May 30, 2025 • 34 mins
In this episode, Joey Jones of FOX News discusses his upcoming book, 'Beyond the Badge,' which highlights the lives and stories of first responders. The conversation delves into the emotional toll of their work, the impact of the defund the police movement, and the importance of humanizing these heroes. Jones emphasizes the need for mental health support for first responders and the role of families in their lives. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Today, I am joined by staff Sergeant Joey Jones.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Many of you know him from Fox News.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
But we're going to be talking about his upcoming book,
Beyond the Badge, Answering the Call to Serve on America's
home Front, and the book officially releases on June seventeenth.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Joey, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Yeah, thanks for the interest. I really appreciate it. This
book is. It's exciting for me and hopefully it's enlightening
for a lot of other folks. So thanks for letting
me talk about it.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It really, I'm telling you, That's what I was saying
before we got on. It really is for me because
here in Michigan, we've had a lot of situations where
police have been under attacking. And I liked how you
started the book with your story about Colin Kaepernick, because
I was reading that and.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this is so cool.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
They actually spoke and I'm going to hear something really good,
and then you're like, no, he turned out to be
a total jerk.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
So it just reinforced what we all thought.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Yeah, that's you know, some times I feel like I
look back, and it's like, man, it's a little bit
Forrest Gump, like in my life, where I just end
up wrong place for wrong time, or connecting with someone
while something's going on. And with the old Colin Kaepernick thing,
you know, my buddy Nate Boyer connected us, and it
did feel very genuine. Nate was an army ranger and
(01:18):
after that he played for the Seattle Seahawks for a preseason,
not in the regular season, but he was at thirty
three years old, so he gained fame just by making
an NFL roster as a thirty four year old rookie.
And so Nate's a very open and honest guy. He's
not necessarily politically liberal, Conservatives just like people. And he
tried to bridge a gap and make something good out
(01:39):
of the kneeling and Colin kind of spit in her face.
And I brought that example up, not necessarily to talk
bad about Colin, but to say, hey, listen, I'm not
coming from this one sided. I'm just saying there's really
only one side. Oh.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It's so interesting because as I was reading that, I
think about comparing that to the political world, which you're
obviously a big part of as well, and we talk
about that all the time as we look at this
next cubernatorial race in Michigan, and what the battles are
on the ground here, which are the battles in many states,
and education and things that you would think as parents
(02:14):
we would all come together on. And I was just
talking the other day, I'm like, you know, there is
a part of me that things on certain issues we
could sit down with the other side. But I read
this and I was like, maybe I am being naive
about that.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
You know, I talk about in that intro since you
brought it up, which is this book. Unlike my last book,
I probably spent more time on what the guys and
gal had to say and making sure their words were
accurate and their anecdotes made sense. Then I spent on
my own take because I didn't feel like my take
was as necessary as making sure they were presented. But
(02:49):
in the intro, one of the few places I get
to just pontificate in this book, I talk about how
there are two different narratives that happen, and this idea
of defund the police, which is what politicians said, and
then acab acab all copture bad or really what a
lot of people are saying all culture bastards. And in
doing my research and writing the book, what I learned
(03:11):
is that it was the exact same movement. It's just politicians,
in their spineless way, said oh, we're not going to
say all culture bassards. We're going to say defund the police.
We're going to kind of repackage this. So it became
the politically correct way of saying all cops are bad
or all copture bassaards. They were embracing that sentiment. And
you look no further than the riots in twenty twenty
(03:32):
and every time a police officer had to use their
weapon in the line of duty, the politicians that would
come out and call them a murderer because the person
they shot was a person of color. And so you really,
what you learn is that politicians are what they are. They,
or at least some they latch onto the worst of
us that we get excited and passionate about, and they
(03:54):
use that to manipulate our emotions or allow us to
become the worst versions of ourselves. And that's happened in
this movement, this idea that police officers are somehow terrible people.
It's you know, if I can turn that into your enemy,
then you're not looking at me anymore. And that's really
what it became.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
And it's so personal because that movement was and I
think it still exists. That movement is kind of they
paint police as this as not people you know, as
a unit on and of itself, but this book brings
you to the actual life and the day in and
day out of these people, so you can humanize what
(04:31):
these jobs are. And just last week, I actually had
the honor of presenting a couple of police Officer of
the Year awards here in the state of Michigan, and
you get to read their story. There's a significant moment
in the year that something happens, and you get to
read their story aloud to the entire group and then
present them the awards. So I had two different stories
(04:53):
with multiple officers involved, and the stories are so powerful
and when I read them, I think to myself, I
couldn't do this. I couldn't have run into this burning building.
And the one was a police officer with no gear,
not trained as a firefighter, who ran into a burning
building and brings a child out, but in the process,
two other children don't make it out.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
And you take that home.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
And there are stories like that in this book that
I think that is what people need to read, because
the one thing that I came out of this awards
ceremony with from the director of the Police Officers Association
was our police officers still feel abandoned.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
No, absolutely, when you read this book, number one, it's
not all police officers. It starts with two firemen that
are really close to me, my brother in law, and
then a guy that was I've known since I'm three
years old. He's like an uncle to me, and they
happen to work at the same department together. That's not
why they that's not a why the three of us
know each other. It's just to come from a small town.
(05:57):
But in those first two chapters you have my friend
Clay Hendrick, who is a country as the term green
is hopefully that translates in Michigan, you understand what that means,
really country. Really it talks with a thick accent, didn't
go to college, but incredibly smart guy. And then my
(06:17):
brother in law, Keith, is kind of the opposite of
that from this area. His his dad's well educated, he's
well educated, had went to the University of Georgia got
a business degree, came back and told his dad that's
a you know, self made millionaire. Hey, I appreciate the education,
but I'm going to go be a fireman. And the
point there is that these are two people. One person
might see it as an opportunity in life, the other
(06:38):
one sees it as a mission in life. But they
kind of come together to do the same thing for
a period of time, and they come from very different places.
They're very different, you know, experiences in the same place.
And I really wanted that juxtaposition to shine. And what
happened was when you write a book like this and
you interview people, what you want to happen, isn't this
(07:00):
what happens? And what really shined was how they went
through this experience of my brother in law talks about
going into a burning house at a young age, early
on in a fire department, trying to save two kids.
Couldn't find them. They've crawled up and under a pile
of stuffed animals to hide, didn't find them. They perished.
And then Clay talks about very first time on incident,
(07:23):
the very first time young kid is killed in the
car crash and having to see the parents, and what
you learn is it doesn't matter where you come from
or what your experiences are, that raw human emotion is there,
and some people can deal with it and some people can't.
