We got Memorial Day coming up, and that's what this is about.
There's kids right now growing up in this country that will
never know who their father was because they were willing to
give their lives up for me to be here today to fight for this
country. So if I don't, if I don't stand
up and fight against something that I see is wrong, all we're
doing is pissing on their grave. If we turn the other cheek for a
paycheck and I couldn't look my kids in the eyes and tell my
kids to do the right thing, no matter what the consequences are
to you if I wasn't willing to do it myself.
So I I thought for sure, there's no way I win this fight.
Nobody beats the government. But one thing I will be able to
do at night when I'm standing in the the bathroom mirror, I'll be
able to look myself in the face and be proud that I didn't let
my children down. If we're not willing to stand up
and fight today, in reality, all we're doing is we're passing
this fight on to that next generation.
And if you're OK with that, then in in my eyes, you're a coward.
And that's something I'm scared to be.
I'm scared to be a coward. All interviewers have their own
style, and my style is to try to get to the point and to be
intensely curious. And the key to interviewing is
listening. Take a look behind the curtain
with a real whistleblower and American patriot.
Prepare to embrace the uncomfortable truth because this
program has no time for comforting lies.
Here is civil liberties enthusiast, Second Amendment
defender, and recovering FBI agent Kyle Serif.
Well, hello my friends, welcome to the Kyle Seraphin show in our
Sunday Sit down. I think you're going to really
enjoy this one and I hope you give it a listen.
It's an important time. Sometimes you get to discover
another suspendable and we've done just that got Matt
Strickland on. He's a restaurant owner, he's a
military veteran. He's a guy that stood up against
the government multiple times, whistle blower from DHS.
That's not the beginning of the story and it's definitely not
the end of the story. So make sure you guys stick
around for that. I think you're going to really,
they're going to walk away inspired on this Memorial Day
weekend, which is a good thing to do.
Something to remind you about. It's a heavy time as you're
thinking about those folks doing a Memorial Day sale.
Our friends over at My Patriot Supply.
You can check them out at mypatriotsupply.com slash KYLEI
don't want to give you a big heavy-handed talk about it.
At the end of the day, we're in this for our families.
If that means that you need to prepare yourself with water
filtration, emergency food, solar power, etcetera, check
them out. They're doing up to 60% off
right now. You guys can scan either QR code
if it's on your on your screen. Otherwise just visit the website
itsmypatriotsupply.com slash Kyle, go check it out.
The link's in the show description.
That's all I'm going to say about that right now.
We're going to honor the men and women that died for our freedom.
And at the same time, we should be protecting our own by
investing in the things that keep us free.
And some of that means making sure that you're able to stand
against tyranny with the right equipment.
If you get squeezed out, maybe they take your liquor license,
maybe they shut down the power at your house, maybe they take
away your ability to go out and buy food.
Whoever they is right now, be aware, be prepared, and a little
bit of forewarned is forearmed in this case.
Let's dive right into this conversation.
You guys are going to learn something good.
All right, folks, thanks for joining me for the Sunday.
Sit down. We got a good one today, at
least I think so. I think we're going to have a
fun conversation with Matt Strickland.
He's a restaurant owner. He's got some stuff behind him
on the wall. Matt, you want to tell people a
little bit about who you are and your background and about your
restaurant maybe too. Yeah, absolutely.
Well, first of all, it's, it's great to finally, finally meet
you virtually, Kyle and, and I wanted to thank you for
everything that you're doing up just that doing, you know,
standing up for the little guys, everybody here in America that
doesn't necessarily have the position to stand up and speak
out against some of the things that are going on in our
government. So thanks for having the balls
to do it because not a lot of people do.
Me personally, I joined the join the military at 17 years old and
actually my first day and I joined as a combat medic.
So I was an infantry medic and my first day at my first unit
was September 10th, 2001. And I was 17 years old.
So get to my unit and, and the next day was on from there.
And I, I enjoyed my time in the military.
I, I came from some pretty rough neighborhoods growing up had,
you know, not the most ideal childhood.
I don't think many people have. So, you know, I don't, I don't,
I don't tell some kind of old OSB story or anything like that,
but it's the reason I joined the military.
My oldest brother, he was killed from gang violence in 1996.
And my other older brother, he's been in prison since 1997.
One of my oldest sisters, she was also killed in, in, in those
same neighborhoods. And so I, I've got little
brothers as well. And I wanted to set a better
example for them and prove to them that even though we, you
know, we grew up in the situations and the conditions
that we did, it's still, it's America.
Everybody's got the same opportunities if you bust your
ass and don't make excuses. So I joined the military for
that reason at 17 years old. And it was the the best thing
that I could have done at that point because I got the
discipline that I needed that I didn't know that I need in the
military and especially. So I joined as a medic like I
told you, and the recruiter kind of kind of tricked me into it
because I was good at taking tests.
So I did well on the ASVAP and everything and, and could, could
have pretty much selected any job I wanted to.
I was always interested in the medical field.
And the recruiter kind of talked me into it saying, hey, listen,
check this. She showed me a picture of like
this medic in the hospital, like looking up at an X-ray and all
these chicks behind them, these nurses and everything.
And I'm 17 years old. I'm like, yeah, absolutely.
Sign me up for that. I want to go hang out with with
every chick in that picture. So I always get you.
I always. Get you with that that's that
sly lie like it could happen but it's just.
Not going to happen. Yeah, they got me 17 year old
me. But I get through basic
training, AIT and all of that and I get orders for since 25th
Infantry. And I looked at the the drill
Sarn and I said, hey, drill Sarn, I'm a medic.
I'm not in the infantry. What is this 25th Infantry shit?
And he was like, well, the infantry needs medics as well.
And that's where you're going, buddy.
You're a combat Med. And, and at the time, I'll be
honest, I wasn't all fired up for it.
And I, I was fired up to go hang out with the chicks in the, in
the hospital, man. But it was the best thing for
me. It's what I needed.
It's what I didn't know I need, I needed.
And it, it kind of set the course for my life at that point
right there. And, and like I said, I, I, I
enjoyed my time doing that. I made a lot of lifelong
friends, a lot of a lot of brothers.
Actually, one of the brothers I met is, is the reason why in the
in the, in the Army is the reason why following the
military. I got into security contracting
downrange and he had his own team with Blackwater.
He ended up we were in the same unit. 25th Infantry ended up
going to first group at Fort Lewis where I was stationed at,
which is another funny story because once I realized I'm
going to the infantry, I see 25th Infantry and I think I'm
going to Hawaii. So I at least get to celebrate
that. But no, I was going to 1st
Brigade, 25th Infantry at Fort Lewis.
So yeah. So they hit me with a double
whammy that day. But one of my brothers, he was
as soon as I got there, we got real tight.
He ended up going to selection with the first group at Fort
Lewis. So, you know, he stayed there.
We and we grew that brotherhood and friendship that that we
started with the because we both got there at the same time.
Anyway, he got his own team with Blackwater, called me, told me
about it. And at first, honestly, I
wasn't, wasn't interested because, you know, a young guy
just wanted to come home and, and see what I missed the past
few years while I was gone and hang out with friends and, and
just do what people, you know, in their early 20s want to do.
But then when he told me how much they made, I was all in.
I said at the time it was all, it was all SF guys, Seals.
I'm at the very least Rangers and I was just a regular
infantry medic, combat medic. So he's so I told, I said, hey,
man, I'm not SF or anything like that.
I don't know if I can get with Blackwater.
And he was like, well, you know, let me see if I can vouch for
you and call, you know, talk to one of the recruiters.
So anyway, I did that. I went to the vetting course
down in Moyock, NC, went to that training course down there and
it worked for Blackwater and. Was that course a challenge?
Yeah, the course was a challenge.
It was it. It wasn't because it's not a
training course that you go through with Blackwater.
It's a vetting course. So you got to come down there
knowing your shit. You got to come down there
knowing how to shoot, move and communicate.
And as a medic, you got to come down there knowing tactical
medicine. You got to be squared away.
And they also, you know, you also peer each other out.
So that's another reason why I thought I was going to make it,
because I'm in there with all these SF guys and Seals and I'm
here. I am this combat, you know,
infantry medic. Oh, for sure, because you got to
you got to put, I think it was every week, if I'm not mistaken,
or I can't remember how often it was.
But you had to fill out a, you know, a piece of paper saying
who in the class would you want to deploy with the most?
And then who in the class would you not want to deploy with?
Sure. They, they took the same kind of
things from, from SF selections from Ranger School, things like
that, where they want to see, you know, who's top and bottom
amongst the peers. Yeah.
So even if there was, there was, even if you we're cool with
deploying everybody, with everybody in the room, you still
had to select somebody. So that was nerve wracking, you
know, knowing I didn't come from the same communities as these
guys. So I'm probably going to be on
that chopping block. But I made it through and it was
once again one of the best things that's ever happened in
my life. I have no complaints working for
that company. Eric Prince, one of the best
bosses I've ever worked for that got squared away and has
probably the best military mind of anybody that I've ever come
across or met. If that guy's planning an
operation, you're going to be good to go.
Like if, if we were into, if we were getting into World War
three with X country and I knew Eric Prince was planning the
entire war, I'd be comfortable with it because that guy's just,
he's so sharp. He's so smart and, and, and, and
he's also just a good boss to work for.
So I don't, I don't have any any protects his guys.
You know, he looks out for his guys.
So it was a, it was a great experience working for that
company. So I did that until I think it
was May 5th of 2009 when Blackwater got kicked out of
Iraq. So I was there and it was
because of the 2007 Dassault Square incident.
But So what happened is in that SOFA agreement that Obama signed
with Iraq and that was put into place, I think in 2008, part of
the part of that SOFA agreement said Blackwater is no longer
allowed to operate in Iraq. And but it didn't make any
difference because May 5th, 2009, I mean, all of us that
work for Blackwater, we just woke up the next day doing the
same job working for some another company, you know, so it
didn't accomplish anything. But, but anyway, it, it was very
different working for another company.
I won't name any, any companies to talk bad about them or
anything, but it wasn't the same as working for Blackwater.
I can tell you that. So in 2010, I wanted to, you
know, I have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, pretty
much my whole adult life at that point.
And, and I was married and I had kids and I want to come home and
be with my family. So I started applying for jobs
and in 2010, I got a job at the National Ground Intelligence
Center as an intelligence analyst.
And I didn't have any Intel background or experience, but
they were looking for somebody with a medical background
because part of the job was casualty analysis.
So anyway, got a job there and, and I was kind of honest, to be
honest with you, Kyle, I was, when I got that job in 2010, I
was kind of intimidated walking into the building because I'm
just this guy that's, you know, I guess kind of been a door
kicker my entire life, since I was 17 years old.
Never worked in the office environment at all.
And part of my title now is intelligence.
And I didn't see myself being that smart of a guy from being
honest with you. And I was kind of, you know, I
was kind of intimidated walking into the building thinking about
what those guys would be thinking about me.
But I learned very quickly that, oh, these guys aren't as smart
and as sharp as I thought. This intelligence thing that
they talk about, actually these people, not all there's some
pretty sharp people working in the industry, but the vast
majority of them are actually pretty stupid.
And this job is not hard at all. So I hit the ground running in
that position and, and I wanted to prove myself.
So it went above and beyond, actually did some things that
made it so a couple new programs were started.
So I, I, I, I would say I did a great job from 2010 to 2014.
But then what happened in 2014 is ISIS started taking back over
Iraq and I wanted to get into that fight So, and I hated the
office life, to be honest with you.
It was. It wasn't for me.
Before we before we dig into that next Phase, I want to kind
of just pick your brain at it, just because I wasn't there at
that time, but I had this kind of growing instinct about what
the Intel world looks like, various different agencies.
Were you a blue badge or were you a contractor at the time?
I was a contractor. Yeah.
OK. So you're working in there.
What was the culture between permanent employees and
contractors and was there a respect differential there out
of curiosity? Absolutely.
There's, there's always been a respect differential between
contractors and, and government. And I think that's one of the
things in the government that doesn't allow for efficiency
because there's a lot of contractors that bring a lot to
the table and experience and, and, and, and just knowledge.
And they're not allowed to, to share that or do certain things
because they're not a government employee.
They're a contractor. But to me that doesn't make any
sense because we're all Americans and, you know, we're
all supposedly here doing this job for the, for the same
reason. But so like, yeah, for example,
some of the things I did on that program, I didn't get the credit
for or the acknowledgement for it because I was a contractor.
And what I did had to run through a government employee.
So they're the ones that moved from a 13 to a 14 or 14 to a 15
because of the work that that I did.
But I was cool with that. I never wanted to be AGS
employee because I didn't see myself working for the
government for 20 years. I knew even at that point that
that wasn't the life for me. And honestly, the reason for
that was because I thought going into that job in 2010, maybe the
government life would be for me. But I learned very quickly it
wasn't because I saw how miserable everybody's life was,
worked for the government and, and honestly, you know, making
the same amount of money every two weeks no matter how hard you
work or how lazy you are does not motive.
I'm a very self motivated person and money wise, I want my
paycheck to reflect how hard I work, you know, and, and, and I
would just see these people that are working all around me that I
know aren't doing anything except checking their emails and
I'm in here busting my ass, you know, making, making them look
good and they're getting paid more than me.
And, and it was just, it was just, it wasn't motivating, you
know, so I knew I wanted to, I knew I wanted to be a small
business owner. That was, that was my dream at
that point. And I knew specifically I wanted
to be a restaurant owner because the thing I learned very quickly
is that you have to really love what you do as a job, as a
career, because it's going to affect every other aspect of
your life. It's going to affect your
relationship with your children, with your wife, with your
friends, everybody. Because you're at work majority
of your life. So if you're miserable in it and
you don't enjoy it, you're going to be miserable in the presence
of everybody. It's going to, it's just it's
going to negatively affect you. So I, I wanted to be a small
business owner because I, I wanted my earning potential to
be limitless. I wanted it to be dependent on
my work ethic. And you know, I've always, I've
always been proud of my work ethic and knew that I've always
felt like when I go through a course, a military course, or
like you asked about the course with, with Blackwater, my
mindset has always been, if another man has done this and
completed it successfully, then I can do it.
That's always been my mindset. And that's what, what, what has
always gotten me through tough courses and such.
