Transcript of South Beach Sessions - Governor Wes Moore

You're listening to DraftKings Network. So if I take the W in West, and I make it an L, then I can have the campaign slogan of less is more. Do you like that? Less is more? I feel like you're just patronizing me.

Yeah, I think we should stick with Wes.

Okay, we're going to stick with Wes. It sounds like a lisp if I make it. Wes is more. He's Wes more. He's the governor of Maryland. I'm thrilled to hear you're a sports fan. I'm thrilled to hear that you're here. I was wondering why you'd be a part of this ramshackle operation.

It's because I'm a fan, and I've been a fan for a long time. The only thing I am mad about, I thought Piper would be here.

Yeah, everyone's always disappointed when Piper is not around. I've always been surprised by the popularity of that television show, and specifically the fact that my father stole it from me. I mean, doing it in his second language. So many people love him and feel like they know him just from watching him on television.

Well, you know why? I feel like for all of us, and particularly those of us who come from immigrant families, we all have a puppy. There is That person in our life that really helps to lead us and mold us and guide us. And the thing I loved about what you all did is you took two things I'm very passionate about and put them both on display. One is sports. I love sports, and I feel like in many ways, sports helped to not just change my life, but just really help to give a set of direction to my life. And I love family. And as someone who comes from an immigrant family, someone whose grandmother was born in Cuba, raised much of her life in Jamaica, came to this country with my grandfather, who she met in Jamaica, and then they built a life here in the United States, which also included helping to raise not just their kids, but helped to raise me and my siblings. Your show was really meaningful because it took a lot of passions and it put all in one.

Thank you for that. You lost your father when you were three, though. Did your grandfather play that role?

Absolutely. When my dad died in front of me at three, my mother called up her parents. My grandfather was a minister in the South Bronx. My grandmother was a school teacher in the South Bronx. I say their house was barely big enough for them, but they figured out a way to make it big enough for all of us. When my mom said that she needed help, that house, for a lot of us, you had that one house in your family that no matter what people were going through, whether it was a breakup up, whether it was losing a job, whether it was someone who was coming to the country, that house was the healing bomb for the family. And that was my grandparents, small home in the Bronx. And that's where we went. That's where my grandfather really helped to take on that paternal role for me. And in fact, to show just how important he was, I was deployed in Afghanistan. I led soldiers with the 82nd Airborne when he died. And usually, they never let you leave theater unless it's the death of a child, a sibling, a spouse, or a parent. But because he really did take on that paternal role for me.

That was when the Red Cross got involved and made the exception to say, So that's how I got permission to go and bury my grandfather.

I have a lot of follow-up questions about everything you just said, but you said sports saved your life or changed the direction of your life? Absolutely.

How's that? Well, because it was a few things. One is when I first moved from Maryland to New York, I'm now in a new neighborhood, in a new place, and frankly, in a place that I was still getting to know. This was the Bronx during the 1980s. The place of refuge for folks coming up in the Bronx in the 1980s was the basketball court. That That was where I learned so many life lessons about how folks interact with one another, about who to trust and who not to trust, about all the rules and the laws of the neighborhood, the community. A lot of them were built out from what happened on basketball courts. I saw the role that basketball played in my life much through high school, et cetera. Then I found this passion for football, which I never played in high school or anything like that. The The first time I ever played football was when I went to college.

Is that right? You were a wide receiver, right?

I was a wide receiver. And the football coach came and watched me play basketball, a guy named Jim Margraff, who this year, I'm very proud, he's getting inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. And he comes and he's like, after he comes up to me and he's like, Have you played football? I said, No, sir, I haven't. And he's like, You got good hands and good speed. And he's like, Do me a favor, if it's okay, maybe after practice tomorrow, why don't you come out and I'll have you run some patterns? So I went out, I did the 40-yard dash, I did a vertical leap test, and I ran a couple of patterns. And then when I finished that up, he's like, What do you think about being a wide receiver? And that was my introduction to football, which really has now... That's been my lifelong passion.

As a kid, what were you like as a kid before you got... Did the military straighten you out?

Oh, yeah. I think I was a kid who had a lot of anger issues because I was dealing with a lot, and I was trying to process a lot. It's like your dad dies in front of you when you're three. Your mom has a really difficult time. A woman who's an immigrant from Jamaica coming to country. You're now living with your grandparents and your siblings and your mom, and there's aunts and cousins and everybody on one roof. There was a lot of anger that I I was just dealing with. And I think it showed itself. And so my mom had been threatening me with military school. I think I was eight years old, literally getting me brochures and showing me she was going to send me away. And every year she didn't. But it wasn't because she makes empty threats, because my mother doesn't make any big threats. It was because she couldn't afford it. And finally, that's when I was 13 years old, my mother thought, once again, my son's having real challenges. I mean, I handcuffs my wrist by the time I was 11. And finally, when she was like, I think it's going to be another year, why am I not going to be able to do it?

I found out that it was my grandparents who, with that home in the Bronx that they had, were able to help my mom to be able to afford that first year military school. In many ways, sending me to that military school really helped to save my life.