And they're two people that can. I don't know that
I could. I mean from the time I had my
daughter on, reading the news on Fox and Friends and
(07:45):
learning about a little kid that was injured or mistreated
just hit so much harder. And so to know that
we have people out there that can go do this
and then come back to their own kids, take them
to school through that same intersection that they just saw
a kid die in and go home at night and
give their family a smile and a happy day. Man.
(08:08):
It's you know, we use the term hero a lot
and superhero, and it's like, I feel like that's a superability.
It's not something I know that I could do. And
to know that two people really close to me in
my life do it every day. I've known these men
for twenty thirty years. I didn't know these stories. And
to know that you don't have to go to LA
or New York, or Houston or Detroit to find these stories.
(08:30):
It's not Chicago fire, It's Dalton Georgia Fire Department, and
here are two guys that have these stories. It's a
common denominator. It's a thread that sews every community in
this country together.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
And that these tragedies are happening all the time and
we don't know, but they pile up. I mean, I
think it was your friend Clay who said that when
he saw the child, after he saw the child he
hit by a truck, felt like, I.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Don't know if I can do this job.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
In almost the sense that I got from that moment
was there was a little bit of shame, and he
went to his boss and was like, you know, I
just don't know if I can do this, And that
was so human. There was so much vulnerability in the book,
which I thought was beautiful because it's the stuff we
don't get to see. We see first responders and we think,
(09:19):
just what you said, I don't think I could do that.
You know, there's something special about them, and I do
think there's something special, And sometimes because of that we think, oh,
they're all right because they deal with it differently.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
But the vulnerability of.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Him going back and calling his wife and saying, I
just need to hear the kids' voices. I was in
tears when I read that, because I thought, this is
just one day.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
You know, I'm going to talk myself into a circle here.
But you ring up a great point, which is I
sit here and say it's almost this superhero ability. The
truth is they don't have the ability to do it
any more than you or I. They just believe that
their mission is more important than their own peace of mind.
If there's anything superhuman about him, it's that it affects
them just the same. Some people obviously get affected worse
(10:07):
than others things like that, but it's not that they're unaffected.
It's that they believe that that job and the service
they provide and the lives they do save and the
people they can sol And there's a game Boarden who
was search and rescue, is on the dive team. He
believed in his story that it was worth hypothermia to
retrieve a body of a young girl for her mother
before I think it was Thanksgiving, her Christmas, before the
(10:29):
next major holiday, because his chief had made her a promise,
We're going to find your daughter before the New Year
or whatever it was. And so he goes and he
dies to find this girl, and he finally does and
as he does, they get him on shore and he
blacks out and he wakes up in the hospital. So
it's like it's the kind of thing that you know,
he was willing to risk his own life, not to
save a life, but to bring closure. And it's like
(10:51):
this idea that they're not infalluable, that they can die
in cold water just like you and I can. They
can have the mental and emotional trust just like you
and I can. They just believe it's worth it, the
sacrifice is worth it, that the risk is worth it.
And if there's anything special, I think the first chapter
is an ordinary guy and extraordinary circumstance and man that
(11:13):
just really ties a bote on all of it, because
that's who these people are.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
And their families as well.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I think that's also key is that his wife heard
in his voice when he called there's something different. I'll
just sit here in silence with him on the phone.
And to me, that was so powerful. And then Sheriff
Lamb was also a similar story of his family understanding.
I mean, my goodness, when I read about him working
(11:39):
two jobs. He's working as a police officer and I
think pest control.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Too, and he is lee I mean, you are away
from your family so much.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
And his wife, God bless her, because I don't know
that I looked at it even that and I'm like,
would I be that understanding? He's like, don't come to
me with the minuscule things, because I'm like, there are
times when I'm like, and then they did this, and
they did this.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
You know, as a mom, you just like you want
to unload and you want someone else.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
You want dad to come in and hear the horrible
things of the day. But this understanding of what he
is doing is a mission and it is bigger than
those small moments of so and so poked the other
kid's eye, you know, like all the things that happened
during the day.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
This is so much bigger.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah. Mark Lamb's story is really unique. I mean he
became a is now essentially, especially on the right, a
famous law enforcement figure because of he understood the pr
side of being a sheriff. What he really gets into
that I love and I think is a great educational
opportunity is like the constitutionality of a sheriff and hall
a sheriff has the juggle that responsibility of enacting walls
(12:47):
that he believes are unconstitutional in the will of the
people he serves. And by becoming this kind of forward
facing sheriff, someone that has social media, then he becomes
accessible to his community. So it's a little of vulnerability
in a sense because you can't just say, oh, I
didn't know about that, or I didn't hear you, because
now you can go on my social media page and
(13:08):
tell me about your grievance. And so it really is
it's so much more work to do that. It's not
about self aggrandization. It's about making sure everyone in your
community knows you are accessible to them. And when you
do that, then you have to hear all the things
that they want to change. And instead of him being
overwhelmed by that or coming up with excuses, he listened.
And wow, you know what a what a person an
(13:30):
elected official that listens. And so every person in the book,
whether it's the border patrol, search and rescue, game board
and fireman, police officers, bomb squad, every person in the
book has a story or two of trauma, of experiencing
something that you hope nobody ever has the experience. And
the anecdote I use is, you know, the worst day
(13:51):
in our lives, like in the book, when I talk
about losing my dad the worst day in our lives,
there's just another day on the job. For them, it's
just another day. But then also, every person in the book,
without prompt offers some sort of wisdom or insight or
actionable idea that has helped them and may help the
(14:12):
person reading the book to get through that trauma or
that difficult time, or that difficult job, those difficult hours.
And I think it's really unique, or not unique, but
really amazing that this really is something that we don't
think about a lot, is so common among them. It's
just this unique idea that I guess the best way
to explain it is as a veteran for more than
twenty years, I've watched my country have this conversation and
(14:35):
lead to programs and everything from a free mail at
Applebe's on Veterans Day to the Department of Veterans Affairs
looking at psychedelics, the treatmental health. Like we've gone that
far with our appreciation and understanding for the military, what
they go through and what they may need as far
as mental health. And then we look at our first
responders who never come home from war because they go
through their battlefield every day, and we have nothing. We
(14:58):
don't acknowledge it, don't program for it, we don't. Very
few charitable organizations and efforts exist. So how do they
do it? They do it at the grassroots level. They
do it in the fire hall, at the precinct, on
the SWAT team, having conversations with each other because there's
still a stigma in their community. You're going to take
(15:19):
me off the street if I go talk to the
We called it wizard, I don't know what each of
them calls it, but the psychologists like, are you not
going to let me carry a gun? Now? You know
it's it's a legitimate concern, Like I feel sane, but
these things bother me. And if I just talk to
you about these things, are you going to take my
ability to do my job with And so they just
talk to each other, they have conversations. Clay Hedrick gets
(15:39):
into it in the first books, like he said, listen,
what helped me more neything was talking to somebody else
about what they had going on. And it's this idea
that you talk about humbling makes me never want to
complain as a veteran again, which I try not to anyway,
you know, we probably have it better than any group
of veterans in this world, and we're living beside a
fireman or a police officer has seen equally as traumatic
(16:01):
things and has none of the resources available we have.
