is a man of controversy and. he came to an event of mine last night night and he spoke about his fight in the military. there were two things that struck me about everything that we talked about last night. number one, he never needed to spin the story. he never needed to change the facts. he never needed make it personal. he would have the moral courage to stand up and do the right thing because it was right thing. and when they hit him, he got back up. now, you would. i would think that's enough. but when they hit him again, he got right up. and when they told him he'd lose his career, he kept right on going. when they told he would go to jail, he got right on in there. he said, bring it on. seven days a week, 24 hours a day. i'm right here. let's go. we've got this thing. this stuck with me is when somebody me, was it worth it? and you gave the humble answer i've ever heard in my life. it was the truth. and the truth. i don't know yet, because i can't see it. i'm stuck down at the bottom, man what a struggle. what a testament to that sacrifice. i'm still down at the bottom, climbing my way out. let me tell you something. it's going to be worth it. and know why? because my kids get to at you and they get to see man who did the right thing because it the right thing. it's what billy graham always talked about. i'm using billy graham because grew up with my grandfather. okay? so don't it against me. that's never. billy graham used to say there was a great thing or a great man ever came without a great sacrifice. you have made a great sacrifice for our nation and you might not see it today. you might not see it tomorrow. you might not see it next week. but your children, your son son. they're standing up for excuse me, i i'm just saying what they're all thinking, you know, your children, your sons will look up at you and they will know that a man stood up, that a father that a father stood up and did the right thing and set right example and for the rest of your life if you never get a thank you from f jamie if never get a thank you you will have love and their respect and you will have the respect of me and my family and my. you are true and a patriot and we can't wait. hear your story. so let me get out of the way. all right. just one more thing before i go. matt strickland steve, would you come right on up? me just for one more second. and let me tell you right now, this is the moral majority looks. stu come on up here, man this is what moral courage like. you don't win. we don't fight. we don't get out of that foxhole. we don't climb out of the bottom of that pit without you. so we need you in 2023. we need you in 2024. we everything you've got because we've got work to do in virginia. let's go get them mad and tell everybody. how wrong they that. i told you these are good. and we're going to go to richmond it's and stuff folks all right folks i know i just finished stu's book a couple days ago and i wanted to talk about couple of things real quick. they hit me very hard when i read his book because i went through a similar as you guys know that he did. he wrote the book that he set in his office and something told to make that video. and he didn't post the video from, his office, he drove home on a 30 minute drive thinking, should he post this video? because he had no idea what the effects were to come after that he about in the book, how he paced in front of his house before he walked in thinking about shooting his post on that video and figured how it might affect him and how it might affect his family in the future. this man was at 17 years for his military. he was a lieutenant colonel. all he had to do is three more years and man would have been paid a retirement lieutenant colonel level for the rest of life. and now to give that up when somebody gives something like that up just because of his moral courage man, you got to listen to him at the very least. and i went through a similar situation right here at gourmeltz when i made my sitting in the car, i wrestled with the with the decision should i hit post on that or not because my wife and i, we had no idea what would happen. i hit post. we had no if anybody was going to be here supporting us or if everybody the community felt like a piece, cotton actually protected them from virus and we would get no business anymore and everything that we worked our whole life for would be gone. but the reason why stu hit the post is this, and i know why his post because it's the same reason why i hate post because there was something bigger than something bigger that his something bigger than gourmeltz something bigger than money that was telling us if you don't hit post, who will you. and we've already the answer to that the answer to that is nobody will. so the reason we hit post is to start a revolution of folks and i think guys see the proof in the pudding that revolution started and there's a few reasons we hit post one. there's an excerpt from his book that i want to read real quick. stu said this stu is the battalion commander at the advanced age inventories group. he was a battalion folks, and this is in his book. so when you it you'll see the steps. and it hit me hard. one of the instructors at the infantry school said to stu after he made that video, sir, i agree with your comments. but these statements can the battalion it could used against this by our enemies now how can anything that he put in the book used against our enemies. you know it can be against us by our enemies the lack of leadership that we have right now the military. that's what could be used against us. but soon response to that is what really hit me. and stu said to him in reply if i see your leaders can address our internal, then we shouldn't be talking about our enemies. and the reason that hit me hard is because that's exactly what's going on right here in america right now. all of these people that run around and tell us how conservative they are and how big of a patriot they are, they get our votes, time, the election around and then they forget who the hell we are. so that's the reason why i'm running for state senate because listen, vote if we can't clean our house, how are we going to go to somebody else's house and tell them their houses? well, we have roaches running around in our house. so before you criticize anybody, you've got to make sure that just up the street and that your house is clean, folks, i can't tell you