his own race. Because people naturally don't want other people to succeed. I'm not that way. I love it. When I hear success stories, man, I don't get jealous. I get enthusiastic, and I get inspired.

Joey: Yeah, likewise.

Carlos: That's awesome. I love to hear people's success stories.

Joey: Likewise.

Carlos: Well, a lot of people don't like to see people succeed. And I hate to say this, but my culture, the Latino culture, and the black culture are the biggest culprits in that. We are the biggest offenders, where in our culture, you're never happy for anybody.

Joey: Really.

Carlos: So if your neighbor gets a new car, you're never happy for him. You're like, "Oh, that guy must be dealing drugs. That guy must be doing something he's not supposed to do." That's just the way. It's woven into our culture here.

Joey: Really?

Carlos: I'm not that way.

Joey: I've never heard that before.

Carlos: But our culture is that way, absolutely. We're never happy for anybody.

Joey: It reminds me of Dave Chappelle's Playa Haters' Ball.

Carlos: Yeah.

Joey: There is like, hate, hate, hate, hate. As I drink from this cup, I'm sure somebody spit in. Like, okay. I didn't get it. I just thought it was a hilarious skit. I didn't realize it was actually.

Carlos: But I've never used a race card either in my life. I've never, ever, ever played the race card.

Joey: I've tried. I just don't get very far with it.

Carlos: Yeah, I've been called names, I've been this, but I've never let it stop me, and I think that's why I have a unique voice too. So, when Latinos or blacks or the people want to play a race card, I call bullshit. I'm like, "Dude, I've gotten to where I am. I own businesses, and I've been successful. I'm educated. I have a wonderful family. I own my home, and I'm living the American dream." And I never once felt like anybody had their thumb on my head telling me I couldn't do that. I don't know.

Joey: That's part of that left victim mentality. Pretty soon, you're not black enough, you're not transgender enough, you're not gay enough, you're not disabled enough.

Carlos: Yeah, you're not weird enough.

Joey: Yeah, to me, that's why I wasn't as scared or fearful as I'm like, they'll eat themselves. They always do.

Carlos: They do, they do. They cannibalize.

Joey: Like you said, pretty soon, Will Smith, I thought at one point he'd run for president. He was just on top of the world. I didn't know that he. But I didn't know he got criticized or called any of these things. I just was. I heard when he's like Hollywood's racist. I'm like, man, Hollywood's racists?

Carlos: Hollywood's racist, are you kidding me?

Joey: Are you?

Carlos: What's next? NBA's racist? I'm like, come on.

Joey: Like, come on, man. But when you're pumped with that message and constantly told that every time you don't get exactly what you want in life, it's because of something you can't control, that is a powerful victim message.

Carlos: Sure. Yeah.

Joey: And it destroys the soul, right?

Carlos: It does.

Joey: Versus the other side that says, "Hey, look, you are the master of your domain." p>Carlos: You really are.

Joey: I don't care what you've done, I don't care what you look like. Right now, wake up and crush it. Start crushing it right now.

Carlos: In America, you could be president if you wanted to.

Joey: Yes.

Carlos: There's nothing telling you you can't.

Joey: Yes, dude, a guy, a black dad from Africa, white mom, grows up fatherless, President of the United States.

Carlos: There you go.

Joey: Come on.

Carlos: And does zero.

Joey: And he's a millionaire.

Carlos: And does zero for the black community.

Joey: Well, that's aside. I'm just saying if that's not. If somebody can't look at that, what story do you need? Do you know what I mean? What do you need to succeed? Because I can't kind of get it.

Carlos: And I think some people have it. Some people just have some inside them. I have a really dear, dear, good friend of mine who grew up fatherless, and mom was off doing stuff she shouldn't have been doing. He raised himself. He would feed himself, clothe himself, and scrape by alone with no other family help.

Joey: Self-reliant.