You've mentioned now a couple of times your father dying in front of you. I don't have any memories from that early in life. Is that your first memory? Because you were three, right?

Yeah. Honestly, I only really have two memories of him. The first was when my mother always had the cardinal rule about putting your hands on women. I think part of it goes back to her past where she has been in abusive relationships. I hit my sister. I have an older sister, I have a younger sister, and I hit my older sister. And my mother just lost it. And it was my father who helped to come save me and was like, and I hear him. And after now talking my mom about it, basically he's saying, he's too young. He doesn't understand. But my father really was my protector in many ways. And the only other memory that I have of him was when my protector died. And so it was something that still very much Sits with me. It sat with me because even when he died, like my mother tells a story about how even at his funeral, I actually went up to the casket and asked him if he was going to come with us because I didn't understand what was going on. And so I think as I got older, it just got more confusing.

And I think that confusion just turned to a lot of anger.

How was the anger manifesting itself?

It was manifesting itself in the ways I was with other people, violent, the amount of fights I just got into. And I think what I did was I heard a lot of people who didn't deserve it. I think there's a lot of people who, I think, ended up becoming the recipients of the fact that I was not processing this well. And I think it showed itself in my grades. It showed itself in the fact that I started picking and choosing which days were worthwhile to go to school and which ones weren't. And unfortunately, I had a lot of educators who were enablers to it, where they weren't letting my mom know and they weren't notifying anybody because as I had one teacher who told me, the class worked better when I wasn't there. I think that that continued to watch this spiraling of bad behavior. Then finally, when my mom said, I'm going to send you away, I first thought she was I'm kidding. I was like, All right, mommy, I know I'm going to work harder. Then finally, she's like, No, you're going next week. That's when she decided to send me away.

You were very young. What was the culture shock like? How long before you became acclimated? That had to be fairly stunning.

It was crazy. I still remember. That first morning, it was 5: 30, 5: 45 in the morning, and they were all in the barracks or the place where we all lived. And they start flicking lights on and off, on and off, on and off. And they're playing Welcome to the Jungle by Guns & Roses. So I'm in the song, but it's like...

So it's an aggressive early morning. It's aggressive.

Good morning.

Yes.

And so they're playing Welcome to the Jungle. They're flicking lights on and off. They're beating trash cans with sticks, and they're just screaming, Get out of your racks, get out of your racks. So I'm on I'm in a bunk bed. My roommate, who's from Brooklyn, was on the bottom bunk, and I'm on the top bunk. And he jumps out of bed, and I just remember his legs were shaking. And he looked at me and he's just like, We got to go. We got to go. We got to go. And so I look at my roommate, and I look at the clock, and the clock says, 5: 45 in the morning. So I look back at my roommate, and I'm like, Dude, it is 5: 45. And I said, Tell me to come get me around 8: 00 because I was ready to go right now. This was an optional wake-up call.

You actually said that? Where did you think you were?

This was an option. I literally said him- You hit the snooze alarm on the military The Academy. This was my first morning. So he thinks I'm crazy. He runs outside with all the other people.

But he's scared. His tears are shaking. You're annoyed.

I'm annoyed. I'm like, Yo, it is... I was Tell me when can't give me a ride. So he's outside. I just curl back over and I put my pillow over my head. So I'm blocking out the noise because the noise wasn't for me.

Where did you think you were?

This was my mindset. You know what I mean? And then Finally, I hear someone yell, Why is there only one person outside this door? So then my door, then I hear the door slam open. So they must have kicked the door open. And then they come in the room, and I think it was my first starting, who's screaming and yelling and cursing at me. I got my back to him because I was curled over to block the noise out. Then I slowly take the pillow off and I'm looking at him. I look at him and I say, Man, if you don't get out of my room. I'm 13, 12, whatever I was. He's like a high school senior. I just remember him looking at me and smiling, and he walks out of the room. My first thought is, this thing's going to be easier than I thought.

I scared them off.

Then next thing I know, probably 15 seconds later, boom, door slams open again, and the entire chain of command walk into my room, all of them, and they just pick up my mattress, and they take it off the rack, and they just flip it over, and then I just slam to the ground. That was my first morning.

So how long before you get acclimated? Does the slam on the ground alert you to, Now I know where I am. I'm not going to do any of that again. How long did it take for you to- It still took a little bit.

I ran away five times in the first four days because they would always tell us there were gates around the campus, and they would always tell us there's a train station right in Wayne, Wayne, Pennsylvania, where the school was. They was like, There's a train station right in Wayne. If you want to go, you can go. So I would just take them off in their offer. I would just run out of the gates, and they kept on catching me and bringing me back because I had no idea where the train station was. I was just going to go run up on the train station. Maybe three nights in or four nights in, whatever, my squad leader comes up to me, and we call the room to attention. I'm staying at attention. And my roommate, because it was me and my roommate together. And he tells my roommate, he says, Get out. I got to talk to more alone. So I'm like, damn. I was like, Whatever you're about to say, he doesn't want witnesses. Or whatever he's about to do to me, he doesn't want witnesses. So my roommate grabs his stuff, he runs out of the room, and I'm staying at attention.