how much i love man right here. for the first time, i met a man i the bromance is real, man. love this man for all the courage that he has shown this man. and i am proud to call steve brother. so what i want to do, guys and this is after stu said a few words, we're going to have a quick q&a. so anybody that would like to ask ameriquest audience just raise your hand and i'll bring a mic over to you, ask him a question, and he'll answer it. and i know he will because stu's just like myself. any question guys throw at us will answer you. not like the answer, but we'll answer it. we promise you that. so vote is my pleasure to introduce to you somebody that will go as one of the biggest american in the history of american stuart scheller. thank you. so there's a lot going on here after what just was said is one thing i want to say, this is matt and put me up to this and just for everyone's context, i'll go through my story in a second. right now i'm on a book tour. i'm on a book tour through christmas and then i got to figure out i want to be when i grow up, i have people that are trying to get me into politics right now. the races are trying to push me into the u.s. senate out of ohio. and i don't i don't know. i don't know if i want to be a politician. the words that are being used here right now patriot my platform is about courage. governor youngkin we were all very happy. see, you get elected. you're potentially a presidential candidate. you've stood this restaurant and made promises. my platform is about courage. i expect you to do the right thing. i know that preference so. my name is stu. i was a lieutenant colonel. 17 years infantry officer and run run. i was an advanced infantry training battalion. and exactly mean i won't i won't repeat everything matthew said. but i got to a point in my career where i saw a list of decisions that were made that were unacceptable. and everyone that works in a bureau ocracy, you see things that happen the time through action aren't congruent with the mission statement or beliefs, and you don't go around and point every single one of them out, right? otherwise you wouldn't make it very far. so i didn't wasn't a sitting battalion commander by pointing out every every time there was an injustice and i was only three years to the end of my career. but i just got to a point where was i couldn't put my head head down and be complacent and i'm going to go through this list real and then i'll kind of bring it back to this moral in my story. but afghanistan one april, president biden told general mackenzie, i want you to go from 2500 down to 650 troops. general mackenzie could have pushed back. he chose not to. he may disagreed with it, but he didn't resign. and he accepted the restraints of the plan. we conducted that operation in from april to september. anyone that's ever been to afghanistan knows that's the peak fighting season. we have what we call a spring fighting season because the taliban hides in the in the winter. the reason we risked american lives and treasure was because of a -- september date and our general wasn't brave enough to push back. and our president wasn't wise enough to take the council. so we continue to execute in the military investigation, which was sent to me by my peers who were also just as frustrated, it outlines. so we're conducting the withdrawal right? we're dropping down concurrently. we assign a one star general to plan to evacuate as if be prepared to separate mission. this is the department state. this is the department of defense in dc planning. it. they planned on using bagram air base until the third week of june. this is in the investigation. all of a sudden on the third week of june, general mackenzie said, you know what, 650 is not enough to hold the embassy and the airfield. so we're going to pull bagram off that the planners to reset entire plan. three months of planning lost terrible decision. but what's worse is the indecisive this which not one congress member asked about in the congressional testimony not. one interviewer since mackenzie has got into the news on msnbc or morning joe. ask the question hey in the military investigate united states you didn't decide to pull bagram the third week of june. why were you so indecisive? that would be a great question ask so we make that decision we leave bagram on one july. we leave 7000 prisoners in the prison. just leave them in. the taliban walks in on ten august and opposes release as the 7000 prisoners, which the way is a much larger force than. we ended up responding in complete force with ten august. now general mackenzie realizes thing is going bad. he throws two marine battalions in the 82nd airborne 5000 troops. so we from 2500 to 650 up to 5000 on 15 august. that's the pictures where you see all the civilians holding on to the airplanes. the taliban surrounded the airfield, pushed all the civilians on the airfield and use them as cover, as they got into firefights with the marines. marines killed six or seven people. we don't talk about it. that same day, general is in doha negotiates basically surrender with the taliban. they our external security. he talk about the firefights he calls them critical partner. then the taliban, a suicide bomber through the checkpoint, probably came from the prison. we'll never know. 13 service members injures, 20 more, hundreds afghanis at the gate killed. and then in response to that, we conduct a drone strike and kill nothing but women and children. and then we stand in front of everyone, say it was an overwhelming success. ladies and gentlemen there is no better list of overwhelming failure than. those list of decisions, bottom line. and for us to not hold senior military leader accountable is criminal. so some of that information came out to me after the fact, like the investigation. the investigation, if you go back and watch the news was presented just like the reporter lester holt, i think is his name. and he interviewed president biden when that military investigation came out and president biden said, president biden said, i reject conclusions in that. you know, lester holt trying to be like somewhat of a journalist says well can tell us what part specifically you reject and he said i reject it and that was it. there was no other logical explanation and we have never since gone back and talked about it and it's like just look away, pretend like it's not happening. so sitting in my