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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:52
Let's get into it.
0:53
All right, guys, today I've got a very special and intense guest on the show.
0:56
His name is Dakota Meyer, so if you don't know who that is, he's a United States Marine
0:59
Corps veteran.
1:00
He was also a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and he was actually the first living United
1:04
States Marine in 41 years to receive the Medal of Honor, and he's one of the youngest recipients
1:09
of the Medal of Honor here in the United States, and he was given the award for his actions
1:14
during the Battle of Gone Jigal on September the 8th of 2009.
1:18
He wrote a New York Times best-selling book about his life and about that experience,
1:21
and it came out in 2013, and it's called Into the Fire, a firsthand account of the most
1:25
extraordinary battle in the Afghan War, and he's also the co-author of the new book, which
1:29
is surely to be a bestseller.
1:31
It's called The Way Forward, Master Life's Toughest Battles, and create your own lasting
1:34
legacy.
1:35
And he co-authored that book with retired cell team six operator Robert O'Neill, and that's
1:39
the man who killed Osama bin Laden.
1:41
So Dakota's been featured before on the Joe Rogan experience, on Jocko podcast, on Mike
1:45
Drop, on all these different shows, and today Meyer serves in the individual ready reserve
1:49
of the United States Marine Corps Reserve.
1:51
He's an advocate for American veterans.
1:53
He's a creator of podcasts called the American Party podcast and front towards the enemy.
1:57
He's an entrepreneur behind a lot of different brands, including Own the Dash and Flipside
2:00
Canvas and some others, which we talk about in the show and all that's in the show notes.
2:04
But this interview is legitimately one of the favorite interviews that I've ever done
2:08
in my life, and it was wildly intense.
2:11
I've done some other interviews before that were intense when you're talking about these
2:13
crazy life and death type stories.
2:16
There was something different about this interview with Dakota, and it just struck me different.
2:20
I was trying to hold it together myself at different points, which, you know, I feel like
2:23
I did a pretty okay job.
2:24
And he and I talked a lot beforehand and a lot after the show.
2:27
I think that he and I are going to have a good relationship moving forward, a good friendship
2:30
and it's just such a cool opportunity to be able to connect with these people that had
2:34
done some very, very unique things but have a different perspective on it because he talks
2:37
about the Medal of Honor.
2:38
And, you know, the name of this episode has Medal of Honor in it, but the Medal of Honor
2:42
that he was awarded is something that he's not a big fan of.
2:45
He actually hates it.
2:46
It reminds him, and we talk about this a lot in the show, it reminds him of the worst day
2:49
of his life and the fact that in his eyes, he didn't do his job.
2:53
He didn't get his teammates, his Marines home.
2:56
He didn't get them back state side.
2:57
He didn't get them to safety, right?
2:59
So we dig into that, you know, we dig into, you know, when he had this particular moment
3:04
where he basically was fighting a Taliban fighter and he killed him right up close, right?
3:09
He beat him to death with a rock.
3:11
I mean, if you've heard a story before you've kind of heard that story and if you haven't,
3:14
you're in for a treat.
3:15
But, you know, there's a mild intensity warning with this podcast.
3:18
If you're listening with kids, mild, you know, language warning and then things like that.
3:21
But it's just such an awesome conversation.
3:23
But even toward the end, when we're talking about his family and talking about his views
3:27
on fatherhood and all that, like we went everywhere in this conversation, I couldn't be more pleased
3:31
with how it turned out.
3:32
But guys, I'm not going to keep them from you any longer.
3:34
So without further ado, let's get into it.
3:37
Dakota Meyer, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
3:39
Thanks, Matt.
3:40
I appreciate it.
3:41
Dude, I've been so excited to talk to you and to interview you because I feel like you've
3:45
been talking to me for like the last several weeks because I've been reading your books.
3:48
I've been going through some of your interviews and everything like that.
3:50
So finally, I get to address, you know, questions directly to your face.
3:54
I'm just sorry that you have to look at mine while we talk about it.
3:56
But I do like to start as generically as I possibly can.
3:59
Anytime I talk to a veteran, I myself did not serve in the military.
4:03
I went a little bit of a different route.
4:04
It's something that I'm like, you know, a little bit, I'm like, oh my gosh, I wish I
4:07
would have done that.
4:08
That's something I wish I would have checked off at some point in my life.
4:10
But for you, why did you join?
4:12
Why did you join the military and why become a Marine specifically?
4:15
Man, I'll be honest, I don't have like the cool story of like, oh, you know, I grew
4:22
up, you know, I knew I was going to be a Marine since I was five years old or whatever.
4:26
Honestly, when I joined the Marine Corps, I had no clue what the Marine Corps was.
4:31
You know, my grandfather was a Marine, but honestly, I didn't know he was a Marine really
4:36
until, I mean, I knew I'd heard about it, but I didn't pay attention.
4:41
But like, until I joined, right?
4:44
I just, you know, when I look back at it, I joined off of a dare, right?
4:51
So like, basically a recruiter told me there's no way I'd make it as a Marine.
4:55
And you know, look, I was like, I'm in, right?
4:58
I guess, I think that just, I think that it's either in you or it's not, right?
5:03
And I think a guy like me, like, it's not about like being infatuated with something
5:08
or, or, you know, I don't, I don't try to live out some dream.
5:12
And I think for me, it's just about, I don't know, I think it's just, it's either in you
5:16
or it's not.
5:17
And I think looking back, like watching my dad, watching my grandfather, you know, service,
5:23
service was something that they did, but it wasn't something that was talked about, right?
5:27
It was just a way of life, like the way they lived their life based off principles based
5:31
off of, of, you know, taking care of others, putting others before yourself, treating people
5:38
the right way.
5:40
All these things, I just think that it was just, it was just etched in to me, my entire
5:45
life of watching this.
5:46
And I think that that's how, you know, I found this path to join the Marine Corps.
5:51
Right.
5:52
Well, it's also just kind of where you're at.
5:53
So I grew up in Lawton.
5:54
So Lawton, Fort Sill, I was around the military my entire life.
5:57
I just went, you know, the, the academic leadership sports route.
6:00
I just went a different route, right?
6:01
So if it, if you had been challenged by like a Navy recruiter or an army recruiter, do you
6:06
feel like it would have been the same thing?
6:07
Or was it some special about, you know, the few, the proud?
6:10
The Marines, that whole deal.
6:11
It was just a way the Marine recruiter was versus, versus, I mean, cause I had been, I
6:19
had been, you know, I had been talked to before by a army recruiter, right?
6:24
Right.
6:25
But it was just, it was just the way that the Marine recruiter presented himself.
6:28
You know, usually when I see army recruiters, they're in their fatigues, right?
6:34
Like they're in their, they're in their, you know, their, their, whatever you want to
6:38
be, whatever it would have been for them right now, right?
6:41
Right.
6:42
You use AC, whatever it is.
6:43
And, you know, Marine recruiter was in his dress blues, you know, and it was like how
6:49
he held himself, how he talked and, and it was just a, I don't know.
6:54
And, and, you know, but I just think that all of it played into, into it and look, he
6:59
told me I couldn't do it.
7:00
I think I was probably looking for something a little different than being in my, in my
7:04
town and following the same route as everybody else.
7:07
And I think all that played together, you know, and, and I ended up where I was supposed
7:11
to be.
7:12
Absolutely.
7:13
And we'll get a whole lot more into that.
7:14
But in 2013 Dakota, you released your memoir called Into the Fire and I just, I appreciate
7:19
you and your team shooting this copy over to me so I can dig into it before I interview.
7:22
But this week you're releasing your second book, right?
7:25
As of this week, as of the release of this episode, it's called the way forward master
7:29
life's toughest battles and create your lasting legacy.
7:32
And we'll be referring to both books a lot in the show.
7:34
But the thing that's unique about the way forward is that you actually co-authored it.
7:38
It was co-authored with retired Seal Team six operator, Robert O'Neill.
7:42
So I guess the question generically from the beginning is you're obviously not setting
7:45
out and you've never said that you're setting out to, you know, be some sort of best-selling
7:48
author and, you know, have a bunch of different books.
7:51
So I guess why do another book and then, you know, how did you get connected with Robert
7:55
to where y'all, you know, wrote this thing basically together?
7:58
So Rob is one of my best friends, his wife, Jessica, is by far one of my best friends,
8:06
right?
8:07
And both of them are just incredible human beings, right?
8:11
And me and Rob relate a lot, right?
8:13
We have a lot of commonalities and, you know, we, you know, we cross paths a lot, you know,
8:19
so how we met was we both speak for the same speaking agency and, or we did.
8:24
And, you know, we cross paths talk, just we hit it off and it was just such a natural
8:29
fit, right?
8:30
Like Rob never wanted to be in the spotlight.
8:32
I never wanted to be in the spotlight.
8:34
Like none of us asked for this.
8:36
We just literally loved our job and we loved what we did and this is where we got, right?
8:41
And both of us had, rather, been back serving and still taking out bad guys and to be doing
8:46
what we're doing right now.
8:47
But we were kind of forced into this situation and we just had to figure out how to make the
8:53
best of it, right?
8:54
And, and I think that that was a thing that brought us together and there's actually one
9:00
story that many of them were talking about whenever I was going through a tough time.
9:03
I can remember we're out in a, we're actually out in, in DC and I was talking to him about
9:10
it.
9:11
And I know it really connected with me and I was like, man, like we're on the same page.
