March 7, 2025 • 41 mins
David Wheeler and Colonel Moe Davis bring the heat in this episode of "Muck You!" with a mind-bending discussion featuring retired Colonel Terry Virts, who seems to have done it all—military, NASA, and even a Guinness World Record for circling the globe in a jet. Right off the bat, they dive into the absurdity of current political dynamics, with Virts throwing shade on the state of affairs, likening the Republican Party to a cult rather than a functioning political entity. Between their banter about military experiences and the hilarity of Virts' near-miss with a political career, they also touch on the stark contrasts seen from space—like the dark void of North Korea against the bright lights of South Korea—illustrating the pressing need for a government that works for all Americans. With a mix of humor and sarcasm, the trio navigates the complexities of the political landscape, all while reminding listeners that despite the chaos, there's still hope in the younger generation stepping up to the plate. Buckle up, folks; it’s a wild ride filled with wisdom, wit, and a healthy dose of reality check!
The conversation kicks off with David Wheeler and Colonel Moe Davis welcoming their guest, Colonel Terry Virts, an Air Force veteran and former NASA astronaut. The trio dives into a mix of military anecdotes and reflections on international politics, particularly focusing on the current U.S.-Russia relations. Virts shares his personal journey from an exchange student in Finland during the Cold War to leading F-16s in combat training against Russian aircraft. This nostalgic yet sobering narrative sets the stage for a broader discussion about the cyclical nature of international conflicts, highlighting the irony of Russia's return to being perceived as a threat after years of diplomatic relations. Virts's insights are both enlightening and tinged with a hint of sarcasm, as he reflects on the absurdity of geopolitical dynamics that seem to repeat themselves throughout history.
As the dialogue unfolds, the hosts and Virts tackle the challenges facing the military today, emphasizing the importance of accountability and leadership integrity. Virts recounts his personal experiences, including the inherent risks of space travel and military operations, while also critiquing the current political landscape that seems to undermine the values instilled in military personnel. The discussion takes a turn toward the impact of social media on public perception of government and military actions, with Virts expressing his disdain for the divisive nature of platforms like Twitter. Instead, he advocates for a more respectful and nuanced approach to political discourse, which resonates with the listeners who may find themselves disillusioned by contemporary political antics.
The episode concludes with a glimmer of hope as Virts shares his admiration for the younger generation, emphasizing that they possess a desire for positive change and are equipped with the tools to achieve it. He encourages listeners to look beyond the current turmoil and recognize the potential for growth and improvement in society. This mixture of candid storytelling, critical analysis, and a hopeful outlook encapsulates the essence of the episode, making it a compelling listen for anyone interested in military affairs and the intricacies of global politics.
Takeaways:
- David Wheeler and Colonel Moe Davis emphasize the importance of unfiltered conversations to uncover hidden truths in today's chaotic world.
- Colonel Terry Virts shares his incredible journey from Air Force to NASA, highlighting the absurdity of how political narratives can shift over decades.
- The podcast discusses the irony of America's fluctuating relationship with Russia, showcasing how historical tensions seem to repeat themselves in modern geopolitics.
- Colonel Virts reflects on his experiences in space, illustrating how viewing...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome back, folks, to MuckYou!, where we cut through the noise
and dig into the truth. Nosugarcoating, no spin. It's the raw,
unfiltered conversations thatmatter to you. I'm David Wheeler
and as always, joined by my cohost, the one and only Moe David.
Hey, thanks, David. It's greatto be here. Great to be back. We've
had a number of interestingguests on and today is no exception.
(00:31):
I guess out of the eight or 10shows that we've done, I'm really
always pleased when we have aveteran on and particularly if it's
an Air Force veteran. So Ithink this is the third time we've
had Denver Riggleman on whoserved in the Air Force. We had Adam
Kinzinger on. And today we'vegot retired Colonel Terry. Terry
Virts, who, you know,oftentimes I feel like I accomplished
(00:51):
a lot in my lifetime and thenI see a bio like his and I feel like
such a slacker. He's an AirForce Academy graduate, like I said,
a retired Air Force colonel,former an F16 pilot, then had a distinguished
career with NASA. He's in theGuinness Book of World Records. He's
an author, He's a motivationalspeaker. Just a really interesting
(01:14):
bio. And Terry, we're reallypleased to have you on today. Thanks
for doing this.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.I like your background, by the way.
We saw it on video and I sawsome Air Force patches on the wall.
Oh, yeah. Well, thanks. I, Iwish I was young enough to do it
again. I really enjoyed it andstill, you know, I've been retired
since 2008, but I still missit. But so how did you end up what,
(01:36):
what got you into the militaryand off to the Air Force Academy?
That's a good, that's a greatquestion. When I was a kid, I was
an exchange student. I livedin Finland with a Finnish family
and I lived about a kilometerfrom the Soviet Union. This is back
in the 80s when. No kidding.USSR. And it just, I was really fascinated
by this giant evil empire.And, you know, 1984, this is in 1984.
(01:59):
In the book 1984 really strucka chord with. And I was just amazed
at the Europeans, you know,defending themselves from this evil
empire and World War IIhistory. And so basically I joined
the, went to the Air ForceAcademy when I was 17 to defend Europe
from Russia. That was the,that was kind of my worldview at
(02:20):
the time. And it's ironic thatnow, you know, for God, 40 years
later, Russia's back. They,they just don't change. And it's
the same, same story.
Yeah. They're our new bestfriends now, I guess, are allies.
Oh, my God. Yeah, that, that,that's actually terrifying. It makes
me sick to my stomach. So I,I, I flew into space with Russians.
(02:43):
I have, I speak Russian. Ispent over a decade there, traveling
back and forth there and havea lot of Russian friends. One of
my very good close neighborswas Russian. And now they're an American
citizen as of yesterday. Wentthrough great. Yeah. So I love a
lot of Russian people and foodand culture and everything. It's
just the, the government hasbeen, in my humble op, the main source
(03:08):
of human misery on planetEarth for the last century. I mean,
they, they have been amongstbetween you know, making themselves
miserable, miserable with theSoviet Union, between making other
countries miserable with, youknow, Estonia and Latvia and Poland
and Ukraine. More thananybody, they just bring misery everywhere
(03:28):
they go. For my whole careerin the Air Force, and I'm sure for
years too, we trained againstMig 29s and SA6. All these Russian
airplanes and missiles, theybasically arm all the bad guys on
Earth. So if you're, if you'relike, on the side of Russia, you're
probably on the wrong side of it.
Is ironic because I'm sureyou've done the same. Spent hours
(03:48):
in chemical warfare gear, youknow, training to, you know, fight
Russia Mach 4. Yeah. Or I wasat 19th Air Force. You know, the
ballistic missiles where, youknow, 24, 7, 365. We've got crews
sitting there just waiting,uh, for the. Hopefully the time never
comes. But to turn the key andhit the button and suddenly for them
(04:10):
to be our supposed best friendother than our adversary is just
incomprehensible.
Yeah, it's not in America'sinterest. It's not in anybody's interest.
I'm actually watching Band ofBrothers. I don't know if you guys
like that. It's one of myfavorite shows. I think the most
meaningful moment in my AirForce career was I led a four ship
of F16s in a flyby overNormandy, the American military cemetery
(04:34):
there, on June 6. And back inthe ninet, it was on the anniversary
of D Day. Missing manformation. It was just the ball.
The really. I've gotten to dosome really cool things, and that
was the most meaningful ofeverything I got to do. Just to kind
of honor the men that diedthere. Defending our friends and
allies and weaker partnersfrom a much larger dictator that
(04:55):
was, you know, bringing evilAnd America used to do that, and
I think we're going to do itagain. We're just. We're having a
really bad moment right now,but it's not going to last forever.
Yeah.
I'm like you, I'm hopeful thatwe're going to get through this rough
patch and get back to beingthe country. Country that, that we
ought to be. But, boy, it'sscary times we're living in right
now.
Yeah.
You mentioned F. You mentionedF16s. I, I look through your bio.
(05:18):
I saw you were at Homesteadwhen Hurricane Andrew rolled through
and had to relocate up toMoody. Essentially, my first assignment.
I'm about a decade ahead ofyou, age wise. My first assignment
was at Patrick Air Force Base,and I bought a house there from a
captain that was PCSing out.
Right.
And he ended up going to. Tothe Philippines. And he was there
(05:39):
back in August of June of 1991when Mount Pinatubo erupted.
The Herc or the volcano. Yeah.
And he got out of there withjust, you know, the clothes on his
back. And then, you know, theassignment folks said, you know,
it's not going to reopen.Where would you like to go? And he
said, you know, used to bestationed in Florida. I really liked
it there.
Oh, no, how about the Homestead?
(05:59):
He went to Homestead. And soin August, August of 92, the second
time in about 15 months,everything he had was lost again.
So I've always made it a pointto see where he was stationed. And
sure, I didn't go there.
His call sign was lucky. Sure,I had heard of him. He was legendary.
Like, I think there was more,maybe more than one, but I remember
(06:20):
absolutely, like, the Pinatuboguys were like, oh, my God. Yeah,
yeah. All my, all my basesfrom that time frame got shut down.