Carlos: Complete self-reliant, ended up joining the Marine Corps, and he is now a psychologist. He's a doctor. And I'm very proud of that story. I'm very proud of people like that because you can use them and say, "Look, I came from nothing. I had all the odds stacked against me. The cards were literally stacked against me. And yet, here I am, and I made it. And I'm here to help other people." And that's the American dream. But somewhere along the line, you're told that you can't, and they believe that. Somewhere along the line, they're told that they're limited or that they're not capable enough. They're not strong enough, not smart enough, not big enough, not tall enough.

Joey: And they're told that all the time.

Carlos: Not good looking enough.

Joey: They told it all the time.

Carlos: All the time, but they believe this.

Joey: Brainwashing.

Carlos: That, to me, is the saddest part of this whole thing, it is. It's an absolute indoctrination. It is a brainwashing. And it's debilitating, it's debilitating to our country. But that's what they want. They don't want successful people. Successful people, we're loud, we speak, we're confident. People who aren't successful follow along. They're happy in their cubicles.

Joey: I'm blown away when people can't see. I understand because people have their life to live, man. I saw a thing the other day. I was in my chiropractor's office, and they have all these stats that run up on the thing. And it said that the average American today deals with more mental and emotional stress in 30 days than their grandparents dealt with their whole life.

Carlos: 100%

Joey: Their grandparents had physical stress.

Carlos: Why do we see depression? Why do we see high levels of suicide? Why do we see?

Joey: Drug use.

Carlos: Failed relationships, divorce rates, child abuse. Why do we see these things? That's all a function and a construct of what you're saying. This is it. This is just, to me, this is what's tearing us apart. We've said this all along. What's going to take America down? It's not some external force. It's not the Chinese bartending here and killing us all. It's not the Russians. It's not any of that. It's going to be us. It's going to be us devaluing our culture to the point that we can't even recognize ourselves. I think that's where we're at now. Where we don't even know. We have no identity. We don't even know who we are. And our identity shouldn't be, and I'm white, black, Latino, Asian, or whatever, pink or purple, I don't care what you are. Our identity should always be that we're Americans. We have our differences. We have different backgrounds and cultures. But first and foremost, we are uniquely American and exceptional because of that. And that's my message. I know it sounds so cliche. Oh, I have a black friend, or I have an Asian friend. Well, that doesn't mean anything. What it means.

Joey: I think it does though. They planted those seeds years ago, like, "Hey, I have black friends." That doesn't mean anything. I think it does. If I were a racist, how would I have these friends? If I was secretly burning.

Carlos: Yeah, but I feel that's what people say when they actually are racist. They say, "Well, I got a black friend. Can't call me racist."

Joey: No, because we were told.

Carlos: Yeah, but what I'm saying is this, like in the Marine Corps, we don't see color, man. We have brothers and sisters.

Joey: Dark green and light green.

Carlos: From all walks of life, man. And I don't remember this guy was this, thus guy was that. I remember the times we had together, the friendship, the relationships we had, the people they were, and their character. When Martin Luther King talked about the content of his character, that meant something. That's what I'm looking at. So yeah, this whole race thing, what an easy bait to take, though.

Joey: It is. Absolutely.

Carlos: God dang. And if anything's going to take us down, look what's happening right now. This is all because of race. Set aside COVID, we're talking about Antifa and BLM. It's not about social justice.

Joey: No, not at all.

Carlos: No, it's not really about reparations. This is about creating chaos and confusion for them to come in and take the control they need. That's it.

Joey: And you know what? I want to touch upon something that I've been saying with my friends: I understand the angst of these people and their anxiety, and I agree that there is something to be anxious and have anxiety over. But I think what is causing that, and how they're addressing it, is absolutely wrong. I think there is. Our capitalistic system has been gamed. During all this COVID, a bunch of billionaires became even more billions, right?

Carlos: Yeah, even richer.

Joey: Small business was shut down, and Walmart and Amazon and Costco are going off.

Carlos: Sure. They want to get rid of the middle class, right?

Joey: Yes. So, I understand that angst. I understand the like, dude, why is all the money being taken off the table? I understand that. But they're being told, "Oh, well, it's because of race."