9:15
And, but, but yeah, I mean, like that, that's how we met, you know, and, and you know, when
9:21
you ask like, well, why do it again, you know, I felt like in my first book, you know, I,
9:29
I have this theory that look, you know, right, like, and I understand the reasoning behind
9:33
it, but I feel like you've got to be fair, right?
9:36
And so, you know, in the beginning, all of us came back and wrote these books that made
9:43
like the books on war made it like we were, we were larger than life, right?
9:50
Like we told the good side of it.
9:52
We told the side of it that was exciting and entertaining, right?
9:56
About, about going in and, and killing guys, bad guys and then fighting evil across the
10:01
globe.
10:02
And you know what I mean, and it, and it, and it, it was wrote in a way that I understand
10:07
the reasoning behind it, but I don't think it was fair, right?
10:11
I don't think it was wrote in a way to, to empower the everyday citizen.
10:16
You know what I mean?
10:17
It wasn't wrote in a way to where it was like, hate normalizing, humanizing us, right?
10:21
Of, hey, I mean, it was wrote so, it was wrote in such a way that, think about this, right?
10:27
These books were wrote in such a way that, that our children are now playing video games
10:34
of the stuff that keeps us awake.
10:36
Right.
10:37
Yeah.
10:38
So, so it would, so it tells me that like, yeah, look, we need kids to look up to stuff
10:42
like this, right?
10:43
We need kids to look up to honorable people, but it's not fair for us to, to tell just
10:52
one side of it and pretend like it's not, you know, that you don't humanize the things.
10:57
But I also think that with the perspective of when we wrote that versus five years later,
11:01
and that's what this book is, it's your perspective changes.
11:06
There's a day of, I caught, there's a day of reckoning for everything.
11:10
And it's not necessarily held in your accountable, but it's like the either, it's between the
11:13
day of reckoning versus the aha moment, right?
11:16
And that's what this, the way forward is, is like taking all these bad situations or
11:23
whatever these, these lessons or these hard times and how they make good times, hard
11:29
times make good times.
11:32
And, and that's what the, the collection of the way forward is, is, is the hard times
11:37
for me and Rob coming through all the way from growing up to war to after war.
11:43
And how we've, we've taken these things and these lessons and put them in the toolbox
11:48
to make good times and make a better life now, right?
11:51
And that's, that's kind of it.
11:52
But it's not about being a title or a new, it's literally like, if this book goes out
11:57
and somebody reads it and it makes them feel better, or it makes them say, look, I can
12:02
do this, or it makes them, empowers them in one way, it's worth it.
12:08
Yeah.
12:09
And I think I'm with you that the new book, the way forward, it seems more accessible
12:13
to the everyday man because when you read into the fire, or you read the operator, which
12:17
is Rob's memoir, it's like, bro, like most people can't be, they can't even fathom some
12:23
of the stuff that happened in that book, good and bad, right?
12:26
But, but this one, it's more kind of like, here are some life lessons, here's some things
12:29
that I did that were ridiculous, that were crazy, and we're going to get into your story
12:33
a lot more here in just a second.
12:34
But it makes it accessible to where it's like, okay, here's how I can apply this to my life
12:38
as a stay at home mom, or as a salesman, or as a teacher, or as a whatever.
12:42
And so I think you guys nailed it.
12:44
And it's funny because I was reading, I'm rereading the operator right now, read into
12:47
the fire.
12:48
And so, you know, you're referring to a lot of the same stories in both books, but you
12:52
know, it isn't a more accessible light, it's not as much as the nitty gritty detail.
12:55
But I will say, just as my own, just aside here, when I was reading into the fire, I felt
12:59
like it was fair, because you didn't, you didn't try to make yourself seem like the
13:04
genius the entire time.
13:06
Like you were, you called yourself out for being dumb in certain areas, and when you
13:09
were in support, and it wasn't the right call at the moment.
13:13
Also when you were in support, and when it ended up being the right call.
13:15
So I feel like it was at least fair.
13:17
So that's what I got out of the new book is how accessible it was.
13:20
But I feel like we obviously have to transition because it's really hard to tell your story
13:24
Dakota without going into the battle of Gone Jigal.
13:27
But as I was preparing this podcast, right, as I was reading through your books, I was
13:31
preparing my questions and everything like that, I was kind of struck by the thought
13:35
that like, are you tired of talking about the battle of Gone Jigal?
13:40
Is it cathartic for you?
13:42
Do you like telling the story because you get to tell the story of your fallen teammates?
13:46
Or does that make it even worse?
13:47
I mean, what do you think at this point about talking about it all the time?
13:51
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to speak for raw, but I think that was one thing that, that
13:56
me and him related arm was, there's so much more to us than that.
14:01
You know, like, like, I mean, Rob's killed tons of evil people, you know, and, you know,
14:13
it's just, I mean, you know, I always ask people, you know, if I can tell it in a way
14:19
to people who genuinely care, that's one thing.
14:25
But like, to go out and tell it is entertainment, it's another, right, and it's like a chamber
14:30
of commerce meeting or something like that, it's like, ah, yeah.
14:34
And so it's like, I think that like what, am I tired of telling it?
14:39
I mean, would you be tired of talking about the worst day of your life, right?
14:44
The toll of it, I don't care, I don't care to talk about it because I know that if I
14:48
can help somebody and people genuinely want to know because they can't fathom it, right?
14:53
So I know that and I don't care to talk about it, right?
14:56
I don't care to talk about it, but like the mental exhaustion after I walk off the stage
15:02
and tell that story, it's just like, most people can't even think about the worst day
15:07
of their life.
15:08
Right.
15:09
Much less going in front of crowds and tell it, you know what I mean?
15:14
So it's like, am I tired of talking about it?
15:17
There's a lot more to, like, there's a lot more of it, like, there's a lot more to my
15:20
life and, you know, so now I don't get tired of talking about it, I just, it's like, what's
15:27
next?
15:28
Right.
15:29
Well, I definitely understand the what's next thing.
15:31
There was a few key moments in both of your books that I want to get to, which I'll kind
15:35
of feed in that to a little bit here.
15:36
And guys, just frankly, if you're listening to this, I'm going to tell you right from
15:39
the jump to code.
15:40
I genuinely care about your story.
15:42
My audience is going to super, duper care about this.
15:44
The guys that I told that I was talking to you, they're very, very excited to get a little
15:48
bit of a peek behind the curtain, but it's impossible to get into all the details here.
15:52
This isn't going to be a 10 hour long podcast.
15:53
So guys, you have to get into the fire.
15:55
You have to get the way forward so you can get the details of all of that.
15:58
But just for our listeners in the most basic, I guess generic way possible, go ahead and
16:02
tee up the battle of Gone Jigal because it took place on, you know, the border of Afghanistan
16:06
and Pakistan.
16:08
You know, there were some kind of weird things going on leading up to this mission, things
16:12
that didn't really set well with you.
16:14
And then obviously things kind of went wrong pretty quickly.
16:17
So just kind of tee up, you know, the pre battle and then kind of where things started
16:21
to go wrong.
16:22
Yeah, you know, so like we, so we, I was on an embedded training team.
16:25
I was in Northeastern Afghanistan.
16:27
So a lot of people, when I tried to try to, you know, get them in the area, it's like
16:32
I was one valley over from where Marcus Latrell was in the Corngo Valley, right?
16:37
I was just north of Asada Bad, which, which are two really distinct places over in Afghanistan.
16:45
And so I was on, it was four US and AD Afghans on a team.
16:48
And so we've gone over, we were on an embedded training team, our mission was to train the
16:53
Afghans on how to, I mean, look, the theory behind it is amazing, right?
16:59
We go over, we train them how to fight, we, we make them better, we train them up, get
17:04
them up, then they can hold their own.
17:06
That's the theory and that's the methodology to it.
17:09
It was a very unique, very unique, it was a unique mission, like it was so rewarding.
17:18
I loved my Afghan soldiers as much as I did my Marines, right?
17:21
Like they were, we were all that close.
17:24
And so we got called in that we were going to a place called the Gangegal Valley.
17:29
This valley is notorious in a book called the Bear went over the mountain.
17:34
This valley is just known for being savages, it's a, it's a valley that goes connect straight
17:39
to Pakistan.
17:40
It is a, it is a valley that's used a lot by, by the enemy.
17:45
And so we were going to go in the, the, the Gangegal Valley people had came to, to us.
17:53
There have been like some guy got killed by a rocket or something.
17:57
They came to us, we talked and they, they basically said they wanted to renounce themselves
18:01
from the Taliban and start supporting the government and so we were going to go in and
18:05
see how we could help them help facilitate that, right, help, help, help change this
18:10
over because this would be huge for this valley.
18:12
I mean, this would, this would really be a big, big deal.
18:15
No chance of it ever happening, but, um, so the mission was we got brief the night before
18:23
about this mission that we were going to go in, uh, to this valley.
18:27
Uh, we were going to park the vehicles at the mouth of the valley.
18:32
We were going to go in on foot on a 90 man patrol and have, uh, have meetings with the
18:38
village elders and then see what they can do and then we're going to come out.
18:43
So I had a couple of issues like listening to the brief.
18:45
I brought up a few issues with the mission planning the night before, um, my background
18:51
just so you know, for who doesn't know, uh, I was a, I was a sniper, I was a school trained
18:55
sniper in the Marine Corps, one of the youngest, uh, went over, I had already served in Iraq.
19:00
Um, so I'm not saying that I knew, I'm not saying I knew anything about combat, but I
19:07
knew about mission planning.