Like, I went to pilot trainingat Willie the Fighter Lead in left
Holloman, the F16s leftMcDill. Homestead got shut. You know,
so everywhere I went, the basegot shut down. So nobody wanted,
you know, wanted me to move totheir base.
(06:41):
Yeah, it's funny, my wife andI, I got orders to, to go to Columbus
Air Force Base as the seniorattorney there. And I called my wife
to tell her, and she said, Ithought Wright Patterson was in Dayton.
And I said, no, no, notColumbus, Ohio. Columbus, Mississippi.
And. And she cried. I think ifyou ask her now, the best assignment,
(07:02):
the most fun assignment weever had was at that UPT base where
it was just. It was.
When were you there?
I was there from God. Thatwould have 19, like, 87 to 90.
Okay, so you're there beforeDoc Fogelsong was the wing commander.
Actually, I worked for him forabout a week. He was.
(07:23):
Do you remember some F16 guysgetting in trouble there?
Yeah, I'm trying to think.
It might have been. I had.I've been in trouble many times in
my Air Force career. We weredoing a vertical takeoffs. We were
four F16s. We were going onour way to Andrews for the. Like,
just across country. And I wasnumber four. And we did, you know,
(07:44):
we got to the end of Runway,pulled straight up, and it was pretty
cool. Doing vertical takeoffat pilot training base. I thought
the.
Yeah, it's gone. It's gone. Go ahead.
All right, so we're talkingabout Columbus Air Force Base. You're
talking about doing the. Thefour ship and the vertical takeoff.
Yeah. So I was a newlieutenant, and we were on our way
(08:05):
to Andrews, um, and we decidedto do a vertical takeoff. Cause it's
a weekend. It's pilottraining. I'm sure these poor lieutenant,
you know, the other pilottraining students would love to see
this. So. And I was the numberfour guy. So number one takes off,
goes straight up. Number twotakes off, and you go straight up
to, I don't know, maybe10,000ft and then level off. And
as I was going straight up, Irolled the jet. So I'm going vertical,
(08:29):
and I rolled the jet, and wego on to Andrews. And we get to Andrews,
there's a yellow sticky. Hey,call your home base. And we called
home, and the colonel wasyelled at us. And then we had to
fly back, and the wholesquadron came in on a Sunday, and
basically for them to chewour. To chew our ass up. And. And
it was because of me. And the.My commander calls me in, is like,
(08:49):
do you want a lawyer? Blah.I'm like, sir, what are you talking
about? I was. I was goingvertical, and I rolled the jet. And
he was like, blah, blah, blah,blah. So the wing commander there
at Columbus was not happy.Those. It was like in Top Gun, you
know, those guys showboating.And I'm like, it's not. I mean, I'm
going vertical. So it's.There's no, like, acrobatics. I'm
already going 90 degreesstraight up. So what's wrong with
rolling the jet so that Ididn't really see a problem with
(09:12):
it. But the colonel thoughtdifferently. Well, I was going to
say real quick. So I got introuble. I had to. They made me go
grade landings. I had to gostand by the Runway and, like, grade
people's landings. Mypunishment. And. But like, that week
A, we had a Dutch exchangeofficer, and anyway, we were doing
this thing to see how fast wecould come up initial, which is like
(09:34):
the traffic pattern before youland. And everybody wanted the triple
nickel club. So we were tryingto go 555 knots, which is really
fast up initial. Just like thescene in Top Gun where the. The captain
spills his coffee, and thenthat wasn't fast enough, so then
it was the Satan club. So youwere trying to go 666 knots. Anyway,
finally this Dutch guy got introuble. The colonel saw it, and
(09:55):
so as soon as he was introuble, I wasn't in trouble anymore.
So the.
The career lesson that Ilearned was it doesn't matter if
you do something wrong. Youjust don't want to be the most recent
person to have done something right.
Yeah, I really enjoyedColumbus. I. My family had a little
airport here in NorthCarolina, so I started flying when
I was 15.
Oh, wow.
Ended up in the Jag Corps. Butmy last day at Columbus, the wing
(10:17):
commander said, come on, let'sgo flying. And so we took up a T38.
The only thing I ever got tofly. You could point straight up,
and it would get. I mean, youdo that in assessment.
At some point, for a fewseconds, you can do it.
You stall out. But. But. Sofrom. From the Air Force, you went
over to NASA. What. What. Whatprompted that?
I wanted to do it ever since Iwas a little kid. You know, like
(10:40):
I grew up. The first book Iever read was about Apollo when I
was in kindergarten. I hadposters of the space shuttle and
an F16. The old red, white andblue, YF16 and galaxies. It's just
what I wanted to do my wholelife. So I read a book called the
Right Stuff when I was ateenager. Great book. Actually, I
(11:01):
just gave it to my friend whojust became an American citizen.
I gave. Gave her some, youknow, great American books, and that
was one of them. And Travelswith Charlie, a John Steinbeck book,
is. Which is a spectacularbook. I gave her that. But, yeah,
that. So it's something I'vewanted to do ever since I was a little
kid.
Okay, cool, so we'll edit thisout. Terry. Sorry, I was.
That's all right.
(11:21):
You know, usually MOEDominates these conversations so
badly that I take a nap, but.So, Terry, you've been in space,
you've been in the military.Why is it that Air Force guys are
such badass?
Well, we're smarter than theArmy. And Navy guys and better looking
and more humble. But no, Idon't know. I, I was lucky. I was
(11:45):
very lucky. I mean, I'm. I'mthe rare guy that got to do what
I wanted to do when I was alittle boy. You know, I'm so, I'm
very fortunate, I could say,you know, I worked hard, but a lot
of people worked hard. I was,you know, I was lucky when I got
picked by NASA. Excuse me. So,but I think the hard you work, the
luckier you get. And there's amessage that I tell folks and kind
(12:05):
of my, my motivational,inspirational message is don't tell
yourself no. So if there'ssome dream you want, you know, don't
tell yourself no. If it's abig dream, you're going to have to
work hard. It won't be easy.But that first step, the most important
step I think is that throwingyour hat in the rain and going for
it. So don't tell yourself no.That's, that's my advice.
Okay, so let's, let's applythat to this conversation. What,
(12:26):
what are you dreaming aboutthese days?
Well, I'm dreaming about aAmerica, you know, resists our enemies
and is. Helps our friendsrather than the opposite. So that's
kind of my goal. You know,when I was in space, you look back
and it's a beautiful planet.It really is. And it's just gorgeous.
And it's. You can't evenimagine. You cannot imagine. I'm.
(12:49):
I'm doing a photographyexhibit right now in Asia, or, I'm
sorry, in, in Europe. It's inGraz, Austria right now. It's going
to go in different places. Andthe guy that did it with, with a
lot of my space photography,it's the coolest thing I've ever
seen. I mean, it is amazing.The prints that he did, he really
did a great job. So when yougo through this thing, you're like,
man, it's a. Earth is, isbeautiful. It really is. Except,
(13:14):
well, there's a couple ofthings that I took away. First of
all, that, that thin blueline, you know, when you look at
our atmosphere, it is thin. Itis really thin. And we have Planet
A and there's no Planet B. Soit's like, wow, it is a pretty planet,
but, you know, we need to takecare of it. And the other thing is,
people say astronauts don'tsee borders. You know, if we could
(13:35):
just send people into space,they could hold hands and sing Kumbaya
and everybody, everythingwould be great. No, that's not true.
First of all, if you're anempathetic person and your, your
mind is open, then, yes,you're going to be profoundly impacted
by space. But, you know, we,we all probably could think of a
few leaders these days whodon't really have open empathetic
minds. And the other thing is,when you look back at Earth, you
(13:57):
do see some borders. Not alot, but North Korea, South Korea
is the most stark one. It'sjust insane. Google a picture of
that at night. You know, SouthKorea is thriving. It's brilliant
white everywhere, city lights.And North Korea is just a black hole.
The other thing that you see,you know, when you look in Africa,
there's no city lights. And soyou can kind of see politics and
(14:18):
corruption. And I neverexpected to see politics on Earth,
but you can see them throughthe city lights that you see, which
is something I was completelynot expecting to see. But, you know,
that's, that's what I saw, really.
A view that very few peoplehave probably thought. Colonel, so
you mentioned a word importantto me. You know, my father was a
(14:41):
Marine, so maybe I shoulddefend the Marines on your, your
derogatory comments a littlebit ago.
But no, just army and Navy. Ilove the Marines. My first. Okay.
All right. We can bash thearmy and the Navy.
Okay, good, good. I'llremember that. So, you know, he,
my father was. He was in theMarines during Korea and. But somehow,
(15:01):
you know, he grew up in areally small town in the middle of
Iowa and they were so poor,they had to go. He had to go away
from their home on the summersand work because they couldn't afford
to feed his house. But somehowhe became a Democrat and a big Democrat.
I mean, like, you know, thefucking, fucking Republicans. That.
And I think that's through alived experience. How did you. How
(15:25):
do you view politics thesedays? As a former Air Force NASA
guy living in Texas, where doyou see politics?
