April 8, 2024 • 25 mins
In this conversation, Kurt Schlichter discusses his book 'The Attack' and the vulnerabilities and risks faced by the United States. He highlights the decline of the military and the lack of accountability in the ruling class. The conversation also explores the need to reestablish normality and address cultural problems. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Over the weekend, my husband and I celebrated our fifteen
year anniversary five years ago. On our ten year anniversary,
I tweeted a thread about where my life was before
I got together with my husband and how fast it
turned around. I'll read it to you so on my
(00:26):
tenure wedding anniversary today. I want to do this thread
in case it helps anyone going through a bad time.
I'm forty one. I got married at thirty one on
my thirtieth birthday. My life was a total disaster. I
was at the tail end of a seven year relationship
with a really great person for whom I was ill suited.
I wasn't working, and I had no idea in what
(00:47):
direction to take my career. I was in debt for
the first time in my life because I made the
mistake of going to grad school yet continued to live
like I had the same high paying job I had before.
I was a pharmaceutical legal straight out of college, which
paid well, but I quit that to follow my passion
into politics. I was in a dark place. I'm an
(01:08):
optimistic person, but I had a hard time seeing my
life improving. I wasn't suicidal. I don't want to minimize
people in real darkness, but I was completely adrift. I
was drinking a lot daily, and my friend Tom Elliott
kept asking why I'd always drag him to bars with
homeless people asleep in the corner. I didn't want to
be around functioning, normal thirty year olds because I was
(01:30):
so off the path, and also those bars never really close,
so four am would come and go and I'd still
be out. I'd sleep till five pm regularly. My husband
was actually my best friend. That's not just something we say.
He was the main voice, along with my brother, who
would reason with me to get my shit together. But
it's so much easier not to seriously when you ain't
(01:53):
got nothing, you ain't got nothing to lose, which is
just so true. I don't have a secret sauce for
how things got better, But the summer of my thirtieth year,
I slowly started to pull myself together. I got a
consulting job, I spent more time with my now husband,
I went outside during the day. That's a big one.
It turns out I took better care of myself. After
(02:14):
some false starts, my husband and I got together for
real that Thanksgiving. We were engaged in September and married
the next April. Sometime I'll do a thread about what
went right in my career after we got married. I
had to fix myself before I could be with him seriously,
and then just being with the right person went such
a long way toward making everything else fall into place.
(02:34):
He knew all my faults and they were okay. My
big point is that everything seemed hopeless, really hopeless, and
then a year later I was at the start of
the best decade of my life. It can turn around
so quickly. Don't give up on yourself, don't wallow. Acknowledge
you're in a bad place, and work to get yourself
to a better one. I believe in you. So five
(02:55):
years later, I think about that thread and I reposted
for people who might be going through a hard time,
and look that thread. It's honest, But really it was
far worse than it sounds. I broke up with a
good guy because he wasn't the one for me, and
that's way harder than breaking up with a jerk who
treats you badly. Career wise, I was feeling that I
(03:17):
had made a huge mistake going into politics. I wasn't
a writer yet, not really. I had a blog and
I made a tiny bit of money from it, but
I had no idea that I could even be doing
what I'm doing now, and I retreated further and further
from my normal and successful friends. My husband was my
best friend, and when I say that, I mean that
(03:38):
whenever I met a nice girl, I would try to
set him up with her. He was worried about me,
and it showed in so many ways. But my point
here is not that life can be bad or hard,
and it's only partially the amazing things that can happen
to you if you're in the right relationship. It's that
it all can turn around very quickly. If you're in
a bad place, don't give up. Make incremental changes, small steps,
(04:03):
leave the house, talk to people who love you. There's
a light at the end of the darkness, even if
it's not obvious to you. Right now, my light was
brighter than I could have ever imagined. Coming up next,
an interview with Kurt Slifter. Join us after the break.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Kurt Slichter. Senior columnist at Townhall dot com,
retired Army colonel, lawyer.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
And author of The Attack. Hi, Kurt, it's.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Nice to have you on here.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
So the attack.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Scared the living Bejesus out of me, so we could
start there.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Why did you.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Do that to me? And tell me about this? The
book came out in January. First of all, it came
out in January?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Is that right?
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Yes, I saw the attack on ten to seven. I
immediately recognized the vulnerability here. I started talking with folks
at Regnory, and on October tenth, I started writing it.
On November twenty nine, fish it Wow. Unfortunately Regnory went
(05:14):
away as an imprint, But I did what I did
with my Kelly Turnbol People's Republic novels. I got it
out very quickly on using Amazon as my distribution platform,
and by January seventh it was out and it has
been selling like hotcakes and scaring the hell out of
(05:35):
people ever since, which is exactly what it was intended.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So can you tell us a little bit about the book?