19:08
Um, so I, I, I, I did have that.
19:12
So I went over and we got the brief and I had a few issues with the brief, right?
19:20
And so now, now to be fair, to be fair to my leadership, I was the guy who was always
19:26
like, well, what if, right?
19:28
Well, what if, whoa, you know, like, well, do we have, do we have a plan in case?
19:32
I mean, like, and this is exaggerating, but like, this would be something that was not
19:36
far from my radar of, well, well, what if we, you know, do we have a plan for if we have
19:41
an aerial platform coming at us and it's like Dakota to Taliban doesn't have an aerial platform,
19:46
right?
19:47
Like, but either way, I was always what ifing.
19:49
I was always wanting, uh, you know, you know, secondary tertiary plans of how we're going
19:56
to do this.
19:57
I looked at combat as combat.
20:00
I was a warrior.
20:01
I was a fighter.
20:02
Like, that was my job.
20:03
And so I was always looking at the it from the fight side, right?
20:07
Um, so with that being said, I brought up a few issues, you know, one of the issues was
20:13
and it doesn't take a tactician to understand this.
20:16
We were going to have between the overwatch positions and the different breakaway, like
20:21
this 90 man patrol breaking into different sections to do their jobs.
20:26
And we were going to have, it was like over eight different sections on one radio frequency.
20:32
That radio frequency was going to have to be relayed back to base through a sniper team.
20:40
So yes, this all works.
20:42
And I, and I remember stating this that look, if, if one shots fired, the chaos that will
20:51
turn onto the radio will cause people lives.
20:55
Yeah.
20:56
So I didn't want to change it.
20:58
The second factor I didn't like or I didn't think was okay or was smart was they kept saying
21:04
that, well, we got air on 15 minutes.
21:07
When I looked into it, we had air on what's called 15 minute strip alert.
21:11
So that just means that the rotors have to be spinning and they have to come off the ground
21:17
within 15 minutes.
21:19
It doesn't give us priority air.
21:21
It doesn't like the still 30 minutes 30 to 45 minutes away in Jalalabad.
21:29
So which where they would, where they would be coming from.
21:32
So either way you're in an hour with air.
21:34
So I wanted to get out of their head that they had air within 15 minutes, brought that
21:39
up.
21:40
And then the last issue I had was if you're taking a 90 man patrol in there, I understand
21:47
not wanting to come in and being as aggressive with having trucks because the look on that
21:53
is different, but bring the trucks in behind this patrol, right?
21:57
So you go in, we have the truck stage closer.
22:01
That way that if it does hit the fan, you've got these up guns and armor to try to get
22:07
people out.
22:08
And I promise I'm going to quote to you what I was told was on this was, well, Dakota,
22:13
we want to go in clandestine.
22:16
Like you want to go in clandestine with a 90 man patrol, are you like dumbest thing
22:21
ever?
22:22
So anyways, these were the facts.
22:23
So this is what got me removed from my team and they replaced me with a guy named Gunnar
22:26
Sartre Johnson.
22:30
You know, you can what if that all day, right?
22:32
You can, you can lay in bed and beat, you know, and beat yourself up about, well, should
22:37
I've kept my mouth shut, should I not, whatever, right?
22:40
I don't even know how to look at it anymore.
22:44
So I got, take out my team, we rolled in that morning.
22:47
My team rolled in.
22:49
My team was actually going to be, they were in the front of the patrol.
22:52
So they were the furthest in the valley when everything broke off.
22:57
And so they pushed up and as soon as they got to the valley, we've been set up, like
23:03
and there was like so many factors that we weren't told that they were watching guys
23:08
come from the Pakistan border.
23:10
They're watching them on a, on a UAV.
23:14
They never told us, they knew it and they never told us, they seen guys patrolling over
23:20
to set up in this valley like that we're going into.
23:22
Like there's so many factors to it that are just so weird.
23:26
But anyways, myself and Rodriguez Chavez, incredible guy, we were sitting back at the
23:34
trucks and just the fighting started.
23:36
I won't get into all the details, but the fighting started and then we just, we, we started
23:40
going in with the trucks to go and try to pull people out.
23:43
Well, and that's the crazy thing is it's one thing to Monday morning quarterback Dakota.
23:48
And it's another thing to say here are the things that I saw that were wrong from the
23:51
beginning because it's really, really easy to connect the dots looking backwards, but
23:54
it's hard to kind of perceive what you think might happen.
23:57
But yeah, you're right.
23:58
You can't get into all the details.
23:59
You're going to have to get the books to really get into the details, but you basically
24:01
spurned the orders from your command to not go into the valley and, you know, you and
24:06
the guy driving the truck, you said, forget that we're going in there.
24:09
And you made several trips into and out of the valley, you saved a lot of lives that day,
24:14
but there was a quote from into the fire that I thought was really, really interesting.
24:16
And it's not something I've read quite a few military memoirs.
24:19
I never really got something like this.
24:20
And this was a quote strange, though it may seem I wasn't scared or angry.
24:24
I was beyond that.
24:25
I didn't think I was going to die.
24:27
I knew I was dead.
24:29
There wasn't anything I could do about it.
24:30
I wasn't a thinking human being.
24:32
I had gone somewhere else.
24:33
I wasn't firing the machine gun.
24:35
I was the machine gun.
24:37
So that's kind of a very macabre way of describing playing with house money.
24:41
You're like, Hey, I'm already this far into this.
24:43
I know that I'm dead.
24:44
I just haven't caught the bullet yet, right?
24:46
But describe that a little bit for me because it's one thing to be in a flow state because
24:50
people have heard about that.
24:51
Oh, I got in a flow state, you know, I started making a bunch of free throws like Rob, you
24:55
know, said in his books are like, I got in a flow state doing a sport or doing like a
24:58
project or something like that.
24:59
But to have no fear of the ramifications of death.
25:03
I mean, take through, take a sippy through that because it doesn't make sense to a lot
25:08
of people.
25:09
Yeah.
25:10
I mean, looking, you know, like when you're getting shot at, like you, it literally sounds
25:12
like the best way to describe it is if you take a whole piece of paper up and you take
25:17
a pencil and you push it through that piece of paper, it's like that crack, right?
25:20
Right.
25:21
Like that's exactly what it sounds like.
25:22
And the closer it is, the louder the crack is, right?
25:26
And so, you know, we've been in quite a few gun fights up to this point.
25:30
And man, when I went in, it sounded like static, like it was just like static.
25:36
The rounds were hitting because they had elevation inside the turret, right?
25:40
Like, like there was nothing like, as soon as we turned this, it was like we had to come
25:45
in this valley and it was terraces, like the valley was built with terraces all up through
25:49
it.
25:50
So some of them were high.
25:51
And as soon as we turned around and we got in the wash, I mean, there were bodies everywhere.
25:56
Like Rodriguez Chavez literally was running guys over to keep them off the truck.
26:04
And it was just like so bad, like, and I think that like, there was a shock factor as soon
26:11
as it turned, right?
26:15
But it was just the reality that I'm going to die.
26:18
Like it was just the reality that I was going to die and I mean, I'll be honest, I remember
26:24
as soon as we turned and I was fighting, there was one time that like, I sat down on
26:30
the, there's a strap in the, in a turret.
26:33
There was one time that I sat down and I was like, I don't, I don't even know what's going
26:40
to happen.
26:41
Right?
26:42
Like, I'm like, this is, this is insane.
26:45
But it just, I didn't care.
26:49
I seen so many people suffering that I cared about.
26:52
Like literally, I seen so many people that I cared about suffering, that I didn't care.
27:01
And I knew that all I could think about in my head was that I'm not going to, I'm going
27:09
to make it as hard as I can for them to kill me.
27:11
They're going to kill me.
27:12
Yeah.
27:13
But they're going to have to [inaudible] do it.
27:15
Yeah.
27:16
Again, as I was reading through that, that totally came through that you had gotten to
27:20
this point where you can't literally understand it unless you've been in that point.
27:24
I have a lot of friends that have been in combat that have been in situations like that.
27:28
And it's, it's weird for them to be living now and living alive with kids and a wife
27:32
or in a, in a business or a job or whatever.
27:34
And to, to think that at one point they went to that place mentally, but also a lot's been
27:39
made about during that battle, you know, this, this Taliban member, this jihadist militant,
27:43
he got the jump on you, right?
27:45
And so you basically look up in one of your, your moments of exhaustion and stupor and
27:50
you see this guy, and for whatever reason, he didn't just engage you immediately.
27:54
He tried to get you to come with them.
27:56
Maybe he thought, you know, we can get this guy on the news later and chop his head off
27:59
and, you know, get some more converts to who the heck knows what happened, but you managed
28:02
to get a shot off on him.
28:03
You shot your grenade, you know, hit him in the chest.
28:05
You thought it killed him, but it didn't kill him.
28:07
There's, you know, there's a live grenade round somewhere and you guys are basically in
28:10
a wrestling match where, you know, the ramifications are death for one of the two of you.
28:14
And you've talked about this a lot, you talked about it in the book, you ended up taking
28:17
this guy's life with a rock.
28:19
But the difference I feel like with the situation you went through is the modern military in
28:24
a lot of ways is mastering how to kill people from a long ways away.
28:28
There are people in a, in a room in Stillwater, Oklahoma that are flying drones and taking
28:33
people out like it's a video game, right?
28:36
Like this is, you know, call of duty or battleground or something like that.