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: Billionaires are billionaires, man.

Carlos: Yeah, exactly.

Joey: Somebody's taking. Your business shut down and they rose. It doesn't matter what race they are. They didn't. I don't get checks in the mail because I'm a white guy. I won't be like, "Hey, it's the 13th. I get my white check from Jeff Bezos." "Hey Jeff, I haven't got my check yet." That doesn't happen. There is a group of people and they're taking all the resources, all the chips off the poker table, and people are having. Young people are having anxiety angst. I understand that. They were sold a very bad bill of goods. Oh, get a college education. You know what I mean?

Carlos: I just talked about this in the last interview about this college education stuff. I was raised in a time when we were told in school from the day you went to first grade to the day you graduated. You have to go to college. If you don't go to college, you'll end up being a plumber. Well, guess what?

Joey: My plumber friends are rich.

Carlos: I had to get a plumber. It's $100 an hour for a plumber.

Joey: That's cheap.

Carlos: And if you own a company, you're making even more.

Joey: That's cheap.

Carlos: You see what I'm saying?

Joey: Yeah.

Carlos: So we were told don't go into the trades because you're going to end up being a dummy. You're going to end up being in the trades. Well, guess what? Trades is one of the most intelligent smartest people I've met. Who are the business owners? They're not guys with big college degrees. Guys with college degrees are trying to get jobs teaching at colleges making pennies. I have a college degree.

Joey: Me too.

Carlos: And I'll tell you what.

Joey: I busted my ass for that degree and I think I was 30 when I actually officially got the piece of paper 'cause I had to keep going back to finish 'cause I was working the whole time.

Carlos: The only thing my degree was ever good for was my commission, being an officer in the Marine Corps, and that's it. That's the only thing my degree did for me. Other than that, you can take that thing back. That's an expensive piece of paper. And if you would've asked me 10 years ago, I would've said, "Hey, I want all my kids to go to college. I want them to go to college." But as I start to unravel this whole thing, as we start peeling back the onion and we see what's really going on, we see that these colleges and universities really are just funnels for indoctrination. And why were we told this? Why were they so adamant that we go to college? They were so set on those. And the metric for high schools being recognized as successful or unsuccessful high schools is measured on what? It's not measured by how many kids go out and get jobs or go to trade schools.

Joey: Go off to college.

Carlos: It's how many go off to college.

Joey: ACT scores.

Carlos: Yeah, that's what it is. It's a system geared towards indoctrination, and liberalism lives and is bred in these universities.

Joey: Now see, that's. Okay. I consider myself a classic liberal, right?

Carlos: Sure. We're all classic liberals. Classic liberals.

Joey: Yeah, you pray to whoever you wanna pray or don't pray at all. Marry whoever you want.

Carlos: I don't care.

Joey: Or don't marry it all.

Carlos: I don't care.

Joey: Just stay off my lawn, man and don't ask me to pay for your stuff.

Carlos: Absolutely.

Joey: Guy says to me, "Oh, that's libertarian."

Carlos: No, no.

Joey: But I hate that the left and liberal became synonymous because the left is not liberal. They're militant left. And that's not liberal, that's militant.

Carlos: Absolutely. The anti-fascism is the most fascist thing. The woke.

Joey: Yes. Oh, the irony. The irony.

Carlos: The irony. The irony. They're the most fascist. I saw a video the other day, that made me sick. It was a couple. You probably saw it. It was going around. It was viral. A couple that was sitting at a table eating dinner without a mask on, and this little girl comes up, she starts screaming at them. And what does that do guy. I wouldn't even call him a guy. What does that cuck do? He ,takes and he puts his mask on because she was yelling a,t him and he puts his head down. And I'm like, "Oh my God. I'll bet his wife doesn't wanna sleep with him another day in her life." What kind of woman wants a man like that? That's not a man. They're going back.

Joey: I thought you were talking about the one where there's a couple, everyone's wearing their mask in DC, and there's a couple sitting there, and they all raise your hand for Black Lives Matter.