What was your you know, what was a thinking behind it?
And you obviously have experience in this world. In fact,
you often write about kind of military topics and also
very scary stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
We'll get into that, but tell us about the book.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Well, the book is a novel I could have done
as nonfiction, but I don't think that would have punched
people in the gut the way they need to. Essentially,
imagine a ten to seven attack here in the United
States with except exponentially larger because we have a wide
open border and a you know, an intelligence and law
(06:19):
enforcement community that's more focused on arresting people for walking
through the rotunda, taking selfies or praying at abortion clinics
than protecting us from mass murderers. And we've seen you
know you. Every time there's one of these psychos with
a rifle, you know he's been on the FBI's radar.
(06:40):
It's shocking. I took a look at events like the
Boston incident, where you had a couple of idiots with
pipe bombs and a couple of handguns and they managed
to shut down an entire city. Imagine thousands of guys
with minimal training, simple weaponry, and simple instructions going on
(07:04):
a rampage. And this talks about the rampage from the
points of view of many different individuals. The way I
did that, I couldn't have like one character Forrest gumping
his way from the White House to a city street
where a bunch of psychos are killing people. So it's
about forty little vignettes of people telling what happened. If
(07:30):
you remember World War Z or World War three for
that matter, the old John Hackett book from the eighties
that really scared the hell out of people about the
Warsaw Pact. I use that style. I think it was
pretty effective. It has been scaring the hell out of people,
and that's what it's supposed to be doing, because we're
(07:50):
in a lot of danger. We are at risk because
we default to a peaceful and secure society, but we're
unwilling to do the things that were fire. They're required
to maintain a peaceful and secure society, and much of
what we do is frivolous and stupid. Much of what
we do is self defeating, you know. I think if
(08:16):
you look at our vulnerabilities, particularly the kind of people
who watch an MSNBC are particularly vulnerable because very few
of them are armed, you realize that as individuals we
are vulnerable, and as individuals we need to be able
to fight back, but we also need to be fight
(08:36):
back as a country, and this talks about all of
that from the perspectives of men and women, law enforcement,
regular civilians, government officials, bad guys as well, including homegrown
anti fought type terrorists who I think is to be
a willing part of this sort of thing. So it's suck.
(08:59):
It's a scary book, okay, And it's selling very well,
which I appreciate. I hope people listen.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I hope they do too.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I have to say that the thing that helps me
kind of sleep at night when I think about this
kind of stuff is that it hasn't happened yet. And
what do you say to that, the fact that we
haven't had any kind of attack like that yet, and
our border has been wide open for a while, and
we do have people across the world that hate.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Us, Why do you think it hasn't happened, You.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Know, Carol, I'm often stunned about how our enemies missopportunities.
We like to think there are enemies. Are these ern
stavros Blofeld, the volcano layer guys stroking the task, these
geniuses who can put all the pieces together. It's important
not to underestimate them. It's also important to be realistic.
(09:46):
A lot of them are kind of stupid. In fact,
as the book points out, a lot of the foot
soldiers in these things are stupid people, dumb people, people
in no future, who get sucked into these things and
do horrible, horrible things at the behest of much smarter people.
I see them missing a lot of opportunities I have
(10:06):
always looked at, for instance, on a different level, President
g not moving to take Taiwan. I mean, you know,
it would be an audacious move. I'm not sure we
could stop it, and I kind of wonder why not.
I don't think it's the goodness of their heart. I
just don't think they're as unbelievably talented as we sometimes
(10:33):
make our enemies out to be.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You write and tweet a lot about our military largely
falling apart. You do you feel like that that is fixable.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
I have a town hall column that'll run on March
seventh about that very subject, with a lot of focus
on the frivolous trans idiocy. I mean, when you have
a full colonel coming up, who is a man pretending
to be a woman addressing other officers, that's not a
(11:04):
serious military and I might give a little more leeway
to these kind of social fads. If we had unequivocally
won a major war in the last thirty years, which
we have not done. I was there the last time
we did. I was there at Desert Storm. I was
in the seventh Core main command post, and we achieved
(11:25):
a victory on par with Hannibal or Julius Caesar. We
destroyed what thirty six divisions and one hundred hours. It's unbelievable,
just unbelievable. And since people know, I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Going to drop that line by the way to my
history loving son, because I don't know anything, so I'm
going to be like, you know, it was a victory
on par with Hannibal and Julius Cesar.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
It absolutely was. And if you're right, we could do
a deep dive in a Hannibal at CANi, but we
don't need to do that. The simple fact is we
had the most You know, there are legendary military forces
throughout history, and the American military of nineteen ninety one
would have to be in the top ten of any
(12:07):
serious list, you know, with the Mongols, with Hannibal's army
in Italy, with a Julius Caesar and Gaul. It's just
it was a pinnacle, and as for so many as
with so many things, we took it for granted. My
theory is, you know, we're being run by the third generation,
(12:31):
right Like you look at the Fords, and you know,
Henry Ford had a lot of issues. He was a
jerk in personal life. He was also a genius who
revolutionized manufacturing and he built a giant empire. And the
second generation of Fords took that and made it even
bigger than you know, they brought us the Mustang. I mean,
it's just Ford is a multinational corporation, just a huge achievement.