So anyway, I wanted to be a restaurant owner specifically
because I love cooking. It's always just been one of my
#1 passions. And I knew that if I did that
every day, it'd be something that I enjoy going to work for.
And, and I'm a restaurant owner now.
And sometimes I'm at work, you know, 1216 hours a day and, and
it feels like I was there for two.
And could you imagine being inside of a government office
for 16 hours a day? I feel like you were there for
three weeks. It's, it's, it's awful.
It's. The worst feeling in the world.
And, and I ran restaurants for a little while and I know that
thing where you look down and you realize like you smell like
fry oil and, and your feet are exhausted and they feel like
they're about to fall off. And at the same time, you've
been there, you've only been there for a few minutes and it's
been all day. So that's right.
And it's not for everybody. I mean, you know, everything's
not for everybody. Some people.
I hate the restaurant industry. I happen to love it, you know, I
love the fast pace of it. I love meeting people.
I love talking to people. I love seeing somebody take a
bite of something I created and loving it.
You know, I just enjoy that some people enjoy working on
computers. I blow my brains out.
If that was my job, everybody, everybody's different.
But so, you know, I talked to my wife at that point in 2014 and I
was like, this sucks. I'm miserable.
I can't do this for the, you know, 30 years and and I've got
a great wife. You know, she's always had my
back. He's supported me and everything
and, you know, been married since I was 24 years old.
I'm 41 now, still married to the same woman, but always been
supportive of me. So she said, well, listen, I
don't want you to be somewhere that you're miserable.
So figure out what it is you want to do.
And then and, and you know, I've got your back.
And I told her about this dream of owning a restaurant and
everything. In 2014, ISIS started taking
over Iraq. And I, I knew this was my
opportunity to first of all, I didn't want I, I, I was still
kind of in that neo con mindset, if I'm being honest with you.
I was still, I, I was still operating under the lie that we
were told as to why we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.
So I, I wanted to go get some more payback from these guys
taking back over Iraq for my brothers.
Then I left on the battlefield. I wasn't going to let, I wasn't
going to let them just come and destroy and take over everything
that I thought we built up the past, you know, 1514 years.
So I went back to Iraq to fight, fight ISIS and, and I was there
for, for two years. And the goal with that was to
come home after this experience and not go to back to work for
the government, but open my own business, open my own
restaurant. So that's what I did.
Went to Iraq for two more years. 2016 came home and actually
opened a food truck and and it took off pretty quick.
Yeah. When you were, when you were
going back over there, were you going back as a medic?
Did you maintain those credentials as you're during the
government time? Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. I maintained my my medic
credentials and went back over as a tactical medic in the, in
the, you know, in in the same sense that I was there before.
And it was weird when I got there in 2014 though, because
there was absolutely no military there.
There was no U.S. military presence.
The only military presence was US contractors.
When I say no military presence,
I mean, so I flew into the, I was flew in the Biop and then
went to the the Baghdad embassy compound and there was literally
not one great suitor there. It was wild.
It was just all contractors because they had evacuated all
of the support elements out when ISIS started taking over.
So it's just US contractors. Not too long after the Marine
FAST team moved in to secure the, the NBC and then, and then
there was one, I think it was, I think it might have been the
82nd thing that came in first. I I can't remember, but there
was probably about a month there where it was just US civilian
contractors. Did that change the nature of
what the what the fight looked like over there?
Yeah, it did. It, it, We were allowed to for a
couple of months do things that contractors probably, you know,
shouldn't have, but we were allowed to do.
We were allowed to do certain things for the first couple of
months that were probably more of a military mission.
Yeah. But anyway, so came home and,
and opened that food truck and it took off.
I had two trucks, 3 trucks. And then, you know, a year and a
half later, after I opened the first food truck, I opened the
restaurant and it was booming. And right before COVID, I was
actually getting to getting ready to sign a lease on
multiple restaurants. That's how good we were doing.
What was the? Hold on, what was the cuisine
that you were selling out of the trucks, and was it the same
thing that you're going to go brick and mortar with?
Yeah, same thing. So the name of my restaurant is
Gourmelts, spelled GOURMELTZ Gourmet melts combined,
obviously. So what I mean, our claim to
fame is grilled sandwiches, but we do all kind of unique grilled
sandwiches, like brisket sandwiches, all kind of
different chicken sandwiches, pulled pork, different BBQ
sandwiches. We also do smoked wings,
something we call grilled cheese tacos, where we we take a corn
tortilla and we grill some fresh mozzarella to the outside of a
corn tortilla. That way it doesn't fall apart
like corn tortillas do and you don't have to double up the the
the tortilla. We do some pretty cool things,
man. And and do you love?
Do you have formal? Training in running a
restaurant? Do you have formal training in
anything culinary? Did you ever go to any schools
for this? Was this just like I got a
dream? I'm gonna make it happen 0.
Zero training was I've never. I worked at KFC when I was
probably like 14 for like 3 weeks.
So you're well. Trained.
Is what you're saying? Yeah, Yeah.
So I. Had a ton of training.
I was ready. Pedigree.
Yeah. I so you're about to get into
the COVID story and, and that's when I first became aware of
Gormeltz. I I lived in the area at the
time. You may not know that, but like
your story was a, a big local story in the DC area.
So you're in Fredericksburg, correct?
Correct. Yeah.
And you are further. South in Old Town, which is
where my wife and I would have gone.
So you were always kind of maybe outside of our drive radius.
So I never actually made it down to the restaurant.
I was looking for it. I was like, where the hell are
they? Like because Fredericksburg is
really small in my mind. It's obviously got some
additional parts. You guys are off the highway.
They're off 95. Yeah, we're right.
Off of 95, like not even a mile off of 95.
But yeah, we're probably, I don't know, 10 minutes from
downtown where you're talking about.
Yeah, I'm in the probably the most southern part of
Fredericksburg. Yeah.
But. It was a huge fight and, and,
and it was a huge local story, a huge Virginia story and then a
couple of big social media personality shared it.
Much love to the Hodge twins cause the Hodge twins were the
first ones that were a conservative personality that
shared my story and, and, and then it kind of took off from
there. But so look.
You were doing the trucks. You're about to sign the lease.
I don't want to take away from the story.
I just wanted to say that it was, it was an obviously big
story even then. And I heard about it when I was
working for the Bureau. So this is not like something
I've not been, you know, unaware of.
That's going back five years now then.
Yeah, this is at the beginning of the lockdowns, which was
February, March 2020. Yeah, March.
March of 2020 so honestly, like in March of 2020, I didn't know
what COVID was about. Like like nobody did.
I mean, they were telling us that this was this, you know,
virus that was going to kill half of the people in the world.
And so, you know, I took a step back and, and, and I said, well,
let me, you know, let me close my restaurant and make sure I'm
not putting anybody in danger, you know, including my family.
So in March of 2020, I, you know, I listened to the, the, I
guess mandates or whatever you want to call them.
And I closed my restaurant down in March of 2020 just to
evaluate the situation and see what was going on because it all
happened so quickly. And then three months later in
June of 2020, that's when the then governor of Virginia, which
was a Democrat governor named Governor Northam, that's when he
said, OK, restaurants, you can open back up, but under these
provisions and and that's when it it, you know, during those
three months, I started kind of noticing weird stuff that didn't
make sense to make me kind of think this was more about
government control than it was our health and safety.
But when they told us we can open back up, but under these
provisions in June of 2020, that's when it really clicked.
And that's when I, I realized, oh, this is, this is not about
health and safety. This is about control.
And, and the reason I say that is because they, they put in,
they made me as a restaurant owner follow these like
draconian mandates that absolutely made no common sense.
Like my bartender could could make a drink right in front of
somebody across the bar, but couldn't hand that drink to the
person across the bar. They had to walk around the bar
and hand it to the person side by side.
And nobody was allowed to sit at my bar, but I could pull a bar
height table all the way up to the bar and they could sit at
that bar height table. And you, you, you probably know
the one where you know, you had to wear a mask walking into the
restaurant, but as soon as you sit down, somehow you're safe
and you can take the mask off. It was just stuff that didn't
make any sense. And, and I immediately
recognized what it was. And I, you know, I talked to my
wife about it. I said, hey, listen, I, I spent
my whole adult life in other countries fighting against it.
It, you know, dictatorships. And I'm not going to come home
to my country and allow a dictatorship to rule here.
I don't like what's going on. And I just can't be blindly
complicit in it. If I know it's wrong, I got to
do something about it, yeah. What was the?
Other side of that conversation because I've had similar
discussions with my wife and I don't think everybody has the
same one but it they all tend to run the same route.
I'm curious how yours went. Well, so my wife is, is probably
has even more comments. I so I, I, I'm not the smartest
guy in the world. I don't have 100°.
I'm probably smarter because I don't have 100°, to be honest
with you. But I do pride myself on having
a lot of St. smarts and common sense a lot due to, you know,
how I grew up. But my wife has even more common
sense, I think, than I do. And, and, and she's actually
even more of a fighter than I am.
So, you know, when I mentioned it to her, we will be, of
course, it wasn't just out of the blue.
We've been talking about it ever since it happened.
Sure, we both saw the same things.
And we're married for a reason. We share the same values.
And, and when I told her, I said, Hey, listen, I don't think
we can do this at the restaurant.
I, I, I'm not comfortable with not affording my customers the
right to choose what's right for them themselves.
And one thing I'm not going to do is take away my, my customers
constitutional rights. I'm not going to be complicit in
that, you know, because even though I'm being forced to do
it, if I do it, I'm just as complicit as the person forcing
me to do it. That's my mindset.
So I told my wife, I said, I don't want to do this.
I want to, if we're going to open up, I want to open up
business as usual and let the people decide for themselves.
If they don't want to come to our restaurant, they don't have
to. But if they want to come and
they don't want to wear a mask, then they're more than welcome
to do so. If they want to sit at my bar,
they can sit at my bar. It's up to them, 100% up to them
and see how, let's see how it goes.
So she was all in from the beginning.
She was like, yeah, absolutely. Did you guys discuss?
Consequences. Did you war game that out at all
well? So we did.
I was the only restaurant here in Virginia to do what I did.
So we didn't know what the consequences would be.
And obviously this is something that's never happened in the
history of the US. So there was no case law to go
off of. You know, we were, we were
flying in the dark, but. You know, I just.
I just, I couldn't be complicit in the corruption and I saw it
taking place before my eyes. You know, there's, like I said,
there's, there's a lot of people that, that I, that I deployed
with that have kids growing up right now in this country
without a father because they thought that this country was
more important than themselves. And they, they, they gave their
lives. I mean, we got Memorial Day
coming up. And that's what this is about.
There's kids right now growing up in this country that will
never know who their father was because they were willing to
give their lives up for me to be here today to fight for this
country. So if I don't, if I don't stand
up and fight against something that I see is wrong that's
happening to the American people, not only am I wrong and
the American people, but I'm pissing on the graves of every
man and woman that went down range to fight for you and me
and didn't make it back. And they've got kids growing up
right now in this country without them.
All we're doing is pissing on their grave if we turn the other
cheek for a paycheck. And so I just, I, I couldn't do
it. I could not look myself in the
mirror if I did and I couldn't look my kids in the eyes and
tell my kids to do the right thing, no matter what the
consequences are to you. If I wasn't willing to do it
myself. And, and so, and I know I didn't
didn't know what the consequences.
I, I thought for sure, there's no way I win this fight.
Nobody beats the government. I will probably lose everything
that I have worked for my entire life, you know, but my wife and
I have the same mindset in that we'll be OK no matter what
happens. We'll be fine.
I'll go, I'll go mow lawns if I need to.
I'll do whatever it takes, but one thing I will be able to do
at the end of the the day, at night when I'm standing in the
the bathroom mirror, I'll be able to look myself in the face
and be proud that I didn't let my children down.
Because why did I bring them into the world if that's what
I'm going to do? Because one thing I think we're
forgetting about in all of this that's been going on the past
five years is if we're not willing to stand up and fight
today, in reality, all we're doing is we're passing this
fight on to that next generation, to our children and
our grandchildren. And if you're OK with that, then
in in my eyes, you're a fucking coward.
You're the definition of a coward.
And that's something I'm scared to be.
I'm scared to be a coward. Where did that?
Mindset come from I. Think that mindset was, was, was
instilled in me and the way that I grew up, you know, I had to, I
had to being in the neighborhoods that I was in
growing up in those neighborhoods, I had to, I had
to fight my entire life basically.
You know, like I told you, my brother was killed from gang
violence when I was, you know, just just 12 years old.
And, you know, he was, he was in, he was in gangs.
He, he sold drugs at a high level, not proud to say that,
but that's what happened. And you know, at that point,
gangs were really big in the 90s, especially in the
neighborhoods I grew up in. And I live my entire childhood
thinking that the people that killed my brother were
eventually one day, you know, going to come after me and kill
me because that's how things happened.
And had to fight a lot in the, the neighborhoods that I was in.
And it's just, I think that mindset was born from that.
You know, I've always, always been, you know, been a fighter.
But I guess the mindset of doing the, the right thing for my
country was really instilled in me through the military and,
and, you know, through security contracting and, and, and being
in a mixing pot, you know, being in a, a, a squad, being on a
team of people that are not from where you're from, that grew up
in completely different, you know, environments than you did.
But being able to, to come together on one thing.
And that's that we're from this piece of land that our ancestors
fought and died for and gave up so many sacrifices.
So, you know, we can have the, the, the ability and the
privilege to be here today to fight for that next generation.
And, and it really, just really going through that and still so
much patriotism inside of me that I just wanted to always do
what was right for my, I'm not a perfect man by any means.
Fuck up all the time. I, I, you know, I've done a lot
of wrong things in my life. I'm not, but I mean, I try to be
a great husband, try to be a great father, try to be a great
friend and great brother. And sometimes I feel like that,
but I try all the time. I, I can honestly say one, one
thing I've never failed at is being a patriot of the United
States of America. I've always done what was right
for my country. And honestly, the main reason
for that is because my kids are Americans and they're going to
be living in this country when I'm not here one day.
And that's all I think about is I will, I, I just want this
place to be the best place for them when I'm not here, you
know, and my family fought every war that this country has had.
We've done it as Americans and I just, you know, just to steal
something in me that I just, I don't know how to.