Carlos: Oh, I saw. And that girl wouldn't.

Joey: And they were on her, man. They were like this, and I thought.

Carlos: Yes, I saw that one. I saw that one.

Joey: I thought, here's the deal. If I'm there not talking trash, but I'd be afraid, the steak knife is going in her throat. That's number one, because you can't have 30 people. The videos I've seen of people getting kicked in the head, you can't get right here yelling at me. That's, to me, assault.

Carlos: Yeah, 100%

Joey: I don't know if legally it's an assault, but it now your assault is going to bring my battery.

Carlos: I'll fight that in court. Yeah, I'll fight that in court.

Joey: So I'm sitting there watching that, and it's very similar to the kid with the gun. It's like they are saying, "He shot people." It's like, "Do you not see him being chased?"

Carlos: Yeah, he was gonna die.

Joey: Hit with a skateboard.

Carlos: Did you see the fellow in Portland that got kicked in the head and died?

Joey: Yeah, they kicked his head.

Carlos: They killed him.

Joey: There's several people died.

Carlos: They were gonna do that to him. They were going to kill him.

Joey: Yes, of course. One of them had a gun. I think the guy who got shot in the arm actually had a pistol.

Carlos: He did. He did.

Joey: Yeah. So what was he going to do with the pistol? He was just going to pistol-whip him a little bit.

Carlos: Yeah, it doesn't matter. I'm glad he will look down his arm every day and remember what he did.

Joey: I want to talk about somebody who I admire a great deal Eric Weinstein, Eric and Bret Weinstein. And they are classically on the left, but Eric Weinstein was just on Senator Ted Cruz's podcast. I don't know if you saw that. It was awesome. Just to see those two, because I think Senator Ted Cruz is awesome. That's something else. You can't like everybody.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: Right? Because then they can bring up the worst. Do I agree 100% with Senator Ted Cruz? No.

Carlos: No.

Joey: But I love his story, and I like listening to him.

Carlos: Sure. Yeah, me too.

Joey: I agree with him probably 70% of the time.

Carlos: Me too. Yeah.

Joey: Eric Weinstein, love the dude. I never have to meet him, but he's. Hey, Eric, if you ever can watch this and we have a chance, let's hang out. That's the call. But he got on there, and he said the moderate left and the moderate right need to come together.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: We need to realise that we are.

Carlos: The answers are in the middle.

Joey: In the middle. And the extreme right, I don't even know how much extreme right there is this big. But the extreme left and the extreme right are dictating the conversation, and meanwhile, we're being tossed, and we're so much closer together.

Joey: Yeah. Oh, we are.

Joey: Than we are to them.

Carlos: 100%. And we're not all that different. I travel a lot, my wife and I, and anywhere we travel, we always like to sit at the bar because I feel like that's where you get to know people. That's where you really get to see what's going on in the town you're in. Right?

Joey: Totally.

Carlos: And we get to hear the happenings. And one thing I've always commented on is the fact that we're not all that different. You meet people from all walks of life and the first thing you ask a person is not what your political affiliation is. You don't ask them how they voted or who they voted for, who they're voting for in the next election. You have conversations about other things, about work, kids or.

Joey: You got kids or sports.

Carlos: Or what there is to do around here. Absolutely you have a conversation about a hundred thousand other things before politics has to even come up. Maybe not today in this divisive world, but in my experiences, and we're not a lot different. We wanna be told that we are very different. We're gonna be told that we are divided. We wanna be told that, "No, you're from here. You're from here. You cannot talk to each other."

Joey: You're not American.

Carlos: Yeah, you're not. No, exactly.

Joey: You're prefix American. So, African segment, segment them out.

Carlos: You're African American. You're an Asian American. You're a Latino American. I've never. I hate that. I'm an American.

Joey: I wanted to find my segment. My something American. But we did this Ancestry thing and I was like.

Carlos: Anglo American.