And he tells me to sit down. And he says, Listen more. It's obvious you don't want to be here. And quite honestly, we don't want you here. So I've drawn you a map on how to get to the train station. And he hands me a map, like handwritten with a legend at the bottom, like pace counts. I'm literally looking at this thing like, Dude, just handed me a lottery ticket. And I'm like, Yo, I'll never forget you. When you get out, let me know. We'll grab lunch. Or something. And that night, I had this whole big great escape, and I left and said goodbye to my roommate, and I ran out of the thing. And the map was fake. The map literally took me to the middle of the woods. They just were cracking up watching me doing donuts in the woods, looking for the train station. And that's when they realized that, You know what? If we don't make an exception, we're going to lose this kid. And so they let me make one phone call, and I called my mom, and I was just begging her, just like, Mom, can you please come get me?

This is not cool. I'll do whatever you want me to do. Just let me come home. And she's just like, Too many people have sacrificed in order for you to be there. And too many people are rooting for you, and it's not all about you. And you got to figure it out.

How long before you found the gratitude for any of that?

I felt like I really started to better understand the system, probably, I would say a month in. And it's because I started to develop this brotherhood and this bond, where we needed each other and we relied on each other. And then eventually, they gave me a little bit of responsibility. And that's when the military started kicking in in a way that the military normally does, which is it's going to break you down as the individual because they're going to build you up as a collective. And it started to work. And I think that mattered. But I would honestly say, I don't know if I had a full appreciation for how How tough a decision that was for my mom to make and how she had to sacrifice in order for it to happen. It took years for me to really tell her thank you because she helped save my life and she had to sacrifice her own.

When did you take to the discipline? When did you start to like it?

Actually, and this is maybe where sports comes back into it, where when the discipline, when it started to feel a little better, was because I was always on probation, so I couldn't really play sports when I was younger. This was the time when my grades were getting better. My military performance was actually pretty good once I just gave into the system. And I could play sports because I wasn't on probation anymore. And when people asked my mom, they're like, How's Wes doing? She could say, He's doing well, and not be lying about it. And so I got a chance to That was eighth grade, so I got a chance to play basketball. I was MVP of my basketball team. I got a chance to play baseball. I was the team captain.

Oh, so you start to get confident. You start to feel like you belong. You start to You're not just a bad kid anymore, an angry kid. Exactly.

You weren't this consistent problem that everybody was just attacking and blaming, and where every classroom you walked into, whatever like that, they knew you before before you walked in.

And it's the first thing that you feel like you're good at? Yes.

I feel like, Oh, wow. When I get on a baseball field, I'm the team captain. I'm a leader on the team. When I play basketball, I'm the leading scorer, and the people So when the game's on the line, they throw the ball to me. And that felt good. And I think it's just something that feeds into not just how you dealt with sports, but also that was a good feeling for life. That it's like when people, when you When you realize that people are relying on you, whether it's your family, whether it's your friends, whether it's your community, when people are like, No, we need you to succeed because when you succeed, we're all going to be better because of it. That's like That's dopamine. You know what I mean? That's addictive. And I think it's just something that you then continue to put in the work because you realize that you're necessary, and that matters.

How do you come by your optimism? It's a very difficult time to be optimistic. Yeah.

Honestly, for me, I think a lot of my optimism comes from my understanding of history, where it's a difficult time, but I know this country has been full of difficult times. I know this country has been full of difficult times for my family. I think about my grandfather, where some of his earliest memories was watching this country reject him when he is just a child and his father my great-grandfather, leaves the country because the Ku Klux Klan runs them out. And they go back to Jamaica. And for much of my family, we've always said that we won't go back to the country. It's the reason why I still have so many family members still in Jamaica right now. My grandfather, though, decided to come back here. He comes back. He goes to Lincoln University, Historically Black College University in Pennsylvania, becomes a minister like his father, becomes the first Black minister in the history of the Dutch Reformed Church. The threats that were coming to his father start coming to him because it's not like everybody was happy that he was making history in this way. He stuck. He spent his whole life devoted to family and God and community.

Also optimistic?

And also optimistic. In fact, I always said this is a man who had a deep Jamaican accent his entire life and is maybe the most patriotic American I've ever met. And so I'm like, so what right do I have to be bitter? Amongst his first memories was his country rejecting him. What right do I have to be afraid when amongst his first memories was watching the clan attack his family and then watching racist slurs thrown in him by members of the clergy when he became a minister.

These are all stories, right? You're hearing them from him, but you're not seeing it, correct?

Yeah, no. Because all this happened before I was even an idea, before I was even a thought. These are things that he had to deal with as a child. Then when he became a young man before, as he was just having kids, forget grandkids, that's when he had continually sees this bitter and brutal face of racism that shows itself at him. And he never lost his optimism, and he never lost his belief in this country. And he always fought for this country, and he fought for God, and he fought for his family. And so these are the stories that I grew up with. These are the stories that were shared to us, but they were shared not because they were looking for pity. They were shared to us because they wanted us to remember our strength. And listen, life is not going to be simple, and it's not going to be easy, and you're going to have all the stuff that comes that life is going to bring you, but that God has prepared you for it. That's the thing that I think my grandmother and grandfather and everybody who came before me, that they wanted to make sure that we understood.