28:39
It's just or battlefield, whatever the name of it is.
28:41
But this was a very up close and personal thing like you talked about the smell, you
28:45
talked about everything.
28:46
And again, I don't want you to get into any areas that you don't want to get into here,
28:50
but talk about kind of the difference and the way we do things and the way that happened
28:53
with you.
28:54
Yeah.
28:55
I mean, yeah.
28:56
And like, and I'll, look, I'll be, I'll be honest with you.
28:59
This is one of my deficiency struggles, whatever is the, the, the anger that I have towards
29:09
people, like it's not their fault that they're in a room over there.
29:14
Yeah.
29:15
It's not their fault that they just used to shoot, shoot back against guys on a mountain
29:21
where they could only see muzzle flashes, right?
29:24
Like it's not their fault, but it is different.
29:27
Like, like the, the combat that they know versus the combat that I'm not, and it's, it's
29:32
not their fault.
29:33
And it's not anything to say I'm, I'm anything more than them.
29:37
All I'm saying is, is the lens of combat for us two is way different.
29:42
Yeah.
29:43
And, and, you know, um, and so it's really, it's, it's, it's a struggle that I have, like
29:50
when I hear people like, oh yeah, you know, I just want to go, you know, I just want to
29:55
go back to combat.
29:56
Cause I want to kick indoors and shoot people in the face.
29:57
It's like, dude, you've never looked somebody in the whites of their eyes as you've taken
30:01
their life.
30:02
You know what I mean?
30:03
Like don't quit giving off this perception that you've ever kicked in a door and shot
30:07
somebody in the face.
30:08
Cause first off, I don't know too many people who were that good of a shot, right?
30:12
Uh, second off, it's like quit giving off this mentality, quit romanticizing war.
30:19
There's nothing romantic, there's nothing about it that's, that's awesome, right?
30:23
Yeah.
30:24
It's a different kind of stolen valor.
30:25
Like some people still valor by wearing the wrong uniform in public, but these people
30:29
like talking about that, we have a friend who's in, who's in the seals and in, he talked
30:33
about how they came back on Thanksgiving day and all the people that had never been outside
30:36
the wire ate all the turkey and stuffing and good stuff.
30:39
And here are these guys that have been outside the wire for 48 hours.
30:42
They're covered in blood and everything else that you can imagine.
30:44
And here they are eating biscuits, right?
30:46
You know, it's just, it's a different, weird thing, but that doesn't diminish their, the
30:49
other people's service, but it's not the same.
30:51
Doesn't, but they have a responsibility to stick to what they've seen and what they did.
30:56
And when you start lying about your stories or you start romanticizing of more than what
31:00
you did, it's stolen valor.
31:03
And so anyways, that's my rant on that, but yeah, no, I, I never, I'll never forget this
31:08
guy, right?
31:09
Like up to that point, up to the point of where I met him.
31:14
And I always sad met him.
31:15
I mean, I came in contact, you know, you come in contact with people.
31:20
Up into the point where I came in contact with that man, I, I loved fighting.
31:27
Like, I loved it.
31:29
I was a guy who would look for fights.
31:32
Like I was a guy who like, I just loved it.
31:38
And you know why I loved it?
31:39
I loved it because look, I would, you know, look, we're America, right?
31:43
So we're America.
31:44
So we have, we are a powerhouse.
31:47
So the cool part is, is that I can go in here and mean you, let's say you're the enemy.
31:53
I mean, you can start fighting and as soon as you start kicking my ass, well, guess what
31:57
I'm doing?
31:58
I'm calling up air.
31:59
I'm going to call an artillery.
32:00
And I'm going to call on all this [inaudible] that you don't have and I'm going to win, right?
32:04
And then I walk out pounding my chest as if I did it, right?
32:10
Yeah.
32:11
It ain't the same.
32:12
The fight that they have against us versus the fight we have against them, it ain't
32:16
the same, right?
32:17
And so, so I'd always, I loved it, right?
32:22
And until this moment and when he got to jump on me, I mean, before we went in that valley,
32:32
if you wanted to know how bad ass I was, all you had to do is give me two seconds of silence
32:37
and I would have let you know.
32:40
And then I messed up, right?
32:47
I was on my knee.
32:48
I'd gotten complacent.
32:49
I mean, all I'd been doing is running around carrying bodies out and like, you know, we
32:53
shot some guys here and there and I mean, literally, I was running around, I was holding
32:59
my weapon in one arm, like a briefcase kind of like we're just running with it.
33:02
And I didn't even, I don't even know if I had my chest rig on.
33:05
Like I was like, I took my chest rig off, I had my body armor on, I was running around
33:08
with it and I'll never forget like getting hit in the back of my head.
33:12
But it was like, you know, like when you get hit and it's like that, that kind of like
33:16
that the stars like, but you know what I'm talking about, like it doesn't hurt, but it
33:20
was kind of like getting, I remember turning around and looking up and he's just standing
33:25
over me and all I could think about my mind was like, I just, I, I didn't want anybody
33:32
to have to come look for me.
33:35
I didn't want anybody to get hurt looking for me.
33:36
I didn't want my family to have to worry about me.
33:38
I would rather them know that I was dead right here than to have to cause all that anxiety.
33:45
Yeah.
33:46
So I turned and when I turned, luckily my fingers like it literally like just swung naturally
33:52
and hit the grenade launcher on my 203, the way the trigger was and so I'm like, what
33:56
do I got to lose?
33:57
And I didn't even know if it was loaded because I'd been shooting and I didn't know if I'd
34:00
reload it or not.
34:01
Like it was, there was a lot of factors to it that it was just luck.
34:05
And I squeezed the trigger and it hit him, he hit the ground and I literally thought
34:10
he was dead.
34:11
I didn't even, I didn't even look at it.
34:14
I just went back to grabbing one of my best friends dot Ali and I had laid down a little
34:19
bit and this guy comes up and next thing I'm getting choked out and I was like, man,
34:30
this is it.
34:31
Like my division just started closing, like, you know, it started diminishing and I don't
34:38
know what happened.
34:39
I don't know how I got out of it.
34:40
I kind of relaxed a little bit.
34:41
I don't know if you bled out.
34:42
I don't, you know, I don't know if the injuries got him like what it was, but he let up enough
34:48
to where I could get out and we were fighting on the ground back and forth and I was just
34:53
grabbing everything I could and I got a rock and I remember hitting him across the side
34:59
of the face and just about the third or fourth hit.
35:04
He's laying on his back looking at me and you could tell he knew he was going to die.
35:13
And I don't know that I realized that at that moment, but I think subconsciously I realized
35:20
that I just probably didn't process it then, but I'll just, I never forget, like, I remember
35:26
I didn't know that guy.
35:29
He believed in he neither one of us thought we were wrong at that moment.
35:34
He believed in his cause as much as I believed in mine.
35:39
He has family that's going to miss him just like I would.
35:44
Could have a wife, he could have kids, but literally we were there at that moment because
35:55
we were born in two different places.
36:00
And for me, at that moment, I realized that I don't fight because I hate what's in front
36:11
of me.
36:13
I fight because I love what's behind me and that's a whole different perspective.
36:23
You know, like, that's a whole different perspective.
36:27
And at that point, fighting has never been fun for me since.
36:32
I don't, obviously I don't care to do it, but I don't see the reason to do it.
36:39
And I went ahead and killed that guy, took his life because that's the way life works.
36:45
But I appreciate that man.
36:48
I appreciate that man for the lesson that I was taught, for the person that it made me
36:53
now.
36:55
That guy right there changed my life forever.
37:00
And I killed people before, but I don't know that there's many people in my life that made
37:09
such a positive impact on my life as that man.
37:14
It's an odd thing to say, it's an odd thing to hear, but it does also make perfect sense.
37:18
And it reminds me of a quote actually from the way forward because since this all happened
37:23
and, you know, there have been people that have questioned your story, you know, questioned
37:26
the validity of your battle story and the situation with this Taliban guy that you took
37:30
out.
37:31
But here was a quote and I want to get your feedback on it.
37:33
Here's what I have to say to that BS, unless you were there, you don't know.
37:37
And let me tell you why I can say that because when I close my eyes at night, it's the eyes
37:41
of that Taliban soldier that I see looking in the mind, knowing what was coming and that
37:46
he was about to leave this world and enter another night after night.
37:49
I look into the eyes of a dying man.
37:52
And every time that image replays my mind, I don't see an enemy.
37:56
I see myself.
37:58
So I was with you Dakota all the way.
38:00
Yeah, like I can imagine closing your eyes and seeing the eyes and the of the man that
38:05
whose life he took.
38:06
But it was those last three words, I see myself.
38:09
What did you mean by that?
38:10
I think that the evil in me died right then too.
38:18
You know, that man took some bad out of me, right?
38:24
Like he forged me, challenged me to be a better person after that.
38:33
You know, because what nobody likes to understand is good people don't kill bad people.
38:45
Bad people, you have to drop to that level.
38:48
I don't care how you look at it, murder is murder, like whether it's self defense, whether
38:54
it's either way, it's killing, it is killing.
38:57
There is nothing pretty about it, whether you're on the good side or the bad side, you have
39:01
to drop to the level to fight, to do these types of things, to be capable of doing these
39:06
types of things, right?
39:07
It has to be in you, like, and that's what, like I think Jordan Peterson talks about it
39:12
really good.
39:13
And I don't mean bad people, good bad, whatever.
39:15
I mean, you know, Jordan Peterson talks about the monster inside you, right?