I tried not to, but I, youknow, jokingly, but I actually, I
follow it extremely closely.I. Somebody just sent me this old
Simpsons from 30 years ago,and it was like, man, the Simpsons
nailed this 30 years ago.There was, it was the Republican
(15:47):
convention. And their signswere like, we'll do everything that's
bad for you and we're evil.That was the Republican Convention.
Then the, the Democratconvention across the street was
we suck and we can't govern.So it was kind of funny. And I love
the Simpsons, but, you know,when you look at American politics,
I tell you what, I. From aforeigner's perspective because I
do a lot of traveling. They'rejust aghast, like they can't believe
(16:10):
what they're seeing happeningin American politics. And I don't
think this is what Americanswant. I mean, Clearly Americans in
2024 didn't vote for morehigher EG, which is what we're getting.
They didn't vote for their,their 401ks to get clobbered, which
is what's happening. Theydidn't vote to join Team Putin and
join the Kremlin to attack ourally. And so we're getting, I think
(16:32):
we're getting things maybe alittle bit of buyer's remorse there.
But I hear something that'sreally awful. This is terrible. But,
but it's, it is what it is. Asyou know, former government folks,
there's a lot of seniorpolitical appointees. I think there's
a thousand or maybe 2000.There's lots and lots of senior government
officials that come in, runthe government. All of them, 100%
(16:55):
of them and 100% of thecabinet, all the top leaders in the
American government got theirjob by line. They all had to pass
this egregious 20, 25 minuteloyalty test, which is like something
out of the Politburo orsomething. And they had to lie. They
had to say, you know, Trumpwon the 2020 election. And they had
(17:15):
to go on and on about all thisother stuff that's just absolutely
egregious. So when you build ahouse on a foundation of, on a bad
foundation and a storm comes,that house is not going to stand.
And right now, unfortunately,the executive branch of our government
is built on a foundationalline. So that's not, you know, I
don't care what party you are.I've, I don't care about what party.
I just care about, I'm anAmerican first, I'm a Texan second.
(17:39):
I care about doing the rightthing for Texans and for Americans.
And it makes me sick to mystomach seeing some of the stuff
that's happening now.
I don't know how it wasduring, during your military career,
but, you know, during minepolitics, you know, the folks I worked
with, I rarely knew if theywere a Democrat or Republican. It
just wasn't an issue. Youknow, the military really prided
(18:01):
itself on being nonpartisan.And, you know, I served under both
Democratic and Republicanpresidents. And I, you know, I never
doubted. I mean, I disagreedwith them on policy, but I never
doubted they had my back. AndI just don't get that feeling with
the current commander in Chiefand the current Secretary of Defense
and what seems like thepoliticization of the military. So
(18:23):
I was always a big advocate toyoung folks. I was on the faculty
at Howard University at thelaw school, and I encouraged a lot
of my students to consider amilitary career. I don't know that
I'd do that now under thecurrent administration. I'm just
curious on your thoughts aboutwhere we are today with. With the
military.
How terrible is that to say? Imean, isn't that the worst thing
(18:43):
that you've ever said? I. I'mnot disagreeing with it. I'm just
saying, you know, my daughteris on a Fulbright scholarship right
now, which is like the. Youknow, that's a big deal in the Foreign
Service universe and the StateDepartment, and they just got a email
warning that that programmight be canceled and all this stuff
might be canceled. Andbasically none of her friends want
(19:04):
to work for the government.And that's terrible, man. The government
is important. Our governmentis really good. You know, we just
had this Sorayan ceremonyyesterday. Thousands of people just
became Americans here inHouston yesterday morning. There's
a reason why all these peoplewant to come to America, because
we have a great country. Imean, it's a pretty good country.
And part of that reason is wehave a great government and we have
(19:27):
things like the rule of law.And, you know, like, you and I can
do a business deal, and weknow that we're probably going to
implement what we say we'regoing to do. And if we don't, there's
ways to do it. We have roadsthat work. You know, we have a military
that keeps us safe. Americaworks very. Has worked in the past
very well. And I think justdestroying it with a wrecking ball
(19:48):
is a bad idea. Should it betweaked? Yes. Oh, my God. We. The
government is, you know, couldabsolutely be improved. Of course,
it's an ugly sausage factory,but, you know, it needs to be tweaked,
not destroyed. And that'sunfortunately, I think, what's happening
right now.
Yeah, I think you're exactlyright. I know I worked for Congress
for a little over a year, andthen I ran for. And both. I'm a big
(20:11):
advocate for procurementreform. I mean, we waste. We waste
so much money that, you know,you never run a business the way
we run the government. Butlike you said, it needs a scalpel,
not a sledgeham, to make thosecorrections. And it really bothers
me, too. I was a judge at theDepartment of Labor when I retired,
and whether it's the militaryor the federal civil service. You
(20:34):
would occasionally run intosomebody that shouldn't have been
there, but that was theexception and not the rule. I mean,
the vast majority of folks arethere for the right reasons. They're
not getting rich and they're,they're doing something because they
believe it matters. And to seethem, to see them demonized and,
you know, demoralized and yougot to send Elon. The five things
you did last week is. It'sreally just disappointing.
(20:57):
It's. Well, it'sdisappointing, but it's also very
damaging. I mean, the damagethat Elon is doing to our government.
And by the way, the governmentis important. And it's kind of funny
if you look at, you know, taxdollars in and tax dollars out by
state. Red states get by farthe most tax dollar. You know, they,
they. The government's apretty good investment for them because
(21:18):
a lot more dollars go into redstates as a whole than, than blue
states. And yet, you know,it's being demonized and jobs are
lost. I think, I think there'sgoing to be a lot of buyer's remorse,
frankly, just to, I hate topurely political here, but I think
the 26 midterms is going tobe. There's going to be a lot of
backlash. And, and you know,the one thing that Americans want
is checks and balances, likethe government that you have to have
(21:41):
checks and balance becausethey know human nature and they know
that people want to be a king.And we see this in a leader that
wants to be a king here inAmerica. And that's not what America
is. And so that's why we havea legislature and a judicial and
an executive branch. Rightnow, we don't have that. There are
no checks and balances. The,the courts have some checks and balance.
Not what we want. I think theAmerican people would much rather
(22:03):
see the president of one partyand the Congress of another party.
So I think there's going to bea blue wave in 26. We'll see.
Fingers crossed.
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, we're talking,you mentioned we're talking about
Elon Musk. You know, you werethe pilot of the shuttle Endeavor.
You're the commander of theInternational Space Station. So you
certainly have a, you know, aunique perspective on, on the space
(22:23):
program. It seems like NASAis, is kind of being pushed to the
side a bit and more.Privatization of space. I'm just
curious how, how you feelabout that. Is that the right, right
approach?
I mean, there's always beenprivate companies you know, back
in the 60s, Rockwell andBoeing, Grumman built, you know,
the Apollo component. Sothere's always been private companies
(22:46):
with boards of directors andshare prices and all that have been
building NASA hardware for along time. The approach now is much
more hands off where NASA justhere's some money, go build us something.
And by the way, Elon hasgotten, I've seen numbers well north
of $30 billion in governmentmoney and tax subsidies between direct
contracts and other subsidies.So that's always been the case. But
(23:07):
NASA's going a lot more handsoff. And frankly, you know, having
the I'm from the FAA and we'rehere to help was our joke. And when
I was a pilot, you know, youwould rather have less government
than more, I think when itcomes to a lot of things. And so
American innovation isamazing. I mean what SpaceX is doing
with this big giant starshiprocket is amazing. That's a impressive
rocket. The Falcon 9 dominatesall global launch. I mean the Falcon
(23:30):
9 has basically put everyother company and country almost
out of business when it comesto launch. So you know, SpaceX is
clearly executing in someways. But I think that you need the
right balance. It's called apublic private partner. If the government
does what it's good at,private sector is good, do what it
does. I think that's a goodbalance. But you need a balance.
(23:51):
And especially when humans areinvolved, if you're just launching
satellites and it blows up,that's fine. Once humans get involved,
you need some adultsupervision and you don't want the
Elon's 20 year old internsrunning things the way they're running
the federal government.
Yeah, I was, you know, Imentioned earlier my first assignment
was at Patrick Air Force Baseand I was there when Challenger exploded
(24:11):
and the launches had gotten soroutine that, you know, it just happened
that day. I don't if yourecall the. It was. Weather was an
issue in the morning, it gotpushed back a bit and the only reason
I saw it happen was it wasaround lunchtime where a group of
us were walking over to theOfficers Club for lunch when, when
Challenger launched. And youknow, we stopped to look at it and
(24:33):
my, my initial thought wasboy, the boosters separated, awful
low. And then, you know, justtook a few seconds to realize that
something catastrophic hadhappened. But you know, they were
launching like one a month andit becomes so routine that people
kind of took it for granteduntil that day and it really drove
home, you know, how importantit is, you know, safety and I guess
you know, looking back on thethings that were missed during that
(24:55):
mishap, that could have haveprevented it. You're right. You know,
you put human beings in theequation and it's a different story.