I can't put my finger on it, but it just lights a fire in me.
When somebody works against that, I think that you become my
enemy instantly. When I know that you're working
against the American people, even if it's not me
specifically, just lights a fire in me.
Yeah. So I think that that comes.
Through real clear, I want to. I want to have you reflect on
one thing. We're pretty close in age, so
the odds are you've seen the movie Fight Club or you've read
the book. Does that sound right?
Yeah. Yeah, there's a moment in that.
Movie where they talk about after Fight Club, all the volume
is turned down on on corporate BS.
Like you're in an office and people are upset with you or
somebody steps on your toe or bumps into you on the bus and it
just doesn't mean as much because you've seen actual
violence. You've seen actual things.
You with your experience as a medic, had to have hands on some
some people that were really in bad shape and and done some
things with them. Teams very aggressive where your
life's on the line. People died around you, I'm sure
of it. So when you see those things, it
tends to turn the volume down on like the government might come
and shut down your restaurant, right.
Is that not like just a lower consequence when you've seen
people give their life for something or you've seen people
die around you because the right thing wasn't done and then
someone's going to shut down your sandwich shop.
You actually. Just explained it perfectly.
Yeah, absolutely. And so that sums up what my
mindset was, You know, if those guys were willing to to die for
this country, then I better be willing to lose my business for
this country and. We, we had this moment during
that time, which I think a lot of us saw and it really blew my
mind working in federal service. I'll just share this one more
thing. Just as you walk around and
think about it. We're told that members of our
law enforcement community, right, our military members, we
all sign up up to it, including our life.
That's the deal, right? That's what we signed up for.
Listed guy here as well. And the the deal is, is that we
saw people who theoretically were willing to lose their life
for everyone else's freedom and they weren't even willing to
lose a paycheck for it. So how do you take those people
seriously when you've seen people do the real thing?
You. You.
Can't you know you hear the excuses all the time?
I have a family to feed and, and to me, I want to sit those
people down and, and tell them, look them in their eyes and tell
them. Do you realize what you're
giving the fight you're giving up right now to feed your
family? What you say is to feed your
family. There's many ways to feed your
family, but the excuse you're using that you're, you're not
taking this fight on for a paycheck every two weeks.
Do you, do you realize what you're giving up and what you're
passing on to your children? You think you're doing this to
save your children so you can provide monetarily for them, but
in not all actuality, you're screwing your children over by
not willing to step up and take this fight head on right now.
Because your children's future will be so much easier, so much
better if you just do what you know you should be doing right
now. And I don't know why people
don't understand that. Like that doesn't compute in my
head. Why they think why they think
short term comfort is better than than long term stability
for this country And and you know the the following
generations to come doesn't compute to my own, but you said
it right there. That people were were addicted
to comfort in this country, we are.
Yeah, is I'm, I'm telling you right now, the best thing, the
best strategy that. Anybody's ever.
Had is the US government employing more people than any
other corporation in the world. So by the US government being
the biggest employer, they've got everybody by the balls
because they can make people do something they wouldn't normally
do or go along with the plan that they know in their heart is
wrong to make sure that those benefits and though and that
paycheck keeps rolling in. And so they got people by the
balls because of that, because there's people that have worked
for the government for, you know, 20-30 years.
That's all they've done. That's all they know how to do.
They don't have any other talents outside of government.
They couldn't do anything else in the private sector.
So there's no way they're going to push back against the hand
that feeds them. And the government knows that.
And that's why a lot of what happens in the government, it's
not necessarily because those government workers are, you
know, these, these sinister deep state actors that have a
mission. It's really honestly just
because these people are spineless cowards and they don't
want to lose a paycheck to do what's right.
That's what it comes down to. It does.
I just love how how plain spoken you are it that that resonates
with my heart really well because so many people dance
around the answer. You know they don't.
I'm sure a lot of your clientele work in federal government based
on where you are. There's got to be people that
are either part of the federal government or they work really
closely with folks that do most. Of them, yeah, most of most of
my client, I mean, I'm in Fredericksburg, VA, right
outside of DC. Most of my customer base is, is,
you know, federal government workers.
And like, don't don't get me wrong, you know, thinking I'm
saying everybody that works for the government is a spineless
coward. That's not what I'm saying at
all. Or that the government shouldn't
exist and nobody should work for the government.
That no, no, we, we, there's, there's programs in the
government, there's agencies, there's departments, departments
that do essential missions that we absolutely need to protect us
as Americans. And there are people that work
for the government that bust their ass.
That's right. And aren't lazy spineless
cowards absolutely 100%. But the default setting that's
exactly right, because the. Default setting is what you said
the first time, so it's very. Few and far between.
Yeah, I, I'll be generous saying it's 20% of the government work.
Oh yeah, that is that. Might be a little generous, but
we'll, we'll, we'll give it to you.
We'll we'll round up because you got the folks in your area And,
and I wonder this too, people who come to your restaurant have
to know what the reputation of your restaurant is.
You want to talk about the rest of the fight that you guys got
into and that where that left you today?
Yeah, I'll summarize. That real quick for you.
So I took on that fight and like I said, I didn't know where I
was going to go, what the outcome was going to be.
I, I expected to lose everything I worked for my whole life and
and I took on that fight kind of under the radar.
At first. I just allowed my customers to
choose what they wanted to do what was best for themselves
without announcing it on social media or in the news.
But eventually people started complaining to the health
department that I wasn't following COVID mandates.
So I got it. So I got a visit from OSHA and
the Department of Health and they actually came in and they
were doing their inspection. And so I've never my, my, my
restaurant is the cleanest restaurant you've ever been to.
I mean, you can eat off the floor in my kitchen.
You can come inspect my kitchen anytime you want to.
You'll see me exactly what I'm what I'm never had a health
violation at all. And that's rare for a
restaurant. But had OSHA and the health
department come to my restaurant and do their little COVID
inspection. And in my kitchen area, in the
back where we washed dishes, there's a three compartment sink
and then there's a space and then there's a dishwasher.
So the ocean guy says, hey, how many people work back here at a
time? And I was like sometimes 2,
sometimes somebody be washing the dishes and then the other
person will be putting it in the dishwasher and rinsing them off
and or whatever. Sometimes two people.
He was like, OK, well, I need you to put a piece of plexiglass
up between those two sections so those people don't infect each
other. I was like, what?
So I wanted to play with this guy and actually I recorded this
when I did it and, and I did put this video on YouTube and it's
hilarious. I'll send it to you when we get
off. But so I saw I wanted to mess
around with this OSHA guy because he was making no sense.
So I said, oh, OK, cool. I said, well, what's the
regulation? Like how tall does this
plexiglass need to be? And he was like, well, I need to
go from floor to ceiling. And I said, oh, OK, cool.
But these fire sprinklers that I have, you realize I'll be
violating the fire code if I do that because I'll be blocking
the sprinklers. And then he was like, oh, OK,
well, yeah, don't violate the fire code.
Just get him as high as as you can get him.
And I said, well, that's not the regulation.
I want to make sure when you guys come to spec, then I'm
following regulations. And so he stutters.
He well, just get him as high as you can.
And I said, OK, So what you're telling me is you guys actually
don't have a regulation for it. So I said, all right, let's move
on. How wide does these do these
plexiglass separators have to be?
And he told me, he said, actually there's no regulation
for that. And I said, so you're telling me
if I put a one inch piece of plexiglass from floor to
ceiling, technically I'm within the the regulation.
He said technically that'll suffice.
I said, OK, buddy, take your OSHA hat off for one second and
just talk to me man to man. Does that make any sense to you?
And his reply was, well, Matt, it doesn't have to make any
sense. The governor said you will do
this or you will do this. And I said, well, it's a good
thing that we don't live in a under a dictatorship.
It's a good thing we're Americans because we have
rights. And right now you're violating
them. So you're going to have to leave
my my property or I'm going to have you removed.
And, and that's when he left. And then that's when he told me
as he was leaving, we'll be back to suspend your health
department license. And he made good on that
promise. So they came back, suspended my
health department license. And in the state of Virginia,
you're ABC licensed. So you're licensed to sell
alcohol is connected to your health department license.
So I lost both of those the same day.
But my, my, my mindset was if the Constitution means nothing
to you, then your licenses mean nothing to me.
And I continue to operate without those licenses.
And that's when I took my story public because I knew the only
way I win this thing is, is if I get the people of America to
come out and get behind me and support me.
So that's when I, I made a video saying, Hey, guys, this is this
is what I'm doing at Gore Melts. Hopefully you guys will come out
and support me. And they did at that point, they
came out in droves. I mean, I had people flying to
my restaurant from like the West Coast coming to Virginia and
come in just to shake my hand and thank me for standing up and
fighting. And I mean, it made me tear up,
man. It made me at that point I knew
I was doing the right thing. And at that point I kind of felt
the sense of security in that, that we might be fine, maybe we
might be OK, we actually might get through this thing and it,
and I truly believe that it was because of the support of the
people that I did win my fights in court.
So eventually with the court proved in court that some of
these mandates were indeed unconstitutional and, and I won.
I was, I was, I was able to prove that they were
unconstitutional. They had to give me my health
department license and my ABC license, Mac.
So we were victorious. Yeah, quick little.
Breakaway right now, say thanks to our sponsor My Patriot
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Nothing wrong with that. Again, mypatriotsupply.com/kyle,
that's it. We're going to get right back
into this conversation. A little power outage, which is
quite interesting for me. I had a little panic moment
where I sat in the dark and thought, oh, my God, who's
coming through my doors? You guys will continue to listen
to this. It doesn't make you feel any
less panic, but it should make you feel more ready.
All right, back to the conversation right now.
OK, Little little power outage never stopped anybody except
when all your stuff is digital and it all just shuts down and
I'm sitting in the dark by myself.
Matt, you were just talking about how he told the government
kind of to stick. It sounds like you won that
fight in the end and they you're able to send them home.
You had your liquor license restored, is that correct?
Yeah, well, it, it, it was even more long and drawn out than
that. So I, I won my health department
license back in court. So then we went before the ABC
board, the liquor board, and we basically told them, hey,
listen, you guys took my ABC license only because the health
department took my health department license.
Well, we went to court and proved it was unconstitutional.
They had to give me my health department license back.
So now in turn, you should have to give me my ABC license back.
That makes sense, right? Sure.
Well, the ABC. Board said, now Matt, when we
took your ABC license away from you, you continued to sell
alcohol without it. And I said, yeah, I did because
you unconstitutionally took it away from me.
So they said, well, you're not getting it back.
So I said, Roger that. And once again I said, if
constitution means nothing to you guys, neither does your,
your, your liquor license. So went back to my restaurant
and sold alcohol business as usual.
And the, this important part about that was by this time
Glenn Younkin was the governor of Virginia.
And I supported the heck out of Glenn Younkin while he was
campaigning. I mean, he came to my restaurant
to garner the support of the people that was supporting me
gladly. Did you know, events forum and
everything like that. And he told me if, if we win,
not only your COVID mandates gone, but we're going to make
sure businesses like yours are no longer prosecuted for COVID
mandates. What he won and then he did the
opposite of that. I continued to be prosecuted
under his governorship. And so as him being the
governor, my restaurant was raided by the Virginia State
Police and ABC agents for not following COVID mandates.
And there's a long back story as to why that happened and why he
allowed that to happen. I'll just tell you real quick so
we can move on from that. But So what happened is there
was a guy that came to my restaurant who was going through
kidney failure. His name is Shamgar Connors and
it's a cool last name, by the way.
So he came to my restaurant and he was like, hey, Matt, I'm
coming to you for help because I don't know where else to go.
I've been hitting up every politician there is.
I'm going through kidney failure.
I'm about to die. I was on the kidney transplant
list at UVA, University of Virginia Medical Center, which
is a state funded hospital. And they called me, told me they
got kidneys for me, but they said I won't get these kidneys
until I take the COVID vaccine. And I'm just not comfortable
with the COVID vaccine because my immune system is already
compromised. And I just, and I've already had
COVID. So I got the best vaccine
available. So he, so he told me he was
like, if, if I don't get this vaccine that I don't want, they
won't give me what I need to stay alive, which makes no
sense. So I said, hey, listen, funny
you say you need help because I'm doing a event in two weeks
at my restaurant for a congressional candidate, and
Glenn Yunkin's actually going to be here.
I'll make sure you get in front of him.
So two weeks pass, he comes to the restaurant, I get him in
front of Glenn Yunkin, tells Glenn Yunkin his story, and in
front of me, Glenn Yunkin tells him he'll make sure there's a
resolution to that. Long story short, with that,
Glenn Yunkin doesn't He allows this man to be kicked off the
UVA Medical Center kidney transplant list for not taking
the vaccine. So I started looking into why
would Yunkin allow this? So I started uncovering the
millions of dollars that Glenn Yankin takes from Pfizer and all
the rest of the big pharmaceutical companies.
So I wanted to help help save this man's life.
So I started blasting that on social media and and Glenn
Yankin wasn't happy about that. So that's the real reason he
allowed my restaurant to be raided by the Virginia State
Police and ABC agents. But anyway, to wrap that story
up, they took all of my alcohol and this was December 2nd of I
think 2023 that this happened, OK.
And and so it went viral because I recorded the police raiding my
restaurant. I went live as it was happening
and. And I told these.
Police officers and you can go back and check that video.
I told these police officers as they were doing it, I said, hey
guys, I already won my case in court.
I already proved the reason you're stripping me of
everything that I own right now is unconstitutional.
And, and I, and I told them to their face and I recorded it.
When I said it, I said what you're doing right now is no
different than what they did back in Germany in the 40s.
And you saying that I'm just doing my job.
I said that is no different than what you're doing right now.
I said, you know what you're doing is wrong, but yet you're,
you're using the excuse that I'm just doing my job.
And that's no longer an excuse. You're screwing your kids over
by saying that. And, and anyway, I ended up with
it. So I got a call from everybody
from across the nation, came to my defense once again, and Glenn
Younkin couldn't make a post on social media without somebody
jumping on there saying, hey, what about Matt Strickland and
Gore melts? What are you doing about that
situation? Why'd you allow his restaurant
to be rated for COVID mandates when you campaigned against it?
And he couldn't make a post on social media without people
coming in the hundreds and having my back.