(12:56):
Name me a third generation four. It's like naming me
naming a third generation Kennedy. Okay, you want to meet
one of them. You know they're they're there, Toyota Corolla
is idling in front of a crack house.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Okay, do we just get too comfortable?
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Is that we had what we are? We are run
by trust fund babies. Our institutions were not built by
the people who run them. They were not uh they
didn't suffer, they didn't put any sweat equity in. They
were handed them these institutions thanks to their credentials. You
went to Harvard, great you're now qualified. So look at
(13:33):
I mean, generationally, look at it. The World War two
generation beat beat Hitler, beat the depression, the next generation,
you know, civil rights built America into a superpower. And
the third generation, what's it got? Only fans and the grinder. Okay,
I mean the the the people who run our institutions
(13:53):
right now are not running the institutions to have the
institutions do what the institutions are supposed to do. It's
pursue their own personal agendas. The thing about institutions is
the institutions have to actually perform their function or they
lose all credibility. So if you look what's what's the
institution that works today is at academia? No? Is it
(14:15):
the media? No? You know? Is it the military? No?
You you you look at polls in.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Health care agencies no.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
And uh and they and the credibility uh uh just shrinks.
So these people are simply defending sinecures rather than actually
doing jobs. So we are run by cultural trust fund
babies who are not accomplished people. They're not particularly right,
they're not particularly good at their job. This is why
(14:47):
we have a war on accountability. You know, I mean,
there is nothing our ruling class hates more than being
held responsible. And look, I've got some issues with Donald Trump,
but Donald Trump is accountability in the sense that he
was elected because you guys suck and and nobody nobody about. Yeah,
(15:07):
nobody exemplifies that better than Hillary Clinton, who he beat.
Hillary Clinton is a unaccomplished, not particularly bright woman. She
failed the District of Columbia bar exam for God's sake.
I mean, she had a pulse and everything. How do
you do that? She's she's no genius. She got went
to the right school and married the right guy, and
(15:30):
that that's that's who she is. But that's emblematic of
our ruling class. They you know, they get they get
hand to a silver spoon and then imagine that they
somehow mine the ore. But they didn't. And they're terrible
and they're only concerned with maintaining their power. That's what
aar democracy is. It's not art democracy, it's their sinecures.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
What would you say is our largest cultural problem, Like,
what do you think we need to tackle first?
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Basically, Uh, there's so many. I I think we have
to re establish normality in the sense that it's the
normality that I grew up with. I'm not sure whether
you were here during the seventies or eighties, but that was. Yeah,
there was a sense right that kings worked one perfect
(16:19):
you know. I mean there were there were problems, there
are always problems, but there was a sense that, you know,
justice is kind of going to prevail, you know, the economies,
we're going to get through it. I'm going to be
better off than my parents were. You know, I can
generally walk the streets safely. I'm not going to get
arrested for saying something. Government's not going to stop me
(16:40):
from saying something. And none of that's true today, none
of that's none of that's something we can rely on.
We have to get back to that, and that means
reorienting our ruling class, because there's always a ruling class,
and I am hoping that we don't have to completely
(17:02):
fail before we have a reform move. But right, you know,
the the old thing about weak men make hard times.
You know, hard men make good times. Good times make
weak men. I mean, there is a cycle to history,
(17:22):
and I just you know, I don't want to run
out my personal life clock on the downslope of the
Bell curve. But here we are.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, you're still in California.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
That's a surprise. I do have you just want to
be the last one to turn out the lake.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Literally, I literally have one or two conservative friends left here.
There used to be a vibrant community when Andrew Breitbart
was here, a lot of people and they're all gone.
The people in California are not the communists, not the
welfare cheats, not the losers, not the Chardonnay soaked wine moms.
(18:04):
It's people like me and I am. I'm going to
be spending more and more time in Texas. Yes, Arena
wants us to get a third place in Florida.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I love her.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I watch it too. I love Florida. If there wasn't
family in Texas, I got the only Manbin family that's
not in Miami. But no, you know, I got here
in seventy two, and you could feel, even as a
little kid, I could feel the excitement. It was a
beautiful place.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
I used to love California. I mean I loved it.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
It was a governor. He there was always a sense
and I never didn't have this sense that I could
do whatever I want to do. I went to school
at uc San Diego, went off to the Army for
four years. But I came back and I went to
Los Angeles. Now I grew up near San Francisco, and
then I went to school in sandiw but I'd never
been to Los Angeles, and I knew Los Angeles was
(19:01):
a place you go to do what you want to do.