Yeah. I teach a case study, Icall it why Organizations Fail at
Harvard Business School. And Ido it for. I just did it for a big
company here in Houston lastweek. And it's about Challenger and
also Columbia. And it's kindof frightening how similar both of
(25:17):
those space shuttle accidentswere. They're basically the same
accident. Different. One wasan O ring and one was foam. So technically
it was different. But theleadership failures and management
failures and, you know, allthat stuff was exactly the same.
So the point. Well, there'smany points. It's a long involved.
Case studies are great. It's agreat case study. But there's. It's
(25:39):
one thing to learn a lessonand it's another to remember the
lesson. And that's trueprobably, you know, in our personal
lives, but it's certainly truewhen it comes to business and technical
things, you know, like theglobal financial. We all learn that
you shouldn't be too big tofail. Well, is bank of America too
big to fail? Is, you know,Wells Fargo or Chase, or are any
(26:01):
of those too big to fail? So,you know, humans are good at learning
lessons, we're not good atremembering them.
Yeah, yeah. I participated ina couple of aircraft accident investigations.
It seems like in every onethat, you know, when you put all
the pieces together, if anyone thing had gone differently, it
would have been a non event.Yep. It was just that string of things
(26:21):
that just happened to alignand, and led the catastrophe.
Yeah, we used to call it thesafety chain. Do you remember hearing
that?
Yeah.
If you look at an accidentlike a chain, all the links have
to be in place in order, youknow, from start to finish in order
for the chain to hold. Andsame thing in an accident. All these
things have to happen for theaccident to happen. If you break
any of those links, the chainfalls apart. And if you stop, you
(26:43):
know, there's a lot ofdifferent opportunities to stop accidents.
Airplanes rarely just explodeout of the blue with no war. Like,
there's always some, there'salmost always something that could
have been done.
All right, well, listen, Iknow you circled the globe, what,
three, 600 times, but you'rein the Guinness Book of World Records
for circling at one.
That's true.
(27:04):
Can you tell the tell folks alittle bit about that one trip around
that got you in the GuinnessBook of World Records.
Yeah, so a good friend of minenamed Hamish Harding, who, unfortunately,
you may know his name, he wason. He was one of the passengers
on board that Titan sub thatwent down. Yeah, so. So anyway, he
had this dream, this crazyidea to. He wanted to do it in honor
(27:27):
of Apollo to set a worldrecord going around the Earth. He
was a pilot. He had some otherrecords and so he liked setting aviation
records. So originally we weregoing to take an Apollo astronaut
and I was going to fly. Andthen that didn't happen and we had
to wait a year and then.Anyway, so I ended up making a documentary
about it and it's called OneMore Orbit. It was my first direction,
(27:49):
my first movie that Idirected. And it was cool. We took
off and landed from theKennedy Space Center. We went over
the North Pole and South Pole.So we set the, the world record for
circumnavigation over thepoles. And it was amazing. It was
an amazing experience. We hadto stop three times for gas. We stopped
in Kazakhstan, Mauritius andPatagonia, South America. And it
(28:12):
was a really fun experience.It was about 44 hours, so almost
two days in that airplane. Itwas in a business jet. So that's
kind of cool. It's fancy, butnot really. I mean, you don't want
to spend 48 hours in the, inthe cabin. And it was a bunch of
people. And so, yes, it was abusiness jet, but it was also, you
know, it was, it was quite anadventure. It was a lot of fun. And
(28:32):
we flying over Antarctica, themost dangerous part by far because
there's no divert. It was theJuly, which means it's wintertime
in Antarctica. So I mean, wewere like really low on gas. The
air, it got really. It gotbelow the limit air temperature limit
of the airplane. It was just.Yeah, it was an exciting. It was
an exciting 44 hours.
(28:52):
So you've, you've got someleadership chop. Have you ever thought
about running for politicaloffice now that conquered space and
conquered Earth.
It's funny, I get asked thatquestion all the time whenever I
do my space talk. There youwill do Q and A and, you know, how
do you go to the bathroom inspace? And are there aliens? And
all the standard questions.And someone always goes, when are
you running for office? So,yes, I've been thinking about it.
(29:12):
When I was in, in middleschool, in eighth grade, they said,
what do you want to do whenyou grow up? So we went around and
when they came to me, I said,I want to be Secretary of State.
So it's something I've had inmy mind. So we'll see what the future
holds. But you know, honestly,I. Running for office, just awful.
I've had friends who've doneit, obviously. Mark Kelly, Senator
Mark Kelly is a friend ofmine. I was in when I was commander
(29:34):
of the space station. Hisbrother was on my crew and God, you
know. Well, you know, I thinkMo, you said you ran for office,
is that true?
Yeah, I ran for Congress backin 2020. Oh, wow. Yeah, defeated
by Madison Cawthorn, if youremember him. He was.
God, I wish I would have knownyou. I would have emptied savings
account. Well, not empty. Thelimit. The limit. Now the limit's
(29:57):
3,500. It was probably 3,000back then, but. Right. But you have
to spend. Here's what myfriends. First of all, everybody
says mean stuff about you. Andin the Air Force we had a rule it
had to be 10% true. If youwere telling a story about somebody,
you know, there's lies aboutyou, there's your skeletons come
out. It's just, you know,that's no fun. And you spend, I've
(30:19):
been told, six to nine hours aday on the phone asking for money,
which is like, I can't imagineanything worse. So, and it's just
constant and especially, youknow, some for congressional races.
You know, you, you normallyneed millions of dollars to unseat,
especially an incumbent, a lotof money. But if it's a Senate race
like in Texas, that's ahundred million dollar race. So it
(30:40):
sounds like not a lot of funbetween getting yelled at and, and,
and spending all your time onthe phone and you know, but you know,
at the end of the day, we haveto have good leaders because the
U.S. government matters. Imean, we're seeing that right now.
It's only been a few weeks andthere's been a lot of bad things
are happening just to normalAmericans. The billionaires are great,
(31:02):
they're loving things. Butlike the average car mechanic or
hairdresser man, it's a, it'sbeen a rough couple weeks. So we
need to have good people inoffice who don't have to lie to get
their job.
So, so what are you lookingat? I mean, Texas is a tough state
for I think anybody to getelected because it's very competitive
on the Republican side and,and Democrats have been redistricted
(31:25):
out and gerrymandered out andall that crap. How do you run from
Texas? And, and, and what racewould you think you'd look at?
Well, I, I don't want tospeculate too much. But I mean, I,
I, I used to, it's funny, Iused to say, I need to run for Congress
when I get out of the AirForce. And then, like, the more I
knew, the more older I got,the more experience I had, I'm like,
I don't need to run forCongress. I need to run for Senate.
(31:47):
And then seeing things thelast few years, I'm like, I need
to run for President. So. Butrunning in Texas is tough. A lot,
A lot of states gerrymander,as you know. And Republicans and
Democrats both do it, butRepublicans do it more than Democrats.
So even though you look at thehouse and it's 50, 50 rough, but
unfortunately it's 50 hyperpartisan Republicans and 50 partisan
(32:09):
Democrats. And it's because ofthis, the partisan primary system
we have, especially in Houseraces, leads to the most extreme
cat. In order to win theprimary, you have to be an extreme
person, which is not good. SoEven though it's 50, the, it's much
more partisan than, say, in 30years ago when it was, you know,
60, 40, or 70, 30. It was,they, they would still work across
(32:32):
the aisle.
And Texas had a long historyof being Democratic.
It was all Democratic.
Yeah.
When I was in the Young damnNational Committee, populated with
Democrats, and we'd haveconventions down there, and. Yeah,
those days are long gone.
Yeah. This, I'm reading abiography, Max Boots biography of
Reagan. And I stuffedenvelopes for Ronald Reagan when
(32:55):
I was in high school. TheSouthern Strategy, the Republican
strategy to take over thesouth, which was really, to be blunt,
it was, it was a raciststrategy, but it worked. The south
is all, it went from allDemocrat to all Republican now. But
we have 38 House seats here inTexas, two of them in the last election.
Two out of 38 were decided byless than 10 points. So there are
(33:18):
no competitors. There's maybeone. Or if you call 10 points, most
people call 10 points gettingyour butt kicked. So, you know, there's
two of the 38 are competitive,which means that 36 of 38 have to
appeal to the partisan base.So we have a lot of extremist congressmen
here in, in Texas, which isnot cool. And, and, you know, we
have John Cornyn in the Senateand his reputation, he's a grandfather,
(33:41):
and he's very bipartisan, andhe's, you know, nice guy, and he
works across the style. He'sjust a Trump rubber. I mean, the,
There are no more. There'svery few. Don Bacon's an exception.
There are some exceptions, butthere's Almost no exception, Republicans
who are anything other thanrubber stamps. And that's, that's
just not healthy for America.America wants and needs checks and
balances, and we don't havethat right now.
(34:02):
Over to Mode. You got another one.
I'm sorry. I wasn't payingattention. I'm sorry. I didn't see
your note.
Yes.