39:20
You have got to be able to get on the level to fight monsters.
39:25
You've got to be able to become a monster.
39:28
And that's just the reality of it, right?
39:31
Like, that's the reality of it.
39:37
And I think that like, I think that when I say, when I say I see myself, I just, I see,
39:52
there's just so many anecdotes to that, right?
39:54
Like, obviously I've seen the evil of me about to take this man's life.
39:57
And I also, he also pulled some good out of me.
40:02
You know what I mean?
40:03
Like, as crazy as it is, like it's such a crazy thing to say and it's such a deep thing
40:07
to say, but it's like this moment, literally, literally this moment makes me the man I am
40:14
when I get off the truck, when the level of empathy that that man pulled out of me to
40:20
have understanding for others, if I can connect, if I was able to connect with a guy who just
40:25
tried to kill me, who believes who are so far away, if I could find a way to connect
40:32
with him, we can find a way to connect with anybody.
40:38
Yeah.
40:39
And Dakota, it's a cornerstone moment for your life, but it's just, it's a different intensity
40:43
because like some people, the cornerstone moment of their life is losing the state championship
40:47
game or a book they read or, you know, a crazy, great thing.
40:51
You know, the moment they saw their child born, like something like that, yours just has obviously
40:55
a different tinge to it, but it's just part of your story and it does create a pathway
41:01
for you to have other people's understanding, because there are other people that are in
41:04
your situation that I can't align with them and say, Hey, brother, I know how you feel,
41:09
right?
41:10
That's just not something that they could ever say.
41:12
But to even keep the story of the battle going just a little bit, obviously the battle ended
41:16
at some point, you go into all the detail in the books, but you lost your teammates, right?
41:21
You lost your team on teammates, you weren't with them because you know, you question authority,
41:27
they thought you were being insubordinate.
41:28
They took you away from your team.
41:30
So I know that there's a little bit of guilt there.
41:31
You talked about that a lot, but you lost Lieutenant Michael E. Johnson, Staff Sergeant Aaron M.
41:36
Kinefic and corpsman third class James are late, right?
41:39
And you found their bodies.
41:40
You talked about taking them out.
41:42
You know, it's a tough situation.
41:43
I don't envy the position you're in of having to talk about it.
41:46
But there is a quote from the way forward that doesn't seem like it should relate.
41:51
But it like snapped into my brain whenever I was thinking about this interview, okay?
41:55
There was a time in your life when you were growing up, because you lived on a farm with
41:59
your father and you were caring for a cow of yours named Tinker, right?
42:04
So Tinker was supposed to die.
42:05
We don't have to get into all the veterinary medical reasons why, but Tinker should have
42:08
died.
42:09
But you said, no, you're like, I'm not this, this cow is going to live, [inaudible].
42:14
And you cared for this cow.
42:15
You spent months trying to preserve her life, and there's a really funny story of how you
42:19
ended up preserving your life, which will, we'll leave that to the imagination of the
42:22
readers whenever they get to that part of the story.
42:24
But here was a quote, and it was just a random quote.
42:27
It was because my biggest fear in life was not being able to be what someone needed me
42:31
to be when they needed me to be it.
42:34
It's still my biggest fear.
42:36
So in that moment, when you found your teammates, I know you thought you should have been with
42:42
them, right?
42:43
You still think that you should have been with them.
42:46
Maybe the outcome would have been different for them.
42:48
Maybe the outcome would have been different for you.
42:50
Maybe you would have died instead of them, something like that, right?
42:53
But I just that quote, it seems like that's been in you from the beginning, Dakota, that
42:57
God wired that in you, this overwhelming desire to overcome that biggest fear of needing to
43:03
be what people need you to be in that moment.
43:05
So take that wherever you want, man.
43:07
I want to be cognizant of where you're at in the story, but is that related?
43:12
Do you feel like it's related to your story?
43:13
Yeah, I mean, it's every day, right?
43:15
I mean, it's every day and where it came from.
43:18
I don't know, you know, I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out, you know, and it's
43:23
like, yeah, I mean, you know, that's literally, that's why I get up and I train so hard.
43:31
I steal today, right?
43:32
Like it's why I, it's why I try to push myself so much further, right?
43:38
It's why I try to push other people.
43:39
It's why I'm a firefighter.
43:41
It's why I do these things because it's why I try to read up on knowledge.
43:46
I'm always trying, I don't, you know, I, you know, when I lost my teammates, it's still
43:56
the biggest failure in my life.
43:58
And when people say, well, it's not, no, no, it is.
44:03
And it's, and it is, and it's not arguable, it's, you don't get to change the facts because
44:09
you don't like how it feels, right?
44:12
And, and if you take that away from me, it, it changes up the drives that I have, right?
44:22
It's like, no, I, I failed.
44:23
I went in to go get my teammates.
44:25
We all know that.
44:26
And when I got to them, I didn't get them out alive.
44:29
Like it's a clear failure, period.
44:34
Again, it's, it's defined who I am, it's, it's gave me the, the why that a lot of people
44:39
don't have.
44:40
And so with that quote being, you know, my biggest fear is that I won't be able to be
44:45
what someone needs me to be, when they need me to be it, it's, it's real.
44:52
Like, I, I just want to help people.
44:57
Like I just, I just want to help people.
45:01
I just want to make the world a better place, right?
45:04
Like, man, I don't, I don't care how much money I have.
45:06
I don't care what type of house I live in.
45:10
I just want to serve people.
45:11
I just want to, I want to take away all the pain from these bad, like from people who
45:17
are in bad situations or those moments that they don't know if they can get through.
45:23
Like, I want to be able to come in and help them get through that and help them see that
45:29
it's going to be okay.
45:30
And, and whatever the circumstances are, we will get through it and I will stand next
45:34
to you and I don't care what's in front of it, but we will go through hell together.
45:39
And where we end up, like you're not going to be alone, right?
45:43
And that's literally it's, it's, it's whether it's a car wreck, whether it's a, whether
45:48
it's a friend going through something or, or whatever it is, like, I just, I try to show
45:55
people that no matter what, if you think nobody cares about you, I do, and I don't care who
46:05
you are.
46:06
I don't care if I know your name.
46:07
I don't care what I know about you.
46:08
Like, I genuinely care about you and it's like, people say, oh, that's cliche or whatever,
46:14
right?
46:15
It's like what it's, it's not, it's not.
46:17
And, um, it's not a cool thing to say.
46:20
It's not a, it's not, it's just a way of life.
46:25
It is a way of life.
46:26
And it's a good word to live by, but in all honesty, and you've, you've talked very openly
46:31
about this.
46:32
You weren't always in that position mentally, um, because whenever you did get back, whenever
46:36
you got out of the Marine Corps, you were obviously having some, some big time issues.
46:40
Um, you, you were kind of falling apart in a lot of ways in your life.
46:43
And at one point, you decide that that was it.
46:46
And that you were going to take your own life.
46:48
You parked your vehicle.
46:49
You reached in the glove box, grabbed your Glock, put it to your head, pulled the trigger,
46:53
thick, but no bang, right?
46:55
Um, and it reminded me of a quote from your book because, well, here, I'll just read it
47:00
here.
47:01
It's from Into the Fire.
47:02
As a grunt, I was resigned about death.
47:04
I don't go to church.
47:05
To me, organized religions seem like bureaucracies, but I believed in God, grunts see his acts
47:10
on the battlefield.
47:11
Guys beside you get shot or blown up.
47:14
You don't.
47:15
God has a plan that we won't understand until we cross to the other side.
47:18
There's no sense obsessing about getting tagged.
47:21
Whether a bullet has your name on it or it doesn't.
47:23
No need for philosophizing.
47:26
So to philosophize a little bit Dakota, there was a bullet with your name on it and it should
47:31
have been in your Glock, but it wasn't, you know, somebody unloaded your pistol, right?
47:36
You didn't know that when you put it to your temple, but that bullet had your name on it,
47:41
brother, but it didn't take you, right?
47:43
There's a different plan for you, right?
47:46
And again, I'll know how that's affected you moving forward.
47:48
Obviously, that's another cornerstone moment of your life whenever you made the decision
47:52
to end it all.
47:53
But here we are talking.
47:54
So give me a little bit more on that.
47:55
Yeah.
47:56
I mean, you know, look, in a hundred percent, like, you know, one of my closest friends
48:00
is Mack Rashard from Lake Hills Church.
48:03
I mean, the guy has been with me.
48:04
I mean, look, you know, I believe in God.
48:07
I believe that God is, I mean, I watched the acts of God all the time.
48:13
You know what I mean?
48:14
All the time.
48:15
I am a living.
48:19
You know what I mean?
48:20
Like, my life in so many ways, like, you know, are just God's hand, you know, taken
48:29
it in his own hands, right?
48:32
And yeah, I mean, you're right.
48:33
There's a bullet.
48:34
And I do believe that.
48:35
I believe that it doesn't matter if you have a paper cut and you're in the best hospital
48:39
in the world with all the best doctors in the world, it could be a paper cut on your
48:44
pinky finger.
48:45
And if it's your time to go, it's your time to go and there's nothing we can do about
48:48
it, right?
48:49
I've seen this happen so many times.
48:52
And yeah, you know, when I tried to take my life, it wasn't because, honestly, I just
49:04
felt like I'd become a burden on everybody else.
49:07
You know, I, I felt like that I, I had just, and I had, I'd lost my way.
