July 5, 2021 • 42 mins
Imagine you’re a Marine deployed to Afghanistan. Your job is to find and dispose of enemy bombs. One day you’re out there with your team, doing your duty. You pause for a few minutes to take a breather and readjust your gear. But then you take one step to the right — and directly onto an IED. The explosion changes your life forever. For this podcast, Gianno speaks to the man who lived this experience, Johnny “Joey” Jones. Joey is a Fox News contributor and retired US Marine who does extensive work with non-profits helping veterans and their families. Joey discusses his life story, all things military, and what drives him to do so much for veterans.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Up next out WOUD with Gianno called part of the
gig which switch SI. Imagine you're a marine deployed to Afghanistan.
Your job is to find and dispose of enemy bombs.
One day, you're out there with your team. During your duty,
you pause for a few minutes to take a breather
and readjust your gear. But then you take one step
(00:20):
to the right and directly onto an I E. D.
The explosion changes your life forever. Today we'll hear this
very story from the man who lived it. This is
out Allowed with Gianno called well. Welcome back to Allow
(00:40):
with Giano called well. I'm Gianno called well. And on
this week's show, we're talking about the military, overcoming adversity
and helping others. My guest today know something about all three.
He's Johnny Joey Jones, a retired U. S Marine who
served two combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan in eight
years of active service in the Marine Corps. In twenty ten,
(01:03):
Joey suffered a life change and injury while deployed in
Afghanistan as an explosive ordinance disposal technician after stepping on
an improvised expulsive device placed by the enemy. He lost
both his legs above the knee and suffered severe damage
to his right forearm and both wrists. Since recovering, Joey
(01:24):
has dedicated his work to help veterans and their families.
In twenty nineteen, Joey became a Fox News contributor and
now he currently hosts Fox Nation Outdoors and Fox Proud
American Podcast. Today, we're going to discuss his life story,
all things military, and what drives him to devote so
much of his life to help veterans. And with all
(01:45):
of that, I welcome Joey Jones to the show. Thank
you so much for coming on out lot with Gianno Caldwell. Well,
thanks for having me on. Man. When you when you
hit me up about this, I was really excited. I
love these long form conversations. No, I'm excited myself now.
I want to just go right into it because you've
achieved great success in your life and you have so
much going on professionally. But I want to begin this
(02:06):
conversation by going back before all of that, even before
the military. I know you come from humble beginnings. You
were the first in your family to graduate high school.
Big deal. Yeah, No, sincerely, I'm telling you it's someone
who's coming from these kind of environments too. I know
how big of a deal that is. And at one
point you worked as a forklift operator at a flooring manufacturer.
(02:28):
Can you talk a bit about how you grew up
and the values that were instilled in you at a
very young age. Yeah, you know, I mean that kind
of says it, all right. The first one in my
family to graduate high school, to walk across the stage.
And it's not for lack of intelligence, it was for
lack of opportunity because you had other responsibilities. My dad
had two brothers, my mom had four siblings herself, and
(02:49):
they were both born for the purpose of being a
part of the family farm kind of thing, like you
needed all hands on deck. That's why you had children.
And I kid all the time and tell people like
my dad's experience went from like nineteen fifty nine to
two thousand, and he didn't really catch all that that
happened in between, because it was like he stayed in
(03:10):
this kind of no technology, you worked hard and and
take care of your family mentality up until he was
sixty and had no choice but to have a smartphone
to talk to me and Uh. And so all that
time in between, things were pretty pretty much. You know,
you're a lot on your family and your you. You
owe what you owe to your family and they owe
(03:31):
it to you. And there were a lot of hiccups
and a lot of problems, a lot of adversity. But
to have that coming out and going into the world. UM,
any success I've had, it's because I had that foundation.
Mm hmmm. Now you just mentioned something that I want
to dig into more. You said that there was a
lot of problems and a lot of adversity. You mind
talking about that a little bit? No, not at all.
(03:53):
And I talked about this fairly freely. My dad was
an alcoholic and my mom suffered from her own problems. Uh.
I think her diagnosis is manic. Um, I get him
mixed up like mannic or bipolar or something. She has
really high highs, really low lows and doesn't trust anybody.
And when she's in her lows, she thinks everybody's legit
at me, trying to undermine her, hurt her. And it's
(04:13):
because she was, um, you know, abused in a lot
of ways growing up and um like, for example, my
mom was woken up at fifteen and said, hey, you're
gonna go with this man and you're gonna marry him.
And it's because he had traded her dad basically his
truck and um, and that's in South Alabama, you know.
And so not not to paint everyone that from her
(04:36):
side of the family is bad, but that was the
experience they had. So my mom, you know, lost her
virginity and and got pregnant on her wedding night, and
my sister was born. She was was sixteen, seventeen years
older my sister, and so and my sister's early years,
my mom was figuring it out. She went through a
lot of depression and drug addiction, and when she found
my dad, she also kind of found redemption. And he
(04:58):
had had his own struggles through his first wife and
and they were kind of each other's saving grace at
that time in their life. And from it came me,
and then a few years after that came a marriage.
So I mean, if you can talk about as as
redneck and hill bill as it, yes, that was it.
But from that adversity came a lot of things that
they were never able to overcome, but always had the
heart and the mindset to overcome it, you know, they,
(05:19):
more than anybody I've ever known, focused on making life
better for their kids than what they had had. And
my dad's family was very positive. I mean they were
solid of the earth. I mean not as not as
maybe parody backwards, but very much likely the clamp its
from Beverly Hillbillies. Like they just everything was about the family.
My dad had two brothers, his mom and dad. My
grandparents on my dad's side was the epitome of what
(05:41):
a love should be for two people. And so when
my safe for example, like my dad always wanted me
to play football, but he only ever came to two
football games because he couldn't drink there. But I had
a grandfather and two uncles that were there, So if
you put all four of them together, I had all
the right positive experiences for a father and um and
I was a lucky in that, you know, and we
(06:01):
talk all the time about like a nuclear family and
how important the father is. Well you know what aunts
and uncles and grandparents are important to like it does
take a village and um, and I just wish people
would understand the honor and importance it is to be
in a child's life, regardless of kind of where what
position you hold by title. Because it took my aunts
and my uncles and my grandparents and my older sister
(06:22):
um and they all invested in me, and man, then
I just owe it to them to go out and
get it done. Wow that man, you know as you talk,
it's so much reminds me of my own life, although
the circumstances were a bit different. My mom was addicted
to crack cocaine and my dad was in my life.
I saw him on the weekends, my grandfather's small business,
(06:45):
plumbing construction business, if you take me with them on
the weekends. But things were really rough during the week
at home and the things that I saw, and it
reminds me so much of my own upbringing. And I
know that even years after being removed from that environment
because I'm thirty four years old now, moved out of
the house when I was nineteen years old, those issues
(07:07):
from way back when still impact me today. And you
think about the reality of how you think right now,
how you move, you know, when people say things to you,
how it makes you feel. How is that impacting you today?
You know this, And what I love about this is
we're so different yet so alike and that's that's what
(07:27):
cause the human conditions consistent. Right, Like more than likely
you and I were exposed to the type of trauma
and had the just the good luck or good influence
respond to it in a way that it ultimately became
a positive thing for us because when we started to
experience trauma as adults, we had tools to deal with
it and it didn't just wreck us because hey, we've
been there, We've done that, and we figured it out
(07:48):
through God's grace, good luck and maybe some good people.
And so not to jump over away from your your
question to begin with, but today, when I experienced trauma,
like for example, getting blown up in Afghanistan, I've got
a basis of knowledge, Like I've been through the valley
and I know that I'm gonna make it to the mountaintop,
like I've done that before. I mean, I've I sit
(08:09):
there and watch my dad get mad about things and
throw the refrigerator out the back door and my mom
just crying, and it's like, man, it can't get worse
than this. And then we wake up the next morning
and he takes us to breakfast, and he owns up
to what he did wrong, and he explains himself when
we go on about our lives. And it's not because
that will never happen again, but it's because he doesn't
never want it to happen again. Right, And so, like
humans make mistakes and keep making them. But if you
(08:31):
can survive that as a child and come out in
a positive way, come out knowing these people loves you,
even if they hurt you sometimes and not on purpose,
and and we're remorseful, and you can learn to forgive
them and see something in them that's better than your
than their worst moment. Then when you go through trauma
of your own as an adult, one you know whatever
that is, you're gonna survive it. Two, when you do
(08:53):
make mistakes, you know there's redemption there for it. And
three you see that love is complex and it's not
black and white. It's not a m calm. It comes
with its own skeletons, but it also comes with the
sunshine too. And and so that's kind of with the
way I process things. And and it's been very helpful,
Like it you and your words said, I'm very successful,
and I think I am, but I'm successful because I
(09:15):
have two kids and I love them and they know it,
and I just don't know that there's more success than that. Man,
I mean, you're just dropping jewels. Is what you're saying
is very profound, and I think for a lot of
people who are listening right now, they can just apply
some of these principles to their own lives, no matter
if they came from a wealthy family, no matter if
they came from a poor family, whatever the set of
(09:35):
circumstances were. They can take exactly what you're saying and
just reevaluate their lives based on that and say, man,
I can do battert what do you say with the
grace of God, um, good luck and some good people.
I think that's just I think that's really amazing. Thank
you for sharing that. Joey No, you mentioned Afghanistan and
you joined the military when you were eighteen years old.
(09:58):
Why did you join the military at a you know,
what was your experience like during the first few years
in the military, including your deployment in Iraq? You know
why during the military is you know, I'm a product
of that nine eleven generation, right. It affected all of
us and we all found different ways to respond to it.