Yeah. So. So obviously, youknow, you're not throwing in the
towel. You know, think you're,you're still hopeful that America
is going to. The pendulum isgoing to swing back in the other
direction. What do you thinkwe need to be doing? Folks that want
to see a return to sanity?What do we need to be doing to try
(34:24):
to. I mean, obviously, I thinksome folks on the other side are
just. There's nothing you cando to penetrate that bubble they
live in. But what do we do totry to reach out to those folks in
the middle that might be opento reason?
Well, that's the key. Andunfortunately, right now, the Republican
Party is not a functioningparty. It's a cult. A party has debates.
(34:45):
Cults have witch hunts andthat, you know, so that the Republican
Party is gone, at least fornow. That's not healthy. America
needs at least two, if notmore, you know, healthy political
parties. And right now, theDemocrats are the only one. And I,
you know, I've been talking toa lot of Democrats and I've been
so encouraged because they allrealize and they all really want
to grow their party and to beopen tent. In the past, they didn't.
(35:07):
In the past, they were very,you know, you had to toe the line
on all these progressivepositions. And I think Democrats
have realized that, you know,America just voted. They don't like
illegal immigration. Theydon't want millions of people pouring
across the border. And I don'teither. America just voted. They,
they don't want an emphasis ondei. They. They just don't, you know,
they're. They. They wantpolicies that are good for all Americans.
(35:29):
And so I think the Democratsare opening up their eyes to this.
And all the ones that I'vetalked to or, you know, even the
progressive ones, and Godbless them, they, you know, I love
them, but the, the party, Ithink, is going to grow and welcome
those moderates that are, youknow, that they don't really like
Trump, but they just couldn'tstomach all those illegals pouring
(35:49):
across the border. Andfrankly, I didn't like it. I hated
that. I'm in. Here in Texas,we have lots of immigrants, obviously,
here in Texas. Well, everybodyin Texas is an immigrant of some
kind. Even the NativeAmericans here thousands of years
ago came across the Bering Seafrom Russia. Right. So everybody
came here from somewhere butit just needs to be done legally,
I think illegally. And thevast majority of.
So if you were to run, youwould run as a Democrat, independent,
(36:12):
liberal Democrat or liberal conservative?
I don't know. I hate labels.And the late, you know, I just read
a book last year called theMyth of Left and Right and it just
dis like when you sayconservative and you know, brands
you a rhino. Republican. Well,he's actually the most Republican
in name only. I mean there'snothing about his policies that are
traditional. Free trade. Areyou kidding me? He's destroying the
(36:36):
global economy and ruining allof our long term friendships with
our allies. Stand up toRussia. Russia. He's on the side
of Russia. I mean that killsme to say that, but it's the truth.
He's literally on the side ofRussia. Small government. He had
the biggest ever debt of anypresident ever. So there's nothing
Republican or traditionalabout him. So I don't like to use
(36:57):
the labels just because theychange. It's more about tribe than
it is about any one particular policy.
Well, tell folks where theycan learn a little bit more about
you. Let's plug your book.
Sure. Yeah, sure. So I have awebsite. It's just terry ver.com
you can follow me on socialmedia. I'm Astro Terry on Instagram
(37:19):
and Twitter and Blue Sky. I'mtrying to use Blue Sky. I love Blue
Sky. Actually I don't spendvery much time on social media but
I, I, I can't doom scroll onTwitter. It's just, it's the hate
channel. So Elon has reallyruined it. So I, Blue sky is a great
app. Instagram. So yeah, Terryverts.com and you know for where
(37:40):
I do speaking and executivecoaching and that kind of stuff.
Well that's terrific. And, andso what, what's given you hope? You
know, Mo likes to talk abouthope at the end of conversations
and.
I, I love young people. Yeah,go ahead.
Oh, I was just gonna say I'mkind of the doom and gloom guy and
most the hope and, and changeguy. You know what, what do you see
(38:03):
out there that gives you hope?
Well, I'm a realist. I meanthere's some bad, there's some really
bad stuff happening and I'mnot going to stick my head in the
sand and say everything's perfagainst this, this stuff that's going
on. But I love young people.Like I said, my daughter is on a
Fulbright program. Man, thereare some smart 20 somethings out
there that are really smartand they really are want good things
(38:24):
for the world that I think thefuture is bright. I had a chance
to do a couple of Air Forcespeeches at dining ins and I did
an F35 graduation talkrecently and man there's some pretty
good 23, 24 year oldlieutenants that are flying F35 which
is a pretty good airplaneairplane. So I'm very hopeful about
(38:45):
that. I think Lockheed salesare going to crater if we continue
to crush our allies around theworld. No one's going to want to
buy American products. SoLockheed and Boeing ought to, ought
to start lobbying theadministration to kind of zip it
when it comes to bashingfriends. But I'm very hopeful that
these young people there are,there are some good and old people
(39:05):
like us, the old crusty men.Ah, these young people, they don't
know any. Back when we werekids, back when I was a kid I was
like a knuckle dragging and Ididn't know anything and these kids
are like super smart. So I'mhopeful for the terrific way for
you here.
And Colonel, we reallyappreciate your time and insight
and, and also your service toour country. A lot of risk involved
when you were in thoseaircraft and on, on the shuttles.
(39:28):
So we appreciate that. And,and also helping us understand what
really matters. I mean yourview of, from space of the Earth
I'm sure has given you aninteresting view of the world and
life. So we really appreciateyou taking some time time. And Mo,
I want to head back to you forone more thing. Could you do us a
favor and tell us about yourbook and where folks could get your
(39:50):
book really quickly.
Sure. You have a historicalnovels called Sovereign Oaks based
on events that took place fromwhere I'm standing right now. Historical
events that led to thedevelopment of western North Carolina
and 100% of the proceeds aregoing to Hurricane Helene relief.
So you can find it on Amazon.com.
And okay, so that's sovereignoak on Amazon.com folks and if the
(40:14):
this conversation made youthink or gave you a new perspective,
please share it, subscribe,leave a review and join us next time
for a deep dive. This has beenMuck U. I'm David Wheeler. Thanks
to Colonel Moe Davis for cohosting today. Our guest has been
Colonel Virts from Texas andplease stay informed, stay engaged
and take a moment to look atthe bigger picture as Colonel Virts
(40:35):
reminded us today. See younext time.
This has been Muck you, cohosted by colonel Moe Da Davis in
Asheville, North Carolina andDavid Wheeler in Spruce Pine, North
Carolina. Thanks to our friendand guest today, Colonel Terry Virts.
You can follow Colonel Virtson Blue Skyer X at Astro Terry or
Terry bir.com Muck you isproduced by American Muckrakers.
(40:56):
Copyright 2025. You can learnmore at American Muckrakers.com and
follow us on X and Blue skyunder American Muck.
Welcome back, folks, to MuckYou!, where we cut through the noise
and dig into the truth. Nosugarcoating, no spin. It's the raw,
unfiltered conversations thatmatter to you. I'm David Wheeler
and as always, joined by my cohost, the one and only Moe David.
Hey, thanks, David. It's greatto be here. Great to be back. We've
had a number of interestingguests on and today is no exception.
(00:31):
I guess out of the eight or 10shows that we've done, I'm really
always pleased when we have aveteran on and particularly if it's
an Air Force veteran. So Ithink this is the third time we've
had Denver Riggleman on whoserved in the Air Force. We had Adam
Kinzinger on. And today we'vegot retired Colonel Terry. Terry
Virts, who, you know,oftentimes I feel like I accomplished
(00:51):
a lot in my lifetime and thenI see a bio like his and I feel like
such a slacker. He's an AirForce Academy graduate, like I said,
a retired Air Force colonel,former an F16 pilot, then had a distinguished
career with NASA. He's in theGuinness Book of World Records. He's
an author, He's a motivationalspeaker. Just a really interesting
(01:14):
bio. And Terry, we're reallypleased to have you on today. Thanks
for doing this.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.I like your background, by the way.
We saw it on video and I sawsome Air Force patches on the wall.
Oh, yeah. Well, thanks. I, Iwish I was young enough to do it
again. I really enjoyed it andstill, you know, I've been retired
since 2008, but I still missit. But so how did you end up what,
(01:36):
what got you into the militaryand off to the Air Force Academy?
That's a good, that's a greatquestion. When I was a kid, I was
an exchange student. I livedin Finland with a Finnish family
and I lived about a kilometerfrom the Soviet Union. This is back
in the 80s when. No kidding.USSR. And it just, I was really fascinated
by this giant evil empire.And, you know, 1984, this is in 1984.
(01:59):
In the book 1984 really strucka chord with. And I was just amazed
at the Europeans, you know,defending themselves from this evil
empire and World War IIhistory. And so basically I joined
the, went to the Air ForceAcademy when I was 17 to defend Europe
from Russia. That was the,that was kind of my worldview at
(02:20):
the time. And it's ironic thatnow, you know, for God, 40 years
later, Russia's back. They,they just don't change. And it's
the same, same story.
Yeah. They're our new bestfriends now, I guess, are allies.
Oh, my God. Yeah, that, that,that's actually terrifying. It makes
me sick to my stomach. So I,I, I flew into space with Russians.