We're saying we should have more. Word like it was
a very very introspective for me in writing this book.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
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Speaker 1 (17:26):
Now stay tuned. We've got more with Joey Jones after this.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
We don't think about it as going to war every day,
but they really are going into battle every single day.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And it's interesting because.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Like I said, when I was at the Police Officers
Association event last week, the director was saying to me,
in since twenty I think twenty three, twenty four to
twenty into twenty five, now they are seeing more attacks
on police officers than they've ever seen. It's like an
increase of seventy five percent that they are seeing people
(17:59):
fight back and fight the cops.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
And I said, why do you think that is?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
And he said, I think that because they've seen all
of these people come in illegally and get away with
what they're doing. They feel empowered to go after these guys.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
And he said, to be.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Honest, Suitor, those are only the ones we know about,
because he's like, guys aren't coming back to the office
and saying, hey, I got my butt kicked today. He's like,
we don't really tell people that. And I'm that is
also something that you're taking home with you. You are
at war every single day.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
That was the picture I tried to paint, the picture
that was painted for me, not in direct words, because
none of these guys and Caitlin, the female in the book,
and none of them would ever sit around and complain
or it's just it's so antithetical to who they are.
Number One, they look at guys like us. I mean,
obviously I've got the prosthetic legs, but I know the
majority of people in this book because I do these
hunts where I take a group of my veteran friends
(18:54):
and a group of first responders and we go on
a hunt and we sit around a camp fire and talk.
And that's what really inspired this book. And so not
to I guess lose my train of thought there for
a minute, because I'm thinking about hunting for a second.
You see the duck over my head here. But the
inspiration of this book came from this idea that here's
my brother in law sitting beside me. I've known him
(19:17):
for thirty years. Literally we're family now. He grew up
two miles down the road from me, technically different communities,
but same area. I know where he works. I know
the road that he got on to go to work
every day because that's the one I took the high
school every day. And to hear him tell these stories
of what he's experienced, and that was the first time
(19:37):
it clicked in my head that, you know, his battlefield
where he goes to war to save somebody's life, is
the most safe place in the world to me. You
can pluck me out of Hawaii, Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Kurrgystan,
wherever I was at, and if they said put you
somewhere that you feel safe, anywhere in Dalton, Georgia, that's
(19:58):
where I'm from. I know where I'm at. And to
think that the same place that is the safest place
in the world for me is where he sees the
worst happen to us and sees us do the worst
to ourselves. That just really kind of rocked my world
a little bit. And what it showed me was the
sense of entitle that we walk around with as Americans.
(20:19):
We don't worry about if I have a car wreck,
somebody's going to be there. If my kid is injured,
somebody's going to be there. If if I drop my
kid off at school, there's an RS or a school
Resource officer, an SRO there, and it's going to take
care of my kids. We believe that and this idea
that these people exist in our communities. We go to
(20:40):
church with them, we see them at the supermarket, we
get mad at them in an intersection because they cut
us off in their civilian car. And it's like they're
the people we interact with positive and negative all day,
and they're also the same people that we just wake
up every morning believing will save our lives and save
our families lives, and save our house and save our business.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Run into a burning building.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I mean that to me is like you were saying earlier,
I don't know if I could do it. I mean,
I think in that moment, there's probably adrenaline if you
are in the moment hero.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
But this is their life every day.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Every day it's a choice to get up and say
I will run into a burning building.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
That's my job.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
If it happens, I'm here and that and I think
that again, I will say, I think the thing that
struck me in this book is the piling up of
these stories, because you talked about losing your dad and
then I think it was just a few days later
when you saw the person from the fire department who
looked at you and said, you know what happened, it
(21:42):
was still with him.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
That story.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
What That's just another file in the file cabinet of
suffering that he has seen. And I have to imagine
that you take a bit of that into yourself every
single time. And I think that was kind of highlighted
in the book too. At a certain point, people went,
I need to talk to somebody, I need to say
(22:04):
it's okay, I need to get this off my chest.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
You're absolutely right, take a step back when you talk
about running into a burning building. You're right. A lot
of people may, in a moment, with adrenaline, run into
a burning building. That's being brave. It's brave when you're
nine years old and you've never been electric before to
stick a paper clip into a light socket, like you,
you're showing a little bit brave to do that, right,
(22:28):
once you've been bit, once you know the consequence, once
you know that it hurts, you're not going to do
it again. Well, if you're running into that burning building
and it does hurt, trust me, it hurts, and the
fears there and you see your buddy not make it
back out, you're in a standoff and you see your
buddy gets shot because you're on the Baltimore County Squat
team like Tommy Wirl And so once you see somebody
(22:52):
get bit or you get bit, it takes courage to
keep doing it once you know the consequence. But you
continue to do it, that goes beyond bravery, that becomes courage.
Then it's a conscious decision. And that's what they all
have in common. And I make a little bit of
that point in there, but I think it's really important.
It's more than just running into the burning building. It's
(23:12):
knowing what you're going to see when you get there.
It's knowing what could happen to you while you're in
there and saying, man, it's just it has to be done.
I can identify in a sense as in eodtech, in
the sense of I knew what those bombs could do,
and I've seen it happen to others, and it nearly
happened to me until it did. But to do it
for people that I know I grew up with in
(23:34):
a building that I have an emotional attachment to and
an intersection I have to drive my kids through, it's
just a completely different level. And each each and every
person in this book, I guess I'm humbled by, almost
kind of disheartened by, but also it's a sense of
hope they found a way to deal with this on
their own. I hate that they had to. I hate
(23:55):
that there wasn't some major program and already figured out,
you know, multi PhD person that can say here's the
twelve steps to getting through this, but it's just not true.
And the thing that the same guy the same process
in Dalton, Georgia and LAPD like the same amount of
trauma for these two people and finding their way to
(24:17):
sanity and finding peace. I mean say in the book,
they give up their peace for us to have this
blissful ignorance of safety. I mean they give up their
own peace of mind.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
I think that's I think that's what's cool about the
way it's written and you being the.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Author behind it all.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And I know you would say, well, they're the author
of their own story, but bringing these stories together from
your perspective, because I think a lot of us look
at you and go, this guy has seen things I
will never see and has done things for me that
I didn't deserve.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
And I watch you walk up.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
With prosthetic legs, and I know that you feel pain,
and that's something I don't think people really know that
it somebody in your situation. You feel pain every day.