But I don't believe any of us did not have
(10:18):
the trajectory of our lives changed if we were adolescent
preteen or teen and watched those towers fall and what
happened to our country afterwards. For me, the military was
just the avenue, like I remember, um, you know a
lot of people remember the towers falling. I saw that,
but it didn't have an immediate impact because growing up
in North Georgia with not a lot of money, never
been on an airplane or even a bus. New York
(10:40):
was as far away as Tel Aviv, Like, it just
was not even it didn't even register. So I didn't
have that immediate impact of hey, they attacked us on
our home school. But what I did have was a
few years later when a guy that was on my
football team and upper classmen deployed and came back and
just the changes in him he had seen ward. Yeah,
but it also boys become men and women or girls
(11:03):
become women, and like he had seen a new team
in a brotherhood, and and just you could see that's
what came from it, not just the war. And I thought, man,
how how cool to be to have some of that
in my life. So when I graduated high school, that
was the accomplishment. There was no expectation beyond that for
my parents, who had never seen that, that was the accomplishment,
even in two thousand four when college was more mainstream.
(11:26):
So for me it was like, well, I didn't have
the financial support or really the attention span to go
into college. Laying brick and block was not easy. So
I joined the industry in my town, which was to
make carpet and didn't really like that a whole lot,
and it just needed to be something more. And I
just remember the day I woke up and realized my
mom cleans houses and my dad builds them. They provide
(11:48):
services for other people, and they do it with hard work.
What can I do? Like, how do I honor that?
How do I honor everything they give up to give
me decent clothes to go to school in in a
vehicle to drive things they didn't get? How do I
honor that? And the military just was the most obvious
thing for me. So in short, because nothing I say
short kind that's okay. I kind of went for selfish
(12:10):
reasons because it was about me in my life, but
it was also for others in the sense that I'll
put three this way. I joined the Marine Corps eighteen
and that was all about me, but by the time
I was twenty, it was all about being something, a
part of something bigger than myself and and serving it.
Really did everything they preached. Man, I just soaked it
up and it made sense to me more with Joey
(12:31):
jem was right after this. How old are you? Joey,
I'm thirty four for about three more weeks, so I'm
I'm hanging in there. Wow, bro, I'm thirty four two. Okay,
so you're a little older, been than me by what
five months or so? So now that that's great to know.
(12:53):
I didn't really realize that. Now you were deployed in Afghanistan.
It's a technician, and I mean there was a life
event that pretty much changed your entire existence. Now, it
was a day that you stepped on you improvised explosive
device i e. D and lost both your legs. Can
(13:16):
you take us back to that day? Can you describe
what happened? Yeah? Unfortunately or unfortunately one of the big
mixed numbers and movies are probably to blame for this,
but also just trauma in general. Like people think when
you get hit by a bomb, you're knocked out and
you wake up in the hospital, And the truth is,
unless your head gets hit, you don't go unconscious. A
matter of fact, you're going through shock, which means in
(13:39):
some ways you're way more alert than you probably want
to be. So my job as an e O D.
Explosive ordnance disposal or bomb technician, it's kind of like
the movie hurt Locker, although the movie doesn't really show
the job correctly in in reality. By two thousand ten,
in Afghanistan, we didn't wear bomb suits, and we worked
on two man teams, not three men teams. And we
(14:01):
were walking on foot with a patrol. We weren't in
a vehicle with robots, and the majority of the work
we did was by hand. Um. We tried to use
robots when we could, but in Afghanistan the bombs were
placed in in so remote places we couldn't get the
equipment there. And so my number one tool for taking
a part of bomb was a pair of trauma shares
um and like a little hook with some cord on
(14:22):
it so I could get some distance when I needed
to black tape and in another explosive charge, I've had
to blow it in place. And it was all by hand.
And so I say that because a lot of people
don't understand that, and so how did this for six
months on that deployment, and then on the sixth morning
of an operation it was August six. We started it
on August one. The job was to go in and
(14:44):
clear out a town called Safar Bazar. You can look
it up and google it. We have our little Wikipedia page.
It was Operation Roadhouse too, and we took a couple
hundred marines in six bomb texts, and those six bomb
texts were three teams of two men each, and each
team had its own responsibility, and my team mate and
I had the responsibility of being with the main effort,
(15:06):
so clearing the main path ahead of us. And so
for five days we cleared city blocks, street by street,
and then on the sixth day we started clearing the buildings,
and the town was pretty much a ghost town. Because
our respect for collateral damage in civilian life means we're
gonna let them know we're coming. And this town was
known for stockpiling the bomb parts that they would send
(15:27):
up to other places. So when we told him we
were coming in order to keep the civilians safe, the
bad guys took all those bomb parts and put them
in the ground and made a mind filled out of
the town. But we had to go in and clear
to the town because they were using it basically as
a as an enemy base. And so for five days
we were very successful. I worked thirty eight eight s
and five days, and UM on the sixth morning, Basically
(15:49):
what happens. I stepped on an idea I didn't know
it was there, and that happens. It's kind of ironic,
considering I had knelt down and touched a hundred of
them with my hands, and it was the one I
didn't even know it was there that got me UM.
And the unfortunate part about that day is that a
marine engineer, Corporal Daniel Greer from Knoxville, Tennessee, UM lost
his life to the same bomb. And that's really the
(16:09):
irony war I stepped on it. He was twenty ft
away a piece of a wall, a big rock hit
him in the head. Traumatic brain injury took his life.
And of course I lost my legs, but man, you know,
it would be very selfish to me to complain about
losing my legs when that could have taken my life.
And so really what that was, if anything, was just
a wake up call. It kind of kind of reset
(16:29):
my compass a little bit. As I began to recover,
a lot of other things changed in my life and
and I had a chance to just kind of refocus.
And my recovery was an opportunity, to to say the least.
And it's you know, I tell people all the time,
let today be the last worst day of your life,
which means you can change your perspective and make every
(16:49):
day after a tragic event better. Um, and that's what
I chose to do. Did you have children at that point?
I had a son, And you know, I told you
before we got started. I love these kind of conversations,
get a chance to kind of let it go. And
uh So the whole story of my son is I
was very single and very much a marine and in
very good shape and enjoyed to meet new people, to
(17:11):
include ladies. And so I had a son from a
one night stand and I just found out about him
right before I deployed. He had made it to about
five months old before I met him. And uh I
like to say I did the right thing, but I
just did the the only option I had, which was
I was ecstatic I had a child. I gave him
my name. His mom and I worked together to figure
(17:32):
it out and do all the legal stuff. We we
didn't get together, but we decided to raise this sun
as two parents that love him. And so when I
got hurt, I'd only spent two or three days with him.
And by the time I got hurt and made it home,
he was a year old. Um. And so I tell people,
you know, we learned to walk together and uh. And
that's how we became friends and and the father and
(17:52):
the son, and he's been here with me ever since.
Now I've got a little daughter. M h. That's a
that's a man. I tell you, that's one of the
more interesting stories, especially when you know that life isn't
all about you anymore. And you had this experience that
you just mentioned was from a one night's thing. You
didn't know that you had a child out there, but
(18:13):
you find out right before you go. And I'm imagining
as you have this experience, because you talk about a
bit about the recovery, but as you have this experience, mentally,
I just wonder what was going on with you at
that time you got you got a child. Now you're like, okay,
how you know, how are they gonna look at me.
I didn't spend much time with them. Your family, I'm
(18:34):
sure probably was, you know, all concerned about what was
going to happen, what life was gonna be like for you,
And I know you were wondering what life was gonna
be like for you, you know, one of the I
guess unfortunate blessings of my job and there when I
joined the Marine e O. D. Field And and what's
different about the Marine Corps than the other services. Has
(18:54):
to become a bomb tech. You volunteered into it, but
you have to have served for a certain amount of
years and reach a certain rank before you can do it.
And they really want anybody that goes through that training
to be dedicated to it and know really what they're
getting into. And so just to join the Marine Corps
e O. D. Field, Man, I had seen it happen.
I'd had Buddy's deployed come back without legs. I kind
of knew the process. And then even on that deployment,
(19:15):
I've seen it happen a half a dozen times, either
right in front of me or showed up immediately after
and help clean it up. So when I lost my
legs and went through the recovery, it was more about
just kind of uh, setting a goal and checking it off.
Setting a goal and checking it off. I can't say
that I was prepared for it, but it didn't hit
me by surprise either. If your job to take bombs apart,
you better be mantally prepared for the probabilities, if not,
(19:38):
if not, the possibilities and uh and so for me, like,
for example, man, I got a picture of the first
time I pete standing up, and it's kind of funny,
but it was also a goal I set, like, Hey,
that's something I used to do without thinking twice. I
can't do that anymore. I need help to go to
the bathroom when I'm walking enough that I can take
myself to the bathroom and stand up and urinate like
I'm gonna take a picture of it. Mark that a
(20:00):
And I did that with every goal. And as far
as my son goes, I mean, I often say he
kind of saved my life because I never wanted for motivation.
Nothing motivates you like responsibility, and I had his responsibility
to be a father. And you can't do that laying
in the hospital bed worried about what you lost. You
gotta be able to appreciate what you have and do
(20:22):
the right thing. And so for me, it was like,
you know what, I've got learned how to throw a
baseball without legs. I've got to learn how to teach
this kid to drive. I've got to learn how to
take him to a restaurant. I gotta learn how to
discipline him and work him like my dad did me. Um,
and these legs can't be the reason why I don't
do that. He deserves more than that, you know, Joey,
thank you for sharing that story. But I'm reminded of
(20:44):
how we first met, and I believe, if I'm correct,
the first time we met was in a Fox Nation
studio and we were on a panel together, and I
just remember thinking and seeing you and wondering, how the
hell does this guy have such a a great attitude?