Joey: Dude, blonde hair, blue eyes, you'd think like, "Oh, you're. " I've got two different Native American.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: I'm English, Irish, Norwegian. My aunt did. It was just basically the poorest people who slept with the other poorest people they could find. They had a poor kid. Then he went and found the poorest girl he could find. So I'm like, "Damn, man. I think I'm just American." And I think if I go back far enough, I'm from Africa. I just gotta go back a little bit further.

Carlos: Probably I'll back.

Joey: Yeah, we all come from Africa.

Carlos: But you know what? Hey, listen, and that's the beautiful thing is that we're all Americans. We don't have to look the same to be Americans. In fact, it's beautiful that we're so different. We like different foods and we live in different types of homes and places, and that's culture, man. That's beautiful. We need to celebrate our differences. Not use our differences to stack us against one another and to separate us. Let's use our differences to come together and learn about each other. And that's a beautiful thing.

Joey: Agree.

Carlos: I don't want everybody to be like me. How boring. My grandmother, she's still alive and bless her heart. She's the eternal optimist. I've never heard my grandmother say a bad thing about anybody. Actually, I shouldn't say she says plenty of bad things now about the liberals. She's just turned 90 years old a few weeks ago. She's just appalled at what's going on in this country. But she said one day. She said, Carlos, because I was sitting there and I was mad about something. She said, "Carlos, what fun would it be if we were all the same?" "That's pretty good, grandma." What fun would it be if we were all the same? And we think we want everybody to be like us, but we don't.

Joey: No.

Carlos: We think that we wanna convince people to think and be and feel and dress and act like us, but.

Joey: Because we want reinforcement that our decisions were good.

Carlos: The fuck, what is that?

Joey: Do you know what I mean?

Carlos: Yeah, that sucks.

Joey: If you wear the same shirt as me, then I know I made a good choice in my shirt. If you pray to the same God that I pray to.

Carlos: Exactly.

Joey: Then I know, "Oh, I must be. That's. "

Carlos: Don't even get me started on religion, man. That's a whole another podcast.

Joey: We're not. No, no, but that's what it is.

Carlos: Yeah, you right.

Joey: People want that affirmation that they made the right choice. You know what I mean?

Carlos: Yeah.

Joey: And that goes back to us as being tribal animals like you get kicked out of the tribe. I know you've heard this because it's popular that they ask people what they're afraid of and public speaking trumped death.

Carlos: Yeah, I know.

Joey: And they say it probably goes back to, like, if you had to stand up and talk in front of the group, you were justifying your ability to stay with that group.

Carlos: Absolutely.

Joey: And that was terrifying.

Carlos: That that is terrifying. Yeah.

Joey: And so there's this cocktail of not wanting to.

Carlos: Sure.

Joey: And so we seek us out.

Carlos: But why is that? It's not really the fear of public speaking, and that's the fear I thought they were scared of. What are they scared of?

Joey: Judgement by others.

Carlos: They're scared of sounding stupid, of not saying the right thing, of somebody judging them.

Joey: That's never stopped me. I sound stupid all the time.

Carlos: No, I sounds stupid every day. I mean, geez. My 80/20 rule, I try to keep 80% logical and making sense, and 20% is jabber that nobody's gonna understand, but.

Joey: That's pretty good numbers.

Carlos: Yeah, maybe 60/40, I don't know. But, yeah. So it's really not a fear of public speaking. It's a fear of acceptance or not being accepted.

Joey: Yeah, exactly.

Carlos: I should say.

Joey: Yeah, and being judged.

Carlos: Yeah, but it's not surprising. I think at the end of the day, we want to be accepted. We want to be loved, and we want to be respected, and I think those are all really human needs.

Joey: Dude, man, this has been.

Carlos: It's cool.

Joey: I love what you said a minute ago about on our next podcast 'cause I'm gonna hold you to that 'cause I'm gonna have you come back on again.

Carlos: I love to come back on. I love this stuff. It's just fun.

Joey: That's awesome, man.

Carlos: So, yeah.

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