And they were calling his office everyday, sending him emails.
So he finally felt the political pressure behind the scenes.
They reached out to me and said, hey, we got to come to a
resolution. How about this?
How about instead of, and this is December, remember he said
instead of us bringing your alcohol back to you in February
and giving your license back to you then and you paying the 30
grand penalty or whatever the price was, how about this?
How about we bring everything back to you now and you just
give us $2000. And I said, absolutely not.
Here's what's going to happen. I said you're going to bring
everything back to me. I'm not going to pay you a dime
and I'm going to give you until Christmas to do it.
By this time it's like December 17th.
I said I'm closing my restaurant for Christmas.
Obviously when I open back up on the 26th, I will be serving
alcohol. And I'm guessing at that point
you're going to have to come arrest me.
So if you're ready for the political backlash that comes
with that, I'm ready to go to jail for my country.
And on December 23rd, they tapped out, brought everything
back to me, gave me my license back, and that was the end of
that. So that entire fight cost me a
lot of money. Everything that I had right
before I went into that fight, like I said, I was doing very
well, getting ready to sign the lease on multiple restaurants
for the first time in my life, had, you know, well, in the six
figures in the bank. At one point during that fight,
my bank account was drained to -500 dollars, and I didn't know
how I was going to make it the next month.
And yeah, I'm a Christian and, and, and I take my faith very
seriously. And I just believed that God
wouldn't allow that to happen. And he brought me down to the
lowest point. Nothing.
And and that's when my story became public.
And at that point, the next month, the people showed up and
supported me and I was able to pay all my bills, pay all my
employees, and I had a couple 100 bucks in the bank.
And then the next month pay my bills, pay my employees, and I
had 1000 bucks in the bank. And I'm nowhere near where I was
by any means, but I'm able to provide for my family.
And I believe that's because I stayed faithful to the Lord and
I stayed faithful to the American people.
And they showed up in droves to to back me up.
And so because of that fight, and because it took so much from
me, I had to I had to go back to work as a government contractor
to, you know, try to make some more money because of what the
government put me through, ironically.
And that's the reason why I was at DHS as an Intel analyst.
Have you and I ever. Talked before this no.
Never have we. Ever.
Compared notes about the commonalities between what went
on COVID and the Nazi Germany and people following orders, no.
Not at all. There's something.
Really. That it?
It's really hard to understand how many people made the same
analogy at the same time. And every time.
Someone does it that I haven't talked to him.
I'll tell people that are listening to me like this is the
first time we've talked. We had a conversation when the
power went out. That's about it.
It was a few minutes compared a couple of notes, which are also
very similar. We have similar stories with the
folks that, you know, the gals we married and and how they look
at the world now and versus maybe the way they did.
But other than that, we didn't have to compare notes because
men knew this. Like I feel like, I feel like
we're throwbacks. Is that is that what's going on
here? Like we just rake their guys
from 40 years ago that just don't want this crap to to to
jump into our lives like this. It kind of does.
Feel like that I don't I don't I don't know what it is I don't
know why men aren't men anymore. I, I always say that if my
grandfather's generation were all to magically come back to
life and see the men running around this country now, they'd
be embarrassed. They'd be embarrassed of what
their, what their lineage grew into because it's, it's, it's
it, it, they wouldn't recognize it.
It doesn't represent what they stood for at all whatsoever.
And I, I, I don't think so. I got in the media, I, I got
some backlash for saying that to those police officers.
They, they, they started saying me and my restaurant don't
support police officers, which is a lie.
They started saying that I compared police officers to
Nazis, which I compared what those specific officers were
doing that day to what Nazis did back in the 40s.
Yeah. I wasn't being walked into a a
train to step into a gas chamber.
No, but they were taking my livelihood away from me.
They were taking, they were stealing from me and they
couldn't have cared less how it affected me or my family.
And that's no different than what they did back in the 40s
to, you know, to the, to the Jewish folks.
There's, there's a whole. Book about this, we talked about
it on my program on a pretty regular basis, but the book's
called Ordinary Men, and it's the story of how men who are
just keeping a roof over their head and working for the
government and doing what they're told following orders.
They went from being guys that were butchers and bakers and
Candlestick makers and people who ran restaurants and, you
know, they're regular dudes and they got conscripted into, to
work for the Nazis. And, you know, within two years,
three years, they were shooting little kids in the back of the
head and, and, and old people that were moving too slowly to
get on the box cars. And so, and the other crazy part
about all that, Matt, is that the historical examples already
been set for people that said no to those disgusting and unlawful
and, and, and inhumane orders. And nothing bad happened to
those guys. We already know what happens if
you say no, you might lose your livelihood.
But generally speaking, when the regime is looking for
compliance, it doesn't actually even go punish the people that
don't comply because it would highlight that that actually
there is a resistance and that what they're doing is wrong.
So in any case, well, you know, good on you for doing the right
thing. And I didn't know all the back
story on it. I knew enough of it from from
being in the area. Makes perfect sense to me.
Again, do you find that the people that are quite a bit
older than you, people in their 70s and 80s seem to have a
kinship with the value system that you're talking about that
maybe skip the people that are our age, They.
Do I mean, I, I love when people from that generation come into
my restaurant. I, I spend probably more time
than I should sitting down talking to them.
Actually, my first job straight out of the military was I worked
in the emergency room up in Fairfax in the, as a medic in
the ER. And I worked the overnight shift
from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM. And that night shift is, you
know, it's a level 1 trauma center.
So you're, you're, you're bumping and grinding until about
3 O clock in the morning. And from three to seven, that
four hours takes so long because everybody's already, they've
already overdosed or they already gotten in that fight or
they already have gotten shot. So those, those last four hours
ago, I slowed what I used to love to do during those last
four hours of my shift was going the rooms of of World War 2
veterans to just talk to them because they were the most
realist people on this earth at that point.
A lot of most of them are going now, but I just used to sit,
love, sit down and talk to them because they didn't give a shit
what you thought. They didn't care about hurting
your feelings. If you ask them a question, you
were going to get an honest answer from them.
And I just, I appreciated it, even if I didn't like the
answer. I appreciated the fact that you
weren't going to bullshit me and I and, and people today, I, I
love that about some people that, that that's why I try to
surround myself with people that aren't going to bullshit me
because it's so easy to tell when you are.
And I just, it's something that not a lot of men hold as a value
today. And it's, and it's, it's
sickening to me, honestly, I don't, I don't know how women
date these guys, to be honest. So really.
It's it. There's a funny dynamic about
all this for some reason. You know, like women basically
steer a lot of society by what they're willing to tolerate in
their mate and. And and they have certain.
Expectations. So when I hear men say, you
know, you know, women are acting like this way, it's like, well,
you, you seek out women that are like that and women who are
upset about the way men are. You allowed men to treat you
that way for some reason or you demanded it of them and they
did. And you know, we're all to blame
for it. It's just, it's strange to watch
it as kind of, I feel like an outsider.
I feel like a like a like a stranger in my own land often
times because my wife and I walked in.
My wife has gone from being someone who was a Liberal
Democrat out of New York and she wears a veil to church every
Sunday. And she converted to to to
Catholicism and got baptized in 2022.
Like I said, we haven't talked before this, but my wife got
baptized the day before. They took my badge and my gun
away. If you could imagine, God does
speak in really interesting, powerful signs occasionally when
we really need it, and I think that's one of them for me.
But that's why and. I don't I don't believe in
coincidences. You know, I think everything
happens for a reason. And I think if you're willing to
open your eyes questions that you have, there are answers for
them all around you. That's right.
You just got to be willing to look up from your phone every
now and then and recognize that, you know, the Lord puts those
answers in front of you. And it's up to you to it's up to
you to acknowledge them and see them.
And honestly, I think the one of the, one of the biggest ways,
like you said, we've never talked before.
I don't know where you stand spiritually or, or religiously.
You say you go to church. So that tells me pretty much
what I need to know. But I think one of the best ways
that the Lord speaks to us is through our gut.
You know that gut feeling you have that that that just
instinct when you know something is wrong or when you know you
have to do something. I believe that that's the, the,
the Lord speaking to us. We, we got that kind of 6th
sense and that, that gut instinct for him to kind of
guide us. And when you knowingly ignore
that, usually bad things happen and you can you can watch people
ignore. It in real time and if you've
ever questioned the subject or if you've ever rolled up a high
value target and they've done something they shouldn't have
done and you ask a real simple question and that that there's a
visceral response when human beings know they're doing the
wrong thing because they're being told to do otherwise and
they can't do it you. Can feel it absolutely you're
absolutely I'm going to send you the video of when those police
officers came to my restaurant that day watch watch what their
face looks like as I I already I don't even.
Have to see it. I will see it, but I already
know what it looks like because it looks the same way that my
boss taking my badge and gun looked when I shook his hand.
Matt. I reached out because I
instinctively or he wanted to shake my hand for some reason.
He held his hand out to me. This is a man that's got 8
inches on me, probably 70 lbs on me.
You know, I'm 5/8 and weigh $1.80 and, and he's probably in
the 250 range and he's, you know, 6 something 6364.
And he he reaches out to shake my hand and it was ice cold and
soft and and and scared and you could just, he knew in that.
Moment that you were a bigger man than he was.
I did too. And.
My boss came up and he said you handled that like a gentleman.
My other boss and and I said, well, these men are beneath me,
you know, and when you have that moment when you're righteous and
you know, and in your fight you were and that's why you don't
accept any half measure. That's why a $2000 fine and
we'll make it go away shortly. It's like, no, no, you apologize
is the answer. The answer is, is that tyranny
doesn't get, you know, I have a little thing.
I'll send it to you on my phone. You can send it to people
occasionally. It says you don't make peace
with evil, you destroy it. Absolutely.
And what? What those men?
Were doing whether they were complicit or they called the
order out, or they just obeyed it, that's evil.
That's what evil looks like. It's good men agreeing to
something that they knew was wrong, and that's why their face
looked that way. One of you knew it too.
One of the guys. That was in that video.
One of the police officers, one of his friends he grew up with,
came to my restaurant in the next couple of days following
the incident. Yeah.
And he said, hey, man, I just wanted you to know that guy in
the video, he is on the same page as us.
He's got the same values as us. He didn't want to do what he
did, but you know, he was just doing his job.
I said that guy doesn't have the same value systems as me
whatsoever. He's not on the same page with
me. And we don't believe the same
things because I would have lost my job that day.
That's the difference between him and I.
And I would have done it with pride and I would have went home
and told my wife. I did so with my hell, my, my
head held up high and we would have been just fine the next
day. That's the difference between me
and that man. If you can call him a man, but
it's it's a. It's an easy identifier and it
and and anybody who says, well, they believe this way, but they
acted another way. Show me, don't tell me.
Real simple. That's it, man.
I mean, that's what we're supposed to do is men, our
actions are supposed to speak way louder than our whether our
actions do speak louder than our words.
And that's why it's so easy to identify who The Who the cowards
are in this society. And then the wild thing is, so
I, I was going to like school board meetings and such during
the COVID stuff because my kids are in public school.
I got 2 in college now. And and then my, my twins, who
are the youngest, they're going into ninth grade, but they were
all young back then. And I was at the school board
meetings pleading for these folks to let our kids back in
the schools and let the kids back in the schools without
masks on. And, and the disappointing part
about it the most is supporting pointing part about it all is I
was one of the only men in there doing it.
The rest of the 50 people and they're fighting the school
board were women. It was like 3 guys and 47 women
in there. And I would even make posts
about it on social media like, hey, where's the men at?
Why, where, why is it moms for liberty?
Where's dads for liberty? Where you guys at?
You fucking cowards? Why aren't you guys joining me
at these school board meetings to speak up for our kids and our
wives and our community? And it was just so it was, it
was disheartening is not even the word for it.
Man. It was embarrassing, you know,
for, for me as a man to to be in there with all those women and
just feel bad for them and have them make excuses for their Oh
my, you know, my husband gets off late and I understand that.
So do I, but I'm here because this is more important than
anything right now. It was just so it was
disappointing, but I won't won't be dead, dead horse.
No, I know I'll. I'll add this little piece to it
and maybe this, maybe this helps.
I think that one of the greatest two things, we had a really
incredible gift in Joe Biden's presidency, which is difficult
for people to accept. We also had a really incredible
gift that was given to us when these COVID tyrannical mandates
came down. And, and the, the gift was as we
got to see what was happening, we got to reveal who was who in
a way that you couldn't have done it without hardship
without, you know, testing folks in the same way, you know, you
throw something in the fire, you find out whether the purities
are there or not. We found that out.
I think if you had eight years of Donald Trump, he would have
been ineffective for four more years.
He would have been impeached another time.
You would have just been hamstring by a bunch of people
that didn't quite see what we were up against.
And in the same way, I, I think the, if we hadn't had the, the
COVID lockdowns, we wouldn't have seen what people would and
would not tolerate. And who will those people were.
And so you know what side you're on.
And I know what side I'm on and I know what side other people
are not. We saw some people on the fence
that realized they got a second chance because it didn't all go
away. They can make a better decision
now. They probably won't.
That's just the way that human nature works.
But at least they get that free will.
Maybe God will turn their hearts to actually realize what
matters. And and so that's a gift.
It's it's an ugly gift. It's not what we would choose
for ourselves. You're right, I'm.
Glad all of the hardships that have happened in my life
personally have happened the past five.
I'm a totally different person than I was in 2019 and I'm I'm
happy for it. Like I told you, I got less
money in my bank account than I did in 2020.
But the, the main thing out of all of this, honestly, Kyle is
and the reason why I'm grateful for what happened to me is
because my kids got to see me go through all of it.
That's right. They were watching me everyday.
They were watching their mother and their father everyday go
through being in a court or before some kind of board on a
monthly basis, you know, being dogged in the media by liberals.
And, and they got to see everything that happened to us
and they got to see us not quit, not for one day that we even
think about quitting. And, and, and what I'm grateful
for is that is not a that's not a lesson that I could buy my
children if I wanted to. So it taught them something that
they will, they will pass down to their grandchildren.
And I can't buy that lesson if even if I wanted to, Kyle.
And that's why I'm so grateful for it.
But you're right that certain things have to happen in order
for us to wake up. And we were given a gift.