And you know care I was able to make it.
I built a law of firm. I was a stand
up comic. I became a best selling author. You know,
I built a family. I did all these things that
I wanted to do, and it never occurred to me
I couldn't. But we have a whole generation to young
people now who only see limitations, They only see constraints,
(19:26):
and that's not what California is supposed to be. It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 4 (19:31):
I know, I feel like I have a lot of
things that I want to do, but I'm not. I
don't feel like I've missed something. I feel like I've
always been an optimistic California kind of old time California person.
I'm looking to the future, going there's all these neat
things I can do. You know, what are you thinking?
Speaker 3 (19:52):
What do you what are you gonna do tell us.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Maybe I'll write a movie. Maybe I'll start another company.
I'm certainly gonna write more books. Who knows. Maybe I'll
get a radio show. I'm a guest host for Hugh
Hewitt tomorrow. I mean, I's some suburban kid from California, right,
and I'm going to talk to two million people for
three hours tomorrow morning.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
That's amazing. Yeah, I'm not special.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
I'm not particularly I'm not an idiot, but I'm not
a genius. I just I just don't think there are
any limits out there. And I want other people to
get that too, Because I'm excited about tomorrow. I always have.
It's like, what's going to happen next? I mean, what
(20:39):
cool thing do we do now?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
I've seen you excited about rain, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I remember that you and Arena were in Florida and
it was raining outside and you both ran toward it
like it's so cool. But then you guys got a
lot of rain in California, like right after that.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I feel like, but in.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
How we should all be excited about all the new
things that can happen, all the things you can do.
I watch people who spend their lives on video games.
Or you know, on the internet all the time. And
I'm on the Internet a lot, but I'm enjoying and
I'm learning new things and doing things. I look at
Twitter as my Sudoku. It's a you know, can I
(21:22):
be funny? Can I be clever? Can I be pippy?
And there's just so many There's so many neat things,
and I just want to do them now. Sometimes I
just want to chill. That's okay. I love my routine.
I have my favorite restaurants and everything. But I think
I'm essentially excited about life, and I don't like that
(21:43):
the younger generation doesn't seem to feel that way because
they've been told they can't and that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
How do you challenge that with your own kids?
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Oh gosh, Well, they're teenagers, so they don't talk to me.
They're finding their way in the world, doing interesting things
and not the things that I did, not that not
not necessarily the past that I've taken. But uh, you know,
there's there's a world out there and they've you know,
they they've got some of I don't, which is youth.
(22:14):
They got they got this whole future ahead of me.
It's very exciting.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What would you be
doing if you weren't in the media or a lawyer world?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
What would be a plan be?
Speaker 4 (22:30):
I don't know. Yeah, there's so many things. I could
have stayed in the military and tried to do some
cool stuff there. I mean, I was in the reserves
for Rocco, stayed active. Uh. I always thought building another
a different kind of business might be interesting. Who knows.
Maybe i'd be a park ranger and take people out
and uh, you know, show them, you know, do the
(22:52):
little uh midnight star watching things. I always enjoyed those.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
I mean, gosh, I like that answer.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Park ranger?
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Why not? I mean, that's just yeah. I have always
promised myself I'm never gonna get in a situation where
I wake up dreading the day on a regular basis. Yes,
I mean as a lawyer. Sometimes I'm like ah in
a deposition. Most of the time I get up, I'm
like Okay, cool another day, yay. And I think people
(23:24):
ought to try strive for that. It's possible, but that
people get being told they can't, and I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
So end here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can improve their lives and be happy,
Like you.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Just go do it. You know a lot of people
are like, how do you find time to write? I
just sit down and do it. If you get learn
to manage your time, time is amazing. As a commander,
I could give you more ammunition, more people, more tanks,
more whatever. I had all that, but I never had
more time. Manage your time wisely, you know, like today
(24:02):
I had about, you know, an hour between what I
was doing and then and then this knocked out a call,
got that much off my trip an hour?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Damn yeah, get it really bad about myself?
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Well, you know I've already written for forty years. I mean,
I hope I could go quick. It's just, you know,
get things done early so that you maximize your freedom.
I try and teach that to my lawyers. You know,
you don't have to throw it over the trance on
the eleven fifty nine. You know, you can do it
(24:36):
two weeks ahead of time, and then you might done.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
My next life, I want to be one of those
people who does it ahead of time and not at
eleven fifty nine and.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
Then oh always, I always do it in advance. Then
you maximize your freedom.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Thank you so much Kurt Schlichter by his new book,
The Attack. It is terrifying, It is fantastic.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
I must read. Thanks so much for coming.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
On, Kirk, Thanks for having me, Thanks so much for
joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Subscribe wherever you
get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Over the weekend, my husband and I celebrated our fifteen
year anniversary five years ago. On our ten year anniversary,
I tweeted a thread about where my life was before
I got together with my husband and how fast it
turned around. I'll read it to you so on my
(00:26):
tenure wedding anniversary today. I want to do this thread
in case it helps anyone going through a bad time.