office i made a social media go back and watch. i stated i knew i was willing to risk my job, my retirement, my family stability. i understood what i was doing. the next day i was fired immediately. i was bullied and i had a choice i could lick my wounds, apologize back. i fully believe the marine corps would have let me go to retirement. so they would have. what they told me was you could go to quantico you can hide in a cubicle and make powerpoints will take care of you. you don't have you have mental health problems right you i know you're saying you don't but you got mental problems, right? right. so i could have done that or the option was to apply pressure in attack. right. and obviously i took the second the second course of action. and so i just i'm all in like i believe in what i'm saying. i'm not backing away from it. i joined the marine corps not be a career officer or to have a retirement, but to leave a better america for my children. and that's what my guiding belief was as i was doing so, i continue making statements and. then this is where like, you know, people ask me like do you regret anything? would you have done things differently. so at that point, i mean, i'm just released. they can't keep up. i'm like dropping content and, you know, was i conduct unbecoming, gentleman? yes. did i violate the social media policy? yes. was i ever charged with the false official statement? no right. and know as this thing kind of escalated, there was a mistakes i made, like like imagine watching a game tape. the day after the game and a team being like. no, we executed every block perfectly. you played that well. you hit that screen like no way. but it seems people to watch an ordeal like this where your whole life is on the line but now remember remember that one time you said the one thing it's like you're guarding the rules of the feelings. i mean, i just gave you that list of the afghanistan evacuation. if you're sitting here quoting me, the rules of that organization and protecting that we haven't won a war since world war two, we keep repeating the mistakes we mean. people that are smart enough to figure out when to apply moral courage and break the rules. yeah. so, i mean, after i after i applying pressure, i had to my mental health checks, they forced me to go a mental health violation trying to get me admitted the doctor was cool with me out then it was weird for me and my boss and then i got in prison and i ended up resigning short of my retirement. but one of the thing i want to talk about, we talk about courage, politicians. when i went to jail you know if you my book it's all in there but i put in there i'll see you monday at eight ready to go to jail. i essentially set somewhat of a trap. the reason i did that is because the were testifying to the house armed forces committee respectively on a tuesday, wednesday. and i lay that on the book and so i felt if i was put in jail, it would apply pressure on the congressional testimony. and it worked. when you're in solitary confinement, you get like one hour for tv time and that i got to see myself being talked about in the congressional testimony, which was pretty wild. but here's where got frustrated. i overestimated congress ability. if you go back and watch the panels politically soundbites, anger, soundbites anger, the american people are upset. why you do this? why do you do this? what is congress is control over the d.o.d. it's the budget. it is the dod budget. that is their one lever of control. and they all know that. not in the news during all those like i'm angry they approved a $750 billion dod budget and now one congressional representative said, hey, you want 750 billion? you just left 80 in afghanistan. how do take that off the top and tell you, you know, three names that are not right. it is common sense. and the reason they don't do is because if i congressman stuart scheller from the second district of ohio as a representative votes no on the 700 billion that everyone's going to be like he hates veterans. i think he's anti-military. right. and no one will. you'll read the headline. so they're so scared in terms of self-preservation that they don't do what we as the american people need them to do. it's the same. all the promises the current attorney general and were made to matt and now are not following through because there's risk i just got into an argument with a congressman in vegas a popular one i won't drop his name but i said the thing like you you mentioned my name and then when i got controversial you were nowhere be found and. no i'm not gonna do that all right. i'm in enough trouble with this situation. i'm just saying, i see these people, and i just it drives me crazy. so, anyway, now what i'm doing is i'm going around promoting my book. mean good people, supporting good people where i can and like i said, i've figured out what i want to do when i grow up. but that's that's me in a nutshell and i will answer questions now. so usually we do this question. answer will, steer each other for like 20 seconds, then somebody a question and then we get rolling. we got a question. there it is such a. could you just john, want me to just wondering since you brought up the budget and exorbitant of money that we spend on defense appropriations every year we just was in the news. there's another 40 million that we're giving to either ukraine or of the other nations that fighting that war where where what can be done to stop this spending when we have all the challenges here in the united states. you've got people suffering from a of problems and we're just throwing money away and a needless war that's i mean that's a big question so what happens is there's never a let's say it's never the best answer. well i guess you have two choices. the let's closest is the ukraine russia situation. everyone wants to protect a democracy in ukraine. right. but it's at what cost and that answering question comes with the leadership. you need leaders to make tough decisions because. i agree with you. our spending is out of control. so the simple answer to your question is you need leadership that understand the bigger is in. i mean, now right now. russia aggressed because of the threat of neda. right. i think putin has an antiquated mindset. he still has this old soviet style thinking that land equals more power in today's society that's not actually relevant. it's shaping the beliefs of the