You were just and every time I've seen you since
(21:04):
we were just hosting a show together on Fox News Channel,
maybe you were three weeks ago or so, and you're
just always in good spirits. I text you your good spirits?
How do you have such a good disposition after all
that has happened um to you, and and and and
certainly with your family, how do you continue, You're happier,
(21:27):
seemingly to me than people who have had everything good
go for their lives. And I get it. Not everyone's
had everything good going for the lives, but certainly they
got all kind of things to call for money, success
and all these other things. You're more happy than they are.
How is that possible, Joey? You know, you see these
movies and you have these full brass and are always
complaining because they've never they've never needed to want for something,
(21:52):
and they had created this false expectation that everything's supposed
to happen and happens when they wanted to. That is
never a factor in my life. I'm not saying that
I wasn't taken care of, but it was never presented
to me that things will go the way I wanted
them to, or even in my favorite was presented to
me that things got to get done towards gotta get
done work. It's gotta get done and you've gotta be
the one doing it. And so I just have a
(22:14):
gratitude for the positive things that happened in my life,
and it's hard for me not to focus on them
about it. You know, there's some people that are really
good at sports, are really good at dancing and seeing it.
I don't have any of those gifts, but life has
a way of working out for the for the positive
things I want in my life, and I'm always grateful
for that. That's a blessing. And I mean, I wish
(22:34):
I had a better answer, because I know, I know
how difficult it is for some people. Um, but I just,
you know, something clicks for me a long time ago
that made me just incredibly grateful to still be alive,
but also to still have these blessings in my life.
And I've never felt like they were supposed to happen.
I've never felt like I was oathed them. I never
felt like they were gonna happen no matter what. And
(22:58):
so when you're raised to work for it and then
things happen and you don't feel like you've even worked
that hard for like you're like, it's hard to explain,
but it's like I didn't do anything for my daughter
to love me but make her, but she loves me unconditionally.
Oh my god, that's such a blessing that I wake
up happy. Like when I wake up and I hear
her say Daddy, It's like, why in the world would
(23:18):
would she be so happy to see me like that?
Those things happen every day. And if you're not grateful
for that, if it doesn't make you happy, like I
don't know you can be happy? And I worry for you. Man,
this is your an adultes is so inspiring. Now, let
me ask you this question, what role does guy play
in your life? Because I hear a lot of tones
(23:39):
and what you say and everything you say, and you've've
seen it on air. What role do this guy really
ultimately play in your life? All the roles and none
of them are defined. Like I was raised in church
and I don't go to church now, um, but I
don't have anything against it, just isn't um the experience
I'm looking for. I have a very spiritual experience. I
pray and talk to out a lot and um, but
(24:01):
I don't want to limit God. And so my experience
is that the difference between faith and religion is religion
as we as people trying to figure it out, and
faith is just feeling it. And so I've leaned into
faith and a and I'm worried that if I ascribe
to a specific um dogma, I guess I would be
(24:21):
limiting God's ability to play a role in my life.
If I if I put rules on God, then perhaps
I limit God. And so I believe in faith, and
I believe in things of that nature. Um, and I
don't I don't corner it, so I don't stop it
from from working the way it's supposed to. I don't
think any human being makes it through most of life's
(24:43):
adversity for any of us, by ourselves. And if it's
through the works of a deity or other people, um,
I call that God and I give it credit. And
it doesn't have to be one to fine thing for
me to believe in it. Now, thank you for sharing
your perspective on that. Now you have to retire ring
from the military. You want on to graduate from Georgetown
University in teen with a degree in liberal studies and
(25:06):
social and public policy. And you often went to Capitol
Hill to introduce yourself to politicians there. What were you
thinking at that time? You know what I was thinking.
I was thinking, every one of these dudes and ladies
up here are gonna want to take a picture with
me because I'm a shandy object. Right, I'm a warder
and uniform that lost his legs. But what they don't
know is I'm smarter than they think, and I'm gonna
(25:26):
sneak up on them what's something I care about and
make them care about it too. And so that's kind
of how I handled that. I um, I kinda it's
a crazy story, and if I don't have enough time
to say it, But basically, when I was recovering, I
recovered pretty quickly and the paperwork couldn't keep up with
my pace. UM I got injured August six, two thousand
and ten. I was walking and by all accounts, fully
(25:48):
recovered by February two thou eleven. And it takes about
two years just for the retirement process to happen. And
usually in those two years, you go to college or
you do Paralympics, and they kind of keep you busy
E up in d C back in during this time.
But I wanted something more than that. I knew I
wasn't gonna lay breaking block for a living. I knew
I probably wasn't gonna earn my living as a marine
(26:09):
for the rest of my career. So what can I do.
I can go educate myself. And so I started college
with a community college on campus October. So I got
injured in August. I started doing classes in October, and
as soon as I was independent could leave campus, which
was around February. I had rolled at Georgetown and started
school there, and in doing school while I became interested
(26:29):
in policy because I was at Georgetown and we were
learning kind of how policy started for mankind. And so
I had an opportunity to go up to Capitol Hill
and meet Chairman Jeff Miller. Actually I met him over
at Eighth and N if you're familiar with d C
over at the Marine Corps barracks. And I rolled up
to Chairman Miller, who's the chairman of the Veterans Affairs
Committee at the time for the Republicans who were in charge.
(26:51):
But more importantly, he represented the first District of Florida,
where the e O D School is and a lot
of EO D retire. And I said, Mr Chairman, I
know all your constituents and they think you should give
me a job, which was a very ignorant thing to say,
but it worked. No, it wasn't. It wasn't ignorant, so
it was naive maybe, and uh it was attention. He
(27:14):
thought I was retired. He didn't know all his active
duty and had a daily commitment to the hospital and
was living right beside it. So that was on a Friday.
On Monday, they're like, hey, will you come up and
submit a resume where we'd like to look at hiring
you for a fellowship or an internship unpaid. So I
went and bought a suit. I typed up probably the
worst resume that has ever made its way to Capitol
(27:35):
Hill and was successful, set in front of him, did
an interview, and they're like, yeah, next week to lot four,
but the Monday after that would love for you to
start coming in And I did a fellowship, So I
went and worked out with my therapist from seven and nine.
I was at Capitol Hill by ten, and then I
left at three or six, depending on the day, at
three two to three days a week to go to
(27:55):
college that night. And that was kind of my routine
until the Marine Corps found out out that they had
some realgunded warrior working up on Capitol Hill and they're like, listen,
you gotta have ethics training and it's got to be approved.
And by that point, I've been there so long that
like they didn't have a choice but to leave me there,
and so I ended up having a pretty good impact
on some policy and just really have been involved in
(28:16):
some way with it ever since. So that's interesting. And
you were in in d C the same period I
was there. I was there from twelve seventeen, so we
we might have even ran into each other, maybe the
r n C or something like that, who knows, but
I would have remembered you, for sure. I would have
some I'm thinking probably not, but we were in the
(28:37):
same place. So you go from Capitol Hill, you had
some good impact on policy. I'm interested real quick, what
was that policy? And I want to I want to
get to your started Fox News. Yeah, so what the
big things at the time was right before I started
working for Age fact, John Baynard being the Speaker of
the House and put some kind of a hiring freeze
and so like. Basically it was all about the fiscal
(28:57):
responsibility side of being a Republican. They weren't letting Congress
just hire and fill all the seats and jobs that
the Democrats had held before him, and it was kind
of more of a we're gonna show you all that
it can be done fiscally responsible. It's what that meant was.
I didn't even havev into college education. And I was
working as the only other staff member in the Disability
Assistance and Momoral Affairs Office of the House Winners Affairs Committee,
(29:21):
And so I set across the table from veteran service
organizations lobbying for different things to be done. But I
had a little bit of a card that I could
pull because they were used to sitting that across the
table from civilian Harvard grads, not guys and gals that
actually been through the system. And so there was something
called the improvised or the it's called the I D
E S. I can't remember what the eye stands for,
(29:43):
but it's the disability evaluation system, and so used to
when you got injured like me catastrophically, you were completely
evaluated by the D O D. They finished their evaluation,
then you got a rating from them, and then you
started from scratch with the v A and then a
full evaluation with them, and you got your pension. And
we were able to combine that into one process and
(30:05):
UM and they really looked to me to give the
user experience side of it. And then there were other
things where people were just lobbying for random things, and
I could really sniff the bull crab, this podcast the
bullshit and uh and and let the decision makers know, hey,
this is not something that this has not helped the
veteran community, or this is not what it looks like. Um.
(30:26):
And so those were two of the places. I mean. Unfortunately,
even back then, getting substantive bills passed was not easy,
but just having that type of influence on policymakers was
a lot of fun. We're talking to Fox Nation hosts
and retired US marine Joey Jones. You got so much
more with him right at their kid break. How did
(30:51):
you go? You? You talked about your background, family background,
and you talked about going into the military. What happened there?