I'm forty one. I got married at thirty one on
my thirtieth birthday. My life was a total disaster. I
was at the tail end of a seven year relationship
with a really great person for whom I was ill suited.
I wasn't working, and I had no idea in what
(00:47):
direction to take my career. I was in debt for
the first time in my life because I made the
mistake of going to grad school yet continued to live
like I had the same high paying job I had before.
I was a pharmaceutical legal straight out of college, which
paid well, but I quit that to follow my passion
into politics. I was in a dark place. I'm an
(01:08):
optimistic person, but I had a hard time seeing my
life improving. I wasn't suicidal. I don't want to minimize
people in real darkness, but I was completely adrift. I
was drinking a lot daily, and my friend Tom Elliott
kept asking why I'd always drag him to bars with
homeless people asleep in the corner. I didn't want to
be around functioning, normal thirty year olds because I was
(01:30):
so off the path, and also those bars never really close,
so four am would come and go and I'd still
be out. I'd sleep till five pm regularly. My husband
was actually my best friend. That's not just something we say.
He was the main voice, along with my brother, who
would reason with me to get my shit together. But
it's so much easier not to seriously when you ain't
(01:53):
got nothing, you ain't got nothing to lose, which is
just so true. I don't have a secret sauce for
how things got better, But the summer of my thirtieth year,
I slowly started to pull myself together. I got a
consulting job, I spent more time with my now husband,
I went outside during the day. That's a big one.
It turns out I took better care of myself. After
(02:14):
some false starts, my husband and I got together for
real that Thanksgiving. We were engaged in September and married
the next April. Sometime I'll do a thread about what
went right in my career after we got married. I
had to fix myself before I could be with him seriously,
and then just being with the right person went such
a long way toward making everything else fall into place.
(02:34):
He knew all my faults and they were okay. My
big point is that everything seemed hopeless, really hopeless, and
then a year later I was at the start of
the best decade of my life. It can turn around
so quickly. Don't give up on yourself, don't wallow. Acknowledge
you're in a bad place, and work to get yourself
to a better one. I believe in you. So five
(02:55):
years later, I think about that thread and I reposted
for people who might be going through a hard time,
and look that thread. It's honest, But really it was
far worse than it sounds. I broke up with a
good guy because he wasn't the one for me, and
that's way harder than breaking up with a jerk who
treats you badly. Career wise, I was feeling that I
(03:17):
had made a huge mistake going into politics. I wasn't
a writer yet, not really. I had a blog and
I made a tiny bit of money from it, but
I had no idea that I could even be doing
what I'm doing now, and I retreated further and further
from my normal and successful friends. My husband was my
best friend, and when I say that, I mean that
(03:38):
whenever I met a nice girl, I would try to
set him up with her. He was worried about me,
and it showed in so many ways. But my point
here is not that life can be bad or hard,
and it's only partially the amazing things that can happen
to you if you're in the right relationship. It's that
it all can turn around very quickly. If you're in
a bad place, don't give up. Make incremental changes, small steps,
(04:03):
leave the house, talk to people who love you. There's
a light at the end of the darkness, even if
it's not obvious to you. Right now, my light was
brighter than I could have ever imagined. Coming up next,
an interview with Kurt Slifter. Join us after the break.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Kurt Slichter. Senior columnist at Townhall dot com,
retired Army colonel, lawyer.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
And author of The Attack. Hi, Kurt, it's.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Nice to have you on here.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
So the attack.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Scared the living Bejesus out of me, so we could
start there.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Why did you.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Do that to me? And tell me about this? The
book came out in January. First of all, it came
out in January?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Is that right?
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Yes, I saw the attack on ten to seven. I
immediately recognized the vulnerability here. I started talking with folks
at Regnory, and on October tenth, I started writing it.
On November twenty nine, fish it Wow. Unfortunately Regnory went
(05:14):
away as an imprint, But I did what I did
with my Kelly Turnbol People's Republic novels. I got it
out very quickly on using Amazon as my distribution platform,
and by January seventh it was out and it has
been selling like hotcakes and scaring the hell out of
(05:35):
people ever since, which is exactly what it was intended.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So can you tell us a little bit about the book?
What was your you know, what was a thinking behind it?