It is painful to walk in a prosthetic. It is
painful to put that on people.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I know.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I've seen the comments on social media, and I thank
you for always fighting back because honestly, you fighting back
has taught me so much about what your story is.
And this now you are teaching me the story of
the first responders on the ground here in the United States,
which I think you've brought these veteran stories to me.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
You brought your own story to me in a way
that has made it so much.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
More real for me to understand what you guys go
through every day. And I think it's beautiful to have
you be the person to go, hey, let me bring
these American Home Front heroes to the page as well well.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
I hope that there are non people in this book,
and I think five or six of them have known
for more than a decade, some of them multiple decades.
None of them are cold calls. They are all people
I knew personally before I decided to write this book.
And the reason why I wanted to have that fact
in there was when I sat down and pitched the
book to the publisher that like, oh, I know NYPD
(26:13):
and you know Oklahoma City, and there are these amazingly
terrible things that have happened and amazing stories from them.
But my point is I can write just as impactful
of a book with people from towns you've never heard of.
That that is the point is that you don't have
to be in New York or LA or in Oklahoma
(26:35):
City when the building is bombed to understand this or
to have a first responder in your life that's gone
through this. And I just hoped that I had enough
credibility that they would share with me and be vulnerable
with me and the audience that I presented it to
in the book would say that last book was pretty good,
let me see this one. So that's that's my goal
(26:56):
in this is I had this amazing, amazing, enlightening experience
over the last four or five years since twenty twenty,
to go on these hunting trips. Talk to my buddy,
see a veteran, there's a special operations bon tech, talk
to a hometown fireman, and see those two guys have
more in common than I probably have in common with
either one of them. And to see how they became
(27:16):
vulnerable with each other and talked about these things, because
you know, if you don't talk about it, it just
bottles up insides. And they've learned, these first responders, probably
more so than we have, because there isn't this national
conversation where we feel heard. They don't have that. They've
learned if they don't talk about it with each other
and somebody, then they don't make it through it. And
so it's been a probably more rewarding for me than
(27:40):
it will be for them to have their story heard
and read. It's more rewarding for me to be the
one to get to do it.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Stick around for more with Joey Jones.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
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Speaker 1 (29:26):
We'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
What would be so cool is to have this in schools,
to have high school kids read these stories and have
to talk about them, because I think, to your point,
it being a town I've never heard of is the
town I live in. It's a town no one's ever
heard of, you know, So it is my when I
read these stories. These are stories of people in my town.
I'm sure somebody could tell me the exact same thing.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
This is it.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
This has been how my life has been. And I
would love to see as we kind of combat this because,
like I said, the first responders here in Michigan will
tell me every day it has been so heart morales
down still, it has been so hard to get people
to answer the call to serve to get people to
come to the fire department, to get people to join
(30:13):
the police department. It has been such a challenge because
there is this undercurrent of hatred because the movement, the
movements that these radicals push they create, they're powerful and
they create long lasting effects if you can't beat them down.
That's the beauty of this book is that it does
beat those stories down because it is real people and
(30:36):
you cannot help but fall in love with the people
on these pages. And so I think it would be
fantastic to get this into high schools, to talk to
young people and say, look, these are the people that
put everything in their life on the line to make
sure you're safe.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
That sense that you have of man.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Everyplace else in the world, I can see danger, and
right here I feel safe. And that was a powerful
statement to me that that's not safe for them. They
put themselves in danger every day. And I appreciate the
fact that you wrote this and you brought these stories together,
so thank you well.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
I appreciate it. I think like this on that idea
of feeling safe, and I always use the analogy that
when it comes to post traumatic stress, like how you
feel in a social environment when you come home from more.
The way I say positive about it was like looking
behind the curtain at the Wizard of Oz. Like, as
long as you believe in Wizard of Oz, anything can
(31:32):
happen and things are awesome. But the moment you find
out the Wizard is just a man moving things around,
things get real. It's like, oh, this is the real world.
And so it's the same thing. Once you see a
benign environment turned deadly, then every benign environment after that
has the potential to be deadly. You've seen behind the curtain.
It's one thing to be in this combative environment that
makes it hard for me to go into bars and concerts.
(31:54):
It's another thing for the curtain that you live in
front of to be get a red light or walking
into a three story building. And when you're curtain, when
the benign environment that you know can turn deadly becomes
the restaurant you sit your family down to have dinner
on Friday night. The amount of just pure faith, I guess,
(32:18):
I don't know what. I don't know where they each
get it individually, but this idea that I don't know
that I'd ever leave the house with my kids anymore,
you know, And they still do and they still have
a full life now. Some of them hit rock bottom
during their career in a very suffering and silence way.
When I say rock bottom, like they hit a place
to where they can't find a smile and they can't
(32:39):
find happiness, and they all crawl back out of it
because that's just who they are, It's who we are
as Americans. It's a you know, for everything negative in
this book, it's also incredibly inspiring and uplifting. And my
point in talking about what I went through in war
or writing Unbroken Bonds of Battle or Behind the Badge
is so that every single person out there can read
(32:59):
these stories and say, you know what I can identify.
And I always when I do a public speaking I
always say, and I think all the guys in the
gallon this book would say the same. You look at
me and you have this reverence. And I appreciate that.
For me, it's because they got blown up. But I
look back at the audience and they look back at
the people they serve and it's like, look, you're going
through cancer, you've lost everything you own, you went through
(33:20):
a messy divorce, you've lost a child. Look how resilient
and strong you are, why wouldn't I be here for you?
And they all, every single one of them, believe in
the people they serve, and they love the people they serve.
And the people in this country are strong.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
People, absolutely all right.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
So we have to tell people where they get the book,
because I really would encourage people not only to read it.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
But share these stories with your kids, because we have
a curse.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
That came into this country that we have to break,
and that is this idea that these people there's something
that is nefarious about the people that go out to
fight for us and save us every day, and like
you said, they go to war every day. So it
is behind the badge answering the alse to serve on
America's home front. Where can people get.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
It before June seventeenth? Go to Foxnewsbooks dot com and preorder.
You'll probably get it on June seventeenth. If you pre
order it after June seventeenth, pretty much ever where books
are sold Barnes and Noble Books, a million, Amazon, Foxnewsbooks
dot Com. But if you're going to pre order it,
foxnewsbooks dot Com and you'll probably get it before anybody and.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
You'll love it. Go on and get it Joey Jones,
thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Thank you, and thank you all for joining the Tutor
Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others, go to iHeartRadio
dot com or go to iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts, and you can watch it
on Rumble at Tutor Dixon. So join us next time
on the Tutor Dixon Podcast and have a blast day.