And then you just happened to go up to someone
to say your constituents, I know a lot of your constituents,
give me a job. How did you from all of
that experience, how did you end up on TV? Where
did Fox News come and play with all of this? Well,
(31:14):
basically what happened is in all of that, I really
got a lot of assistance from military nonprofits, and I
felt guilty about it early on, like, hey, yeah, well
doing way too much for me. How can I help you? Like,
obviously I'm a communicator. I like to talk. Maybe I've
got a gift for it. Can I lend my voice
and communication experience to you. One of those nonprofits was
out of d C, and of the many things they did,
(31:36):
they took monded veterans to NASCAR races and did some
fun stuff. And I ended up meeting this lady, Jen
Williams while I was volunteering for that, which was about
the same time I worked on the Hill and went
to Georgetown and most of my voluntering town was on
the weekends, and um Jen Williams had been a Fox
and Friends producer and left to be freelance and she
was working on a project with a NASCAR and I
(31:58):
met her that way and we became friends. A few
years later in Kyle Carpenter, who had taken my fellowship
that I created and took it after me was about
to get awarded the Medal of Honor I had recovered
with him and and Gay and told them, Hey, this
is the guy you want working on the Hill. So
she asked me to come on and talk about him
during Gression Carlson's show at the time because it was
(32:19):
called The Real Story. So I go and a mike
up and it's my first time doing live TV and
I'm just gonna talk about my buddy Kyle, and President
Obama interrupts and does the speech and he's like, hey,
there's a scroup called ISIS and we're probably gonna have
to go to war with him. And she's like, Hey,
since you already miked up, do you mind to just
talk about it? What was an important enough speech and
lasted long enough that everybody had tuned in, So if
(32:41):
you were tuned into Fox News watching President Obama when
it cut away, there was Joey Jones giving you given
Obama the what for on this and UM, and that
was my introduction to television news. And from there, I've
had a really a fast success on Twitter. And Greg
gutt Felt and Mike Huckabee saw me on Twitter, didn't
even know I had been on each invited me onto
(33:02):
their new shows, respectively, and the rest kind of went
from there. What what did you say about Obama at
that time? UM? I don't remember. You know, I was
still in uniforms UM up until twelve, so at that
time I was recently retired and I just didn't um.
You know, here's the best story I can get. For
President Obama. I went to the White House and had
(33:22):
dinner with him with a bunch of four star generals,
and while I was having dinner, he kind of looks
at me, goes, Johnny, if you were back in the
same place doing the same thing, how would you do
it differently? And I said, well, Mr President, I'd step left,
and like you know, Maddess started laughing, but none of
the other ones got it. And what it was is like,
you know, when I stepped right and step on a bomb.
But the bigger point there was, hey, man, that's for
(33:43):
you to figure out. Like my job was to do
what was in front of me, the big stuff up
to you, like figure it out. And um, so that's
how I've treated all politicians. Like I tell you, he's
very charismatic and very good at his words, but I never,
really it always felt like he was on. I mean
in actually a handful of times, and it it always felt
he was performing. And I can't be insincere because I
(34:05):
haven't met another sitting president. I met Trump before he
was president, I met Bush after. But I can imagine
it may be that they're all kind of feeling like
they're performing at all time. So I was never overly
harsh of President Obama. But I've always called balls and
strikes with any of the presidents. That's just who I
am speaking of. I would like for you to put
on your Fox News Fox Nation hat for a minute
(34:28):
before we close out this show. First, you're a veteran
of war in Afghanistan. I just read on Fox News
dot Com that all US forces have been removed from
the Bagram Airfield, the largest military base in Afghanistan. We're
going to be completely out of Aghanist Afghanistan by September eleven,
according to the Biden administration. A lot of Americans want
(34:51):
out of the longest war in American history. But we
also see now that we're leaving the Taliban taking over
district after district from the Afghan government. It looks like
the Taliban could very well take over the country in
a matter of months. And of course, the Taliban is
aligned with al Qaeda. So with all that in mind,
(35:12):
what's your opinion of America's policy towards Afghanistan as it
stands today. You know, I'm glad you're talking about wrapping
it up with this this most important policy thing we'll
talk about right rest of us just Joey's story. And
so now we talk about some business. Um, here's the deal.
I don't think we've been in the twenty year war.
I think we've been intend to year wars because in
America we hold our politicians accountable and sometimes that's even
(35:34):
to our own detriment. And what I mean by that
is politicians have a way of of crafting their foreign
policy to reflect what the ballot box has in mind.
So if it becomes populars and not want troops to Afghanistan,
then they'll change their mind. And if if it becomes
posular to go attack, um isist, and they'll do that.
And and a lot of times it feels like it's
not really about what makes us safer as much as
(35:54):
what gets us to vote. And so the really I
don't have an opinion as much as questions, which is
the problem, right Like I lost my legs in Afghanistan
and I've got more questions than than definitive opinions on it.
And that's the problem right there. But if I were
talking to the President Biden, I would say, you know,
in two thousand and ten and eleven, you were the
second person in charge. It was it was the Obama
(36:16):
Biden administration that believed in this war and the victory
of it enough to send forty troops to Afghanistan and
me being one of them, and to let my buddies
die and me lose my legs. That's how much you
believed in it. Now you're president and you're unconditionally withdrawing,
which means you don't ask for anything in return, You're
just bring everybody home. What changed? What changed for you?
(36:36):
Why did you go from believing in it enough to
let me die for it to not believing in it
enough to have anything to show for it? And that
would be my question if he answered it correctly, I
you know, if he answered it genuinely and understood, maybe
I'd accept it. But right now, that's my question. Are
you optimistic about the future of America? Always? Eternally? Look, man,
(36:56):
there was a time where we were at war with
half the western world out the eastern Western world, right
and and our grandparents, I mean, your grandparents didn't have
rights that mine had at that time. I mean, that's
just insane to me that even though the world existed
that way, but all of our grandparents were turning in
still for the cause right and get and standing in
the government cheese line because we have a rash in
(37:18):
our food. All of that just for fight for our survival,
and now we fight over how we feel. And so
we've advanced a long way, and we've been through tougher times,
and I just believe that it's in our in our
blood that we will when we're backed against the wall, honestly,
we'll survive and do the right thing. We just unfortunately,
(37:38):
even with nine eleven in my war, maybe we haven't
been backed against the wall and we've been left to
our own devices a little too much. Now, my last
question before we get into projects you may have coming
up in your Fox Nation show and all that good
stuff you said before you were raised the Republican and
still hold many of those beliefs, but are still critical
of the right these days looking at the GEO p
(38:00):
and the right more broadly, do you think conservatives are
going in the right direction? You know, it's fun as
raised as a conservative, but back then that was a
blue dog Democrat, right like, because we were poor, So
you couldn't be poor and be a Republican back in
the eighties and early nineties, and so the conservative idea
of personal responsibility and respecting someone else's ability to live
(38:22):
their life and doing it without the government growing to
the point that it becomes just arbitrary authority. That's never
changed in me, it's just who represents that from one
moment to the other, or if anybody does it all
changes depending on who the politicians are. And so for me,
like I'm more critical of the people on the right
because they're the ones that are supposed to represent my ideas,
(38:44):
and when they mess it up, it matters the people
on the left that I don't always fully understand their ideas,
so it's hard to be critical of it because I
don't agree with it. So I can't tell you how
to do it better. I can just say I don't
like it. But if you're on the right and I
feel like you are taking advantage of our passion for
the opportunity get elected, then I'm definitely coming after you
or at least asking you to explain yourself. And that's
(39:04):
kind of position I've holden. And as far as um
you know where we are now with politics. If you've
got a team mentality, you know, the Georgia football fan.
If I've got the ninth best quarterback in the SEC.
I'm going to give you a full throated argument on
why it's really the third best because that's my team,
right And we can't do that with our politicians. We
can't make excuses for them. We can't make a reality
(39:26):
that isn't true. We've gotta be able to be honest
about it, and sometimes that means critiquing the politicians are
supposed to be on our side. I love that we
share that. I absolutely appreciate that. I'm gonna start calling
you common sense joe common sense Joey, you're you're up
now before we go, Do you have any big projects
coming up at the folks at home so you know
(39:47):
about and what can people find you on social media
and elsewhere? Yeah? On social media Twitter and Instagram is permotional.
I think I'm active on that's Johnny j o h
N and why Underscore Joey j o e Y same
handle as far is what I'm involved in. You know,
I have I have my own little podcast called Proud
American on Fox News Radio. You can get it wherever
podcasts are and we'll have you on there soon, I'm
sure and thank you absolutely. And then on Fox Nation,
(40:10):
have a couple of different projects. I've done two seasons
of Fox Nation Outdoors is really cool. It's a hunting show,
but it's really about learning the country abroad. Um. And
then I have a couple of projects. One it's called
USA Inc. That tells the history of tattoos in America
and all the military involved. And I've got a project
that's dropping July four, um, and I don't know, you
(40:31):
know kind of when people will access this, Yeah, it's
the day after. It's July five, So you get you
had a project that came out yesterday. Basically we're recording
on the Friday before. Guy, So I gotta I got
a really cool thing that should be available on Fox
Nation around the Monday after the fourth of July. They
(40:52):
haven't told me, but I sit down with four veterans
from Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan and talk to
them about why they're proud Americans and where they see
the country today. It's pretty amazing, yo. I just want
to thank you for joining me, Joey Jones, And it's
so wonderful actually to know even more about your story
(41:14):
and know how we really are connected. I want to
consider you my new brother. Because there's so much connectivity
there and I look forward to being in touch with
you and building a stronger brotherly bond with you. So
thank you for joining me here on out Loud with
Gianno Caldwell. And I'm sure you're gonna get a lot
of new followers who are going to be interested in
your story because it's one that's amazing. I hope that
you've got a book that you're working on because you're
(41:36):
hill billy. Elgie was a great book, but yours would
be much more powerful and profound. That's my opinion. I
appreciate it, man, I appreciate you and all you do,
and I look forward to working with you more. M
(41:56):
I want to thank Joey Jones a good for a
great interview. If you're joining show, wease leave us a
review us the Five Stars on Apple podcast. If you
have any questions for me, please email me at out
Loud at Gingerishtree sixty dot com and I'll try to
answer them in our future episodes. And please sign up
for my monthly newsletter at ginglish Street sixty dot com
Slash out loud. You can also follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,
and parlor at Giano Caldwell, and if you're interested in
(42:20):
learning more about my story, please pick up a copy
of my best selling book titled Taken for Granted, How
Conservatism Can win back to the Americans that liberalism failed.