(02:43):
I have, I speak Russian. Ispent over a decade there, traveling
back and forth there and havea lot of Russian friends. One of
my very good close neighborswas Russian. And now they're an American
citizen as of yesterday. Wentthrough great. Yeah. So I love a
lot of Russian people and foodand culture and everything. It's
just the, the government hasbeen, in my humble op, the main source
(03:08):
of human misery on planetEarth for the last century. I mean,
they, they have been amongstbetween you know, making themselves
miserable, miserable with theSoviet Union, between making other
countries miserable with, youknow, Estonia and Latvia and Poland
and Ukraine. More thananybody, they just bring misery everywhere
(03:28):
they go. For my whole careerin the Air Force, and I'm sure for
years too, we trained againstMig 29s and SA6. All these Russian
airplanes and missiles, theybasically arm all the bad guys on
Earth. So if you're, if you'relike, on the side of Russia, you're
probably on the wrong side of it.
Is ironic because I'm sureyou've done the same. Spent hours
(03:48):
in chemical warfare gear, youknow, training to, you know, fight
Russia Mach 4. Yeah. Or I wasat 19th Air Force. You know, the
ballistic missiles where, youknow, 24, 7, 365. We've got crews
sitting there just waiting,uh, for the. Hopefully the time never
comes. But to turn the key andhit the button and suddenly for them
(04:10):
to be our supposed best friendother than our adversary is just
incomprehensible.
Yeah, it's not in America'sinterest. It's not in anybody's interest.
I'm actually watching Band ofBrothers. I don't know if you guys
like that. It's one of myfavorite shows. I think the most
meaningful moment in my AirForce career was I led a four ship
of F16s in a flyby overNormandy, the American military cemetery
(04:34):
there, on June 6. And back inthe ninet, it was on the anniversary
of D Day. Missing manformation. It was just the ball.
The really. I've gotten to dosome really cool things, and that
was the most meaningful ofeverything I got to do. Just to kind
of honor the men that diedthere. Defending our friends and
allies and weaker partnersfrom a much larger dictator that
(04:55):
was, you know, bringing evilAnd America used to do that, and
I think we're going to do itagain. We're just. We're having a
really bad moment right now,but it's not going to last forever.
Yeah.
I'm like you, I'm hopeful thatwe're going to get through this rough
patch and get back to beingthe country. Country that, that we
ought to be. But, boy, it'sscary times we're living in right
now.
Yeah.
You mentioned F. You mentionedF16s. I, I look through your bio.
(05:18):
I saw you were at Homesteadwhen Hurricane Andrew rolled through
and had to relocate up toMoody. Essentially, my first assignment.
I'm about a decade ahead ofyou, age wise. My first assignment
was at Patrick Air Force Base,and I bought a house there from a
captain that was PCSing out.
Right.
And he ended up going to. Tothe Philippines. And he was there
(05:39):
back in August of June of 1991when Mount Pinatubo erupted.
The Herc or the volcano. Yeah.
And he got out of there withjust, you know, the clothes on his
back. And then, you know, theassignment folks said, you know,
it's not going to reopen.Where would you like to go? And he
said, you know, used to bestationed in Florida. I really liked
it there.
Oh, no, how about the Homestead?
(05:59):
He went to Homestead. And soin August, August of 92, the second
time in about 15 months,everything he had was lost again.
So I've always made it a pointto see where he was stationed. And
sure, I didn't go there.
His call sign was lucky. Sure,I had heard of him. He was legendary.
Like, I think there was more,maybe more than one, but I remember
(06:20):
absolutely, like, the Pinatuboguys were like, oh, my God. Yeah,
yeah. All my, all my basesfrom that time frame got shut down.
Like, I went to pilot trainingat Willie the Fighter Lead in left
Holloman, the F16s leftMcDill. Homestead got shut. You know,
so everywhere I went, the basegot shut down. So nobody wanted,
you know, wanted me to move totheir base.
(06:41):
Yeah, it's funny, my wife andI, I got orders to, to go to Columbus
Air Force Base as the seniorattorney there. And I called my wife
to tell her, and she said, Ithought Wright Patterson was in Dayton.
And I said, no, no, notColumbus, Ohio. Columbus, Mississippi.
And. And she cried. I think ifyou ask her now, the best assignment,
(07:02):
the most fun assignment weever had was at that UPT base where
it was just. It was.
When were you there?
I was there from God. Thatwould have 19, like, 87 to 90.
Okay, so you're there beforeDoc Fogelsong was the wing commander.
Actually, I worked for him forabout a week. He was.
(07:23):
Do you remember some F16 guysgetting in trouble there?
Yeah, I'm trying to think.
It might have been. I had.I've been in trouble many times in
my Air Force career. We weredoing a vertical takeoffs. We were
four F16s. We were going onour way to Andrews for the. Like,
just across country. And I wasnumber four. And we did, you know,
(07:44):
we got to the end of Runway,pulled straight up, and it was pretty
cool. Doing vertical takeoffat pilot training base. I thought
the.
Yeah, it's gone. It's gone. Go ahead.
All right, so we're talkingabout Columbus Air Force Base. You're
talking about doing the. Thefour ship and the vertical takeoff.
Yeah. So I was a newlieutenant, and we were on our way
(08:05):
to Andrews, um, and we decidedto do a vertical takeoff. Cause it's
a weekend. It's pilottraining. I'm sure these poor lieutenant,
you know, the other pilottraining students would love to see
this. So. And I was the numberfour guy. So number one takes off,
goes straight up. Number twotakes off, and you go straight up
to, I don't know, maybe10,000ft and then level off. And
as I was going straight up, Irolled the jet. So I'm going vertical,
(08:29):
and I rolled the jet, and wego on to Andrews. And we get to Andrews,
there's a yellow sticky. Hey,call your home base. And we called
home, and the colonel wasyelled at us. And then we had to
fly back, and the wholesquadron came in on a Sunday, and
basically for them to chewour. To chew our ass up. And. And
it was because of me. And the.My commander calls me in, is like,
(08:49):
do you want a lawyer? Blah.I'm like, sir, what are you talking
about? I was. I was goingvertical, and I rolled the jet. And
he was like, blah, blah, blah,blah. So the wing commander there
at Columbus was not happy.Those. It was like in Top Gun, you
know, those guys showboating.And I'm like, it's not. I mean, I'm
going vertical. So it's.There's no, like, acrobatics. I'm
already going 90 degreesstraight up. So what's wrong with
rolling the jet so that Ididn't really see a problem with
(09:12):
it. But the colonel thoughtdifferently. Well, I was going to
say real quick. So I got introuble. I had to. They made me go
grade landings. I had to gostand by the Runway and, like, grade
people's landings. Mypunishment. And. But like, that week
A, we had a Dutch exchangeofficer, and anyway, we were doing
this thing to see how fast wecould come up initial, which is like
(09:34):
the traffic pattern before youland. And everybody wanted the triple
nickel club. So we were tryingto go 555 knots, which is really
fast up initial. Just like thescene in Top Gun where the. The captain
spills his coffee, and thenthat wasn't fast enough, so then
it was the Satan club. So youwere trying to go 666 knots. Anyway,
finally this Dutch guy got introuble. The colonel saw it, and
(09:55):
so as soon as he was introuble, I wasn't in trouble anymore.
So the.
The career lesson that Ilearned was it doesn't matter if
you do something wrong. Youjust don't want to be the most recent
person to have done something right.
Yeah, I really enjoyedColumbus. I. My family had a little
airport here in NorthCarolina, so I started flying when
I was 15.
Oh, wow.
Ended up in the Jag Corps. Butmy last day at Columbus, the wing
(10:17):
commander said, come on, let'sgo flying. And so we took up a T38.
The only thing I ever got tofly. You could point straight up,
and it would get. I mean, youdo that in assessment.
At some point, for a fewseconds, you can do it.
You stall out. But. But. Sofrom. From the Air Force, you went
over to NASA. What. What. Whatprompted that?
I wanted to do it ever since Iwas a little kid. You know, like
(10:40):
I grew up. The first book Iever read was about Apollo when I
was in kindergarten. I hadposters of the space shuttle and
an F16. The old red, white andblue, YF16 and galaxies. It's just
what I wanted to do my wholelife. So I read a book called the
Right Stuff when I was ateenager. Great book. Actually, I
(11:01):
just gave it to my friend whojust became an American citizen.
I gave. Gave her some, youknow, great American books, and that
was one of them. And Travelswith Charlie, a John Steinbeck book,
is. Which is a spectacularbook. I gave her that. But, yeah,
that. So it's something I'vewanted to do ever since I was a little
kid.
Okay, cool, so we'll edit thisout. Terry. Sorry, I was.
That's all right.
(11:21):
You know, usually MOEDominates these conversations so
badly that I take a nap, but.So, Terry, you've been in space,
you've been in the military.Why is it that Air Force guys are
such badass?