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Today, I am joined by staff Sergeant Joey Jones.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Many of you know him from Fox News.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
But we're going to be talking about his upcoming book,
Beyond the Badge, Answering the Call to Serve on America's
home Front, and the book officially releases on June seventeenth.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Joey, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Yeah, thanks for the interest. I really appreciate it. This
book is. It's exciting for me and hopefully it's enlightening
for a lot of other folks. So thanks for letting
me talk about it.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It really, I'm telling you, That's what I was saying
before we got on. It really is for me because
here in Michigan, we've had a lot of situations where
police have been under attacking. And I liked how you
started the book with your story about Colin Kaepernick, because
I was reading that and.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this is so cool.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
They actually spoke and I'm going to hear something really good,
and then you're like, no, he turned out to be
a total jerk.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
So it just reinforced what we all thought.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Yeah, that's you know, some times I feel like I
look back, and it's like, man, it's a little bit
Forrest Gump, like in my life, where I just end
up wrong place for wrong time, or connecting with someone
while something's going on. And with the old Colin Kaepernick thing,
you know, my buddy Nate Boyer connected us, and it
did feel very genuine. Nate was an army ranger and
(01:18):
after that he played for the Seattle Seahawks for a preseason,
not in the regular season, but he was at thirty
three years old, so he gained fame just by making
an NFL roster as a thirty four year old rookie.
And so Nate's a very open and honest guy. He's
not necessarily politically liberal, Conservatives just like people. And he
tried to bridge a gap and make something good out
(01:39):
of the kneeling and Colin kind of spit in her face.
And I brought that example up, not necessarily to talk
bad about Colin, but to say, hey, listen, I'm not
coming from this one sided. I'm just saying there's really
only one side. Oh.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It's so interesting because as I was reading that, I
think about comparing that to the political world, which you're
obviously a big part of as well, and we talk
about that all the time as we look at this
next cubernatorial race in Michigan, and what the battles are
on the ground here, which are the battles in many states,
and education and things that you would think as parents
(02:14):
we would all come together on. And I was just
talking the other day, I'm like, you know, there is
a part of me that things on certain issues we
could sit down with the other side. But I read
this and I was like, maybe I am being naive
about that.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
You know, I talk about in that intro since you
brought it up, which is this book. Unlike my last book,
I probably spent more time on what the guys and
gal had to say and making sure their words were
accurate and their anecdotes made sense. Then I spent on
my own take because I didn't feel like my take
was as necessary as making sure they were presented. But
(02:49):
in the intro, one of the few places I get
to just pontificate in this book, I talk about how
there are two different narratives that happen, and this idea
of defund the police, which is what politicians said, and
then acab acab all copture bad or really what a
lot of people are saying all culture bastards. And in
doing my research and writing the book, what I learned
(03:11):
is that it was the exact same movement. It's just politicians,
in their spineless way, said oh, we're not going to
say all culture bassards. We're going to say defund the police.
We're going to kind of repackage this. So it became
the politically correct way of saying all cops are bad
or all copture bassaards. They were embracing that sentiment. And
you look no further than the riots in twenty twenty
(03:32):
and every time a police officer had to use their
weapon in the line of duty, the politicians that would
come out and call them a murderer because the person
they shot was a person of color. And so you really,
what you learn is that politicians are what they are. They,
or at least some they latch onto the worst of
us that we get excited and passionate about, and they
(03:54):
use that to manipulate our emotions or allow us to
become the worst versions of ourselves. And that's happened in
this movement, this idea that police officers are somehow terrible people.
It's you know, if I can turn that into your enemy,
then you're not looking at me anymore. And that's really
what it became.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
And it's so personal because that movement was and I
think it still exists. That movement is kind of they
paint police as this as not people you know, as
a unit on and of itself, but this book brings
you to the actual life and the day in and
day out of these people, so you can humanize what
(04:31):
these jobs are. And just last week, I actually had
the honor of presenting a couple of police Officer of
the Year awards here in the state of Michigan, and
you get to read their story. There's a significant moment
in the year that something happens, and you get to
read their story aloud to the entire group and then
present them the awards. So I had two different stories
(04:53):
with multiple officers involved, and the stories are so powerful
and when I read them, I think to myself, I
couldn't do this. I couldn't have run into this burning building.
And the one was a police officer with no gear,
not trained as a firefighter, who ran into a burning
building and brings a child out, but in the process,
two other children don't make it out.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
And you take that home.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
And there are stories like that in this book that
I think that is what people need to read, because
the one thing that I came out of this awards
ceremony with from the director of the Police Officers Association
was our police officers still feel abandoned.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
No, absolutely, when you read this book, number one, it's
not all police officers. It starts with two firemen that
are really close to me, my brother in law, and
then a guy that was I've known since I'm three
years old. He's like an uncle to me, and they
happen to work at the same department together. That's not
why they that's not a why the three of us
know each other. It's just to come from a small town.
(05:57):
But in those first two chapters you have my friend
Clay Hendrick, who is a country as the term green
is hopefully that translates in Michigan, you understand what that means,
really country. Really it talks with a thick accent, didn't
go to college, but incredibly smart guy. And then my
(06:17):
brother in law, Keith, is kind of the opposite of
that from this area. His his dad's well educated, he's
well educated, had went to the University of Georgia got
a business degree, came back and told his dad that's
a you know, self made millionaire. Hey, I appreciate the education,
but I'm going to go be a fireman. And the
point there is that these are two people. One person
might see it as an opportunity in life, the other
(06:38):
one sees it as a mission in life. But they
kind of come together to do the same thing for
a period of time, and they come from very different places.
They're very different, you know, experiences in the same place.
And I really wanted that juxtaposition to shine. And what
happened was when you write a book like this and
you interview people, what you want to happen, isn't this
(07:00):
what happens? And what really shined was how they went
through this experience of my brother in law talks about
going into a burning house at a young age, early
on in a fire department, trying to save two kids.
Couldn't find them. They've crawled up and under a pile
of stuffed animals to hide, didn't find them. They perished.
And then Clay talks about very first time on incident,
(07:23):
the very first time young kid is killed in the
car crash and having to see the parents, and what
you learn is it doesn't matter where you come from
or what your experiences are, that raw human emotion is there,
and some people can deal with it and some people can't.
And they're two people that can. I don't know that
I could. I mean from the time I had my
daughter on, reading the news on Fox and Friends and
(07:45):
learning about a little kid that was injured or mistreated
just hit so much harder. And so to know that
we have people out there that can go do this
and then come back to their own kids, take them
to school through that same intersection that they just saw
a kid die in and go home at night and
give their family a smile and a happy day. Man.