Special thanks to our producer John Cassio, researcher Aaron Klingman,
and executive producers Debbie Myers and speaker New Gingridge, part
of the Ginglish Street sixty Networks
Up next out WOUD with Gianno called part of the
gig which switch SI. Imagine you're a marine deployed to Afghanistan.
Your job is to find and dispose of enemy bombs.
One day, you're out there with your team. During your duty,
you pause for a few minutes to take a breather
and readjust your gear. But then you take one step
(00:20):
to the right and directly onto an I E. D.
The explosion changes your life forever. Today we'll hear this
very story from the man who lived it. This is
out Allowed with Gianno called well. Welcome back to Allow
(00:40):
with Giano called well. I'm Gianno called well. And on
this week's show, we're talking about the military, overcoming adversity
and helping others. My guest today know something about all three.
He's Johnny Joey Jones, a retired U. S Marine who
served two combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan in eight
years of active service in the Marine Corps. In twenty ten,
(01:03):
Joey suffered a life change and injury while deployed in
Afghanistan as an explosive ordinance disposal technician after stepping on
an improvised expulsive device placed by the enemy. He lost
both his legs above the knee and suffered severe damage
to his right forearm and both wrists. Since recovering, Joey
(01:24):
has dedicated his work to help veterans and their families.
In twenty nineteen, Joey became a Fox News contributor and
now he currently hosts Fox Nation Outdoors and Fox Proud
American Podcast. Today, we're going to discuss his life story,
all things military, and what drives him to devote so
much of his life to help veterans. And with all
(01:45):
of that, I welcome Joey Jones to the show. Thank
you so much for coming on out lot with Gianno Caldwell. Well,
thanks for having me on. Man. When you when you
hit me up about this, I was really excited. I
love these long form conversations. No, I'm excited myself now.
I want to just go right into it because you've
achieved great success in your life and you have so
much going on professionally. But I want to begin this
(02:06):
conversation by going back before all of that, even before
the military. I know you come from humble beginnings. You
were the first in your family to graduate high school.
Big deal. Yeah, No, sincerely, I'm telling you it's someone
who's coming from these kind of environments too. I know
how big of a deal that is. And at one
point you worked as a forklift operator at a flooring manufacturer.
(02:28):
Can you talk a bit about how you grew up
and the values that were instilled in you at a
very young age. Yeah, you know, I mean that kind
of says it, all right. The first one in my
family to graduate high school, to walk across the stage.
And it's not for lack of intelligence, it was for
lack of opportunity because you had other responsibilities. My dad
had two brothers, my mom had four siblings herself, and
(02:49):
they were both born for the purpose of being a
part of the family farm kind of thing, like you
needed all hands on deck. That's why you had children.
And I kid all the time and tell people like
my dad's experience went from like nineteen fifty nine to
two thousand, and he didn't really catch all that that
happened in between, because it was like he stayed in
(03:10):
this kind of no technology, you worked hard and and
take care of your family mentality up until he was
sixty and had no choice but to have a smartphone
to talk to me and Uh. And so all that
time in between, things were pretty pretty much. You know,
you're a lot on your family and your you. You
owe what you owe to your family and they owe
(03:31):
it to you. And there were a lot of hiccups
and a lot of problems, a lot of adversity. But
to have that coming out and going into the world. UM,
any success I've had, it's because I had that foundation.
Mm hmmm. Now you just mentioned something that I want
to dig into more. You said that there was a
lot of problems and a lot of adversity. You mind
talking about that a little bit? No, not at all.
(03:53):
And I talked about this fairly freely. My dad was
an alcoholic and my mom suffered from her own problems. Uh.
I think her diagnosis is manic. Um, I get him
mixed up like mannic or bipolar or something. She has
really high highs, really low lows and doesn't trust anybody.
And when she's in her lows, she thinks everybody's legit
at me, trying to undermine her, hurt her. And it's
(04:13):
because she was, um, you know, abused in a lot
of ways growing up and um like, for example, my
mom was woken up at fifteen and said, hey, you're
gonna go with this man and you're gonna marry him.
And it's because he had traded her dad basically his
truck and um, and that's in South Alabama, you know.
And so not not to paint everyone that from her
(04:36):
side of the family is bad, but that was the
experience they had. So my mom, you know, lost her
virginity and and got pregnant on her wedding night, and
my sister was born. She was was sixteen, seventeen years
older my sister, and so and my sister's early years,
my mom was figuring it out. She went through a
lot of depression and drug addiction, and when she found
my dad, she also kind of found redemption. And he
(04:58):
had had his own struggles through his first wife and
and they were kind of each other's saving grace at
that time in their life. And from it came me,
and then a few years after that came a marriage.
So I mean, if you can talk about as as
redneck and hill bill as it, yes, that was it.
But from that adversity came a lot of things that
they were never able to overcome, but always had the
heart and the mindset to overcome it, you know, they,
(05:19):
more than anybody I've ever known, focused on making life
better for their kids than what they had had. And
my dad's family was very positive. I mean they were
solid of the earth. I mean not as not as
maybe parody backwards, but very much likely the clamp its
from Beverly Hillbillies. Like they just everything was about the family.
My dad had two brothers, his mom and dad. My
grandparents on my dad's side was the epitome of what
(05:41):
a love should be for two people. And so when
my safe for example, like my dad always wanted me
to play football, but he only ever came to two
football games because he couldn't drink there. But I had
a grandfather and two uncles that were there, So if
you put all four of them together, I had all
the right positive experiences for a father and um and
I was a lucky in that, you know, and we
(06:01):
talk all the time about like a nuclear family and
how important the father is. Well you know what aunts
and uncles and grandparents are important to like it does
take a village and um, and I just wish people
would understand the honor and importance it is to be
in a child's life, regardless of kind of where what
position you hold by title. Because it took my aunts
and my uncles and my grandparents and my older sister
(06:22):
um and they all invested in me, and man, then
I just owe it to them to go out and
get it done. Wow that man, you know as you talk,
it's so much reminds me of my own life, although
the circumstances were a bit different. My mom was addicted
to crack cocaine and my dad was in my life.
I saw him on the weekends, my grandfather's small business,
(06:45):
plumbing construction business, if you take me with them on
the weekends. But things were really rough during the week
at home and the things that I saw, and it
reminds me so much of my own upbringing. And I
know that even years after being removed from that environment
because I'm thirty four years old now, moved out of
the house when I was nineteen years old, those issues
(07:07):
from way back when still impact me today. And you
think about the reality of how you think right now,
how you move, you know, when people say things to you,
how it makes you feel. How is that impacting you today?
You know this, And what I love about this is
we're so different yet so alike and that's that's what
(07:27):
cause the human conditions consistent. Right, Like more than likely
you and I were exposed to the type of trauma
and had the just the good luck or good influence
respond to it in a way that it ultimately became
a positive thing for us because when we started to
experience trauma as adults, we had tools to deal with
it and it didn't just wreck us because hey, we've
been there, We've done that, and we figured it out
(07:48):
through God's grace, good luck and maybe some good people.
And so not to jump over away from your your
question to begin with, but today, when I experienced trauma,
like for example, getting blown up in Afghanistan, I've got
a basis of knowledge, Like I've been through the valley
and I know that I'm gonna make it to the mountaintop,
like I've done that before. I mean, I've I sit
(08:09):
there and watch my dad get mad about things and
throw the refrigerator out the back door and my mom
just crying, and it's like, man, it can't get worse
than this. And then we wake up the next morning
and he takes us to breakfast, and he owns up
to what he did wrong, and he explains himself when
we go on about our lives. And it's not because
that will never happen again, but it's because he doesn't
never want it to happen again. Right, And so, like
humans make mistakes and keep making them. But if you
(08:31):
can survive that as a child and come out in
a positive way, come out knowing these people loves you,
even if they hurt you sometimes and not on purpose,
and and we're remorseful, and you can learn to forgive
them and see something in them that's better than your
than their worst moment. Then when you go through trauma
of your own as an adult, one you know whatever
that is, you're gonna survive it. Two, when you do
(08:53):
make mistakes, you know there's redemption there for it. And
three you see that love is complex and it's not
black and white. It's not a m calm. It comes
with its own skeletons, but it also comes with the
sunshine too. And and so that's kind of with the
way I process things. And and it's been very helpful,
Like it you and your words said, I'm very successful,
and I think I am, but I'm successful because I
(09:15):
have two kids and I love them and they know it,
and I just don't know that there's more success than that. Man,
I mean, you're just dropping jewels. Is what you're saying
is very profound, and I think for a lot of
people who are listening right now, they can just apply
some of these principles to their own lives, no matter
if they came from a wealthy family, no matter if
they came from a poor family, whatever the set of
(09:35):
circumstances were. They can take exactly what you're saying and
just reevaluate their lives based on that and say, man,
I can do battert what do you say with the
grace of God, um, good luck and some good people.
I think that's just I think that's really amazing. Thank
you for sharing that. Joey No, you mentioned Afghanistan and
you joined the military when you were eighteen years old.
(09:58):
Why did you join the military at a you know,
what was your experience like during the first few years
in the military, including your deployment in Iraq? You know
why during the military is you know, I'm a product
of that nine eleven generation, right. It affected all of
us and we all found different ways to respond to it.