Your story seems a bit impossible. So when I give you that bit of history and I say, Okay, he suffers that rejection, and then his grandson grows up to suffer both the indignity and the rejection of the President of the United States saying, You're not worthy of being invited to a White House dinner. How do you absorb that? Do you absorb the insult in it? Does it make you furious? Do you look at the history and calm yourself? How do you manage all of that?

I remember when the President disinvited me from a National Governors Association dinner where I serve as the vice chair. I actually thought about my grandfather and what he would say, where my grandfather always used to say, Never let someone take something away from you when they never gave it to you in the first place. The President didn't make me a member of the National Governors Association The people of Maryland did. When they elected me with the highest vote count in the history of Maryland gubernatorial politics and made me the 63rd governor. The President didn't make me the vice chair of the National Government Association. The other governors did, where Democratic and Republican governors pick and decide and vote who should be the leaders of the organization, and they picked me. The President can't take my power because he never gave it to me. Frankly, and I've told the people of my state that there is nothing I will not do to fight for them. I will work with anybody. I will do anything in my power to make sure that my people are good and that they are protected and that their futures are secured.

There is nobody who can take away a power that came from God or a worthiness that came from God.

But it's meant to hurt you. It's meant to insult you. Does it not?

It's meant to insult me. But here's the thing. It's meant to hurt me, and it doesn't. Because if it hurt me, it means that he won. I think that what he wanted more than anything else was for me to beg, was for me to feel slighted, and for me to attack, and for me to... So I did the thing that not only comes naturally to me and the thing that comes from my family and my family's history, but also the thing that I know hurt him most, which is ignore it, which was understanding that if the idea is to go there and just to take these insults, The message that I sent to the President very clearly is, I don't have time for foolishness, and I'm not going to give you what you are looking for. If you know my family's history, you know we're built different, and we're not going to give you that win.

Do you believe he's racist?

I think it's a question for him. I think it's something that he needs to answer to. And I think it's something that I would hope that the people who are close to him are asking him to be a little bit more self-reflective. I know his actions. I know how his actions hit Me and frankly, how many of his actions, especially when he did things like disinvite me, how it hit members of my community, how it hit many members of immigrant communities, how it hit many members of communities of color all across this country, and how they heard it, and how they saw I am the only Black governor in this country. Not a title, frankly, that I'm proud of. I still find it while that in the 250-year history of this country, that I'm only the third African-American ever elected governor in the 250-year history of America. And I think it is a bit troubling because I know I'm not the third African-American ever qualified. But I think the President I think the President has to answer that question because I think it's important for him to wrestle with it and wrestle with the fact that why do so many people say the same thing?

But you can't just say, yes, he is, right? Because then that gets aggregated. It becomes too absolute. It's a tricky question for me. I don't think it's tricky. I think he is racist, and I think he's also an opportunist above all else. And so he will take all theisms and use them if they present him power. But you can't answer that question just yes or no, because it puts you in a bad spot. It puts you in an impossible spot where now you're giving him some of what you just said you don't want to give him.

Yeah. I think the weight of the question shouldn't sit on your back. It should sit on his. The weight of the question shouldn't sit on my shoulders. I should be free of that weight. You should be free of that weight. All that weight belongs on his shoulders, and he should be the one to be able to answer that. I think that there are many members of our community, and not just... And I think it's a community of Americans and people who are here who They've got to wrestle with that question. I shouldn't have to wrestle with that question alone. You shouldn't have to wrestle with that question alone.

No, I get what you're saying there. He should wrestle with it. I just don't understand how you come about summoning any respect for a man that not only is that, but also feels the way he does about the military or all of the things that have been reported about his disdain for the military. I don't know how it is that you summon. I don't know what your relationship is with this country at the moment.

My relationship with this country is I love it, and that's why I'm willing to fight for it. I know it needs healing, and I think that we all have a shared responsibility to heal it. If there's one thing I know about this country is we're not perfect, and our history hasn't been perfect. There's a great song by Donny Hathaway, and it's called a song for You, but there's a line where he says, I know your image of me is what I hope to be. And I feel like in many ways, that's America. I know your image of me is what I hope to be, where we haven't fulfilled the greatest promise of what this country hoped for when it was first created, that it's still a work in progress, that this country, I still believe, is the greatest experiment in world history, yet it's still an unfinished experiment if we're going to live up to all of our great ideals. But I do think a lot about my family, a family who's willing to fight for this country, even when this country wasn't willing to fight for it back. A family that was willing to sacrifice on behalf of the hope of what America could be, even though for many of them, they knew that they might not see it in their own lifetimes.

That I stand here as the realization of a promise that for generations who made far before us, that they fought for the hope of us. Could you imagine for your great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, if they could see you now, that's a realization of everything that they fought for. I am my ancestor's wildest dream.

Yeah, so am I.