people. and so his actions is i mean, look at finland, look at sweden have actually probably done the opposite of what he was trying to achieve but is almost a separate issue from. united states is naito presidents my opinion is it's way too robust. we have crippled our nato partners. no better example than germany with this, you know, through trying to then only provide 3% of their gdp. if i was the president tomorrow i would call our nato forces and put them on the southern the southern border would be solved. you wouldn't even need to build a wall and then you would force our european partners to stand up. right. that would require a lot of courage. now, there's know there's some risk in that. what i just said, there's a lot of intelligent people that can talk how that might destabilize the area. and you can have this conversation. but right now, the presence in is too robust. but we couldn't keep 2500 troops and afghanistan there's hundreds of thousands across. europe right now, it's crazy. all right. next question. we got we got a question that came from all we need is somewhere somebody asked this for you soup. did you think it was the founding fathers in ten for a military in the united states of america? the development is something that the people are actually afraid of now. so this is a complicated because there is no if you read our foundational documents, it's a it's a force in pursuit of our domestic defense. what happened was world war one, woodrow wilson in, his 14th speech, he outlined something that talked about america's obligation in the foreign diplomacy stage. so we got involved in the end of world war one. then in world war two, we literally built this thing, the national security establishment as we know it today from the ground up and world war two is the national security act of 44, 47, 50. and then after vietnam it was the goldwater-nichols act and this thing that has evolved really came out of starting with woodrow wilson. and it's a very recent phenomenon. if read my book, my last point is we need legislation to update the goldwater-nichols. it's antiquated. it doesn't. and after vietnam, instead of you, vietnam, in my opinion, was a loss. i define a loss by not achieving the political objectives set forth. we didn't any generals accountable. and so the smart people did is they decided the services weren't fighting well together they're going to create a joint and they're going to create these combatant commands and they split the globe up. that combatant command is what mckinsey in charge of which is a product of the goldwater-nichols act. so the takeaway is following the losses in vietnam instead of holding general officers accountable we further empower them with the goldwater-nichols legislation and so obviously the same mistakes are happening if we're not holding those people accountable. so you know, it's a complicated problem, but it is solvable with the right secretary defense. and you know we just haven't had one of those yet. after world war one, there was a guy named marshall. he came in and he cleaned house of old style thinking officers. and that allowed people like eisenhower to ascend, ultimately leading our victory in world war two. so we a marshall right now in my opinion. all right. next question. all right. what would you do for the guy that i told you was the only local representative to reach out to me? jacob lanier, ladies and gentlemen. that is the. one our support help we're giving ukraine. keep pumping money into them. and if you support donald trump, i don't try to understand. what they do. i said, do you support you support the efforts going on in ukraine because we're coming too much money into germany and do you support donald and you support donald trump? i support yeah. right. so there are two very negative questions. i so far, the first one i so as i started, i think the united states needs to protect democracies around the world but not at the cost of what we're doing now. so i think lot of what we're doing is this misguided and i would dramatically scale back to support. we've been giving the ukrainian people. i mean, the current leader of ukraine. so i was part of the israeli-lebanese war in 2006. israel was a much larger force, had much arm, armament and, hezbollah through tunnels and anti systems, really gave it to the israelis hard because they had prepared for it. and ukraine i mean, this thing has been developing since 14 and there's not a single tunnel, there's not a single preparation. they were completely unprepared. and so we to hear realize them a lot but from a military standpoint they dropped ball in a lot of ways. and so i'm not necessarily sure that's completely responsibility. now, there's a whole nuclear aspect. this, too, i don't agree with elon musk that putin is irrational. i think he's very rational now, when you get to nuclear war, that's something that we have to be concerned about, we can't turn a blind to it. but i think he is very aggressive. so that's my my my answer on ukraine, do i support donald trump? i think donald has had a lot of great policies. i him that he had great character. so my story of donald trump is when a bet post i told about when i was going to jail, i criticized the last five presidents and i said my book if i put it in the book and donald trump was one of them. well the media only ran the stories about president trump. i said that president obama was weak. right. but there was not a single article written about it. right. i said president clinton was weak and single out. so because i mentioned trump, i became all of a sudden this anti maga target. and that wasn't my intention. my intention was just to say the whole system was failing. and president trump called one of my friends and said, i'm going to speak against stu. and they talked him off the ledge and he didn't. and so then i wrote a thinking that, you know, i don't know him personally. i think his foreign policy was on point. well he run again. you know, i'd like to him run. that's my answer to that. anybody got a question now. okay. so what will it take to the stage and where do you go? right. we go right down the middle. we'll send a letter and saudi twitter would love get a picture of your brother. and we're going to run out of money all the time he goes. we good. good evening. good evening and welcome. the enoch pratt free library. my name is vivian fisher and i am deputy chief of the pratt