And I told you before I was that that kind of neo kind guy that
loved the war and thought that America just, she could should
just go crush everybody because we could.
And we were the we were the only people in this entire world that
were righteous. And we're trying and everything
we did was for the right reasons.
And I slowly have woken up to holy shit.
And some of these scenarios were the bad guy.
And I'll, I'll tell you, it was even before COVID that I started
realizing that when Trump took office in 2016, you know, I was,
I was, so I, I, when I, when I came back and I opened the, the
food truck, I went back to my other job as an Intel analyst
just for a little bit to, because when you open a
business, you're not making any money.
That's right. So I got my old job back for a
little bit to, you know, to kind of help pay bills and such.
So I worked as an Intel analyst under, under Trump for a little
bit. And what really opened my eyes
and, and changed kind of my trajectory of thinking was if
you remember, we were, we're flying some drones around in the
airspace over near Iran. And they shot our drone down
and, and, and all of the, the, all of Trump's senior military
advisors wanted us to go to war over and it was their chance to
invade Iran. And it was one night that I left
work and we, we had five different strategic military
targets that we're going to get hit that night in Iran.
And thousands of people were going to die.
And it was, it was, it was it was an eerie feeling when I left
work that day and, you know, seeing that operator, knowing
that in just a few hours there's going to be people waking up in
Iran and it's going to be their last time waking up.
And I know this and they don't. So I remember checking the news
at whatever time it was supposed to happen and it didn't happen.
And so I thought maybe something, maybe they cancelled
the mission, something went wrong.
And the very next day, if you remember, Trump got on TV and he
said we had five different strategic military targets that
we're going to be obliterated last night in Iran.
He said, I called it off personally.
And he did. He's the one that stopped it
personally. And he said the reason I did is
because I didn't think you guys shooting down an unmanned drone
warranted me killing thousands of people.
But make no mistake about it. Next time I won't hesitate.
And and at first, the day before, I was like, yeah, fuck
yeah, let's go into Iran. Let's fucking kill everybody.
We're America. And the.
Very next day when he said that. I don't know why it just kind of
woke me up like what, what was I thinking, man?
Why, why was I thinking that? What, what, who am I?
And I was like, he's right. Shooting down an unmanned drone
doesn't warn us, killing thousands of people.
What is wrong with me? What is wrong with the people
who were were making the decisions to let that happen?
And honestly, Trump kind of changed my neo my neo con
mentality at that moment. And, and then, you know, he when
when we killed General Soleimani in Baghdad, when he rolled out
of the gates of buy out and we, we dropped that bomb on them,
obliterated them. If you remember, Iran's
retaliation for that was to send 17 missiles into al-Assad air
base in Iraq where our U.S. troops were.
Well, thirteen of them landed. And if you remember, there was
not one American casualty. And the reason for that is
because they told us the exact grid coordinates and times that
these missiles were coming in, right?
And the reason they did that is because they told Trump, hey, we
have to have a response because if we don't, we'll have a coup
in our country. That's right.
And Trump. 'S responsible.
Like, Roger that. However, if one of my service
members are injured, make no mistake about it, I'll be
retaliated as well, and I'll obliterate your country.
And, and he commanded that respect on the international
stage that I've never seen before.
And that's when I truly fully got behind him, you know, as a
is he perfect? No, not by any means.
But I believe he's the right person in the right position
right now. And that's the right
temperament. Too, It's like, fine, you need
to save face. I understand that.
And he said something recently that that, and I don't get into
foreign politics as much because I just, it's just not
interesting to me. I understand we all live in a
global world, but I, you know, I live in an American world.
The, the thing that was most interesting is that he's like,
we're not going to export democracy.
We're not going to make, you know, put American values on
other countries. We're going to allow other
people to be themselves. We're interested in American
values in America. That's it.
So don't screw with what we're doing.
And that's kind of what he went out and told the Middle East.
He's like, we're not trying to shove America on you.
You guys do whatever you guys do.
We already know what it looks like.
You've you've been in war to see it.
It doesn't work. You don't you don't superimpose
America on top of a place that didn't ask for it.
They don't want it. Well, and.
That's the reason why so many Americans have issues with this
illegal immigration that's going on right now.
Yeah, because I can, I can tell you that probably majority of
Americans maybe not at this point because we have too much
illegal immigration that happened.
Most Americans just want a halt to everything right now and let
us evaluate what's what's been happening.
But I can tell you that probably most Americans agree that if we
were able to have some kind of psychic power and determine
whether or not somebody was a good person and just coming
across the border to make a great life for themselves and
they were going to assimilate to the American values, I don't
think any American would have a problem with that.
The problem is we don't have psychic ability.
And with those families that just want to make a better life
for themselves are terrorists who want to kill you.
And they will kill you at the first opportunity that they
have. But the problem, the biggest
problem is that a lot of these people especially that come over
the border illegally, they don't assimilate to the American
culture or American values. And just like those people don't
want us changing their country or their systems or their value
systems, neither do we. And if you're coming to America
to for a better life, it, it should be known, it should, it
should go without saying that you won't try to change our
country. You will assimilate to the value
system and the structure that made it such a great place that
you want to immigrate to. So for that same reason, we're
never going to change any, any, any country in the Middle East
or in Europe. Those places have been those
places for thousands of years. And to think we're going to, but
honestly, nobody thought that we were going to go turn these
places into a democracy or whatever they want to call it.
The, the, the, the intent of these wars were to launder money
and make certain people billionaires is all it was.
But yeah, the sales pitch. Was what was very different than
the what was deliverable in in the in the real world.
I think 100% one. 100% absolutely.
But just to I do want to touch on one thing real quick, just
because I talked about there was no injuries from that Al Asad
air base incident, the media reported just to make Trump look
bad that 100 and something soldiers were injured.
Well, I like I told you, part of my job as an Intel analyst was
looking at casualty analysis. So I saw every injury that
happened from that attack. Every injury that happened was a
reported headache from people that were in the vicinity of one
of those missiles that landed. They just had a headache.
So they classified that as a concussion or TBI, and the media
classified that as an injury so that the media reported over 100
and some people were injured. In all actuality, nobody was
injured from that attack. And it was because of the
presence of a, of a president like Donald Trump.
And that's honestly, that's why I got behind.
I voted for the first time in my life in 2020 because of that.
Never voted before, ever. And one of the reasons I never
voted before, and I'm, I'm embarrassed to say that
honestly, but one of the reasons I never voted before is because
when I work for Blackwater, one of our missions was protecting
these politicians when they come down range.
And as the medic, you stay with the person that you're
protecting, you stay with the principal and in case something
happens and medics right there with them.
And so I got to meet a lot of these people and they were all
full of shit on both sides of the aisle.
How did I know you were going? To say that they I mean.
They honestly, they were, they would, they would, what do you
guys need down here on the ground to accomplish your
mission successfully? And we give them a list every
time and we wouldn't hear from them once they're back in DC.
They're all full of shit. But I never voted until 2020,
honestly, because of those two decisions that Donald Trump
made. And, and I'm I don't regret
voting for him. I don't regret voting for him
and supporting this time. And, and one of the reasons I
blew the whistle at DHS is because I kind of want to get in
front of him. I don't have his phone number.
I can't call him what I want to. Hopefully a message gets to him
that he has people that he had put in these political appointed
positions that are subverting his agenda and they are not
doing what's in the best interest of his administration
or the American people. And, and and that's why you and
me are talking right now, because I blew the whistle on
some of the things happening up at DHS.
Yeah, to be fair, we. Probably should have before
because there's a lot of commonality here and I
appreciate and it's nice hearing another saying and sober voice
that sees a lot of the same things.
You know, I don't have to seek out confirmation, but there's
always someone out there that saw the same thing that didn't
have any contact before. Let's talk about DHS.
You went, when did you start working?
How did you even come about the job?
Was it and and give me kind of like the parameters what level
you're working at, Like give me the background on it and let's
walk into it. I, I, I finally got through that
fight at my restaurant and, you know, I'm down to nothing in my
bank account because of the fight.
And the only thing else I had to lean on was what I've done since
I was 17 years old, which is, you know, government contract.
So reached out to a company, got a job as a government contractor
up at DHS as an Intel analyst working on the countering
weapons of mass destruction team at DHS headquarters.
And when I first got there, one of the first questions I was
asked is, hey, Matt. And this was under the Biden
administration. So I got there in March of 2024,
OK. One of the first questions I was
asked was, what do you think the biggest chemical weapon threat
to America is right now? And my response was fentanyl.
And, and my response was fentanyl because it kills the
most Americans age 18 to 45 than any anything else, natural
causes, accidents, guns, anything.
Fentanyl overdoses the leading cause of death of Americans age
18 to 45. And not only that, but we know
that the CCP is responsible for bringing the precursors to make
fentanyl to Mexico for the cartels to make.
We know that China has trained the cartels on how to take it
from being a precursor into fentanyl as a drug.
And over 60% of the of the fentanyl that come comes across
the border is of a lethal dose. So if you're just trying to make
money, you're not going to have over 60% of your product be of a
lethal dose because the last thing you want is your customers
to die. You want to keep your customers
alive so they keep buying from you.
So the fact that over 60% of it is over lethal dose lets me know
that the intent is to kill Americans.
And, and the fact that the only reason it's it's it's it's able
to be made in, in Mexico is because of China.
It, it is being used as a chemical weapon.
So that was my response to them. And you know what their response
to me was? I don't feel like it was going.
To be positive, no, they said. Matt, you can't say the F word
in this office. Fentanyl.
And, and it was obvious why, because it was under the Biden
administration. Everybody I worked for in there
was liberal and they knew it was their fault and the
administration that they supports fault that we have a
fentanyl crisis in America. So it's best just to ignore the
problem. And, and I wasn't, I wasn't
allowed to do anything Fentanyl as an Intel analyst working for
the, the, the, the, the, the weapons of mass destruction team
at DHS, which is insane. So they told me it's a narcotics
issue, Matt, it's not a chemical weapon issue.
So that's not our lane. You're not allowed to touch it.
So, so I wasn't. So anyway, I worked in that role
since March of last year. And I I So what happens in the
Intel community when when it when an intelligence analyst
creates a report or Intel note or an Intel bulletin?
It's, it's actionable Intel. So you're creating this to send
out to the rest of the Intel community for them to take
action on it. And I saw many, many, many
different Intel reports come out for review.
Because like for me as an Intel analyst, if I'm creating Intel
report, I send it out to the Intel community for everybody to
look at and review and either suggest changes that should be
made or tell me it's good to go before I publish it.
So a lot of those reports would come into my e-mail across my
desk and I would look at them and they were almost, I would
say at least over 60% of them were completely politically
biased and targeting Americans for things that should be
illegal. And in October of 2024,
something came across my desk that I could, I could no longer
stay silent on. And So what happened at that
point is that's at right after Hurricane Helene in North
Carolina happened. OK, Yeah.
And. I received the Intel report for
review that that targeted the victims of Hurricane Helene.
It said that we need to look into these victims in Hurricane
Helene because they're spreading conspiracy theories on social
media that can put FEMA workers in danger on the ground.
And these conspiracy theories that they were spreading were
things like. FEMA.
FEMA sent. Money to different cities in
different states to house illegal immigrants.
Well, that's not a conspiracy theory.
That's easily provable. Over $300 million was sent from
FEMA to house illegal immigrants.
And conspiracy theories like FEMA doesn't have enough money
to make it to the end of hurricane season.
Well, that's also not a conspiracy theory.
Secretary Mayorkas himself said on mainstream media, CNN, Fox
News, all of the channels that we don't have enough money to
make it to the end of hurricane season.
So they had all these things in these reports that were
conspiracy theories that were easily provable to not be
conspiracy theories, but actual facts.
So I flagged it and I said hey guys.
First, you can't. Target these victims who just
lost everything from this hurricane for things that are
not conspiracy theories but actual facts.
And I sent evidence up when I flagged that report in my
e-mail, I said, here's the evidence that these aren't
conspiracy theories. These are actual facts.
And this needs to be changed before this report is published
and other people within the Intel community take action on
it, like surveilling these these victims.
And, and I set that up and I heard nothing back.
And so I kept reaching out to, I sent it up through my chain of
command. Nothing happened.
Nothing happened but and I kept pressing them and by the time I
heard something back, they said, hey, Matt, that's not our lane.
Your lane is is chemical, biological, radiological or
nuclear weapons. That's it.
And I said, OK, Rodger that man, why'd it come across my desk for
review then? And I said even beyond it being
my lane as an Intel analyst, I'm an American.
So this is my lane as an American.
It's my lane as AUS government employee, even though I'm a
contractor to look out for the people who are paying me to be
here. So it is my lane and it's your
lane to do something about it. And they said well the reports
already went out as is. So they were.
They put that Intel report out as is.
And to be fair. Those are First Amendment
protected things. You can think or say anything
that you like. Now how about crazy how it is?
Like what does the federal government have as far as taking
it? You have the right to spread
even a conspiracy theory online. Yeah, it's up to the American
people to accept it as truth or call you out of your bullshit,
you know, but well and, and. I want to put a finer point on
why this is dangerous and and I'd like you to help me kind of
explain it to people because this is a broader problem in the
Intel community, at least in my experience.
You get something like that, a novel indication that conspiracy
theories or Catholics in Richmond, VA are white
supremacists or take your pick of whatever thing is, you know,
that pro-life advocates might hurt people at abortion clinics.
And you don't have any evidence of that because you don't need
to to write an an IIR or any of these other Intel bulletins or a
domain awareness product. So you're going to generate a
report that's basically your suppositions.
It's your editorialization of something.
You've analyzed the facts and you've got some, you know,
concrete little touchstones. You're going to put them all
together. And you say this is what I
believe this information means. And you send it out there and it
goes across someone's like your desk and nobody, there's not
another Matt there who says, hey, this is problematic.
And by the way, possibly, you know, any illegal use of our
resources to call it out. So everybody agrees to it.
It goes out there. Well, someone writes on that
product, someone sees that product and writes a follow on
product, which becomes part of a body of work.