And that's a beautiful thing that they were willing to sacrifice for something that they wouldn't see themselves, but maybe their legacies would. I think that's what makes this country worth fighting for, and that's what makes us unique.

In my particular case, though, me and my brother make our lives in the arts, which is not something they could have fathomed coming from a place that didn't have freedom, a place they had to escape in order to get freedom. So the idea of that is just the starting point on that is all nuts. But what I'm presently seeing happening in America are the stories my grandparents told about how Cuba fell to communism when it felt... The stories are similar. Neighborhood watches. You give power to certain people who don't deserve power, and now they're ICE or whatever else. The stories are, this is how this creeps upon freedom. When you're fighting in the military, risking your life, it's to protect us from what is presently happening. It's obvious if you have any sense of history. Yes.

That's the thing I want everyone to wake up to. I was talking with a member of our General Assembly who's a Chinese immigrant, and she said, This is what we escape from, the things that we are now seeing this administration doing. I want people to wake up to what's happening. When we're talking about things like the nationalizing of elections, or when we're talking about things like taking control of of the voting booths, or we're talking about things like telling certain states that they need to redistrict, or we're talking about things like the Voting Rights Act, which is going to be the largest ability to be able to take away Black political power that this country has seen. We have to remember This is all very intentional, and particularly for those of us who come from immigrant families, it's just deeply familiar. This country, and the joy of the experiment of this country, was to say that what could it look like if we could have a representative democracy that doesn't behold to a king or a familial legacy structure that could actually have people who had a chance to vote every two or four or six years, depending on the office, that we actually had balance of power.

That the legislative branch was not the boss of the executive branch or the other way around. That the judicial branch wasn't the boss of any of them. All of them have distinct powers, but also there's checks and balances. What could it look like if we could have a country that does peaceful transitions of power and said, Let's try it all out. And by the way, have a country that doesn't exclude people from around the world, but welcomes them because they say they will all be part of our larger glory and our larger grace. This country is such a bold and wild experiment that has worked. And so when we're watching this pushback and this creep against it, when we're watching the administration who's using the Constitution like as a suggestion box, When we're watching our highest courts make decisions and the executive branch pretending like nothing even happened, unfortunately for a lot of immigrant families, this is looking deeply familiar.

I'm beyond exhausted. I'm overwhelmed. I'm consistently overwhelmed by, you say, peaceful transition of power. It was one of the things you said. There's no way that's what's going to happen in 2028 if he's still alive. I'm scared that this Isn't more overt, more obvious to everybody that this is an infringement on almost all American ideals.

For all these people who are just sitting on their hands and just moving goalposts and being aiders and abeters of this and coming up with every single reason why we shouldn't act. I tell people all the time, I'm always going to fight for our democracy, and I'm always going to fight for this country.

Always. But how do you not feel defeated Because I know our history reminds us not to.

I think about it this way, Dan, where if you look at our state of Maryland, we have probably, arguably, be one of the most complex histories when it comes to race relations, for example. The Mason Dixon Line runs through the state of Maryland. Maryland is the northernmost Southern state in this country. The bloodiest battles of the Civil War were not fought in Alabama or Mississippi. They were fought in Maryland. And Tiedem was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. It's the home of Harry Tubman. It's the home of Frederick Douglass. And I think about what our state alone had to endure. And You don't have American history if you don't have the history of Maryland. The country needed Maryland in order to heal. That's why our state flag is... It's literally a contradiction. It's two competing ideas being put together, right? Because it is a Union symbol and a Confederate symbol in one flag, right? But I think about that in context of this moment because it's a reminder to me that we've seen hard times before, guys. And the only thing that's got us through before have been God's grace and moral leadership. That's it.

And I just think that that's what's going to be necessary and required right now. So the reason I don't feel defeated is Harriet Tubman never felt defeated. Frederick Douglass never felt defeated. They spent their entire lives fighting for a better future. And so what justification would I have to feel defeated when the people who came before us never gave up? And so if they didn't give up, neither am I.

I would imagine, though, that at no point, by leaps and bounds, at no point has your optimism been as tested as it is right now. Like these last few years, if I go back 10 years ago and we're talking, there's no way you could have fathomed that this is where the country would be.

But I think that's where it takes the introspection to understand that after the first four years of this administration, what happened that we opened the window to allow them to crawl back in? And I think that there needs to be a certain level of introspection that has to happen amongst society, amongst the Democratic Party, where, again, I don't come from a political background. This is literally the first elected office I ever held in my life. I don't come from a political family. So I'm not one of these, Oh, the Democrats this or the Republicans that, because that's not who I am.

Your party is preachers and teachers.

Preachers and teachers. That has been my life. That's been my background. For many members of my family, they are not diehard, anything. They are people who are like, You know what? You got to convince them to vote. Because they're just not into this stuff. And that's very much my background. I think that the Democratic Party, honestly, needs to have a bit of introspection for all these people who've been doing this for their whole life and the career folks who just go from job to job, the job, the job, the job, the job. What was happening when you guys are in charge that allowed this to happen again? That allowed us to have to go through this again. And now to have to think about what does the aftermath look like. But to somehow think that you can just wash your hands of the fact that we're here in the first place is just absolutely wild to me. But I think even with that, though, I know that we are going to be tested. I'm a very faithful person. I think about things like the Book of Job, where in the Book of Job, there was a natural testing that happened all throughout the entire book, where God tested Job, not because God pushed him away, but God tested Job because he loved him.