(08:08):
It's you know, we use the term hero a lot
and superhero, and it's like, I feel like that's a superability.
It's not something I know that I could do. And
to know that two people really close to me in
my life do it every day. I've known these men
for twenty thirty years. I didn't know these stories. And
to know that you don't have to go to LA
or New York, or Houston or Detroit to find these stories.
(08:30):
It's not Chicago fire, It's Dalton Georgia Fire Department, and
here are two guys that have these stories. It's a
common denominator. It's a thread that sews every community in
this country together.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
And that these tragedies are happening all the time and
we don't know, but they pile up. I mean, I
think it was your friend Clay who said that when
he saw the child, after he saw the child he
hit by a truck, felt like, I.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Don't know if I can do this job.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
In almost the sense that I got from that moment
was there was a little bit of shame, and he
went to his boss and was like, you know, I
just don't know if I can do this, And that
was so human. There was so much vulnerability in the book,
which I thought was beautiful because it's the stuff we
don't get to see. We see first responders and we think,
(09:19):
just what you said, I don't think I could do that.
You know, there's something special about them, and I do
think there's something special, And sometimes because of that we think, oh,
they're all right because they deal with it differently.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
But the vulnerability of.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Him going back and calling his wife and saying, I
just need to hear the kids' voices. I was in
tears when I read that, because I thought, this is
just one day.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
You know, I'm going to talk myself into a circle here.
But you ring up a great point, which is I
sit here and say it's almost this superhero ability. The
truth is they don't have the ability to do it
any more than you or I. They just believe that
their mission is more important than their own peace of mind.
If there's anything superhuman about him, it's that it affects
them just the same. Some people obviously get affected worse
(10:07):
than others things like that, but it's not that they're unaffected.
It's that they believe that that job and the service
they provide and the lives they do save and the
people they can sol And there's a game Boarden who
was search and rescue, is on the dive team. He
believed in his story that it was worth hypothermia to
retrieve a body of a young girl for her mother
before I think it was Thanksgiving, her Christmas, before the
(10:29):
next major holiday, because his chief had made her a promise,
We're going to find your daughter before the New Year
or whatever it was. And so he goes and he
dies to find this girl, and he finally does and
as he does, they get him on shore and he
blacks out and he wakes up in the hospital. So
it's like it's the kind of thing that you know,
he was willing to risk his own life, not to
save a life, but to bring closure. And it's like
(10:51):
this idea that they're not infalluable, that they can die
in cold water just like you and I can. They
can have the mental and emotional trust just like you
and I can. They just believe it's worth it, the
sacrifice is worth it, that the risk is worth it.
And if there's anything special, I think the first chapter
is an ordinary guy and extraordinary circumstance and man that
(11:13):
just really ties a bote on all of it, because
that's who these people are.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
And their families as well.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I think that's also key is that his wife heard
in his voice when he called there's something different. I'll
just sit here in silence with him on the phone.
And to me, that was so powerful. And then Sheriff
Lamb was also a similar story of his family understanding.
I mean, my goodness, when I read about him working
(11:39):
two jobs. He's working as a police officer and I
think pest control.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Too, and he is lee I mean, you are away
from your family so much.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
And his wife, God bless her, because I don't know
that I looked at it even that and I'm like,
would I be that understanding? He's like, don't come to
me with the minuscule things, because I'm like, there are
times when I'm like, and then they did this, and
they did this.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
You know, as a mom, you just like you want
to unload and you want someone else.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
You want dad to come in and hear the horrible
things of the day. But this understanding of what he
is doing is a mission and it is bigger than
those small moments of so and so poked the other
kid's eye, you know, like all the things that happened
during the day.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
This is so much bigger.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah. Mark Lamb's story is really unique. I mean he
became a is now essentially, especially on the right, a
famous law enforcement figure because of he understood the pr
side of being a sheriff. What he really gets into
that I love and I think is a great educational
opportunity is like the constitutionality of a sheriff and hall
a sheriff has the juggle that responsibility of enacting walls
(12:47):
that he believes are unconstitutional in the will of the
people he serves. And by becoming this kind of forward
facing sheriff, someone that has social media, then he becomes
accessible to his community. So it's a little of vulnerability
in a sense because you can't just say, oh, I
didn't know about that, or I didn't hear you, because
now you can go on my social media page and
(13:08):
tell me about your grievance. And so it really is
it's so much more work to do that. It's not
about self aggrandization. It's about making sure everyone in your
community knows you are accessible to them. And when you
do that, then you have to hear all the things
that they want to change. And instead of him being
overwhelmed by that or coming up with excuses, he listened.
And wow, you know what a what a person an
(13:30):
elected official that listens. And so every person in the book,
whether it's the border patrol, search and rescue, game board
and fireman, police officers, bomb squad, every person in the
book has a story or two of trauma, of experiencing
something that you hope nobody ever has the experience. And
the anecdote I use is, you know, the worst day
(13:51):
in our lives, like in the book, when I talk
about losing my dad the worst day in our lives,
there's just another day on the job. For them, it's
just another day. But then also, every person in the book,
without prompt offers some sort of wisdom or insight or
actionable idea that has helped them and may help the
(14:12):
person reading the book to get through that trauma or
that difficult time, or that difficult job, those difficult hours.
And I think it's really unique, or not unique, but
really amazing that this really is something that we don't
think about a lot, is so common among them. It's
just this unique idea that I guess the best way
to explain it is as a veteran for more than
twenty years, I've watched my country have this conversation and
(14:35):
lead to programs and everything from a free mail at
Applebe's on Veterans Day to the Department of Veterans Affairs
looking at psychedelics, the treatmental health. Like we've gone that
far with our appreciation and understanding for the military, what
they go through and what they may need as far
as mental health. And then we look at our first
responders who never come home from war because they go
through their battlefield every day, and we have nothing. We
(14:58):
don't acknowledge it, don't program for it, we don't. Very
few charitable organizations and efforts exist. So how do they
do it? They do it at the grassroots level. They
do it in the fire hall, at the precinct, on
the SWAT team, having conversations with each other because there's
still a stigma in their community. You're going to take
(15:19):
me off the street if I go talk to the
We called it wizard, I don't know what each of
them calls it, but the psychologists like, are you not
going to let me carry a gun? Now? You know
it's it's a legitimate concern, Like I feel sane, but
these things bother me. And if I just talk to
you about these things, are you going to take my
ability to do my job with And so they just
talk to each other, they have conversations. Clay Hedrick gets
(15:39):
into it in the first books, like he said, listen,
what helped me more neything was talking to somebody else
about what they had going on. And it's this idea
that you talk about humbling makes me never want to
complain as a veteran again, which I try not to anyway,
you know, we probably have it better than any group
of veterans in this world, and we're living beside a
fireman or a police officer has seen equally as traumatic
(16:01):
things and has none of the resources available we have.