And now suddenly it is an agreed consensus within the
intelligence community that hurricane victims might be
targeting FEMA workers because we've got 11 different
intelligence reports that have all been peer reviewed and
vetted. Or we think that Catholics who
like Latin Mass are problematic because we have 17 people in
various field offices from DHS and Border Patrol and ICE and
you name it, you know, they're, they're over in the FBI and
they're over in NSA. And they're all saying, well,
these people might be white supremacists, which by the way,
is also illegal in this country. It's not illegal in this
country. You can be a white supremacist.
Like we probably don't want to hang out with them, but you can
be you're on. It Kyle and that's.
You're on it feed. Feed that back to.
People to understand what happens when you build on
somebody else's body of work. That becomes sort of like an
established mentality inside these offices.
It becomes the truth. You know, once 10 different
Intel analysts put that out, it becomes the truth and it becomes
actionable Intel. And that's what I was trying to
prevent. And and, and you would think
that I'd be applauded for that, but I, I painted a huge target
on my back at that .0. Yeah, I knew what I was doing
when I did it, but I had to do it.
And then so Fast forward to December, when you remember when
all the drone activity was coming?
I do was here the DC area. Now this was after the elect.
So that that report that I flagged, remember that was in
October. That was before the election.
So I was kind of, you know, I was, I wasn't protected by the
new Trump administration that was coming in.
I was, I was ready to lose my job over it.
So Fast forward to December when the drone activity was happening
here in the DC area, I reached out to through my chain of
command once again and I said, hey, guys, we are the CWMD team
for the Department of Homeland Security.
It's our job to protect the homeland from any kind of CBRN
attack. And we're getting multiple
reports of all these drones here in the area.
And we know that bad actors, state actors and non state
actors are trying to equip drones with CBR and weapons.
So now this is our lane. You can't use the excuse now
that this isn't our lane. I said, why are we talking about
this in the office? Why aren't we a part of any
investigation into this? Why haven't I heard one word
about this drone activity in the office?
And crickets once again. And eventually when I kept
pressing, kept pressing, my boss got back to me and said, hey,
man, not our lane. We don't do drones.
So that's what the government workers do, man.
They, for the most part, they kick the can down the road and
they spend more manpower and time trying to figure out a way
to get out of doing work than they do actually doing work.
The excuse is always this isn't our lane.
We're not allowed to do this because this is our mission,
when in all actuality, it relates to our mission.
But so at that time, I was just a thorn in their side.
I kept calling out bullshit, calling out improper reports and
politically biased reports, reports that targeted
Christians. And it was so I, I knew it
started, it started to be a very hostile work environment for me.
And what happened at that point is the new, so over the CWMD
program at DHS, the, the, the guy at the top of the food
chain, there is an assistant secretary, OK, that is appointed
to that position by the the president.
So in January, in came a new assistant secretary before you
even. Get into that piece.
Do you mind explaining to people?
Some people probably have never worked in a real hostile work
environment where you know that any day somebody could walk you
out or, or or you know. You're you're.
Constantly. Basically scrutinized for
everything. You can you explain what the
physiological response is? You're first of all, you're a
medic. I have the same background.
I can you talk about what it feels like when you're walking
in those doors and and and looking around and realizing
that you're you're not in friendly territory anymore.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, if it feels like, well,
I've boxed since I was seven years old, OK.
And it kind of feels like you're walking into the room, to be
honest with you. You know, when I, when I walked
into the skiff every day, I kind of felt like I was walking into
the ring a little bit. Like I was walking into a fight.
Like everybody was looking at me like, oh God, here's this dude.
Can you just shut up, Matt, and let us make our money and, you
know, not cause any ruckus and not rock the boat.
We've been doing this for so long.
And here you go showing up, you know, messing everything up for.
That's kind of what I felt like, man.
But would you say? It's a fight where you don't
know who's going to hit you, absolutely.
You don't know where it's coming from.
And, and, and so they, they took me off of the report reviews.
So they took me off the list of people that the reports come to
for review is what they did in retaliation for me flagging
these reports. And, and, and then so the new
assistant secretary came in and this guy's name was Dave
Richardson. And he, he hit the ground
running. Everybody was.
So the first, his first all hands meeting, he scared the
shit out of everybody because he said, hey, listen, I'm going to
make sure Trump's agenda is pushed forward.
And he came very forcefully. And everybody was was scared of
him at that point. And we had to brief him on what
the Intel division was doing and, and they asked me to do it
because they everybody was scared.
They were like, hey, Matt, will you brief the new assistant?
Second, suddenly you got. Value now you're the guy that
they need in that fight yeah, of course I was like yeah, I.
Don't give a shit, I'll brief him.
I was like, wow, this is my opportunity to let him know that
what should be happening in this office is not happening.
And I did. Yep.
And and and he liked it. And honestly, from SO they kind
of messed up making me brief him that day because he realized my
value pretty quickly. And he brought me into all the
senior level meetings that after that as a contractor.
Sure. Usually it's all SES and
fifteens in these meetings. And he had me in those meetings
from that point on as a contractor.
And, and so I was, so he started a series of working groups,
complex problem solving working groups to attack issues that the
CWMD office should have been attacking for decades, for years
and they hadn't been. And he had me in all these
senior level working groups and over, so not to get too in the
weeds, but you got DHS headquarters and then you got
this countering weapons of mass destruction program underneath
that. And then in the CWMD program,
you got these different directorates, one being the
Intel directory where I worked well over each directorate.
You have an SES level person and you have AGS 15 who is that
person's deputy. Got it.
Well, so the SES and the deputy over the Intel division didn't
like the fact that the assistant secretary found favor in me and
was bringing me into all of these senior level meetings.
And so they already didn't like me for, you know, flagging all
of these reports and such and finding out who I really was.
But then when the, the, the assistant secretary found favor
of me, they really didn't like me at that point.
And the hostile work environment really ramped up.
They would, they would, they would come up to me and ask me
why he's got me in these meetings.
And I would tell them, hey, I don't know, man.
Ask him. I mean, you're my boss.
Yeah, but he's your boss. So that means he's my ultimate
boss. He, he put something on my
calendar and I go, that's what it is, man.
I'm, I'm following orders of the senior executive person on this
program. And so anyway, that, that really
created a lot of tension because they knew the reason that he had
me in those meetings and working on the things I was working on
is because he didn't have any confidence in those people
because he saw the, the, the risk adverseness of them in the
inaction. And, and honestly, so CWMD right
now is on the chopping block to be cut.
And the reason it's on the chopping block is because of
their risk adverseness and their inaction the past few years.
They're, they have not been doing what they should have been
doing and in any way. So he had me in those meetings
be, you know, because of that, he trusted me and I wasn't
working outside of the scope of my contract.
Everything I was doing was Intel related, related to the Division
I was in. But they didn't like the fact
that he had me in those meetings.
So what happened is that hostile work environment ramped up.
They started having me report every week, every meeting that I
was in, what the meeting was about, what the do outs were for
me of that meeting, every project that I was working on.
And I said I complied. I was like, OK, Roger that.
You know, even though the the assistant secretary.
You. Know he he chose me instead of
them in some of those meetings for a reason.
I still complied and let them know what I was working on.
I was getting calls so the SES and the 15 on my program would
call the the, the core, the person in charge of the contract
who would then call the company I'm working for and complain
about me saying they don't know what I'm working on because I'm
working directly for the assistant secretary, right?
And that's what. That's not what they hired you
to do, allegedly. That's not what they hired me to
do. They hired me to work in the
Intel division. My reply back would be like, I'm
working in the Intel division. I'm just taking directions from
the assistant secretary anyways, so I let me, let me.
Just ping a thought off you or a question.
Would you prefer to go to war with a team that you trust,
which you've done before, or show up in an office like you
were in with those DHS folks where you've what you've been
calling hostile work environment?
Which one is preferable 10 times out of 10?
I'd rather be shot at by people I know are my enemies than being
an office full of people that tell me they're on the same side
as me and stabbing me in the back. 10 times out of 10, I just
want people to. Get a grasp on it.
I had a buddy one time telling me that he would rather go back
and invade Fallujah again than go to Air Army Airborne school
because he thought it was really dumb and he didn't like the way
they trained it. It's like there's some things
that, like even administrative bullshit like you're talking
about can weigh on you more than I think than combat.
And that I've had more than one person tell me that there are
things like that that are much, they're much less preferable.
And so anyway, you're, you're one more data point in that
lane. Yeah, well.
I'll wrap that up with I wanted to go through everything they
did to make it a hostile work environment.
It'd take an hour and it was insane.
But so I had the company I work for call me and tell me, hey
man, somebody in your office is trying to get you fired.
And they told me I should file a hostile workplace agreements.
They saw how bad it was. They said we even got word
through the core that somebody said you're not going to have,
you're not going to have the protections of the assistant
secretary forever. And then he.
Said, take that as a threat. Somebody wants you fired in
there and just watch your back in there, Matt.
And, and I said, Roger that. So anyway, the assistant
secretary of CWMD 2 weeks ago ended up becoming the acting
administrator of FEMA. So right now he's serving in
both roles, the assistant secretary of CWMD as well as the
acting administrator for FEMA. So as soon as he got appointed
to that position, he has been over at FEMA 100% of the time,
obviously trying to get his wheels under him.
Yep. And so as soon as that happened,
almost a very, I think it was might have been the very next
day I get an e-mail from my contracting company telling me
that the SES and the 15 that are over me and my directorate has
said I'm going to drop everything that assistant
secretary has had me working on. I am not to go to any meetings
unless it's ran through them. I am not to meet with anybody or
talk with anybody outside of the Intel division and I'm to report
to them every morning to get my marching orders.
So they really ramped up the hostile work environment as soon
as the the AS was gone. And then not only that, they
said any meetings I am a part of they want reported everything
that happened in that meeting. What my do outs in those
meetings were, they knew that part of the reason why I'm
working on what I'm working on is because they haven't been
doing their jobs the past four years and they really wanted to
know, you know, what was going on with the alcohol anyway.
So, but not only that, they said from now on I need to report
every conversation that I have during the walk work day with
people. They want to know who those
people are and what the conversation was about.
Yeah. So just insane reporting
requirements that nobody in the US government has to go through
and the the the the reason for it was from the put their their
foot on my neck and try to make me quit.
Basically. Yeah, or or build.
Out the the the termination documents with whatever it is
that they're trying to build together.
I mean, this is classic stuff. Anybody who's worked in
government and seeing how this goes, they're just paper and a
file full of grievances. So they can say this is the
reasons why I'm Matt is such a terrible person.
He was the worst. He was 5 minutes ago.
He was fine, but now he's the worst guy we've ever seen.
And if we don't do something, we would be the real problem here.
So adios, it's. Exactly right.
So it's almost like I've seen this.
Done before. I'm sure you have, man.
And I'm sure there's people going through it right now that
they are going through it right now.
Yeah. But ironically, Cameron Hamilton
was the administrator of FEMA as soon as Trump took over.
So Cameron Hamilton, who's a former Navy SEAL, who is a
really good friend of mine, he was put as the number one guy
over at FEMA. And I was doing a great job over
there, man. He was, he was getting shit in
order over at FEMA and he was there for four months.
And ironically, he was fired and Dave Richardson, the assistant
secretary in charge of me at CWD, was put to take over his
place. So that was kind of weird for
me, but but anyway, So what happened and what led to my
firing is, like I said, Cameron Hamilton's real good friend of
mine. I knew the whole story behind
why he really got fired as the FEMA administrator.
And I don't know how much you know about it, but he did a
congressional committee hearing meeting May 6th or 7th, so just
recently. Yep.
And he was asked in that congressional hearing what he
what he thought about FEMA being eliminated.
And his response was, I don't believe it's in the the best
interest of the American people for FEMA to be 100% eliminated.
And his stance has always been that he agrees that it needs to
be drastically reduced because there's a lot of fraud, waste
and abuse within FEMA that there are there's there's certain
essential missions within FEMA that can't go away because
nobody else in the US government does it.
And if you try to hand these missions off to state Emergency
Management teams, they're going to fail because they don't have
the assets or the capability to fulfill these certain functions.
So Cameron's, and that's actually the president's view as
well. As well as what Secretary Noah
has been saying, if you listen to, I mean, that's a yes, a.
Nuanced position, it's like, look, a lot of things could be
cut back, but there's a couple things that can't be duplicated
somewhere else. Like that's a nuanced position
for thinking people that are in in operating good faith, so.
If you listen to what Noam or Trump says, they say FEMA won't
exist as it does today, which means not going to go away, but
it's going to be drastically reduced.
And that's what was, Yep, that's what was what Cameron's
recommendation was. But he has also said it's up to
President Trump in Congress with what happens to FEMA.
And whatever their wishes are, whatever their direction is,
I'll carry out. So they said that they fired him
because of those remarks. They said they fired him because
President Trump wasn't 100% eliminate FEMA.
And he said that he recommends FEMA not be 100% eliminate.
Well, that's false. Actually, Cameron Hamilton knew
the entire time he was in that committee hearing that he was
already fired. Sure.
So if you don't mind, I'm going to share with you real quick the
real reason why he was fired. Let's do it and then.
Hopefully Cameron will come on and talk to me as well because
I'd be happy to have him on. He and I have interacted online
only for probably 2 years now or a year and a half and I'd be
happy to have him on. Talk about it.
So OK. Yeah, set it up.
Yeah, well, so. Ironically, man, Tom Holman, he,
he, he, he, he came to support me at my restaurant when I was
going through everything. And he just one of the best
dudes in this world, man, Tom Holland, is he he's just a
genuinely good dude. And so I've been friends with
Tom Holland for, you know, past few years because of that.
And he called me and, and it was late November, early December,
and told me, he said, hey, Matt, I'm getting threats from every
cartel under the sun and I can't get any protection from this,
this Biden administration. And he knows what I used to do
in the military, knows I used to work for Blackwater.
He was like, is there anything, you know, can you help?
And I said, absolutely, man. So I stood up a protection team
for him, you know, in 30 minutes and, and Cameron Hamilton
volunteered to be a part of that team.
That makes sense. So we were with.
Tom, you know, pretty much every day leading up to the
inauguration, and I tell you that to tell you how close
Cameron and I are, you know, he's he's like a brother to me.
I know his heart. And the last person's integrity
you would question is Cameron. He's just a genuinely good dude,
man. And if you have a conversation
with them, you'll, you'll immediately see what I'm talking
about. Just genuinely good guy that
just loves his country and wants to do the right thing for it.