But I don't believe any of us did not have
(10:18):
the trajectory of our lives changed if we were adolescent
preteen or teen and watched those towers fall and what
happened to our country afterwards. For me, the military was
just the avenue, like I remember, um, you know a
lot of people remember the towers falling. I saw that,
but it didn't have an immediate impact because growing up
in North Georgia with not a lot of money, never
been on an airplane or even a bus. New York
(10:40):
was as far away as Tel Aviv, Like, it just
was not even it didn't even register. So I didn't
have that immediate impact of hey, they attacked us on
our home school. But what I did have was a
few years later when a guy that was on my
football team and upper classmen deployed and came back and
just the changes in him he had seen ward. Yeah,
but it also boys become men and women or girls
(11:03):
become women, and like he had seen a new team
in a brotherhood, and and just you could see that's
what came from it, not just the war. And I thought, man,
how how cool to be to have some of that
in my life. So when I graduated high school, that
was the accomplishment. There was no expectation beyond that for
my parents, who had never seen that, that was the accomplishment,
even in two thousand four when college was more mainstream.
(11:26):
So for me it was like, well, I didn't have
the financial support or really the attention span to go
into college. Laying brick and block was not easy. So
I joined the industry in my town, which was to
make carpet and didn't really like that a whole lot,
and it just needed to be something more. And I
just remember the day I woke up and realized my
mom cleans houses and my dad builds them. They provide
(11:48):
services for other people, and they do it with hard work.
What can I do? Like, how do I honor that?
How do I honor everything they give up to give
me decent clothes to go to school in in a
vehicle to drive things they didn't get? How do I
honor that? And the military just was the most obvious
thing for me. So in short, because nothing I say
short kind that's okay. I kind of went for selfish
(12:10):
reasons because it was about me in my life, but
it was also for others in the sense that I'll
put three this way. I joined the Marine Corps eighteen
and that was all about me, but by the time
I was twenty, it was all about being something, a
part of something bigger than myself and and serving it.
Really did everything they preached. Man, I just soaked it
up and it made sense to me more with Joey
(12:31):
jem was right after this. How old are you? Joey,
I'm thirty four for about three more weeks, so I'm
I'm hanging in there. Wow, bro, I'm thirty four two. Okay,
so you're a little older, been than me by what
five months or so? So now that that's great to know.
(12:53):
I didn't really realize that. Now you were deployed in Afghanistan.
It's a technician, and I mean there was a life
event that pretty much changed your entire existence. Now, it
was a day that you stepped on you improvised explosive
device i e. D and lost both your legs. Can
(13:16):
you take us back to that day? Can you describe
what happened? Yeah? Unfortunately or unfortunately one of the big
mixed numbers and movies are probably to blame for this,
but also just trauma in general. Like people think when
you get hit by a bomb, you're knocked out and
you wake up in the hospital, And the truth is,
unless your head gets hit, you don't go unconscious. A
matter of fact, you're going through shock, which means in
(13:39):
some ways you're way more alert than you probably want
to be. So my job as an e O D.
Explosive ordnance disposal or bomb technician, it's kind of like
the movie hurt Locker, although the movie doesn't really show
the job correctly in in reality. By two thousand ten,
in Afghanistan, we didn't wear bomb suits, and we worked
on two man teams, not three men teams. And we
(14:01):
were walking on foot with a patrol. We weren't in
a vehicle with robots, and the majority of the work
we did was by hand. Um. We tried to use
robots when we could, but in Afghanistan the bombs were
placed in in so remote places we couldn't get the
equipment there. And so my number one tool for taking
a part of bomb was a pair of trauma shares
um and like a little hook with some cord on
(14:22):
it so I could get some distance when I needed
to black tape and in another explosive charge, I've had
to blow it in place. And it was all by hand.
And so I say that because a lot of people
don't understand that, and so how did this for six
months on that deployment, and then on the sixth morning
of an operation it was August six. We started it
on August one. The job was to go in and
(14:44):
clear out a town called Safar Bazar. You can look
it up and google it. We have our little Wikipedia page.
It was Operation Roadhouse too, and we took a couple
hundred marines in six bomb texts, and those six bomb
texts were three teams of two men each, and each
team had its own responsibility, and my team mate and
I had the responsibility of being with the main effort,
(15:06):
so clearing the main path ahead of us. And so
for five days we cleared city blocks, street by street,
and then on the sixth day we started clearing the buildings,
and the town was pretty much a ghost town. Because
our respect for collateral damage in civilian life means we're
gonna let them know we're coming. And this town was
known for stockpiling the bomb parts that they would send
(15:27):
up to other places. So when we told him we
were coming in order to keep the civilians safe, the
bad guys took all those bomb parts and put them
in the ground and made a mind filled out of
the town. But we had to go in and clear
to the town because they were using it basically as
a as an enemy base. And so for five days
we were very successful. I worked thirty eight eight s
and five days, and UM on the sixth morning, Basically
(15:49):
what happens. I stepped on an idea I didn't know
it was there, and that happens. It's kind of ironic,
considering I had knelt down and touched a hundred of
them with my hands, and it was the one I
didn't even know it was there that got me UM.
And the unfortunate part about that day is that a
marine engineer, Corporal Daniel Greer from Knoxville, Tennessee, UM lost
his life to the same bomb. And that's really the
(16:09):
irony war I stepped on it. He was twenty ft
away a piece of a wall, a big rock hit
him in the head. Traumatic brain injury took his life.
And of course I lost my legs, but man, you know,
it would be very selfish to me to complain about
losing my legs when that could have taken my life.
And so really what that was, if anything, was just
a wake up call. It kind of kind of reset
(16:29):
my compass a little bit. As I began to recover,
a lot of other things changed in my life and
and I had a chance to just kind of refocus.
And my recovery was an opportunity, to to say the least.
And it's you know, I tell people all the time,
let today be the last worst day of your life,
which means you can change your perspective and make every
(16:49):
day after a tragic event better. Um, and that's what
I chose to do. Did you have children at that point?
I had a son, And you know, I told you
before we got started. I love these kind of conversations,
get a chance to kind of let it go. And
uh So the whole story of my son is I
was very single and very much a marine and in
very good shape and enjoyed to meet new people, to
(17:11):
include ladies. And so I had a son from a
one night stand and I just found out about him
right before I deployed. He had made it to about
five months old before I met him. And uh I
like to say I did the right thing, but I
just did the the only option I had, which was
I was ecstatic I had a child. I gave him
my name. His mom and I worked together to figure
(17:32):
it out and do all the legal stuff. We we
didn't get together, but we decided to raise this sun
as two parents that love him. And so when I
got hurt, I'd only spent two or three days with him.
And by the time I got hurt and made it home,
he was a year old. Um. And so I tell people,
you know, we learned to walk together and uh. And
that's how we became friends and and the father and
(17:52):
the son, and he's been here with me ever since.
Now I've got a little daughter. M h. That's a
that's a man. I tell you, that's one of the
more interesting stories, especially when you know that life isn't
all about you anymore. And you had this experience that
you just mentioned was from a one night's thing. You
didn't know that you had a child out there, but
(18:13):
you find out right before you go. And I'm imagining
as you have this experience, because you talk about a
bit about the recovery, but as you have this experience, mentally,
I just wonder what was going on with you at
that time you got you got a child. Now you're like, okay,
how you know, how are they gonna look at me.
I didn't spend much time with them. Your family, I'm
(18:34):
sure probably was, you know, all concerned about what was
going to happen, what life was gonna be like for you,
And I know you were wondering what life was gonna
be like for you, you know, one of the I
guess unfortunate blessings of my job and there when I
joined the Marine e O. D. Field And and what's
different about the Marine Corps than the other services. Has
(18:54):
to become a bomb tech. You volunteered into it, but
you have to have served for a certain amount of
years and reach a certain rank before you can do it.
And they really want anybody that goes through that training
to be dedicated to it and know really what they're
getting into. And so just to join the Marine Corps
e O. D. Field, Man, I had seen it happen.
I'd had Buddy's deployed come back without legs. I kind
of knew the process. And then even on that deployment,
(19:15):
I've seen it happen a half a dozen times, either
right in front of me or showed up immediately after
and help clean it up. So when I lost my
legs and went through the recovery, it was more about
just kind of uh, setting a goal and checking it off.
Setting a goal and checking it off. I can't say
that I was prepared for it, but it didn't hit
me by surprise either. If your job to take bombs apart,
you better be mantally prepared for the probabilities, if not,
(19:38):
if not, the possibilities and uh and so for me, like,
for example, man, I got a picture of the first
time I pete standing up, and it's kind of funny,
but it was also a goal I set, like, Hey,
that's something I used to do without thinking twice. I
can't do that anymore. I need help to go to
the bathroom when I'm walking enough that I can take
myself to the bathroom and stand up and urinate like
I'm gonna take a picture of it. Mark that a
(20:00):
And I did that with every goal. And as far
as my son goes, I mean, I often say he
kind of saved my life because I never wanted for motivation.
Nothing motivates you like responsibility, and I had his responsibility
to be a father. And you can't do that laying
in the hospital bed worried about what you lost. You
gotta be able to appreciate what you have and do
(20:22):
the right thing. And so for me, it was like,
you know what, I've got learned how to throw a
baseball without legs. I've got to learn how to teach
this kid to drive. I've got to learn how to
take him to a restaurant. I gotta learn how to
discipline him and work him like my dad did me. Um,
and these legs can't be the reason why I don't
do that. He deserves more than that, you know, Joey,
thank you for sharing that story. But I'm reminded of
(20:44):
how we first met, and I believe, if I'm correct,
the first time we met was in a Fox Nation
studio and we were on a panel together, and I
just remember thinking and seeing you and wondering, how the
hell does this guy have such a a great attitude?
You were just and every time I've seen you since
(21:04):
we were just hosting a show together on Fox News Channel,
maybe you were three weeks ago or so, and you're
just always in good spirits. I text you your good spirits?