49:15
I had gotten to this victim mentality that so many do of, well, you know, like, I just
49:21
didn't want to look in the mirror.
49:22
I was blaming everything around me, like, oh, you know, I went to combat, lost my whole
49:26
team, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, I served this country, this country owes me.
49:31
I'm the veteran, blah, blah, blah, whatever it was, right?
49:33
Like, I used all these lines, I got PTSD, you know, the world needs to, and what I, what,
49:40
that moment made taught me was that, and obviously not instantly, but nobody owes me
49:47
[inaudible].
49:48
And honestly, I owe, because of, because of the, the hard times I've gone through, I owe
49:59
people more, and I owe them more because I'm still here, and I owe it to be able to
50:10
connect with those people on times like this to help them get through it.
50:14
I am here to help bring them through these times that they've never seen that I already
50:20
have.
50:21
Like, that's my obligation to people.
50:24
And instead of this mentality of, well, I'm, you know, I'm just gonna, it's, it's a selfish
50:31
entitled victim mentality, and I have an obligation to, to be better for it, and then it gives
50:39
me more tools and more ways to connect to people by these hard times, and I have an obligation
50:47
to do that until God tells me I'm done.
50:51
Right.
50:52
Well, I mean, we've all heard it, and I think you alluded to it even a little bit earlier,
50:55
like hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men,
50:59
weak men make hard times.
51:00
So if you can focus in on the hard times making strong men, like that, that's kind of what
51:04
you're talking about, but it would also not be a full, you know, recounting of the Dakota
51:09
Meyer story if we don't talk about what happened in 2011.
51:12
So in the summer of 2011, you were alerted by a Marine colonel that the White House had
51:16
reviewed your award packet from your time of service and what happened in the battle
51:20
of Gone Jigal and that they might be giving you a call.
51:22
And so you eventually did get a call, you know, why you're out working a construction
51:25
job, which is a pretty funny story.
51:27
He had a call from the president of the United States, Barack Obama at the time, he informed
51:30
you that he had reviewed the notes of the battle and that he had signed your citation
51:33
for the Medal of Honor, which is not a call that most people will ever get.
51:37
You go to the White House in September of 2011 for the Medal of Honor ceremony.
51:41
You mentioned kind of ingest to a White House aide that you wish you could sit down and
51:45
have a beer with the president.
51:46
That ended up happening regardless of what you think about Barack Obama.
51:49
That's a pretty cool story.
51:50
Then you go through the entire Medal of Honor ceremony, but from the outside looking in,
51:56
you would think that if you go to, you know, Dakota Meyer dot com or whatever your website
51:59
is, it'll be in the show notes that you would have the Medal of Honor right there, that that
52:02
would be the first thing that you would talk about, that you would have a Medal of Honor
52:05
tattoo and be, and be that guy, right?
52:07
And I've heard you talk about this in previous interviews that you kind of hate the medal.
52:11
Yeah, like you don't, you don't really like it.
52:13
It reminds you of the worst day of your life.
52:14
And I want to read this quick quote and then I want to get, you know, your feedback on
52:17
the entire process before the medal afterwards, how you feel about it now.
52:21
But this is a quote from Into the Fire.
52:22
"When the president hung that medal around my neck, I felt glum.
52:26
I couldn't smile and I said nothing.
52:28
I gave no remarks and avoided the press.
52:30
As a Marine, you either bring your home, you bring your team home alive or you die trying.
52:35
My country was recognizing me for being a failure and for the worst day of my life.
52:40
So a lot of people would disagree with you.
52:42
But guess what?
52:43
I don't get a vote, right?
52:44
You're the one that gets to figure out how you feel about certain situations.
52:47
But take us through that whole thing, knowing that you were up for the Medal of Honor, getting
52:50
the call from the president all the way through to present day.
52:53
Yeah, I mean, you know, look, when I got notified that I was going to be getting the medal,
52:57
you know, we went back and forth and I'll never forget the first meeting that we had.
53:02
I walked out and said, "I don't want it."
53:05
I walked out and said that I'm not a hero.
53:12
And the quote that the colonel said back to me was, "Well, the president of the United
53:17
States thinks you're a hero."
53:19
And I remember saying back to him, I said, "Well, if he thinks I'm such a hero, why
53:22
don't you call my teammates up and let them know?"
53:25
And walked out.
53:26
Brutal quote, yeah.
53:28
And so finally, like, I was like, "Hey, just meld me the medal.
53:34
I got no ceremony.
53:35
I don't want [inaudible].
53:36
Just meld it to me."
53:37
And he's like, "That's not how it works."
53:40
And so we went back and forth and a lot of people don't know this, but the only way I
53:45
agreed to come to the ceremony was if they had a ceremony at each one of my teammates'
53:51
grave sites at the same time.
53:55
And so the Patriot Guard went and did that, and it was just, so at the same time I was
53:59
receiving my medal, they were honoring those guys across the nation.
54:05
And I'll never forget standing up there and getting that medal around my neck, and it
54:15
was the sickest, sickest I've ever been.
54:17
And it still is.
54:18
Like, I hate.
54:20
I don't wear the medal.
54:21
I honestly, just full disclosure, I don't even know where it's at right now.
54:28
I gave it to my daughter.
54:30
You know, she asked about it one time, and I just gave it to her.
54:35
And you know, she wears it, probably has it in a play box somewhere.
54:38
I think she might have took it to school and let her friend borrow it for a week or two.
54:43
I don't know.
54:44
I haven't seen it in a while.
54:47
But I understand what the medal represents, but for me, like, it's, for me, it's, you
55:03
know, I, for me, I have a lot more to do.
55:11
And if I wear that medal around, I feel like it's the Uncle Rico syndrome.
55:18
Yeah.
55:19
Yeah.
55:20
You know, and that was one of the reasons I become a firefighter.
55:26
And because how long could I go living off of 10 years ago of one day of my life and wearing
55:35
this medal around and people looking at me like I'm, I'm something I'm not.
55:44
And so that's why it's important for me to still get on a truck and to still go and serve
55:52
the community at that level.
55:55
And I just that medal, I, yeah, I hate that medal.
56:00
I hate it.
56:02
It's such a hard, you know, from my perspective, it seems crazy to hear you say that.
56:07
But at the same time, I've read your books.
56:10
I get it.
56:11
Like I get it and I don't, it's a, it's a weird dichotomy in my own brain because it
56:15
doesn't make sense while it makes sense perfectly.
56:18
But, but also the thing that's curious as I was thinking through your story and thinking
56:23
through all the things that I seemingly felt like I knew about you before we got to this
56:26
conversation is how different of a perspective you would have on the pull out from Afghanistan
56:32
than, you know, another combat veteran or another veteran that didn't see combat or just someone
56:36
here stateside looking at the news, you know, you talked about even in some of your books
56:40
about how, you know, Afghans, you can, you know, people, there's an Afghan saying that
56:44
you can rent an Afghan, but you can never buy one.
56:47
And then we kind of see that with what's going on with people that are like switching from,
56:51
yeah, go America to, I guess I'll be a tally now or something like that.
56:55
But from your perspective, after, as this was happening, I got the perspectives of a
56:59
lot of people in the show, you know, gold star widows and people that had seen battle
57:04
in Afghanistan, people that had covered the battle on the ground there to kind of get
57:07
their perspective.
57:08
But from your perspective, as somebody who lost brothers in Afghanistan who shed blood
57:12
and had your bloodshed in Afghanistan to see the United States pull out and the way that
57:16
it did and seeing what we're seeing now with the humanitarian crisis moving forward with
57:21
innocent Afghans, you know, on the ground there, what are your thoughts?
57:24
I mean, I'm going to be a straight shooter to you, right? Like I'm not going to get
57:29
all emotional about it romances. Again, romanticizing about it, right? Look, we should have never
57:35
been there past. I mean, we first off, we should have never been there, right?
57:40
We had Osama bin Laden cornered pretty early in our occupation. It wasn't even occupation
57:46
at that point. And we decided not to go get him. And then, you know, here we were 20 years
57:49
later. I believe that if you don't think for one second, that if the Taliban had thought
57:57
that we were going to occupy them for 20 years, they would have gave bin Laden up on 9/12,
58:03
right? Yeah. No, no, this was all about money. There were too many, like, why do you think
58:10
every administration kept kicking it down the road? Because guess what? It was all about
58:15
money. Let's get out of this romanticizing that, oh, it was about protecting our country
58:21
because it wasn't. None of the guys I killed were ever going to come attack America. It
58:26
was literally about money. And it's about [inaudible] politics, right? Which is something
58:32
we've seen so many times. I mean, you're watching this Ukraine situation going right now. Why
58:37
don't you give me one reason as to why? What benefit is it for us to go over and be part
58:47
of that, right? Like, it's just crazy. But anyways, for me, like how we pulled out, yeah,
58:54
it doesn't suck to know that my teammates died for that. Yeah. But I knew that way before
59:05
we ever pulled out of Afghanistan. You know what I mean? Like, like, I knew it. We knew
59:12
it when we were there. You know what I mean? None of us thought that Afghanistan wanted
59:16
to be a democracy or wanted to be free. None of us did it. We all were over there and we
59:22
knew that this was going to happen at some point. And so, like, when I hear like, oh,
59:30
we should stay there. Why? Why? Like, why should we stay there? Like, they're not our
59:36
problem. I don't care what anybody says. They're not our problem. We've got bigger problems
59:41
here. You know, and it's like, you know, it's just a damned if you do damned if you don't.