But anyway, he was really fired because of a personal beef
between Corey Lewandowski and him.
Christy Norm is not the real secretary of BHS.
Corey Lewandowski is the real secretary of DHS.
His official position is one of her senior advisors, but that's
not the case. He's the one really running DHS.
Christy Norm, in my opinion, is just, it's just campaigning for
2028. And so where that rift began
between Corey Lewandowski and Cameron, Cameron Hamilton was
if, if you remember, there was a payment sent out from FEMA to
New York City for $60 million. And that payment was part of the
Shelter and Services program, the SSP program that went to
housing illegal immigrants in the the Roosevelt Hotel in New
York City. Oh yeah.
Yeah, so. That happened in February under
the Trump administration, under Cameron's watch at FEMA.
So, and they blame that in the media on Cameron.
So what really happened with that incident is Cameron was
told right away, soon as he took over to freeze all grants coming
out of FEMA, 100% Lottie, Dottie, every grant freeze it.
So he did, he complied. And then later on, DHS realized
that because of the massive spending that the Biden
administration did on the way out, they put ice in a hole by
like 200,000,200. I don't, I forget how much it
was, but they put ice in a major hole financially, purposefully I
bet for. Hamstring the Trump.
Administration when Trump took over, sure well to try to make
up some of that capital DHS council as long as as well as
the secretary, deputy secretary, their direction to Cameron was
hey, unfreeze all grants because what they wanted to do is so as
FEMA, like if you're the governor of Texas and, and I
give you a grant, let's say, let's say you're doing a project
that cost $8 million, right And, and, and I give you $8 million
to do that project. Well, you've only spent
$2,000,000 on that. I can tell you to stop work on
that project and that remaining $6 million we're going to use
for mass deportations. So that was their reasoning
behind unfreezing these grants. They wanted to use the grant
money that hadn't been used by these states for the mass
deportation flights and such. Got it a good idea, you know, on
on paper. So they told him unfreeze all of
the grants and, and Cameron triple checked with them.
Are you sure you want me to refreeze, unfreeze all of the
grants and, and this is all in e-mail, in writing.
They said yes, unfreeze all grants.
And that direction came from Christy Noah's lawyers.
DHS council said that to Cam unfreeze all grants.
So he did. He did.
He followed orders. And one of those grants that
were unfrozen was the grant that went to New York City that was
then used to house illegal immigrants back in February.
Well, Doge picked up on that. Elon Musk tweeted it out.
And this was during the Super Bowl that this happened.
Yep. And Corey Lewandowski calls
Cameron and just starts berating them like, hey, what the fuck is
this? What's going on?
And cameras like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you, you told me to
unfreeze these grits that came from your office, man.
This is not at my direction. You guys did this, not me.
And so anyway, obviously the secretary's office doesn't want
to admit their stake to to President Trump.
So they blamed it on Cameron. They blamed it on camera in the
media as well, when in fact it wasn't Cameron's fault.
He followed orders from the secretary's office.
So that right there started the rift between him and Corey
Lewandowski, who is actually running DHS.
Fast forward to there was a meeting.
So Corey Lewandowski is the senior advisor to Christy Noem.
Well, Christy Noem's deputy secretary is this guy called
Troy Edgar. So Troy Edgar and Corey
Lewandowski called for a meeting to talk about either eliminating
FEMA or drastically reducing it. And they sent this, they sent
this meeting out via a, a program called E SEC, which is
it's just a, it's a, it's a, it's a government program.
It's a former formal interagency information sharing calendar
invite that you can send out. OK, well, Troy Edgar sent that
that meeting out that the title of the meeting was FEMA abolish
or reform and that meeting went out via E SEC.
Well, the problem is that many, many people have access to E SEC
within DHS. So many, many people saw this
meeting about to happen between the Secretary's office and the
administrator of FEMA that is about abolishing FEMA.
So, so they had they hold the meeting and then not even 12
hours after the meeting, it's reported to the media that these
senior leaders had this meaning about abolishing FEMA.
So it is true they want to abolish FEMA, right?
Sure. Well, Corey Lewandowski once
again, he calls Cameron, he berates Cameron and he accuses
Cameron of being the one that leaked this information to the
media. And Cameron says absolutely not.
That wasn't me. I didn't leak any information to
the media. So then Corey Lewandowski says,
well, then you'll have no problem coming to taking a
polygraph to prove so. And Cameron was like, absolutely
not. I don't have any problem with
that. So Cameron with the DHS
headquarters was interrogated for hours.
They flew somebody in out of state to interrogate them, gave
him a polygraph test, and he passed that polygraph test and,
and, and, and nobody apologized for it.
They just continued to allow the media to blame that leak on
Cameron. And, and, and so that rift grew
between Corey Lewandowski and Cameron.
And then also, to be honest with you, in several different
meetings, man, Cameron just, he's a very smart guy and he
just called Corey Lewandowski on his bullshit.
And if you know Lewandowski, he's a, he's got a, he's got an
ego that won't fit in this room. And he's a, he's AI mean.
He's a guy that he flies off the chain and cusses at people all
the time. He shouldn't be in the position
he's in basically. So anyway, that's what soured
the relationship between him and Cameron and he's been wanting to
fire Cameron ever since then. And a lot of other things
happened, you know, related to what I consider to be corruption
that Cameron didn't allow, which is another reason they wanted
the fire room. For example, the if you remember
that Bourbon Street attack in New Orleans, of course, when the
guy shot up Bourbon Street and killed those folks out there.
Well, the, the governor of Louisiana, he, you know, he
declared an emergency for that. And, and for that incident, he
said he, he, he was speaking to Governor, I mean Secretary Noah
and said that as a result of that attack, there was, it cost
him $50 million in, you know, recovery and, and, and clean up
from that attack. And he wants to build DHS
because of that disaster or that emergency declaration that he
made. He wants to send this $50
million bill to DHS to be paid. And Christy Noem promised them
that, yeah, send me that 50 dollar, $50 million bill.
It'll be paid by DHS some way. We'll fund it via FEMA.
So that that that was sent to FEMA, that $50 million bill.
Not Well, first of all, that attack that happened on Bourbon
Street, there's no way that the result of that cost you
$50,000,000 to clean up. There was some corruption baked
into that. I don't have any evidence of
that, but if you just use, we're talking about.
Louisiana here so. $50 million, what at most after the, you
know, the cleanup of the incident, all you're paying for
is, you know, extra security for a few days or whatever.
That's not $50 million. So there's some corruption baked
into that. Anyways, Christie Noah promised
the governor of Louisiana that that bill would be paid by DHS
and specifically FEMA. So that $50 million bill was,
was, was sent to FEMA and and FEMA, you know, through the, the
correct process, sent that bill to the White House to be to be
approved while President Trump denied it.
President Trump denied that $50 million bill to DHS from the the
governor of Louisiana. Sure.
So FEMA then drafted a notice of denial to the governor.
But the problem is, prior to that denial, Secretary Noam have
already spoken to the governor multiple times and promised that
DHS will find a way to approve this request.
But once once DHS was was made aware of that final denial from
from FEMA in the White House, once the DHS secretary's office
was made aware, Lewandowski and Noam, they weren't happy.
They weren't happy with Cameron and they sought to find other
means to reimburse the state using FEMA funds.
And actually, in April, after Trump had already denied the
request, DHS, the secretary's office, directed Cameron
Hamilton to process the request anyway.
And Cameron denied and stated that their costs were not
reimbursable under a FEMA program and their disaster
requests had already been rejected by the White House.
So. So that's another reason they
wanted to fire him because they wouldn't.
He wouldn't just secretly do what they wanted him to do.
Yeah. Well, I mean, what?
You tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth here, but it
sounds like somebody got their image tarnished and Cameron was
a good scapegoat. And that image tarnishing
happened with some PR issues that happened in the media that
looked bad but weren't. And then maybe a funding request
where promises were made that couldn't be capitalized on
because there are actual policy and appropriation mandates that
certain money is only supposed to go to certain places and you
got to meet certain criteria. And if somebody's being an
honest operator and says, sorry, I can't do that.
And by the way, the boss says no, the chief executive of the
United States said, I'm not interested in this.
I'm not going to sign off. That's the end of that.
But doesn't mean that someone's not going to lose their job over
it, right? Yeah.
And. That's The thing is, is, is
Cameron, Cameron says, hey, I was, you know, I'm put here by
ultimately I work for Trump. If Trump approves this, it'll be
approved. But the White House denied this
request. Yeah.
And I'm not going to go over the president of of the United
States head and approve this request.
So if you want this request approved, Secretary Norm, you're
going to have to go talk to the White House.
It seems like that's what. Should happen anyway.
I mean, I can just imagine we saw a chain of command, right?
The military. This is a simple idea if if
you're working a job and and the commander in chief comes in and
you've been ordered to do one thing and the commander in chief
gives you some different orders. Those supersede your immediate
supervisor. That's super, you know,
supersedes the captain, that supersedes even maybe, you know,
a Colonel that's running whatever your squadron or your
group or your wing or, you know, I don't know what the Army, army
versions of it are. But like, it's pretty
straightforward. There's one ultimate boss.
We know who that person is in the executive.
You work at DHS, That's an executive agency.
So you work for Trump at the end of the day.
And if he came in and said no? You.
Know there's no there's no real argument there 100%.
But what you know, what Christy Noem is doing is she's, she's
collecting political favors, Sure.
And I believe she's collecting political favors and
endorsements. For future, it sounds like from
what you're saying right in 20. 28 Because while all of these
grants were, were paused, the, the, the Governor of Missouri
actually called Secretary Noam and multiple people from FEMA
were on this call as well. And like I said, all grants were
paused at this point. And the Governor of Missouri was
urging Secretary Noam to make an exception and turn back on
grants, at least just for the state of Missouri.
And, and, and, and she did, she actually turned on grants just
for Missouri because of that request from the, from the
governor And OMB was concerned at that point.
And, and this came from multiple people within FEMA that DHS was
going rogue with their budget and not involving the president
in these significant decisions, which obviously have significant
backlash. And in in late March, no one
authorized, she authorized the payments for some of these
grant, these grant programs. And in April, DHS and FEMA, they
actually received a court order directing the cessation of this
manual review that they were doing on some of these grants
and reinstatement of previous grant payments that have been
put on hold and legally awarded to the states.
But it's obvious that the secretary norm is she's running
around just collecting political favours for, in my opinion, her
run for 2028. Wagowski is running DHS.
He's incompetent. He should not be in the position
he's in. And there's some there, there's
some things going on there that so there's some conflicts of
interest. So the position that he's in, he
doesn't have to report financials and he's involved in
a lot of contracts. And I'm not going to make any
accusations because I don't want to get sued.
Yeah. But I can tell you when you're
in charge of the entire DHS budget and then you're also
associated with contracts that involve DHS, that's of conflict
of interest and should not be happening.
There's a real ethical. Question there.
I feel like I can turn you over to some people that might want
to look into that and not from the federal side of this is
stuff that this is what the journalist historically used to
do for accountability. That's right.
That's what, that's what investigative.
Journalism actually looks like it's like, oh, you're doing
things that are unethical regardless of whether you're on
our team or not. Send them my way.
Man, I'm I'm going to and we're. Going to make that happen and if
Cameron wants to come on and talk to me, I think that was a
great tee up of what his story looks like and and why.
And I've been meaning to talk to him for probably a year and a
half now. So that's a easy thing.
If I I just want. To I just want to reiterate,
man, all of these details that I know they didn't come
specifically from Cameron. I know that's terrible people at
senior levels within FEMA who have all corroborated this, not
just one person. So I'm not sure if if if he will
come on and he he was actually transferred to another position.
That's fair, if he. Wants to come talk.
He's got a spot here. There's always a space to to to
tell the story. I want to.
I want to end with a couple of thoughts #1 how, how are things
going now as you sit there? You, you know, you're, you got
terminated like a couple days ago, your contract did.
So how, how are you doing and can people support you and
what's the status? Just give me kind of an update
on that. Yeah, I'll, I'll.
End with with with with that because I didn't even talk about
me being fired yet. So sorry.
I jumped the gun, but I've read it and I think a lot of my
listeners, people actually, I said I have ADHS whistle
blowing, ADHS whistle blower coming on and someone said,
well, I hope it's Matt Strickland.
That's a good guess. So I, my, my chat was on to this
earlier this week. Sweet.
So I I I put a post out when Cameron was fired in support of
Cameron. I didn't say anything that
violated the contract I was working on.
I didn't name any names specifically.
All I basically said was a vague post saying Cameron was doing
great things at FEMA, He shouldn't have been fired.
And basically that's it, that he should, I just put a post on
support. He should have been fired.
He's doing great things at FEMA. He is in support of President
Trump's agenda more than most people that are working for the
administration actually. And and that's what I put in
that post basically so. Last.
Thursday I get a call and this person told me that somebody
very high up in VHS was pissed off about that post I put out in
support of Cameron and they want me fired for it.
And I and I told that person, I said they can't fire me for that
post. That is First Amendment
protected speech. I didn't say anything classified
in that. Nothing, no proprietary
information. It was just my opinion that
Cameron Hamilton shouldn't have been fired.
And I'm allowed to post that on social media.
And I sent him a case law. I said, hey, let that person
that wants to be fired know that there's case law on this, and
they can't fire me over that. Well, that person hurried up and
got off the phone. And very soon after that call,
not even an hour later, I get a call from my company saying that
they got word from DHS that I'm not allowed to come on the
property tomorrow, which would have been Friday.
Yeah. And I said.
Why? And I knew why I knew it from
from that post. I said why?
And, and the guy that called me from my company said, I don't
know. All they gave me was that you're
not allowed to come on DHS property tomorrow.
So I'm suggesting you take a PTO day.
And I said Roger that. And I told him I said it's
because of this post. And I sent them the post And I
said, is there anything wrong with that post?
And they said absolutely not. There's nothing that violates
your contract in this post. They can't fire you for it.
Well, Friday comes. I get no word.
I called my company. Hey, did you guys hear anything?
They said no, nothing at all. I said, is that typical?
Have you ever had somebody be told they can't come on the
property and you weren't given a reason why?
And the next day, nobody from the government reaches out to
you. And they said absolutely not.