How do you have such a good disposition after all
that has happened um to you, and and and and
certainly with your family, how do you continue, You're happier,
(21:27):
seemingly to me than people who have had everything good
go for their lives. And I get it. Not everyone's
had everything good going for the lives, but certainly they
got all kind of things to call for money, success
and all these other things. You're more happy than they are.
How is that possible, Joey? You know, you see these
movies and you have these full brass and are always
complaining because they've never they've never needed to want for something,
(21:52):
and they had created this false expectation that everything's supposed
to happen and happens when they wanted to. That is
never a factor in my life. I'm not saying that
I wasn't taken care of, but it was never presented
to me that things will go the way I wanted
them to, or even in my favorite was presented to
me that things got to get done towards gotta get
done work. It's gotta get done and you've gotta be
the one doing it. And so I just have a
(22:14):
gratitude for the positive things that happened in my life,
and it's hard for me not to focus on them
about it. You know, there's some people that are really
good at sports, are really good at dancing and seeing it.
I don't have any of those gifts, but life has
a way of working out for the for the positive
things I want in my life, and I'm always grateful
for that. That's a blessing. And I mean, I wish
(22:34):
I had a better answer, because I know, I know
how difficult it is for some people. Um, but I just,
you know, something clicks for me a long time ago
that made me just incredibly grateful to still be alive,
but also to still have these blessings in my life.
And I've never felt like they were supposed to happen.
I've never felt like I was oathed them. I never
felt like they were gonna happen no matter what. And
(22:58):
so when you're raised to work for it and then
things happen and you don't feel like you've even worked
that hard for like you're like, it's hard to explain,
but it's like I didn't do anything for my daughter
to love me but make her, but she loves me unconditionally.
Oh my god, that's such a blessing that I wake
up happy. Like when I wake up and I hear
her say Daddy, It's like, why in the world would
(23:18):
would she be so happy to see me like that?
Those things happen every day. And if you're not grateful
for that, if it doesn't make you happy, like I
don't know you can be happy? And I worry for you. Man,
this is your an adultes is so inspiring. Now, let
me ask you this question, what role does guy play
in your life? Because I hear a lot of tones
(23:39):
and what you say and everything you say, and you've've
seen it on air. What role do this guy really
ultimately play in your life? All the roles and none
of them are defined. Like I was raised in church
and I don't go to church now, um, but I
don't have anything against it, just isn't um the experience
I'm looking for. I have a very spiritual experience. I
pray and talk to out a lot and um, but
(24:01):
I don't want to limit God. And so my experience
is that the difference between faith and religion is religion
as we as people trying to figure it out, and
faith is just feeling it. And so I've leaned into
faith and a and I'm worried that if I ascribe
to a specific um dogma, I guess I would be
(24:21):
limiting God's ability to play a role in my life.
If I if I put rules on God, then perhaps
I limit God. And so I believe in faith, and
I believe in things of that nature. Um, and I
don't I don't corner it, so I don't stop it
from from working the way it's supposed to. I don't
think any human being makes it through most of life's
(24:43):
adversity for any of us, by ourselves. And if it's
through the works of a deity or other people, um,
I call that God and I give it credit. And
it doesn't have to be one to fine thing for
me to believe in it. Now, thank you for sharing
your perspective on that. Now you have to retire ring
from the military. You want on to graduate from Georgetown
University in teen with a degree in liberal studies and
(25:06):
social and public policy. And you often went to Capitol
Hill to introduce yourself to politicians there. What were you
thinking at that time? You know what I was thinking.
I was thinking, every one of these dudes and ladies
up here are gonna want to take a picture with
me because I'm a shandy object. Right, I'm a warder
and uniform that lost his legs. But what they don't
know is I'm smarter than they think, and I'm gonna
(25:26):
sneak up on them what's something I care about and
make them care about it too. And so that's kind
of how I handled that. I um, I kinda it's
a crazy story, and if I don't have enough time
to say it, But basically, when I was recovering, I
recovered pretty quickly and the paperwork couldn't keep up with
my pace. UM I got injured August six, two thousand
and ten. I was walking and by all accounts, fully
(25:48):
recovered by February two thou eleven. And it takes about
two years just for the retirement process to happen. And
usually in those two years, you go to college or
you do Paralympics, and they kind of keep you busy
E up in d C back in during this time.
But I wanted something more than that. I knew I
wasn't gonna lay breaking block for a living. I knew
I probably wasn't gonna earn my living as a marine
(26:09):
for the rest of my career. So what can I do.
I can go educate myself. And so I started college
with a community college on campus October. So I got
injured in August. I started doing classes in October, and
as soon as I was independent could leave campus, which
was around February. I had rolled at Georgetown and started
school there, and in doing school while I became interested
(26:29):
in policy because I was at Georgetown and we were
learning kind of how policy started for mankind. And so
I had an opportunity to go up to Capitol Hill
and meet Chairman Jeff Miller. Actually I met him over
at Eighth and N if you're familiar with d C
over at the Marine Corps barracks. And I rolled up
to Chairman Miller, who's the chairman of the Veterans Affairs
Committee at the time for the Republicans who were in charge.
(26:51):
But more importantly, he represented the first District of Florida,
where the e O D School is and a lot
of EO D retire. And I said, Mr Chairman, I
know all your constituents and they think you should give
me a job, which was a very ignorant thing to say,
but it worked. No, it wasn't. It wasn't ignorant, so
it was naive maybe, and uh it was attention. He
(27:14):
thought I was retired. He didn't know all his active
duty and had a daily commitment to the hospital and
was living right beside it. So that was on a Friday.
On Monday, they're like, hey, will you come up and
submit a resume where we'd like to look at hiring
you for a fellowship or an internship unpaid. So I
went and bought a suit. I typed up probably the
worst resume that has ever made its way to Capitol
(27:35):
Hill and was successful, set in front of him, did
an interview, and they're like, yeah, next week to lot four,
but the Monday after that would love for you to
start coming in And I did a fellowship, So I
went and worked out with my therapist from seven and nine.
I was at Capitol Hill by ten, and then I
left at three or six, depending on the day, at
three two to three days a week to go to
(27:55):
college that night. And that was kind of my routine
until the Marine Corps found out out that they had
some realgunded warrior working up on Capitol Hill and they're like, listen,
you gotta have ethics training and it's got to be approved.
And by that point, I've been there so long that
like they didn't have a choice but to leave me there,
and so I ended up having a pretty good impact
on some policy and just really have been involved in
(28:16):
some way with it ever since. So that's interesting. And
you were in in d C the same period I
was there. I was there from twelve seventeen, so we
we might have even ran into each other, maybe the
r n C or something like that, who knows, but
I would have remembered you, for sure. I would have
some I'm thinking probably not, but we were in the
(28:37):
same place. So you go from Capitol Hill, you had
some good impact on policy. I'm interested real quick, what
was that policy? And I want to I want to
get to your started Fox News. Yeah, so what the
big things at the time was right before I started
working for Age fact, John Baynard being the Speaker of
the House and put some kind of a hiring freeze
and so like. Basically it was all about the fiscal
(28:57):
responsibility side of being a Republican. They weren't letting Congress
just hire and fill all the seats and jobs that
the Democrats had held before him, and it was kind
of more of a we're gonna show you all that
it can be done fiscally responsible. It's what that meant was.
I didn't even havev into college education. And I was
working as the only other staff member in the Disability
Assistance and Momoral Affairs Office of the House Winners Affairs Committee,
(29:21):
And so I set across the table from veteran service
organizations lobbying for different things to be done. But I
had a little bit of a card that I could
pull because they were used to sitting that across the
table from civilian Harvard grads, not guys and gals that
actually been through the system. And so there was something
called the improvised or the it's called the I D
E S. I can't remember what the eye stands for,
(29:43):
but it's the disability evaluation system, and so used to
when you got injured like me catastrophically, you were completely
evaluated by the D O D. They finished their evaluation,
then you got a rating from them, and then you
started from scratch with the v A and then a
full evaluation with them, and you got your pension. And
we were able to combine that into one process and
(30:05):
UM and they really looked to me to give the
user experience side of it. And then there were other
things where people were just lobbying for random things, and
I could really sniff the bull crab, this podcast the
bullshit and uh and and let the decision makers know, hey,
this is not something that this has not helped the
veteran community, or this is not what it looks like. Um.
(30:26):
And so those were two of the places. I mean. Unfortunately,
even back then, getting substantive bills passed was not easy,
but just having that type of influence on policymakers was
a lot of fun. We're talking to Fox Nation hosts
and retired US marine Joey Jones. You got so much
more with him right at their kid break. How did
(30:51):
you go? You? You talked about your background, family background,
and you talked about going into the military. What happened there?