I think about the Book of Matthew, where Jesus, for 40 days and 40 nights, was sent into the wilderness. And was sent into the wilderness the entire time because he was going to be tested. And when there were rocks there, and then Satan said to Jesus, and he said, Well, you should just turn the rocks into bread because you're hungry. And then Jesus said back and he said, Well, a man cannot survive on bread alone. And then by the end of the book, by the end of the book, you look at the fourth chapter, where Jesus says to Satan, he says, Be gone. And Satan left. And then God surrounded Jesus with angels. We know we're going to be tested. As a person of faith, that's part of our background, our training, that God doesn't promise us simple. He promises us salvation as long as we stay faithful.

You said be gone, and they came back and turned the mattress over and threw you on the floor. Those weren't angels. How do we go? What were you dreaming What are you doing about when you were in the military? It wasn't this, right? What were you going to come out and do?

Make it home. Make it home. That's the thing. It's like when you're deployed, the only thing you care about is Am I going to make it home? And I'm going to make sure that my folks make it home. That's the only thing on your mind. When I came back, I was a White House fellow, and So basically, it's a year opportunity for you to serve as a senior level advisor to a cabinet secretary or agency head in the federal government. Bipartisan, and actually non-partisan. And I remember when I was deployed in Afghanistan, my Deputy Brigade Commander was a former White House fellow, and he came up to me and he's like, Listen, I think you should apply for this White House fellowship when you're done out of this, because you're now spending a year seeing how policy is made. You should spend your next year seeing how... Sorry, seeing how policy is implemented. You should spend the next year seeing how policy is made so you can, at times, understand where's the disconnect between the policy we hope for and what actually gets implemented on the ground. I remember going back and I listened, but I didn't really fully process because we're in the middle of a deployment and the deadline was coming up for the fellowship.

He calls me back and he's like, Have you started working on it? I said, No, sir, I haven't. He's like, Get working on it. Direct order, get working on it. This is what you need to do. I ended up applying for it.

So it was no longer a suggestion?

It was like, This is a direct order. Get it done. I got all my essays done. I'd literally go on missions, come back, start working on essays, finally got the application sent off, and I ended up having my finalist interview, probably a weeks after I redeployed, weeks after I came home, which was a total... That was an experience, just trying to prepare as you're still very much emotionally and intellectually and transitioning back home. But I'm really glad that I did it. And I'm really glad that at that time, a major, major Fenzel, and then just retired as Lieutenant General, why he made that suggestion? Because he was right. Order. No, not a suggestion. I ordered.

It was a suggestion. You very much ignored a suggestion, and it stopped being a suggestion.

Then it stopped being a suggestion. This is what you are going to do, captain. I was like, Yes, sir. I got it. This is what I'm going to do.

I have a number of follow-ups on all of that. You've written a number of books. Does it start in there? Does it start with the writing there? Were you writing before then? Taking up writing is not for everybody.

No, it's a good question. Honestly, it's not my background because I I really am more of a quantitative thinker than qualitative. Numbers come very easy to me. Words don't. I got to work a lot harder on words than I do numbers.

There's no proof of that. You got to be kidding me. Nobody watching this would say that you have trouble with words.

I really have difficulty with getting ideas and thoughts and thoughts together. Also, the thing about for me, why numbers are easier for me. Numbers don't have opinions. Numbers don't have a partisan bend. Numbers are numbers. It's like, what does the data say? And the data can very clearly let you know whether you're on the right track or wrong track, whether you got it right or wrong. Words can be fudged. Numbers don't lie. So I never had any background in writing, ironically, because my mom is actually a writer. My dad was. And so when I first started writing, and my first book was called The Other West's More. And when I first started writing this book, a fact-to-your-story, I was talking with my editor, and I said, Listen, my mom, because she was real questioning whether I can do this. And I told him, I said, Listen, my mom doesn't think I can do this. She said, She doesn't think I'm a good enough writer. That was unique for me because it was the first time that I ever had done writing before in that way. But I found out that I loved it, and I really enjoyed it.

And now, even still, to this day, I'm constantly writing and journaling because I feel like it's very therapeutic for me. And I also love the fact that outside of academic work, the ability to tell your story and the ability to have something to share with your family about the way you saw the world through your lens and your eyes, I actually think is a A very powerful tool.

What did your mother say when you sent that to her? What did she have to? What was her assessment then?