We're saying we should have more. Word like it was
a very very introspective for me in writing this book.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
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Speaker 1 (17:26):
Now stay tuned. We've got more with Joey Jones after this.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
We don't think about it as going to war every day,
but they really are going into battle every single day.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And it's interesting because.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Like I said, when I was at the Police Officers
Association event last week, the director was saying to me,
in since twenty I think twenty three, twenty four to
twenty into twenty five, now they are seeing more attacks
on police officers than they've ever seen. It's like an
increase of seventy five percent that they are seeing people
(17:59):
fight back and fight the cops.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
And I said, why do you think that is?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
And he said, I think that because they've seen all
of these people come in illegally and get away with
what they're doing. They feel empowered to go after these guys.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
And he said, to be.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Honest, Suitor, those are only the ones we know about,
because he's like, guys aren't coming back to the office
and saying, hey, I got my butt kicked today. He's like,
we don't really tell people that. And I'm that is
also something that you're taking home with you. You are
at war every single day.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
That was the picture I tried to paint, the picture
that was painted for me, not in direct words, because
none of these guys and Caitlin, the female in the book,
and none of them would ever sit around and complain
or it's just it's so antithetical to who they are.
Number One, they look at guys like us. I mean,
obviously I've got the prosthetic legs, but I know the
majority of people in this book because I do these
hunts where I take a group of my veteran friends
(18:54):
and a group of first responders and we go on
a hunt and we sit around a camp fire and talk.
And that's what really inspired this book. And so not
to I guess lose my train of thought there for
a minute, because I'm thinking about hunting for a second.
You see the duck over my head here. But the
inspiration of this book came from this idea that here's
my brother in law sitting beside me. I've known him
(19:17):
for thirty years. Literally we're family now. He grew up
two miles down the road from me, technically different communities,
but same area. I know where he works. I know
the road that he got on to go to work
every day because that's the one I took the high
school every day. And to hear him tell these stories
of what he's experienced, and that was the first time
(19:37):
it clicked in my head that, you know, his battlefield
where he goes to war to save somebody's life, is
the most safe place in the world to me. You
can pluck me out of Hawaii, Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Kurrgystan,
wherever I was at, and if they said put you
somewhere that you feel safe, anywhere in Dalton, Georgia, that's
(19:58):
where I'm from. I know where I'm at. And to
think that the same place that is the safest place
in the world for me is where he sees the
worst happen to us and sees us do the worst
to ourselves. That just really kind of rocked my world
a little bit. And what it showed me was the
sense of entitle that we walk around with as Americans.
(20:19):
We don't worry about if I have a car wreck,
somebody's going to be there. If my kid is injured,
somebody's going to be there. If if I drop my
kid off at school, there's an RS or a school
Resource officer, an SRO there, and it's going to take
care of my kids. We believe that and this idea
that these people exist in our communities. We go to
(20:40):
church with them, we see them at the supermarket, we
get mad at them in an intersection because they cut
us off in their civilian car. And it's like they're
the people we interact with positive and negative all day,
and they're also the same people that we just wake
up every morning believing will save our lives and save
our families lives, and save our house and save our business.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Run into a burning building.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I mean that to me is like you were saying earlier,
I don't know if I could do it. I mean,
I think in that moment, there's probably adrenaline if you
are in the moment hero.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
But this is their life every day.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Every day it's a choice to get up and say
I will run into a burning building.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
That's my job.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
If it happens, I'm here and that and I think
that again, I will say, I think the thing that
struck me in this book is the piling up of
these stories, because you talked about losing your dad and
then I think it was just a few days later
when you saw the person from the fire department who
looked at you and said, you know what happened, it
(21:42):
was still with him.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
That story.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
What That's just another file in the file cabinet of
suffering that he has seen. And I have to imagine
that you take a bit of that into yourself every
single time. And I think that was kind of highlighted
in the book too. At a certain point, people went,
I need to talk to somebody, I need to say
(22:04):
it's okay, I need to get this off my chest.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
You're absolutely right, take a step back when you talk
about running into a burning building. You're right. A lot
of people may, in a moment, with adrenaline, run into
a burning building. That's being brave. It's brave when you're
nine years old and you've never been electric before to
stick a paper clip into a light socket, like you,
you're showing a little bit brave to do that, right,
(22:28):
once you've been bit, once you know the consequence, once
you know that it hurts, you're not going to do
it again. Well, if you're running into that burning building
and it does hurt, trust me, it hurts, and the
fears there and you see your buddy not make it
back out, you're in a standoff and you see your
buddy gets shot because you're on the Baltimore County Squat
team like Tommy Wirl And so once you see somebody
(22:52):
get bit or you get bit, it takes courage to
keep doing it once you know the consequence. But you
continue to do it, that goes beyond bravery, that becomes courage.
Then it's a conscious decision. And that's what they all
have in common. And I make a little bit of
that point in there, but I think it's really important.
It's more than just running into the burning building. It's
(23:12):
knowing what you're going to see when you get there.
It's knowing what could happen to you while you're in
there and saying, man, it's just it has to be done.
I can identify in a sense as in eodtech, in
the sense of I knew what those bombs could do,
and I've seen it happen to others, and it nearly
happened to me until it did. But to do it
for people that I know I grew up with in
(23:34):
a building that I have an emotional attachment to and
an intersection I have to drive my kids through, it's
just a completely different level. And each each and every
person in this book, I guess I'm humbled by, almost
kind of disheartened by, but also it's a sense of
hope they found a way to deal with this on
their own. I hate that they had to. I hate
(23:55):
that there wasn't some major program and already figured out,
you know, multi PhD person that can say here's the
twelve steps to getting through this, but it's just not true.
And the thing that the same guy the same process
in Dalton, Georgia and LAPD like the same amount of
trauma for these two people and finding their way to
(24:17):
sanity and finding peace. I mean say in the book,
they give up their peace for us to have this
blissful ignorance of safety. I mean they give up their
own peace of mind.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
I think that's I think that's what's cool about the
way it's written and you being the.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Author behind it all.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And I know you would say, well, they're the author
of their own story, but bringing these stories together from
your perspective, because I think a lot of us look
at you and go, this guy has seen things I
will never see and has done things for me that
I didn't deserve.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
And I watch you walk up.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
With prosthetic legs, and I know that you feel pain,
and that's something I don't think people really know that
it somebody in your situation. You feel pain every day.