And you obviously have experience in this world. In fact,
you often write about kind of military topics and also
very scary stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
We'll get into that, but tell us about the book.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Well, the book is a novel I could have done
as nonfiction, but I don't think that would have punched
people in the gut the way they need to. Essentially,
imagine a ten to seven attack here in the United
States with except exponentially larger because we have a wide
open border and a you know, an intelligence and law
(06:19):
enforcement community that's more focused on arresting people for walking
through the rotunda, taking selfies or praying at abortion clinics
than protecting us from mass murderers. And we've seen you
know you. Every time there's one of these psychos with
a rifle, you know he's been on the FBI's radar.
(06:40):
It's shocking. I took a look at events like the
Boston incident, where you had a couple of idiots with
pipe bombs and a couple of handguns and they managed
to shut down an entire city. Imagine thousands of guys
with minimal training, simple weaponry, and simple instructions going on
(07:04):
a rampage. And this talks about the rampage from the
points of view of many different individuals. The way I
did that, I couldn't have like one character Forrest gumping
his way from the White House to a city street
where a bunch of psychos are killing people. So it's
about forty little vignettes of people telling what happened. If
(07:30):
you remember World War Z or World War three for
that matter, the old John Hackett book from the eighties
that really scared the hell out of people about the
Warsaw Pact. I use that style. I think it was
pretty effective. It has been scaring the hell out of people,
and that's what it's supposed to be doing, because we're
(07:50):
in a lot of danger. We are at risk because
we default to a peaceful and secure society, but we're
unwilling to do the things that were fire. They're required
to maintain a peaceful and secure society, and much of
what we do is frivolous and stupid. Much of what
we do is self defeating, you know. I think if
(08:16):
you look at our vulnerabilities, particularly the kind of people
who watch an MSNBC are particularly vulnerable because very few
of them are armed, you realize that as individuals we
are vulnerable, and as individuals we need to be able
to fight back, but we also need to be fight
(08:36):
back as a country, and this talks about all of
that from the perspectives of men and women, law enforcement,
regular civilians, government officials, bad guys as well, including homegrown
anti fought type terrorists who I think is to be
a willing part of this sort of thing. So it's suck.
(08:59):
It's a scary book, okay, And it's selling very well,
which I appreciate. I hope people listen.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I hope they do too.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I have to say that the thing that helps me
kind of sleep at night when I think about this
kind of stuff is that it hasn't happened yet. And
what do you say to that, the fact that we
haven't had any kind of attack like that yet, and
our border has been wide open for a while, and
we do have people across the world that hate.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Us, Why do you think it hasn't happened, You.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Know, Carol, I'm often stunned about how our enemies missopportunities.
We like to think there are enemies. Are these ern
stavros Blofeld, the volcano layer guys stroking the task, these
geniuses who can put all the pieces together. It's important
not to underestimate them. It's also important to be realistic.
(09:46):
A lot of them are kind of stupid. In fact,
as the book points out, a lot of the foot
soldiers in these things are stupid people, dumb people, people
in no future, who get sucked into these things and
do horrible, horrible things at the behest of much smarter people.
I see them missing a lot of opportunities I have
(10:06):
always looked at, for instance, on a different level, President
g not moving to take Taiwan. I mean, you know,
it would be an audacious move. I'm not sure we
could stop it, and I kind of wonder why not.
I don't think it's the goodness of their heart. I
just don't think they're as unbelievably talented as we sometimes
(10:33):
make our enemies out to be.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You write and tweet a lot about our military largely
falling apart. You do you feel like that that is fixable.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
I have a town hall column that'll run on March
seventh about that very subject, with a lot of focus
on the frivolous trans idiocy. I mean, when you have
a full colonel coming up, who is a man pretending
to be a woman addressing other officers, that's not a
(11:04):
serious military and I might give a little more leeway
to these kind of social fads. If we had unequivocally
won a major war in the last thirty years, which
we have not done. I was there the last time
we did. I was there at Desert Storm. I was
in the seventh Core main command post, and we achieved
(11:25):
a victory on par with Hannibal or Julius Caesar. We
destroyed what thirty six divisions and one hundred hours. It's unbelievable,
just unbelievable. And since people know, I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Going to drop that line by the way to my
history loving son, because I don't know anything, so I'm
going to be like, you know, it was a victory
on par with Hannibal and Julius Cesar.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
It absolutely was. And if you're right, we could do
a deep dive in a Hannibal at CANi, but we
don't need to do that. The simple fact is we
had the most You know, there are legendary military forces
throughout history, and the American military of nineteen ninety one
would have to be in the top ten of any
(12:07):
serious list, you know, with the Mongols, with Hannibal's army
in Italy, with a Julius Caesar and Gaul. It's just
it was a pinnacle, and as for so many as
with so many things, we took it for granted. My
theory is, you know, we're being run by the third generation,
(12:31):
right Like you look at the Fords, and you know,
Henry Ford had a lot of issues. He was a
jerk in personal life. He was also a genius who
revolutionized manufacturing and he built a giant empire. And the
second generation of Fords took that and made it even
bigger than you know, they brought us the Mustang. I mean,
it's just Ford is a multinational corporation, just a huge achievement.