I still don't think she believed it, but I think she's... You know what she said when I first got the whole book out and she read it and she saw the response that it got? I mean, it did well. I remember once she said to me, she said, Well, you got it honestly, because she was like, again, this was not your academic training. But you got it honestly. Sag mal, Nikola, hast du auch immer dieses Gefühl bei der Steuererklärung, mit einem Bein schon im Knast zu stehen? Boah, nee, gar nicht. Wieso Steuer ist so die Steuer-App, mit der ich wirklich nichts falsch machen kann? Wow. Das heißt, damit ist alles sicher? Ja, genau. Wieso Steuer ist die Steuer-App, die dich versteht. Weil Steuer betrifft ja dein ganzes Leben: Arbeit, Kinder, Partner. Du kannst nichts falsch machen. Stimmt. Nice. Fühlt sich gar nicht wie Steuern an. Steuern erledigt? Safe. Mit VisuSteuer. Jetzt kostenlos testen. Kalt? Fies. Usselig. So viel zum Wetter. Doch du bleibst auf Kurs und kommst gut durch die Erkältungszeit mit Shopapotheke. Deck dich jetzt gleich mit allem ein, was du für den Winter brauchst. Egal, ob die Erkältung gerade kommt, schon voll da ist oder bald wieder geht.

Wähle genau aus, was du benötigst und lass es schnell und direkt zu dir nach Hause schicken. Und E-Rezepte löst du auch super easy ein. Shopapotheke. Riesenauswahl, kleine Preise. In der App What are the scars you wear from war? I think the thing about... I think one of the reasons that I am so skeptical of war is because I've seen it up close. I'm very clear of its limitations. I'm very clear of what it can accomplish in the long term. It's the reason that I'm also very skeptical of things like regime change operations and all that. I just think war is messy. And unfortunately, the people who have to execute it are the ones who are never thought about when the decisions are being made. I just really believe when a lot of these decisions were being made about Afghanistan and what was going to happen, they weren't thinking about me. They weren't thinking about the soldiers that I had to lead. They weren't thinking about the corporals and the sergeants and the private first classes and how this could turn around and impact them and their families and their hopes, that it felt like a bigger chess game.

And it's part of the reason because I've seen it up close. I think it's one of the reasons that I'm so cautious of it and skeptical of it. And I think that those scars, though, are scars that I have, not just in terms of the things that we had to see and endure and the sounds and the smells, but also it reminded me that we have some pretty remarkable men and women who are willing to raise their hand because this country asked. We have some pretty remarkable public servants who would be willing to give their life on behalf of this country if the country requested them to. That we do to have the most amazing military in the history of the world. There's not an assignment that our military couldn't execute. If there is a person that our US military wanted out, there's nothing that could save them. Nothing. I also, though, think that's why we should be very careful about how we're using that tool and about what the impact is going to be on the people whose job it is to actually to execute the operations, because oftentimes the people who are executing the operations are not the ones who are making the decisions.

How introspective are you about what might be, must be, could be, and always should be, PTSD with life or death situations? Or do you just don't look there, move on, got to get to the next thing if I spend too much time looking at that, what my trauma is? What am I doing? I don't know how you cope.

I actually think that in many ways, is one of the symptoms of it, is the people who don't take the time in the process. I think it's impossible to go through what we went through and think that you came back unchanged. I just don't think it's... I could be wrong, and I'm sure some psychologist could tell me, You're wrong, and here's why. You're just never going to convince me of that. I think that everybody who I I've served with, we've come back changed. Now, I'm not saying we've come back irreparably damaged. And even for those who have come back, I think that that's the reason that we want to over index on the healing, because I do think people can be healed, and I've seen this firsthand. I just don't think you can ask people to go through what we went through and think that they just... And everything's okay. And particularly where I I think you'll find soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, Coast Guardsmen, et cetera, marines who will go overseas, and because they come back with no physical injury, that everyone thinks it's okay. Like, Oh, thank God, you're back. Without having a full appreciation of sometimes the most damaging injuries are the ones that people can't see.

When I came back, I spent time with doctors, and I needed to. When I came back, for example, I had problems with white lights. And to anyone else, that wouldn't make sense. But I'm like, when you're in an environment where white lights were essentially prohibited because the reason that we use the red or the green camera lights is because you can't see those. From far. A white light, I can see a white light from miles away. And so if you're in your Fob, your forward operating base, and you got white lights all the place, guess what? It's going to...

Yeah, you have underneath everything in your life, anywhere you would go, I would imagine, still is the undercurrent of white lights are danger. Correct. It's just embedded in there. I don't know how you get that out of there.

That's right. And when you come back and you spend your time deployed, and then a week later, you're in a downtown area or you're in Times Square. I remember once, specifically, a doctor said this to me, where he actually phrased it well, probably better than the way I'm going to phrase it, but he said, You have to give your brain grace. And he's like, You have to understand why this is difficult for your brain to process it. And you have to give your brain grace. Why going from close to Afghanistan to Times Square in the process of a week might be a little bit a lot for your brain to be able to ease back in.

Well, I added a question because I thought it might be stupid to ask you, but as you talked about it, I feel a little safer asking this because you say you were changed. So I don't know if the man who was changed got so good at the disciplines that his life and death situation became so normal that somehow when you talk about the challenges of getting out, Oh, now what am I going to do with my life? That somehow that would be scarier in any way. I thought it was a stupid question to ask. It's a great question. Because how could it possibly be scarier than what he was doing? But the way you framed it made me think, maybe he did think that now he had to use his mind, his future is out in front of him, and now what does he do with his life? He's just been protecting it the entire time.