It is painful to walk in a prosthetic. It is
painful to put that on people.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I know.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I've seen the comments on social media, and I thank
you for always fighting back because honestly, you fighting back
has taught me so much about what your story is.
And this now you are teaching me the story of
the first responders on the ground here in the United States,
which I think you've brought these veteran stories to me.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
You brought your own story to me in a way
that has made it so much.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
More real for me to understand what you guys go
through every day. And I think it's beautiful to have
you be the person to go, hey, let me bring
these American Home Front heroes to the page as well well.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
I hope that there are non people in this book,
and I think five or six of them have known
for more than a decade, some of them multiple decades.
None of them are cold calls. They are all people
I knew personally before I decided to write this book.
And the reason why I wanted to have that fact
in there was when I sat down and pitched the
book to the publisher that like, oh, I know NYPD
(26:13):
and you know Oklahoma City, and there are these amazingly
terrible things that have happened and amazing stories from them.
But my point is I can write just as impactful
of a book with people from towns you've never heard of.
That that is the point is that you don't have
to be in New York or LA or in Oklahoma
(26:35):
City when the building is bombed to understand this or
to have a first responder in your life that's gone
through this. And I just hoped that I had enough
credibility that they would share with me and be vulnerable
with me and the audience that I presented it to
in the book would say that last book was pretty good,
let me see this one. So that's that's my goal
(26:56):
in this is I had this amazing, amazing, enlightening experience
over the last four or five years since twenty twenty,
to go on these hunting trips. Talk to my buddy,
see a veteran, there's a special operations bon tech, talk
to a hometown fireman, and see those two guys have
more in common than I probably have in common with
either one of them. And to see how they became
(27:16):
vulnerable with each other and talked about these things, because
you know, if you don't talk about it, it just
bottles up insides. And they've learned, these first responders, probably
more so than we have, because there isn't this national
conversation where we feel heard. They don't have that. They've
learned if they don't talk about it with each other
and somebody, then they don't make it through it. And
so it's been a probably more rewarding for me than
(27:40):
it will be for them to have their story heard
and read. It's more rewarding for me to be the
one to get to do it.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Stick around for more with Joey Jones.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
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Speaker 1 (29:26):
We'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
What would be so cool is to have this in schools,
to have high school kids read these stories and have
to talk about them, because I think, to your point,
it being a town I've never heard of is the
town I live in. It's a town no one's ever
heard of, you know, So it is my when I
read these stories. These are stories of people in my town.
I'm sure somebody could tell me the exact same thing.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
This is it.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
This has been how my life has been. And I
would love to see as we kind of combat this because,
like I said, the first responders here in Michigan will
tell me every day it has been so heart morales
down still, it has been so hard to get people
to answer the call to serve to get people to
come to the fire department, to get people to join
(30:13):
the police department. It has been such a challenge because
there is this undercurrent of hatred because the movement, the
movements that these radicals push they create, they're powerful and
they create long lasting effects if you can't beat them down.
That's the beauty of this book is that it does
beat those stories down because it is real people and
(30:36):
you cannot help but fall in love with the people
on these pages. And so I think it would be
fantastic to get this into high schools, to talk to
young people and say, look, these are the people that
put everything in their life on the line to make
sure you're safe.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
That sense that you have of man.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Everyplace else in the world, I can see danger, and
right here I feel safe. And that was a powerful
statement to me that that's not safe for them. They
put themselves in danger every day. And I appreciate the
fact that you wrote this and you brought these stories together,
so thank you well.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
I appreciate it. I think like this on that idea
of feeling safe, and I always use the analogy that
when it comes to post traumatic stress, like how you
feel in a social environment when you come home from more.
The way I say positive about it was like looking
behind the curtain at the Wizard of Oz. Like, as
long as you believe in Wizard of Oz, anything can
(31:32):
happen and things are awesome. But the moment you find
out the Wizard is just a man moving things around,
things get real. It's like, oh, this is the real world.
And so it's the same thing. Once you see a
benign environment turned deadly, then every benign environment after that
has the potential to be deadly. You've seen behind the curtain.
It's one thing to be in this combative environment that
makes it hard for me to go into bars and concerts.
(31:54):
It's another thing for the curtain that you live in
front of to be get a red light or walking
into a three story building. And when you're curtain, when
the benign environment that you know can turn deadly becomes
the restaurant you sit your family down to have dinner
on Friday night. The amount of just pure faith, I guess,
(32:18):
I don't know what. I don't know where they each
get it individually, but this idea that I don't know
that I'd ever leave the house with my kids anymore,
you know, And they still do and they still have
a full life now. Some of them hit rock bottom
during their career in a very suffering and silence way.
When I say rock bottom, like they hit a place
to where they can't find a smile and they can't
(32:39):
find happiness, and they all crawl back out of it
because that's just who they are, It's who we are
as Americans. It's a you know, for everything negative in
this book, it's also incredibly inspiring and uplifting. And my
point in talking about what I went through in war
or writing Unbroken Bonds of Battle or Behind the Badge
is so that every single person out there can read
(32:59):
these stories and say, you know what I can identify.
And I always when I do a public speaking I
always say, and I think all the guys in the
gallon this book would say the same. You look at
me and you have this reverence. And I appreciate that.
For me, it's because they got blown up. But I
look back at the audience and they look back at
the people they serve and it's like, look, you're going
through cancer, you've lost everything you own, you went through
(33:20):
a messy divorce, you've lost a child. Look how resilient
and strong you are, why wouldn't I be here for you?
And they all, every single one of them, believe in
the people they serve, and they love the people they serve.
And the people in this country are strong.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
People, absolutely all right.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
So we have to tell people where they get the book,
because I really would encourage people not only to read it.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
But share these stories with your kids, because we have
a curse.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
That came into this country that we have to break,
and that is this idea that these people there's something
that is nefarious about the people that go out to
fight for us and save us every day, and like
you said, they go to war every day. So it
is behind the badge answering the alse to serve on
America's home front. Where can people get.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
It before June seventeenth? Go to Foxnewsbooks dot com and preorder.
You'll probably get it on June seventeenth. If you pre
order it after June seventeenth, pretty much ever where books
are sold Barnes and Noble Books, a million, Amazon, Foxnewsbooks
dot Com. But if you're going to pre order it,
foxnewsbooks dot Com and you'll probably get it before anybody and.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
You'll love it. Go on and get it Joey Jones,
thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Thank you, and thank you all for joining the Tutor
Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others, go to iHeartRadio
dot com or go to iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts, and you can watch it
on Rumble at Tutor Dixon. So join us next time
on the Tutor Dixon Podcast and have a blast day.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
Hosts And Creators
Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
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