Well, we're smarter than theArmy. And Navy guys and better looking
and more humble. But no, Idon't know. I, I was lucky. I was
(11:45):
very lucky. I mean, I'm. I'mthe rare guy that got to do what
I wanted to do when I was alittle boy. You know, I'm so, I'm
very fortunate, I could say,you know, I worked hard, but a lot
of people worked hard. I was,you know, I was lucky when I got
picked by NASA. Excuse me. So,but I think the hard you work, the
luckier you get. And there's amessage that I tell folks and kind
(12:05):
of my, my motivational,inspirational message is don't tell
yourself no. So if there'ssome dream you want, you know, don't
tell yourself no. If it's abig dream, you're going to have to
work hard. It won't be easy.But that first step, the most important
step I think is that throwingyour hat in the rain and going for
it. So don't tell yourself no.That's, that's my advice.
Okay, so let's, let's applythat to this conversation. What,
(12:26):
what are you dreaming aboutthese days?
Well, I'm dreaming about aAmerica, you know, resists our enemies
and is. Helps our friendsrather than the opposite. So that's
kind of my goal. You know,when I was in space, you look back
and it's a beautiful planet.It really is. And it's just gorgeous.
And it's. You can't evenimagine. You cannot imagine. I'm.
(12:49):
I'm doing a photographyexhibit right now in Asia, or, I'm
sorry, in, in Europe. It's inGraz, Austria right now. It's going
to go in different places. Andthe guy that did it with, with a
lot of my space photography,it's the coolest thing I've ever
seen. I mean, it is amazing.The prints that he did, he really
did a great job. So when yougo through this thing, you're like,
man, it's a. Earth is, isbeautiful. It really is. Except,
(13:14):
well, there's a couple ofthings that I took away. First of
all, that, that thin blueline, you know, when you look at
our atmosphere, it is thin. Itis really thin. And we have Planet
A and there's no Planet B. Soit's like, wow, it is a pretty planet,
but, you know, we need to takecare of it. And the other thing is,
people say astronauts don'tsee borders. You know, if we could
(13:35):
just send people into space,they could hold hands and sing Kumbaya
and everybody, everythingwould be great. No, that's not true.
First of all, if you're anempathetic person and your, your
mind is open, then, yes,you're going to be profoundly impacted
by space. But, you know, we,we all probably could think of a
few leaders these days whodon't really have open empathetic
minds. And the other thing is,when you look back at Earth, you
(13:57):
do see some borders. Not alot, but North Korea, South Korea
is the most stark one. It'sjust insane. Google a picture of
that at night. You know, SouthKorea is thriving. It's brilliant
white everywhere, city lights.And North Korea is just a black hole.
The other thing that you see,you know, when you look in Africa,
there's no city lights. And soyou can kind of see politics and
(14:18):
corruption. And I neverexpected to see politics on Earth,
but you can see them throughthe city lights that you see, which
is something I was completelynot expecting to see. But, you know,
that's, that's what I saw, really.
A view that very few peoplehave probably thought. Colonel, so
you mentioned a word importantto me. You know, my father was a
(14:41):
Marine, so maybe I shoulddefend the Marines on your, your
derogatory comments a littlebit ago.
But no, just army and Navy. Ilove the Marines. My first. Okay.
All right. We can bash thearmy and the Navy.
Okay, good, good. I'llremember that. So, you know, he,
my father was. He was in theMarines during Korea and. But somehow,
(15:01):
you know, he grew up in areally small town in the middle of
Iowa and they were so poor,they had to go. He had to go away
from their home on the summersand work because they couldn't afford
to feed his house. But somehowhe became a Democrat and a big Democrat.
I mean, like, you know, thefucking, fucking Republicans. That.
And I think that's through alived experience. How did you. How
(15:25):
do you view politics thesedays? As a former Air Force NASA
guy living in Texas, where doyou see politics?
I tried not to, but I, youknow, jokingly, but I actually, I
follow it extremely closely.I. Somebody just sent me this old
Simpsons from 30 years ago,and it was like, man, the Simpsons
nailed this 30 years ago.There was, it was the Republican
(15:47):
convention. And their signswere like, we'll do everything that's
bad for you and we're evil.That was the Republican Convention.
Then the, the Democratconvention across the street was
we suck and we can't govern.So it was kind of funny. And I love
the Simpsons, but, you know,when you look at American politics,
I tell you what, I. From aforeigner's perspective because I
do a lot of traveling. They'rejust aghast, like they can't believe
(16:10):
what they're seeing happeningin American politics. And I don't
think this is what Americanswant. I mean, Clearly Americans in
2024 didn't vote for morehigher EG, which is what we're getting.
They didn't vote for their,their 401ks to get clobbered, which
is what's happening. Theydidn't vote to join Team Putin and
join the Kremlin to attack ourally. And so we're getting, I think
(16:32):
we're getting things maybe alittle bit of buyer's remorse there.
But I hear something that'sreally awful. This is terrible. But,
but it's, it is what it is. Asyou know, former government folks,
there's a lot of seniorpolitical appointees. I think there's
a thousand or maybe 2000.There's lots and lots of senior government
officials that come in, runthe government. All of them, 100%
(16:55):
of them and 100% of thecabinet, all the top leaders in the
American government got theirjob by line. They all had to pass
this egregious 20, 25 minuteloyalty test, which is like something
out of the Politburo orsomething. And they had to lie. They
had to say, you know, Trumpwon the 2020 election. And they had
(17:15):
to go on and on about all thisother stuff that's just absolutely
egregious. So when you build ahouse on a foundation of, on a bad
foundation and a storm comes,that house is not going to stand.
And right now, unfortunately,the executive branch of our government
is built on a foundationalline. So that's not, you know, I
don't care what party you are.I've, I don't care about what party.
I just care about, I'm anAmerican first, I'm a Texan second.
(17:39):
I care about doing the rightthing for Texans and for Americans.
And it makes me sick to mystomach seeing some of the stuff
that's happening now.
I don't know how it wasduring, during your military career,
but, you know, during minepolitics, you know, the folks I worked
with, I rarely knew if theywere a Democrat or Republican. It
just wasn't an issue. Youknow, the military really prided
(18:01):
itself on being nonpartisan.And, you know, I served under both
Democratic and Republicanpresidents. And I, you know, I never
doubted. I mean, I disagreedwith them on policy, but I never
doubted they had my back. AndI just don't get that feeling with
the current commander in Chiefand the current Secretary of Defense
and what seems like thepoliticization of the military. So
(18:23):
I was always a big advocate toyoung folks. I was on the faculty
at Howard University at thelaw school, and I encouraged a lot
of my students to consider amilitary career. I don't know that
I'd do that now under thecurrent administration. I'm just
curious on your thoughts aboutwhere we are today with. With the
military.
How terrible is that to say? Imean, isn't that the worst thing
(18:43):
that you've ever said? I. I'mnot disagreeing with it. I'm just
saying, you know, my daughteris on a Fulbright scholarship right
now, which is like the. Youknow, that's a big deal in the Foreign
Service universe and the StateDepartment, and they just got a email
warning that that programmight be canceled and all this stuff
might be canceled. Andbasically none of her friends want
(19:04):
to work for the government.And that's terrible, man. The government
is important. Our governmentis really good. You know, we just
had this Sorayan ceremonyyesterday. Thousands of people just
became Americans here inHouston yesterday morning. There's
a reason why all these peoplewant to come to America, because
we have a great country. Imean, it's a pretty good country.
And part of that reason is wehave a great government and we have
(19:27):
things like the rule of law.And, you know, like, you and I can
do a business deal, and weknow that we're probably going to
implement what we say we'regoing to do. And if we don't, there's
ways to do it. We have roadsthat work. You know, we have a military
that keeps us safe. Americaworks very. Has worked in the past
very well. And I think justdestroying it with a wrecking ball
(19:48):
is a bad idea. Should it betweaked? Yes. Oh, my God. We. The
government is, you know, couldabsolutely be improved. Of course,
it's an ugly sausage factory,but, you know, it needs to be tweaked,
not destroyed. And that'sunfortunately, I think, what's happening
right now.
Yeah, I think you're exactlyright. I know I worked for Congress
for a little over a year, andthen I ran for. And both. I'm a big
(20:11):
advocate for procurementreform. I mean, we waste. We waste
so much money that, you know,you never run a business the way
we run the government. Butlike you said, it needs a scalpel,
not a sledgeham, to make thosecorrections. And it really bothers
me, too. I was a judge at theDepartment of Labor when I retired,
and whether it's the militaryor the federal civil service. You
(20:34):
would occasionally run intosomebody that shouldn't have been
there, but that was theexception and not the rule. I mean,
the vast majority of folks arethere for the right reasons. They're
not getting rich and they're,they're doing something because they
believe it matters. And to seethem, to see them demonized and,
you know, demoralized and yougot to send Elon. The five things
you did last week is. It'sreally just disappointing.
(20:57):
It's. Well, it'sdisappointing, but it's also very
damaging. I mean, the damagethat Elon is doing to our government.
And by the way, the governmentis important. And it's kind of funny
if you look at, you know, taxdollars in and tax dollars out by
state. Red states get by farthe most tax dollar. You know, they,
they. The government's apretty good investment for them because
(21:18):
a lot more dollars go into redstates as a whole than, than blue
states. And yet, you know,it's being demonized and jobs are
lost. I think, I think there'sgoing to be a lot of buyer's remorse,
frankly, just to, I hate topurely political here, but I think
the 26 midterms is going tobe. There's going to be a lot of
backlash. And, and you know,the one thing that Americans want
is checks and balances, likethe government that you have to have
(21:41):
checks and balance becausethey know human nature and they know
that people want to be a king.And we see this in a leader that
wants to be a king here inAmerica. And that's not what America
is. And so that's why we havea legislature and a judicial and
an executive branch. Rightnow, we don't have that. There are
no checks and balances. The,the courts have some checks and balance.