(12:56):
Name me a third generation four. It's like naming me
naming a third generation Kennedy. Okay, you want to meet
one of them. You know they're they're there, Toyota Corolla
is idling in front of a crack house.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Okay, do we just get too comfortable?
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Is that we had what we are? We are run
by trust fund babies. Our institutions were not built by
the people who run them. They were not uh they
didn't suffer, they didn't put any sweat equity in. They
were handed them these institutions thanks to their credentials. You
went to Harvard, great you're now qualified. So look at
(13:33):
I mean, generationally, look at it. The World War two
generation beat beat Hitler, beat the depression, the next generation,
you know, civil rights built America into a superpower. And
the third generation, what's it got? Only fans and the grinder. Okay,
I mean the the the people who run our institutions
(13:53):
right now are not running the institutions to have the
institutions do what the institutions are supposed to do. It's
pursue their own personal agendas. The thing about institutions is
the institutions have to actually perform their function or they
lose all credibility. So if you look what's what's the
institution that works today is at academia? No? Is it
(14:15):
the media? No? You know? Is it the military? No?
You you you look at polls in.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Health care agencies no.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
And uh and they and the credibility uh uh just shrinks.
So these people are simply defending sinecures rather than actually
doing jobs. So we are run by cultural trust fund
babies who are not accomplished people. They're not particularly right,
they're not particularly good at their job. This is why
(14:47):
we have a war on accountability. You know, I mean,
there is nothing our ruling class hates more than being
held responsible. And look, I've got some issues with Donald Trump,
but Donald Trump is accountability in the sense that he
was elected because you guys suck and and nobody nobody about. Yeah,
(15:07):
nobody exemplifies that better than Hillary Clinton, who he beat.
Hillary Clinton is a unaccomplished, not particularly bright woman. She
failed the District of Columbia bar exam for God's sake.
I mean, she had a pulse and everything. How do
you do that? She's she's no genius. She got went
to the right school and married the right guy, and
(15:30):
that that's that's who she is. But that's emblematic of
our ruling class. They you know, they get they get
hand to a silver spoon and then imagine that they
somehow mine the ore. But they didn't. And they're terrible
and they're only concerned with maintaining their power. That's what
aar democracy is. It's not art democracy, it's their sinecures.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
What would you say is our largest cultural problem, Like,
what do you think we need to tackle first?
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Basically, Uh, there's so many. I I think we have
to re establish normality in the sense that it's the
normality that I grew up with. I'm not sure whether
you were here during the seventies or eighties, but that was. Yeah,
there was a sense right that kings worked one perfect
(16:19):
you know. I mean there were there were problems, there
are always problems, but there was a sense that, you know,
justice is kind of going to prevail, you know, the economies,
we're going to get through it. I'm going to be
better off than my parents were. You know, I can
generally walk the streets safely. I'm not going to get
arrested for saying something. Government's not going to stop me
(16:40):
from saying something. And none of that's true today, none
of that's none of that's something we can rely on.
We have to get back to that, and that means
reorienting our ruling class, because there's always a ruling class,
and I am hoping that we don't have to completely
(17:02):
fail before we have a reform move. But right, you know,
the the old thing about weak men make hard times.
You know, hard men make good times. Good times make
weak men. I mean, there is a cycle to history,
(17:22):
and I just you know, I don't want to run
out my personal life clock on the downslope of the
Bell curve. But here we are.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, you're still in California.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
That's a surprise. I do have you just want to
be the last one to turn out the lake.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Literally, I literally have one or two conservative friends left here.
There used to be a vibrant community when Andrew Breitbart
was here, a lot of people and they're all gone.
The people in California are not the communists, not the
welfare cheats, not the losers, not the Chardonnay soaked wine moms.
(18:04):
It's people like me and I am. I'm going to
be spending more and more time in Texas. Yes, Arena
wants us to get a third place in Florida.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I love her.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I watch it too. I love Florida. If there wasn't
family in Texas, I got the only Manbin family that's
not in Miami. But no, you know, I got here
in seventy two, and you could feel, even as a
little kid, I could feel the excitement. It was a
beautiful place.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
I used to love California. I mean I loved it.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
It was a governor. He there was always a sense
and I never didn't have this sense that I could
do whatever I want to do. I went to school
at uc San Diego, went off to the Army for
four years. But I came back and I went to
Los Angeles. Now I grew up near San Francisco, and
then I went to school in sandiw but I'd never
been to Los Angeles, and I knew Los Angeles was
(19:01):
a place you go to do what you want to do.