Absolutely. And it's one of the reasons why when people talk about things like PTSD, people think, Well, let me just watch them for the first couple of months. And if things like everyone is okay in the first couple of months, then things are fine. It's like, No, guys, you have to understand. Folks are going to be wrestling with this for the remainder of their life. I saw people who seemed fine years after appointments and then took their own life in year four, where it's just like, because you don't... It just looks like we're not hurting without a full appreciation, understanding of what it's like. And then, particularly for people who are coming back into a world or coming back into a situation where the dynamics are just different. Your family needs are different. How your kids respond to you is going to be different. How your spouse responds to you is going to be different. How your friends respond to you is going to be different. And for a lot of people also, when we, and I think I see a lot with employment, you're in a job while you're deployed, oftentimes, depending on what your MOS or your specialization was, where every single day you ramp up, ramp down.

Every single day, every single day, when you put on your gear and you leave the wire, it's like... And then when you get back, that's dopamine. That's essentially a human production of an adrenaline accelerant. That was the up tempo for how you do your life. And then you go back home, and you don't have that same spikes. You don't have it anymore. You don't need it. When you go to, when we're deployed and we're driving in a convoy, once the convoy is moving, you're just moving. We're not following stop signs or whatever like that. No. It's like, once we go, we go. And then you come back home, and now you're stopping at red lights. When we were instructed why you don't stop at red lights. When you go under an underpass and the place you enter the underpass that you have to exit the underpass in a different part, so no one is dropping things on there. But now you're driving on I-95 and you just keep going. For a lot of people, that is an addiction, that dopamine kick. It's an addiction, right? And if you can't find that addiction naturally-You're quitting cold turkey.

You're finding it someplace else. And so I do think that's why for a lot of veterans and why it's an issue that we've been very involved in. I was very involved in this before I decided to run for office a couple of years ago. And with now our administration in Maryland, while we've been so involved in supporting veterans and making sure veterans are getting what they need, and veterans and their families are getting what they need, is because this is not a short-term thing. This is a lifelong commitment we got to make.

How do you do this one? Because it sounds like your environment, okay, when you talk about, Well, it just looks like we're not hurting. Okay, the military is always wearing that disguise. Men are always wearing that disguise. Black men are always wearing that disguise. How do you manage when you're hurt? Is it yours and yours alone? Who gets it? You're capable of vulnerability, obviously, but are you aware and introspective about being vulnerable, given that your entire training, everything that's always surrounded you makes you hide hurt feelings.

What's that poem, We wear the mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. He says, We wear the mask that grins and lies, and it hides our teeth, and it shades our eyes. I think this With debt, we pay for human guile. With bleeding and broken hearts, we smile. I think part of the way that I've dealt with it is I know what my triggers are, and I know what my healing needs, and I'm unapologetic about it. So for example, people think part of the reason I'm pretty obsessive when it comes to my workout schedule, right?

Knowing what you need is huge. Knowing yourself enough to know how you can self-love yourself is enormous.

It's enormous. And honestly, it's like, and you got to make sure you protect it because If you don't protect it, other people will take it. And they're not being malicious. They just don't know any better. And so when I say, okay, listen, at 5: 30, 06: 00 every morning, I head to go work out. That's because it's much mental health for me, and it's as much healing as anything else. Yeah, it feels good to throw a lot of weights up and whatever like that, but it's my healing. When I say, listen, I like kicking back and traveling, or I'm always a fan of a good Cuban cigar, it's not because it's a fun thing. It's for me, it's my healing. There are things that I have and I do that I know I need and has helped me throughout my journey. I'm okay with that. I'm unapologetic about it because I know that if you were to continue to take those things away from me, you're not allowing me to heal. If I'm not doing that consistently, then I'm no good to anyone else either.

I have to let you go, unfortunately. I've got a million more questions. I'm married by an Elvis impersonator. I've got a bunch of questions. If you want to just tell us that you're going to run for President in 2028, it would help the pod. Anything on the way out that you want to give us is a gift. It was lovely talking to you, though. Thank you for the time.

I'll tell you what, man, I'm really inspired by you, and I'm inspired by your family I'm inspired by your commitment to your family. You guys are the American dream. For a lot of families like mine, watching you and your family gives me more inspiration than you know, and you've inspired more families than you know.

That's very you. I try to remind my father of that all the time, that he doesn't know, even though we were on airport televisions and the sound might have been down, that he doesn't know where he connected with people if it was just a father, an adult father and son, clearly loving each other on television. I will have no greater professional blessing than having done that with him, given where he came from and given the opportunities that he provided for me because they made all the sacrifices. It's not unlike you don't get here. You could be tough. You could be somebody who can be a military leader. You just don't get here if those people weren't an uncommon, more tougher than you were. That's right.

That's exactly right.

Thank you, sir.

Please tell Papy, I said,.

I will. Thank you.