59:49
But it's like, we went in there with no strategy of what a win was. Like, what are we supposed
59:54
to do? If we were going to go occupy or try to make all these countries who are doing
59:59
evil stuff better? I mean, we got to go all over the world, right? And so, as upsetting
1:00:06
as that is and as hard as that is to swallow, you know, we're over here trying to fight
1:00:14
in these countries that don't even want help as we're over here, rising the debt for mining
1:00:18
your children. You know what I mean? It's like, it's a hard pill to swallow. It's a hard
1:00:25
way to look at it. And I understand it. It's hard to look in the mirror and say, you know,
1:00:33
the guys that I cared about so much died not for what I thought they were dying for.
1:00:42
But just because we don't like to look at it that way, it doesn't mean it's not reality
1:00:50
and it doesn't mean that we should continue to stay there because we don't like the feeling
1:00:54
of pulling out and saying that this was done.
1:00:57
Yeah, it's, I mean, Dakota, I literally feel like we could spend the next five hours talking
1:01:03
about the military industrial complex and how real that is or how reality that is or,
1:01:08
you know, geopolitics and all that. And it just kind of muddies the waters. But to even,
1:01:12
I guess, bring it down to, to a simple, more just basic military level. Again, as an ounce,
1:01:17
as a civilian on the outside looking in, there's some concerning things whenever I look at
1:01:21
the military, obviously the seeming lack of leadership or just basic common sense with
1:01:26
some of the general class, some of the woke stuff we're seeing in the military, some of
1:01:30
the things that are happening at the academies, you know, I had somebody from the Air Force
1:01:34
send me a private message on Instagram saying how they were being trained on how to put
1:01:38
pronouns in their email bios, this is in the Air Force, the lowering of standards so that
1:01:44
women or just basically weak men can make it into these spec ops communities or make
1:01:49
it into just the basic military or whatever. It's concerning to me. Obviously, like I don't
1:01:54
necessarily think we need to be the world's police, but I want the US military to be strong
1:01:59
and I want the best people to be in these positions. I don't want anybody to be elevated
1:02:03
to position where they could potentially lead to someone's death later. Like you get this
1:02:08
person to be a special pick and now they're a seal or now they're a marine recon or something
1:02:14
like that. And then something happens on the battlefield and they're not strong enough to
1:02:18
pull someone out of danger. And I'm concerned about it, but for you having been in the military,
1:02:23
but not being a 20 year guy, but someone that still supports veterans and veterans causes,
1:02:28
what do you, what do you think about when you see some of the woke stuff, some of the
1:02:31
lowering of the standards and just in general lack of leadership with our military?
1:02:34
Yeah, I mean, look, the lack of accountability, right? Like that's, that's the issue, right?
1:02:38
It's accountability, the lack of accountability. And you said, I love how you just said, because
1:02:45
I hate what I hear men talking about, oh, they're lowering the standard. So we're going
1:02:50
to have women in there and it's like, hold on. They're also lowering the standards so
1:02:55
that there's going to be weak ass men in there. Like let's don't forget this. And I,
1:03:00
I serve next to men who I'd rather have. They're like, I've served next to men and women. I've
1:03:04
been in gun fights with men and women. And I've seen women outperform some of these guys
1:03:09
that should have never been there, right? So like all that is just whatever. But I, yeah,
1:03:16
it's concerning. If you're not concerned that the joint, the joint chief admitted that he
1:03:25
called China his counterpart and let them know that he would call him and tell them if we
1:03:32
were going to do anything nuclear, if that doesn't concern you, if just that piece of
1:03:37
it. But here's what I want to say. And I'm with you. And I know my view on Afghanistan,
1:03:45
Iraq, all that, I know it kind of seemed like, like, okay, well, I don't want to go take
1:03:51
care of other countries. And that's not it. What I want to say is, is I don't think we
1:03:57
need to occupy it. We have the best SF units, CAD, Delta, you've got, I mean, I mean, you've
1:04:05
got the still team six, they are like, you can trust this, they are the best on the globe.
1:04:14
And at the point that people dial us into where we can spend money in these pockets like Iraq
1:04:19
and Afghanistan or, or Syria, like we're, we're occupying big military there and making
1:04:27
you think that that's the only place. Understand this, like the people of American need to
1:04:32
understand this, that the war that we have is global. It's global. It's on our border.
1:04:41
It's all across the world, right? So we just need to be taking hits everywhere. There are
1:04:46
no boundaries. Like, if it's in Germany and we know that a [inaudible] is there, we go into
1:04:52
Germany and we smash that dude. Like, like, that's, that's how we do it. And when you
1:04:56
talk about weakening the world's military or the America's military, we are, when America's
1:05:03
strong, everybody hates us. Right. But when America's weak, the world suffer.
1:05:11
Yeah. I mean, we see that all, all the time in those people that are like, we shouldn't
1:05:16
be the world's police. That's ridiculous. It's easy to say that when you live in a compound
1:05:21
or you live in a gated neighborhood or you live in Manhattan and all this is like, yeah,
1:05:25
of course you would say that. You're not worried about some tribesmen from over the hill coming
1:05:29
over here trying to take your cow and your family. Like, what are you talking about?
1:05:32
Like you have no perspective whatsoever. And I feel like we've been like super intense
1:05:36
for this entire hour. I do want to shift gears a little bit to talk about, you know, Dakota
1:05:41
Meyer, the person because you're obviously way more than what you did on one day as you
1:05:44
just described. I want to talk a little bit about fatherhood because in both of the books
1:05:49
and into the fire and the way forward, you talk about how you don't know your biological
1:05:53
father that a guy named Mike Meyer. This was a guy that adopted you whenever the day that
1:05:58
you were born, he was with your mother for a short period of time. You went to go live
1:06:02
with him whenever you I think you were 12 or 13 years old. And you basically talk about
1:06:07
how that well, here's a short quote from your book. I learned early on that just because
1:06:11
you come from the same blood as someone doesn't mean that they are family. Big Mike Meyer was
1:06:15
my real dad as far as I was concerned. The thing I'm curious about is I'm a relatively
1:06:19
new father. I've got a one and a half year old, you know, about 20 month old and I got
1:06:23
another son on the way. By the time this episode comes out, he may be here with us, right?
1:06:29
And so I see myself as a father through the lens of my father and the things that my father
1:06:34
did that were good, that were bad, that were indifferent or whatever. So for you, with your
1:06:38
daughters and with your family, how does that affect, you know, basically not knowing your
1:06:44
biological father, but having a relationship with Mike, but it wasn't perfect. And there
1:06:47
was some craziness with with your biological mom and blah, blah, blah and all that. How
1:06:51
does that directly reflect who you are today as a father? How does it shape you?
1:06:56
Yeah, I mean, you know, my dad, I mean, my dad taught me, I mean, if I can be half the
1:07:03
dad that he was, I'll be successful. You know, I was fortunate that my mom showed me what
1:07:09
not to be and my dad showed me what to be. And you know, like, I look at a lot of things
1:07:17
like the way he handled things, the way he didn't. And you know, it's always a back and
1:07:23
forth of like, you know, I don't remember my dad telling me you love me, right? Like,
1:07:27
I don't remember those ever being conversations. I don't ever remember my dad, like, setting
1:07:31
me down and like, Hey, you know, like, okay, so we did this, like, do you want to think
1:07:36
about how this made me feel when you said that, right? Like, right, I don't ever remember
1:07:43
that being part of it, right? Now, I do think that there's certain situations where I need
1:07:48
to do that with my children. But I'll tell you what my dad did is my dad didn't have
1:07:54
to say anything. My dad lived it. My dad didn't have to tell me how you should live. I could
1:08:00
watch my dad every step of the way every single day. My dad woke up and brought it, right?
1:08:06
Like he woke up and he brought it. He was a bad ass son to my grandfather and grandmother,
1:08:12
right? He was a bad ass dad to me. He was a bad ass businessman, right? Like, like all
1:08:17
these aspects, my dad didn't have to talk about it. My dad was being about it, right?
1:08:23
And I think that, like, like for me, that would, you know, like, if I can be half the
1:08:31
man that he is, like, I'll be somebody. And, you know, my dad didn't get, my dad was like,
1:08:39
my dad didn't question how he was doing things. You know, my dad knew what right and wrong
1:08:46
was. My dad knew, my dad, basically my dad is one of the simplest man you'll ever meet.
1:08:51
And he basically does two things. He wakes up every day and he gives all he's got. And
1:08:57
he doesn't have to question or live by social norm or whatever it is, right? Like he's not
1:09:03
like going with the norms. My dad knows what right and wrong is. And he knows he's doing
1:09:07
his best. And he knows what right and wrong is. And that's as simple as it gets for my
1:09:12
dad. And, but just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy.
1:09:16
Yeah, I mean, for me as a father, there are a lot of things that I want to say that I
1:09:20
do and I want to say that there's things that I do incredibly well. But I know the score
1:09:24
for a lot of people. And I know the score for me. I know that there's a lot of things
1:09:27
that I do that's just like, it's astonishing. But it is really awesome when you get to see
1:09:31
an unpolished dad, because I would say in a lot of ways I had a dad that wasn't polished,
1:09:35
right? You know, they're probably not going to write a bunch of like relationship books
1:09:38
about how father should treat a son. And oh, he said this and he shouldn't have done that.