And you know care I was able to make it.
I built a law of firm. I was a stand
up comic. I became a best selling author. You know,
I built a family. I did all these things that
I wanted to do, and it never occurred to me
I couldn't. But we have a whole generation to young
people now who only see limitations, They only see constraints,
(19:26):
and that's not what California is supposed to be. It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 4 (19:31):
I know, I feel like I have a lot of
things that I want to do, but I'm not. I
don't feel like I've missed something. I feel like I've
always been an optimistic California kind of old time California person.
I'm looking to the future, going there's all these neat
things I can do. You know, what are you thinking?
Speaker 3 (19:52):
What do you what are you gonna do tell us.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Maybe I'll write a movie. Maybe I'll start another company.
I'm certainly gonna write more books. Who knows. Maybe I'll
get a radio show. I'm a guest host for Hugh
Hewitt tomorrow. I mean, I's some suburban kid from California, right,
and I'm going to talk to two million people for
three hours tomorrow morning.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
That's amazing. Yeah, I'm not special.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
I'm not particularly I'm not an idiot, but I'm not
a genius. I just I just don't think there are
any limits out there. And I want other people to
get that too, Because I'm excited about tomorrow. I always have.
It's like, what's going to happen next? I mean, what
(20:39):
cool thing do we do now?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
I've seen you excited about rain, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I remember that you and Arena were in Florida and
it was raining outside and you both ran toward it
like it's so cool. But then you guys got a
lot of rain in California, like right after that.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I feel like, but in.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
How we should all be excited about all the new
things that can happen, all the things you can do.
I watch people who spend their lives on video games.
Or you know, on the internet all the time. And
I'm on the Internet a lot, but I'm enjoying and
I'm learning new things and doing things. I look at
Twitter as my Sudoku. It's a you know, can I
(21:22):
be funny? Can I be clever? Can I be pippy?
And there's just so many There's so many neat things,
and I just want to do them now. Sometimes I
just want to chill. That's okay. I love my routine.
I have my favorite restaurants and everything. But I think
I'm essentially excited about life, and I don't like that
(21:43):
the younger generation doesn't seem to feel that way because
they've been told they can't and that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
How do you challenge that with your own kids?
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Oh gosh, Well, they're teenagers, so they don't talk to me.
They're finding their way in the world, doing interesting things
and not the things that I did, not that not
not necessarily the past that I've taken. But uh, you know,
there's there's a world out there and they've you know,
they they've got some of I don't, which is youth.
(22:14):
They got they got this whole future ahead of me.
It's very exciting.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What would you be
doing if you weren't in the media or a lawyer world?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
What would be a plan be?
Speaker 4 (22:30):
I don't know. Yeah, there's so many things. I could
have stayed in the military and tried to do some
cool stuff there. I mean, I was in the reserves
for Rocco, stayed active. Uh. I always thought building another
a different kind of business might be interesting. Who knows.
Maybe i'd be a park ranger and take people out
and uh, you know, show them, you know, do the
(22:52):
little uh midnight star watching things. I always enjoyed those.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
I mean, gosh, I like that answer.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Park ranger?
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Why not? I mean, that's just yeah. I have always
promised myself I'm never gonna get in a situation where
I wake up dreading the day on a regular basis. Yes,
I mean as a lawyer. Sometimes I'm like ah in
a deposition. Most of the time I get up, I'm
like Okay, cool another day, yay. And I think people
(23:24):
ought to try strive for that. It's possible, but that
people get being told they can't, and I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
So end here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can improve their lives and be happy,
Like you.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Just go do it. You know a lot of people
are like, how do you find time to write? I
just sit down and do it. If you get learn
to manage your time, time is amazing. As a commander,
I could give you more ammunition, more people, more tanks,
more whatever. I had all that, but I never had
more time. Manage your time wisely, you know, like today
(24:02):
I had about, you know, an hour between what I
was doing and then and then this knocked out a call,
got that much off my trip an hour?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Damn yeah, get it really bad about myself?
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Well, you know I've already written for forty years. I mean,
I hope I could go quick. It's just, you know,
get things done early so that you maximize your freedom.
I try and teach that to my lawyers. You know,
you don't have to throw it over the trance on
the eleven fifty nine. You know, you can do it
(24:36):
two weeks ahead of time, and then you might done.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
My next life, I want to be one of those
people who does it ahead of time and not at
eleven fifty nine and.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
Then oh always, I always do it in advance. Then
you maximize your freedom.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Thank you so much Kurt Schlichter by his new book,
The Attack. It is terrifying, It is fantastic.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
I must read. Thanks so much for coming.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
On, Kirk, Thanks for having me, Thanks so much for
joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Subscribe wherever you
get your podcasts.
Host
Karol Markowicz
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