This is fucking weird. We've never had this happen
before, but we'll get back to you once something happens, once
we hear anything. Well, the next day, Saturday.
So this took two days. Saturday I finally get an
official word from my company. I'm assuming that why it took so
long is because they sent that post to the lawyers to review
and they were trying to figure out if they can legally fire me
over it or not 100%. Saturday I get a.
Call from my company like, hey, Matt finally got word while
you're fired. They're using the excuse that
you worked on things when the things that assistant secretary
of the program had you working on was outside of the scope of
your contract. So they're firing you over that.
And I knew immediately it was bullshit.
You're telling me the direction I took from the senior executive
on the contract following his order is why I'm being fired.
So that's, and everything I worked on for him, like I said,
was in the scope of my contract. So it was just an excuse to fire
me because they knew. And they, I'm assuming that
they, they, they, that they properly got counsel from the
lawyer saying you can't fire this guy over this post.
But my, my opinion and what I think happened is Corey
Lewandowski, the the maniac that he is, probably said, well,
you're going to find something to fire this guy over because
he's not coming back to DHS property.
And and that's I can almost. Guarantee that that phone call
happened, somebody called out and said find me a lawyer that's
going to find me an answer that's going to go the way we
want. Just the same way that you've
worked in an Intel community that knows how to find the
answer. No, and not my job, not my lane.
Yeah, somebody will pick up. You're embarrassing us.
We're going to figure out a way to make it our problem to to get
rid of you. And isn't that amazing?
It was fire. This guy, find a reason.
Exactly what you said. Yeah, predetermined.
Outcome go find me the the actions that that justify and
and substantiate it 100%. Man, so now trying to find a
lawyer that'll help me in this legal battle because I'm not
taking this laying down man and I love it.
I want to, I want to, I want to do the best I can to help with
that too. If, by the way, if you happen to
be listening and this is your jam, you want to get in this
First Amendment type stuff, there's a space for that.
We've got a couple of leads. Like I said, I've already
reached out to some folks and we're going to try to get some
answers there. The other answer is that they.
Need man, this should be an open and shut case form.
Yeah, the sad. Thing is, it always takes time,
it always takes money, and it takes a will to fight it.
You've got that. So that's something, yeah.
I don't have money, no, but you got the you got the will to go
forward with it. And and there are people that
want to see these. Where I'm at at how I'm doing,
man, you know I don't have I didn't have a plan when I spoke
up at my restaurant. I didn't have a plan when I blew
the whistle on those bullshit Intel reports at my job and I
don't have a plan now. I just I just know I need to do
that gut instinct. I told you yeah, I believe God
talks to you through. I just followed that man and
tried to trying to do what I thought I was there to do, which
is protect the American people is all I've ever done as a
contractor. And I didn't have a strategy and
a plan of this is what happens next.
And if they do this, I'm doing this.
I don't have that plan. All I know is that I need to do
what's right. So I'm in a position now where
once again, you know, I'm losing a lot of income for doing the
right thing. But like I said before, man,
I'll mow lawns if I have to. I don't give a shit.
But I want to be able to look my kids in the eyes and my wife and
look myself in the mirror and be proud of myself at the end of
the day. So you know anybody that needs a
lawn mowed man out in Fredericksburg?
Yeah, I love it. Let me let me put one last thing
in there. Is it just a kind of reflection?
And you tell me what you think of this.
What do you make of the fact that a guy who joined the Army
at 17 years old and, and, and you know, now you're 41 and, and
you're talking to people that are sub cabinet level positions
and you're, you're making friends with people that are on
the news every day. And, and you're in this actual
like at we're at, you're at a level.
It probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense of that 17 year old
kid. Do you ever have that moment
where you sit back and go like, how the hell did I get here?
I do. I do, you know, I have a have a,
you know, I have those moments like I told you about when I
walk into the office as an Intel analyst and I've never been an
Intel analyst where I think I don't belong here.
I'm not supposed to be here. Everybody's smarter than me.
When I actually meet these people that are on TV, these
people in these high level cabinet positions, Yeah, I
realized very quickly, oh, I am supposed to be here.
These people are not impressive at all whatsoever.
These people are liars. These people are here for self
gay. These people are here to make
money and that's it. Honestly, you know, the, the
deep state that people talk about the establishment,
whatever you want to call them, there's some people who are
nefarious and actually trying to do things to hurt people 100%.
But the vast majority of them are just are greedy, they're
power hungry and they'll do anything it takes to to make a
lot of money. And, and that's what it comes
down to. And these people are, they're
not intelligent. Like I said, they're not
impressive. So when I get around these
people and I meet these people and, and, and I think this 17
year old kid from the neighborhoods I'm, I'm from
shouldn't be here. I pretty quickly realized that,
oh shit, yeah, I I should be here because these these people
are the reason why we're in a position that we're in as a
country. And there's very few people
actually represent the American people.
And that's why I love Tom Holman so much, because he's, he's one
of those genuine people that don't give a shit.
We'll, we'll absolutely get fired for doing the right thing
for the American people. And I know not a lot of people
know them. They just know them from being
on TV and such. But I can tell you right now
that that dude's got your best interest in hand.
And I wish everybody in government was like him, but
unfortunately 98% of people aren't.
Yeah, no. They never will be.
And the other fun thing is, is all those people that you, you
wonder whether or not you should be in the same room.
They wouldn't have survived the things that you've survived.
It becomes really obvious when you start meeting folks like
that. I've had similar experiences.
So I, I appreciate your assessment on that too.
It's like I said, it's one more, it's one more just confirmation
of something that. Everyone.
Expects that these people are heroes and they've got a name
they recognize and therefore they're going to go do something
for you. At the end of the day, most of
these people, they're self interested, you know, it's not
evil, not in the not in the sense that they're diabolical.
It's evil in the sense that they just don't have any scruples or
moral and they're just wanted. Well, let me ask you A.
Question man, Sure. Do you ever think about why it's
always the same names that are picked for certain positions?
Especially now when in the past five years, so many true
patriots have stepped up and done the right things for
America and the American people that should be in certain
positions. Do you ever ask yourself, why is
it always the same people that are nominated for these
positions and we get the same result?
Why aren't some of these people who have been willing to give up
everything, like the people who were kicked out of the military
for not taking the, you know, the the COVID vaccine?
Why aren't some of those people promoted to some of these high
positions? Why?
Yeah. You know.
I mean, I have an instinct. It's the most cynical instinct
there is, though. Yeah, I'm with.
You, I think we got the same instinct on that, man.
You know what? Next time you're in the DC area,
we better go get a fucking beer, man.
You know it's a it's. A deal, it's a done deal.
I hate being in DC, so it'd be nice to stand around someone
that I don't hate being around. My, my, my worst instinct is
always that some of these people have no other choice but to do
that that kind of work. And and for whatever reason, and
maybe this is maybe the worst thing because cynically I can
look at other people and say those are crappy actors or bad
people and I don't I don't want them in charge anything.
But the other problem is, is that Americans, and maybe this
is the legacy that we learned from COVID, maybe you and I
learned the same lesson. Americans desperately want a
king. They want someone to say that
it's all going to be all right. They don't want personal
responsibility to do the hard thing on their own.
And then the worst part of it to me is as long as they feel like
they can root for their team, it doesn't matter if their team
does the right thing when it happens.
Well, you're absolutely. Right, babe, we got an idolatry.
Problem is what I call it. They want somebody.
Else to do the hard part for them.
That's right. In all actuality, you know, like
if I wasn't the only restaurant in Virginia to do what I did, if
a hundred other restaurants stood up and said no, there
would have been nothing that they could have done about it.
Same 100%. Same.
There's no reason why people should know your name, because
what you did should have been common in the same way that
exactly. It's the same story.
For me, there's nothing exciting or exceptional about what I did,
in my opinion. You know what the craziest?
Thing is, is after I won in court, COVID mandates were still
in place. I thought for sure when I walked
out of that courtroom and I proved these mandates were
unconstitutional, I thought for sure the next day all
restaurants would would do what I did.
None of them did man. They still followed those
mandates even after I proved in court what I proved and it just
meant it. It doesn't compute in my head.
I don't have an answer for it. People ask me why do you think
that is? Man, I don't even have the space
in my mind to go into uncovering of reason that makes sense to
me. It doesn't make sense.
And like for you wouldn't have the gun, you wouldn't have to
have done what you did as an FBI agent.
If you know there were 100 FBI agents that did what you did,
there'd be too many of you guys to to target, to prosecute.
But unfortunately, men, there's not a lot of Kyle Seraphin's in
the FBI or or in the USG as a whole.
And that's the reason why they can put all the resources they
want to target you and, and get you up out of there, man.
Yeah. And the saddest?
Thing is, is one, it was effective because it got rid of
me and everybody got the message the same way.
They just got the message that anybody that was feeling the
same way you were in your Intel shop, they realize, hey, shut
your mouth or lose your job. Those are the two options.
It's very straightforward. So if you want this paycheck
every two weeks, that's it. We used to say that some of
these people don't love service. They don't love America.
They just love seeing that that golden eagle take a shit in
their bank account every two weeks.
That's. Weird, I actually had a guy
tell. Me that about one of our one of
our long time 25 year, we call him 25 year mistakes FBI agent
that just he's been there too long to get rid of.
So he'll be there until he retires when he wants to.
And I said, you know what does he like working?
Does he doesn't care about the mission?
Does he care about anything? And they go, man, he just loves
seeing that golden eagle shit in his bank account and he just go
what a disgustingly pathetic. There's better ways to make
money than being in the United States government.
There really are the the reason the.
Problem is like working for the United States government should
be such a noble thing to you, you should brag about it.
Yeah. And when somebody tells you they
work for the United States government, you should say, oh,
holy shit, that's a sharp dude. That's that's somebody that
loves America. And there's now now.
I know it's somebody that doesn't have any other common
sense or capabilities. They could never start their own
business or their own restaurant that this is the only option
they had. And if you take it away from
them, then you're going to be paying them on welfare.
It's a my buddy calls it a glorified jobs program and it's
just basically welfare by another name.
And I don't disagree with most of those jobs.
It's highly paid. Welfare is what it is.
Yeah, it is. Yeah, with.
With the dignity of not pretending like you, you have to
accept the dole even though you don't provide any service for
anybody. That's.
You're exactly right, man. And, and, and, and the
disappointing part is there's a lot of sharp people that do work
for the government. I've seen, I met them, I talked
to them and they just are beholden to this paycheck, man.
Well, they're a threat. They're.
Also a threat. To anybody that sucks.
So like, God forbid you step out and try to do something and,
and, and be exceptional, because if you do, you're the problem.
You are a problem as an exceptional human being.
Like they don't need that. Nobody wants to see exceptional
people. That's a good.
Point man, I, I hope you know
some of you, you government folks watching contractors or
blue Badgers, whoever you are, that are sharp and that actually
do love this country, but maybe haven't stood up and said
something because of self preservation.
I hope you guys change your mind here at some point soon and, and
start doing what you're really there for, which is working for
the American people. And I, I promise you once you do
it, you'll feel much better about yourself.
That's right, immediately, instantly you'll feel much
better about yourself. And I know there's a lot of
patriots still working for the US government and there's a lot
of smart people working for the US government.
I just want you to prove that to us, man.
Step up and and do what you're there for, representing me and
everybody else who's on the outside, hoping you're doing
what you should be doing behind closed doors.
Yeah, I'll just. I'll go on record and say the
pay is shit but but the feeling of of of doing the right thing
is good. So they kind of balance out.
The road is tough too. And you wonder.
Why all of these famous people that have millions of dollars
are the most depressed people? Because money can't buy
happiness. No, it can't buy.
Integrity either can it it can't buy.
Integrity, it can't buy time. You know, it's like the old,
the, the, the analogy. If, if I gave you $1,000,000,
would that make you happy? You would say, yeah.
And I'd say, well, how about I give you $100 million?
Would that help you out? You'd say, yeah, but what if I
said I'll give you $100 million? What that means your life ends
in two weeks. Would you take that deal?
Nobody takes it. Nobody takes that deal because
time is way more important than money and, and, and so is
integrity and being able to look at yourself in the mirror.
So people, just please understand how, how deep and how
meaningful that analogy is, man. And, and, and take it to heart
and, and start doing the right thing.
And you know what the right thing is.
And I promise you'll, you'll feel much better about yourself.
You might have a smaller banker bank, smaller bank account, but
you'll sleep so much more soundly at night.
You won't need that CPAP machine, I promise you.
So good. You got a friend here, Matt.
I appreciate you spending all this time with me.
Thanks for working through the exciting power outage we just
had, which was fun too. And yeah, I'm glad HRT.
Didn't Buster your door, man? I thought that man, me, you and.
Me both. Like you say, you sleep more
soundly, except when you start thinking about the tactical team
that might be prepping to come through your tort.
That doesn't make you sleep soundly at all.
Thanks I. Appreciate that brother, and
hopefully we will have the chance to get together in
person, man, and I hope so too, yeah.
Yeah, open, open line of communication.
You reach out anytime I can help you and same I'll do the same.
Sounds good all. Right, thank you, brother.
All right, buddy, have. A good one.
And that's the Sunday sit down with Matt Strickland, a true
suspendable friend. I didn't know that we were going
to have so much in common. I love finding out that there
are people out there that have the same ideas, they saw the
same things that many of you did that I did, and they made the
same decisions and many of us did as well.
Which is that? What is it worth if you can't
look your kids in the eye and be honest and proud of your actions
and know that you at least took the fight to the enemy where
they were when they came at your door and you didn't cower and
wait and hope that somebody would come and save you?
It's a good message. It's as good as any for Memorial
Day. God bless you guys want to check
out the show You'd always do so during the regular weekday
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So that's it for me today. I hope you guys have a peaceful
and thought provoking and and a joyous Memorial Day because
those who allow something and left it all in the field out
there. All the people I know.
That serve this country. They wanted you to be able to
enjoy it. Remember them, but also
celebrate your families that you're still there with.
All right, God bless. See you again on Monday.
On Memorial Day proper, we'll do something special.
Thank you for listening. To the Kyle Seraphin Show,
streamed live weekdays on rumble.com/kyle Seraphin.
Follow Kyle on Twitter, True Social and Instagram at Kyle
Seraphin.