And then you just happened to go up to someone
to say your constituents, I know a lot of your constituents,
give me a job. How did you from all of
that experience, how did you end up on TV? Where
did Fox News come and play with all of this? Well,
(31:14):
basically what happened is in all of that, I really
got a lot of assistance from military nonprofits, and I
felt guilty about it early on, like, hey, yeah, well
doing way too much for me. How can I help you? Like,
obviously I'm a communicator. I like to talk. Maybe I've
got a gift for it. Can I lend my voice
and communication experience to you. One of those nonprofits was
out of d C, and of the many things they did,
(31:36):
they took monded veterans to NASCAR races and did some
fun stuff. And I ended up meeting this lady, Jen
Williams while I was volunteering for that, which was about
the same time I worked on the Hill and went
to Georgetown and most of my voluntering town was on
the weekends, and um Jen Williams had been a Fox
and Friends producer and left to be freelance and she
was working on a project with a NASCAR and I
(31:58):
met her that way and we became friends. A few
years later in Kyle Carpenter, who had taken my fellowship
that I created and took it after me was about
to get awarded the Medal of Honor I had recovered
with him and and Gay and told them, Hey, this
is the guy you want working on the Hill. So
she asked me to come on and talk about him
during Gression Carlson's show at the time because it was
(32:19):
called The Real Story. So I go and a mike
up and it's my first time doing live TV and
I'm just gonna talk about my buddy Kyle, and President
Obama interrupts and does the speech and he's like, hey,
there's a scroup called ISIS and we're probably gonna have
to go to war with him. And she's like, Hey,
since you already miked up, do you mind to just
talk about it? What was an important enough speech and
lasted long enough that everybody had tuned in, So if
(32:41):
you were tuned into Fox News watching President Obama when
it cut away, there was Joey Jones giving you given
Obama the what for on this and UM, and that
was my introduction to television news. And from there, I've
had a really a fast success on Twitter. And Greg
gutt Felt and Mike Huckabee saw me on Twitter, didn't
even know I had been on each invited me onto
(33:02):
their new shows, respectively, and the rest kind of went
from there. What what did you say about Obama at
that time? UM? I don't remember. You know, I was
still in uniforms UM up until twelve, so at that
time I was recently retired and I just didn't um.
You know, here's the best story I can get. For
President Obama. I went to the White House and had
(33:22):
dinner with him with a bunch of four star generals,
and while I was having dinner, he kind of looks
at me, goes, Johnny, if you were back in the
same place doing the same thing, how would you do
it differently? And I said, well, Mr President, I'd step left,
and like you know, Maddess started laughing, but none of
the other ones got it. And what it was is like,
you know, when I stepped right and step on a bomb.
But the bigger point there was, hey, man, that's for
(33:43):
you to figure out. Like my job was to do
what was in front of me, the big stuff up
to you, like figure it out. And um, so that's
how I've treated all politicians. Like I tell you, he's
very charismatic and very good at his words, but I never,
really it always felt like he was on. I mean
in actually a handful of times, and it it always felt
he was performing. And I can't be insincere because I
(34:05):
haven't met another sitting president. I met Trump before he
was president, I met Bush after. But I can imagine
it may be that they're all kind of feeling like
they're performing at all time. So I was never overly
harsh of President Obama. But I've always called balls and
strikes with any of the presidents. That's just who I
am speaking of. I would like for you to put
on your Fox News Fox Nation hat for a minute
(34:28):
before we close out this show. First, you're a veteran
of war in Afghanistan. I just read on Fox News
dot Com that all US forces have been removed from
the Bagram Airfield, the largest military base in Afghanistan. We're
going to be completely out of Aghanist Afghanistan by September eleven,
according to the Biden administration. A lot of Americans want
(34:51):
out of the longest war in American history. But we
also see now that we're leaving the Taliban taking over
district after district from the Afghan government. It looks like
the Taliban could very well take over the country in
a matter of months. And of course, the Taliban is
aligned with al Qaeda. So with all that in mind,
(35:12):
what's your opinion of America's policy towards Afghanistan as it
stands today. You know, I'm glad you're talking about wrapping
it up with this this most important policy thing we'll
talk about right rest of us just Joey's story. And
so now we talk about some business. Um, here's the deal.
I don't think we've been in the twenty year war.
I think we've been intend to year wars because in
America we hold our politicians accountable and sometimes that's even
(35:34):
to our own detriment. And what I mean by that
is politicians have a way of of crafting their foreign
policy to reflect what the ballot box has in mind.
So if it becomes populars and not want troops to Afghanistan,
then they'll change their mind. And if if it becomes
posular to go attack, um isist, and they'll do that.
And and a lot of times it feels like it's
not really about what makes us safer as much as
(35:54):
what gets us to vote. And so the really I
don't have an opinion as much as questions, which is
the problem, right Like I lost my legs in Afghanistan
and I've got more questions than than definitive opinions on it.
And that's the problem right there. But if I were
talking to the President Biden, I would say, you know,
in two thousand and ten and eleven, you were the
second person in charge. It was it was the Obama
(36:16):
Biden administration that believed in this war and the victory
of it enough to send forty troops to Afghanistan and
me being one of them, and to let my buddies
die and me lose my legs. That's how much you
believed in it. Now you're president and you're unconditionally withdrawing,
which means you don't ask for anything in return, You're
just bring everybody home. What changed? What changed for you?
(36:36):
Why did you go from believing in it enough to
let me die for it to not believing in it
enough to have anything to show for it? And that
would be my question if he answered it correctly, I
you know, if he answered it genuinely and understood, maybe
I'd accept it. But right now, that's my question. Are
you optimistic about the future of America? Always? Eternally? Look, man,
(36:56):
there was a time where we were at war with
half the western world out the eastern Western world, right
and and our grandparents, I mean, your grandparents didn't have
rights that mine had at that time. I mean, that's
just insane to me that even though the world existed
that way, but all of our grandparents were turning in
still for the cause right and get and standing in
the government cheese line because we have a rash in
(37:18):
our food. All of that just for fight for our survival,
and now we fight over how we feel. And so
we've advanced a long way, and we've been through tougher times,
and I just believe that it's in our in our
blood that we will when we're backed against the wall, honestly,
we'll survive and do the right thing. We just unfortunately,
(37:38):
even with nine eleven in my war, maybe we haven't
been backed against the wall and we've been left to
our own devices a little too much. Now, my last
question before we get into projects you may have coming
up in your Fox Nation show and all that good
stuff you said before you were raised the Republican and
still hold many of those beliefs, but are still critical
of the right these days looking at the GEO p
(38:00):
and the right more broadly, do you think conservatives are
going in the right direction? You know, it's fun as
raised as a conservative, but back then that was a
blue dog Democrat, right like, because we were poor, So
you couldn't be poor and be a Republican back in
the eighties and early nineties, and so the conservative idea
of personal responsibility and respecting someone else's ability to live
(38:22):
their life and doing it without the government growing to
the point that it becomes just arbitrary authority. That's never
changed in me, it's just who represents that from one
moment to the other, or if anybody does it all
changes depending on who the politicians are. And so for me,
like I'm more critical of the people on the right
because they're the ones that are supposed to represent my ideas,
(38:44):
and when they mess it up, it matters the people
on the left that I don't always fully understand their ideas,
so it's hard to be critical of it because I
don't agree with it. So I can't tell you how
to do it better. I can just say I don't
like it. But if you're on the right and I
feel like you are taking advantage of our passion for
the opportunity get elected, then I'm definitely coming after you
or at least asking you to explain yourself. And that's
(39:04):
kind of position I've holden. And as far as um
you know where we are now with politics. If you've
got a team mentality, you know, the Georgia football fan.
If I've got the ninth best quarterback in the SEC.
I'm going to give you a full throated argument on
why it's really the third best because that's my team,
right And we can't do that with our politicians. We
can't make excuses for them. We can't make a reality
(39:26):
that isn't true. We've gotta be able to be honest
about it, and sometimes that means critiquing the politicians are
supposed to be on our side. I love that we
share that. I absolutely appreciate that. I'm gonna start calling
you common sense joe common sense Joey, you're you're up
now before we go, Do you have any big projects
coming up at the folks at home so you know
(39:47):
about and what can people find you on social media
and elsewhere? Yeah? On social media Twitter and Instagram is permotional.
I think I'm active on that's Johnny j o h
N and why Underscore Joey j o e Y same
handle as far is what I'm involved in. You know,
I have I have my own little podcast called Proud
American on Fox News Radio. You can get it wherever
podcasts are and we'll have you on there soon, I'm
sure and thank you absolutely. And then on Fox Nation,
(40:10):
have a couple of different projects. I've done two seasons
of Fox Nation Outdoors is really cool. It's a hunting show,
but it's really about learning the country abroad. Um. And
then I have a couple of projects. One it's called
USA Inc. That tells the history of tattoos in America
and all the military involved. And I've got a project
that's dropping July four, um, and I don't know, you
(40:31):
know kind of when people will access this, Yeah, it's
the day after. It's July five, So you get you
had a project that came out yesterday. Basically we're recording
on the Friday before. Guy, So I gotta I got
a really cool thing that should be available on Fox
Nation around the Monday after the fourth of July. They
(40:52):
haven't told me, but I sit down with four veterans
from Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan and talk to
them about why they're proud Americans and where they see
the country today. It's pretty amazing, yo. I just want
to thank you for joining me, Joey Jones, And it's
so wonderful actually to know even more about your story
(41:14):
and know how we really are connected. I want to
consider you my new brother. Because there's so much connectivity
there and I look forward to being in touch with
you and building a stronger brotherly bond with you. So
thank you for joining me here on out Loud with
Gianno Caldwell. And I'm sure you're gonna get a lot
of new followers who are going to be interested in
your story because it's one that's amazing. I hope that
you've got a book that you're working on because you're
(41:36):
hill billy. Elgie was a great book, but yours would
be much more powerful and profound. That's my opinion. I
appreciate it, man, I appreciate you and all you do,
and I look forward to working with you more. M
(41:56):
I want to thank Joey Jones a good for a
great interview. If you're joining show, wease leave us a
review us the Five Stars on Apple podcast. If you
have any questions for me, please email me at out
Loud at Gingerishtree sixty dot com and I'll try to
answer them in our future episodes. And please sign up
for my monthly newsletter at ginglish Street sixty dot com
Slash out loud. You can also follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,
and parlor at Giano Caldwell, and if you're interested in
(42:20):
learning more about my story, please pick up a copy
of my best selling book titled Taken for Granted, How
Conservatism Can win back to the Americans that liberalism failed.
Special thanks to our producer John Cassio, researcher Aaron Klingman,
and executive producers Debbie Myers and speaker New Gingridge, part
of the Ginglish Street sixty Networks
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