1:09:41
He should have, you know, done this this way. But you know what my dad did? My dad, when
1:09:45
I decided to play sports, he decided that he was going to see everything. He was going
1:09:49
to go to every practice and he was going to go to every game. And I always knew the score
1:09:52
growing up that my biggest fan on the planet was my father. And that hasn't been in a huge
1:09:58
impact. My dad didn't read a bunch of books. He didn't go get his PhD and fathered him or
1:10:02
whatever to kind of figure that out. He just modeled it. And this was a guy my father lost
1:10:07
his dad when he was 13 years old. Around the same time you went to go live with Big Mike,
1:10:11
right? So you're looking at these things like, how could he have decided to do those
1:10:14
things? And I'm so thankful for the man that he is and for the man that he helped me to
1:10:18
become when all the signs would have pointed to the fact that he wasn't going to be able
1:10:22
to do that. So I would go ahead and think about this, right? You know, like, like, you
1:10:28
know, we get wrapped up in what so being a parent is my kids liking us, right? Or, or
1:10:35
like, you know, brotherhood is about me not hurting your feelings, right? Like, there's
1:10:40
all these aspects of it. And it's, and it's exact. It's wrong. Right. My dad, I'll never
1:10:45
forget. My dad looked at me and he's like, I'm, I'm not your friend. I'm your father.
1:10:51
And, and when you think about that, you know, like, I see this in the fire service. I see
1:10:56
this in the military. You know, you got these guys like, you have an obligation as brothers
1:11:02
to hold people accountable, even when it's hard. It's about accountability. It's about
1:11:07
pushing them to be do their best. It's about making sure that you are being truthful to
1:11:12
them as to where they're at. And right in that brotherhood, isn't that like what teammates
1:11:18
do of like, Hey, hey, you're wrong right now. Like you need to fix this, right? But we've
1:11:23
gotten this idea that, Oh, I want to make everybody like me as a parent, as a friend,
1:11:28
as a brother, as a husband, as a wife, like we've gotten this idea that we want to be
1:11:33
liked. We want the likes of Instagram, social media, we want to be liked. Instead of, instead
1:11:40
of truthful.
1:11:41
And it's, it's not just truth. It's capital T truth, not my truth in your truth. And let's
1:11:46
just do whatever it's been, no, no, right. Like there, there is a truth here. This, this
1:11:50
postmodern idea that somehow truth doesn't matter and truth is somehow the power of white
1:11:55
supremacy. It's just a ridiculous thing for people to think through. And here, I don't,
1:12:00
you've got your own podcast where you get to talk trash. I need to talk to you more. I
1:12:03
don't need to go off on my own tangent here. But one guy I am curious about, because we
1:12:06
got into your story and I really appreciate it. But obviously you're your own guy now,
1:12:10
right? There's a lot of stuff that you're doing now. You've mentioned being a firefighter
1:12:14
often, you're also still reserving the remains as I understand it. You've got podcasts, you've
1:12:19
got your own companies, own the dash and others. So you just give my audience the rundown.
1:12:23
What is Dakota Meyer up to these days? No, I'm a firefighter. Obviously a father. I have
1:12:29
a gym called the dash gym. It's a, it's out here on my property. We've got some really
1:12:34
awesome people that come to it every morning. We got a five AM class. So just awesome community
1:12:41
there. I've got an apparel brand called own the dash, which is just, it's about living
1:12:46
your life. It's about going out and just owning it. Owning that dash, it's on your tombstone
1:12:50
between the day you're born and the day you died, right? I've got, we've got a podcast
1:12:55
myself and Dan Holloway called the American Party podcast where we just talk about principle,
1:13:01
like principally looking at the issues that we have in the world today, which is something
1:13:06
that doesn't happen often. And then I've got, I have a company called the dash IV, right?
1:13:11
So basically we do a hydration therapy or IV therapy. We do NAD. We do all these, these
1:13:19
really incredible, incredible therapy sessions for people that just, it's really just awesome
1:13:24
watching people get excited about their health again. So really fulfilling. And then I have
1:13:29
a company called flip side canvas, right? So we do canvas art that I like to think it's
1:13:33
the most badass art on the face of the planet. And so yeah, it's, I think, I think that's
1:13:38
kind of it. Dude, all that stuff will be in the show notes, but a little aside on flip
1:13:42
side canvas. What's funny is the moment I went to your site, it's like, okay, if you
1:13:45
guys can imagine all of the like CPA offices or insurance offices you walk through, but
1:13:49
there's like an eagle flying, you know, in the mountains and then it'll be like, be the
1:13:54
leader that you want to be or something stupid like that. It's basically what those signs
1:13:59
are trying to be, but in real life for dudes that are bad, right? So like that's, that's
1:14:04
what I kind of put that as. So bravo from some of the stuff that you're creating. But Dakota,
1:14:08
we've talked about a lot of stuff in this podcast, but this is likely going to be my
1:14:11
last question of the day. Towards the end of the way forward, the new book that'll be
1:14:15
in the show notes. There you go. We've we've done our our stuff. The publishers are below
1:14:19
us now. You have a short, almost throwaway quote that caught my attention. It's like in
1:14:24
the middle of a paragraph. Okay. So around this time in the book, you're talking about
1:14:28
being a firefighter, you're talking about going on these emergency calls. You're talking
1:14:31
about always being ready, how you've responded to a bunch of roadside crashes and problems,
1:14:36
how you kind of always seem to be, you know, at the right place at somebody else's wrong
1:14:40
time kind of a deal. But here was the quote that stood out to me. Sometimes I wonder if
1:14:44
maybe God is preparing me for something in the future, but I don't know what it is yet.
1:14:50
So as I read your story, and as I reflect on your story, Dakota, being being a Christian
1:14:53
myself, being a disciple of Jesus Christ, there's nothing more clear to me than the fact that
1:14:58
God has a very specific purpose for you. And that the Dakota Meyer story is not done. The
1:15:04
Dakota Meyer story is not wrapped up in this book. That's in my hands. There's a whole
1:15:08
lot more to your story. It's not wrapped up in your daughters. It's not wrapped up in
1:15:11
your any of your past relationships, or even in your future relationships. But God has something
1:15:16
I can feel in my bones, Dakota. God has an extreme calling for your life where he is
1:15:20
going to utilize everything that you've experienced up to that point in order to respond to his
1:15:25
calling. Do you feel the same way? When I'm upset. Yeah, I mean, and that's, yeah, and
1:15:32
as scary as that is, right? Like, to think that he's preparing me for something bigger
1:15:42
than what I've already had to go through is a scary aspect, right? But, you know, what
1:15:51
I don't know is, is like, you know, I'll tell you, I had a big shift. I had a couple
1:15:57
calls that really kind of bothered me of, you know, where we were with people that died.
1:16:06
And you know, I had a huge shift on my mindset of it. And now, like, whenever I get to it.
1:16:13
And I say this, and you got to hear it out, because it doesn't sound good at the beginning.
1:16:18
But when I get to watch somebody die, I used to look at it negative. And now, I just, I
1:16:27
look at it in a positive thing that I got to share these last moments with these people
1:16:31
on earth, and I made sure that they're not alone. That someone was with them that cared
1:16:35
about them, that as they're about to go across the threshold, I got to stand there with them
1:16:44
and hopefully make it just a little bit better. Hopefully that they're, my dream is, my goal
1:16:49
is that every person that I know is about to leave this world, that I'm around, I want
1:16:54
them or that their last thought, whatever it is, I don't know, I don't know, right? But
1:16:58
like, whatever their last thought is, whatever their last feeling is, whatever their last
1:17:02
breath is, is that they felt loved and cared about on earth. And if I can be that, I'll
1:17:11
do it all day long. Well, Dakota for all we know, maybe you've already found that maybe
1:17:15
that is you're calling, maybe it's just constantly putting in those reps. Maybe it's not that
1:17:20
one big day like in the battle of Ganjigal, maybe it's just those constant reps of being
1:17:25
that guy that can help people as they cross over. But man, I can't think of a better place
1:17:29
to leave our discussion for today. But that's all for me. Is there anything else you want
1:17:32
to get off your chest? Thanks so much, man. I appreciate you.
1:17:35
All right, Dakota Meyer, thank you for coming on Daunted Life of Man's podcast. Thank you.
1:17:40
There you go, guys. Hey, I told you it was an intense one. But man, that is one again,
1:17:44
that's one of my favorite shows that I've done. It was just such a cool interview. I'm
1:17:47
so glad that you guys were here for it. But before I let you go, we are going to do a quick
1:17:50
resilience boost at Undaunted Life. Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with
1:17:53
content that forge a spiritual, mental and physical resilience. So I've got a lot of links
1:17:57
for Dakota here. So I've got a link to his website from there. You can get to a lot of
1:18:01
other places, including to his socials. I got a link to both books that we talked about
1:18:04
in the show, the new book, the way forward and his memoir into the fire. Also, I've got
1:18:08
links to his podcast, to his businesses that's owned the dash, the dash IV, flipside canvas,
1:18:12
American party podcast, front toward enemy. Basically, if you want to get connected and
1:18:15
stay connected with Dakota, we've got you squared away. It's in the show notes. We're
1:18:18
here for you. All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to show. We do appreciate it.
1:18:21
Wherever you listening this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five star review.
1:18:25
If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, you shoot me an email
1:18:28
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1:18:41
dot life. And we also want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their
1:18:44
music for our content. The music on this podcast is our song cutting the ties, which is off
1:18:49
their 10th anniversary of their re recording of their album leveler. The links are in the
1:18:53
description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep
1:18:59
forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
1:19:29
You.