Not what we want. I think theAmerican people would much rather
(22:03):
see the president of one partyand the Congress of another party.
So I think there's going to bea blue wave in 26. We'll see.
Fingers crossed.
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, we're talking,you mentioned we're talking about
Elon Musk. You know, you werethe pilot of the shuttle Endeavor.
You're the commander of theInternational Space Station. So you
certainly have a, you know, aunique perspective on, on the space
(22:23):
program. It seems like NASAis, is kind of being pushed to the
side a bit and more.Privatization of space. I'm just
curious how, how you feelabout that. Is that the right, right
approach?
I mean, there's always beenprivate companies you know, back
in the 60s, Rockwell andBoeing, Grumman built, you know,
the Apollo component. Sothere's always been private companies
(22:46):
with boards of directors andshare prices and all that have been
building NASA hardware for along time. The approach now is much
more hands off where NASA justhere's some money, go build us something.
And by the way, Elon hasgotten, I've seen numbers well north
of $30 billion in governmentmoney and tax subsidies between direct
contracts and other subsidies.So that's always been the case. But
(23:07):
NASA's going a lot more handsoff. And frankly, you know, having
the I'm from the FAA and we'rehere to help was our joke. And when
I was a pilot, you know, youwould rather have less government
than more, I think when itcomes to a lot of things. And so
American innovation isamazing. I mean what SpaceX is doing
with this big giant starshiprocket is amazing. That's a impressive
rocket. The Falcon 9 dominatesall global launch. I mean the Falcon
(23:30):
9 has basically put everyother company and country almost
out of business when it comesto launch. So you know, SpaceX is
clearly executing in someways. But I think that you need the
right balance. It's called apublic private partner. If the government
does what it's good at,private sector is good, do what it
does. I think that's a goodbalance. But you need a balance.
(23:51):
And especially when humans areinvolved, if you're just launching
satellites and it blows up,that's fine. Once humans get involved,
you need some adultsupervision and you don't want the
Elon's 20 year old internsrunning things the way they're running
the federal government.
Yeah, I was, you know, Imentioned earlier my first assignment
was at Patrick Air Force Baseand I was there when Challenger exploded
(24:11):
and the launches had gotten soroutine that, you know, it just happened
that day. I don't if yourecall the. It was. Weather was an
issue in the morning, it gotpushed back a bit and the only reason
I saw it happen was it wasaround lunchtime where a group of
us were walking over to theOfficers Club for lunch when, when
Challenger launched. And youknow, we stopped to look at it and
(24:33):
my, my initial thought wasboy, the boosters separated, awful
low. And then, you know, justtook a few seconds to realize that
something catastrophic hadhappened. But you know, they were
launching like one a month andit becomes so routine that people
kind of took it for granteduntil that day and it really drove
home, you know, how importantit is, you know, safety and I guess
you know, looking back on thethings that were missed during that
(24:55):
mishap, that could have haveprevented it. You're right. You know,
you put human beings in theequation and it's a different story.
Yeah. I teach a case study, Icall it why Organizations Fail at
Harvard Business School. And Ido it for. I just did it for a big
company here in Houston lastweek. And it's about Challenger and
also Columbia. And it's kindof frightening how similar both of
(25:17):
those space shuttle accidentswere. They're basically the same
accident. Different. One wasan O ring and one was foam. So technically
it was different. But theleadership failures and management
failures and, you know, allthat stuff was exactly the same.
So the point. Well, there'smany points. It's a long involved.
Case studies are great. It's agreat case study. But there's. It's
(25:39):
one thing to learn a lessonand it's another to remember the
lesson. And that's trueprobably, you know, in our personal
lives, but it's certainly truewhen it comes to business and technical
things, you know, like theglobal financial. We all learn that
you shouldn't be too big tofail. Well, is bank of America too
big to fail? Is, you know,Wells Fargo or Chase, or are any
(26:01):
of those too big to fail? So,you know, humans are good at learning
lessons, we're not good atremembering them.
Yeah, yeah. I participated ina couple of aircraft accident investigations.
It seems like in every onethat, you know, when you put all
the pieces together, if anyone thing had gone differently, it
would have been a non event.Yep. It was just that string of things
(26:21):
that just happened to alignand, and led the catastrophe.
Yeah, we used to call it thesafety chain. Do you remember hearing
that?
Yeah.
If you look at an accidentlike a chain, all the links have
to be in place in order, youknow, from start to finish in order
for the chain to hold. Andsame thing in an accident. All these
things have to happen for theaccident to happen. If you break
any of those links, the chainfalls apart. And if you stop, you
(26:43):
know, there's a lot ofdifferent opportunities to stop accidents.
Airplanes rarely just explodeout of the blue with no war. Like,
there's always some, there'salmost always something that could
have been done.
All right, well, listen, Iknow you circled the globe, what,
three, 600 times, but you'rein the Guinness Book of World Records
for circling at one.
That's true.
(27:04):
Can you tell the tell folks alittle bit about that one trip around
that got you in the GuinnessBook of World Records.
Yeah, so a good friend of minenamed Hamish Harding, who, unfortunately,
you may know his name, he wason. He was one of the passengers
on board that Titan sub thatwent down. Yeah, so. So anyway, he
had this dream, this crazyidea to. He wanted to do it in honor
(27:27):
of Apollo to set a worldrecord going around the Earth. He
was a pilot. He had some otherrecords and so he liked setting aviation
records. So originally we weregoing to take an Apollo astronaut
and I was going to fly. Andthen that didn't happen and we had
to wait a year and then.Anyway, so I ended up making a documentary
about it and it's called OneMore Orbit. It was my first direction,
(27:49):
my first movie that Idirected. And it was cool. We took
off and landed from theKennedy Space Center. We went over
the North Pole and South Pole.So we set the, the world record for
circumnavigation over thepoles. And it was amazing. It was
an amazing experience. We hadto stop three times for gas. We stopped
in Kazakhstan, Mauritius andPatagonia, South America. And it
(28:12):
was a really fun experience.It was about 44 hours, so almost
two days in that airplane. Itwas in a business jet. So that's
kind of cool. It's fancy, butnot really. I mean, you don't want
to spend 48 hours in the, inthe cabin. And it was a bunch of
people. And so, yes, it was abusiness jet, but it was also, you
know, it was, it was quite anadventure. It was a lot of fun. And
(28:32):
we flying over Antarctica, themost dangerous part by far because
there's no divert. It was theJuly, which means it's wintertime
in Antarctica. So I mean, wewere like really low on gas. The
air, it got really. It gotbelow the limit air temperature limit
of the airplane. It was just.Yeah, it was an exciting. It was
an exciting 44 hours.
(28:52):
So you've, you've got someleadership chop. Have you ever thought
about running for politicaloffice now that conquered space and
conquered Earth.
It's funny, I get asked thatquestion all the time whenever I
do my space talk. There youwill do Q and A and, you know, how
do you go to the bathroom inspace? And are there aliens? And
all the standard questions.And someone always goes, when are
you running for office? So,yes, I've been thinking about it.
(29:12):
When I was in, in middleschool, in eighth grade, they said,
what do you want to do whenyou grow up? So we went around and
when they came to me, I said,I want to be Secretary of State.
So it's something I've had inmy mind. So we'll see what the future
holds. But you know, honestly,I. Running for office, just awful.
I've had friends who've doneit, obviously. Mark Kelly, Senator
Mark Kelly is a friend ofmine. I was in when I was commander
(29:34):
of the space station. Hisbrother was on my crew and God, you
know. Well, you know, I thinkMo, you said you ran for office,
is that true?
Yeah, I ran for Congress backin 2020. Oh, wow. Yeah, defeated
by Madison Cawthorn, if youremember him. He was.
God, I wish I would have knownyou. I would have emptied savings
account. Well, not empty. Thelimit. The limit. Now the limit's
(29:57):
3,500. It was probably 3,000back then, but. Right. But you have
to spend. Here's what myfriends. First of all, everybody
says mean stuff about you. Andin the Air Force we had a rule it
had to be 10% true. If youwere telling a story about somebody,
you know, there's lies aboutyou, there's your skeletons come
out. It's just, you know,that's no fun. And you spend, I've
(30:19):
been told, six to nine hours aday on the phone asking for money,
which is like, I can't imagineanything worse. So, and it's just
constant and especially, youknow, some for congressional races.
You know, you, you normallyneed millions of dollars to unseat,
especially an incumbent, a lotof money. But if it's a Senate race
like in Texas, that's ahundred million dollar race. So it
(30:40):
sounds like not a lot of funbetween getting yelled at and, and,
and spending all your time onthe phone and you know, but you know,
at the end of the day, we haveto have good leaders because the
U.S. government matters. Imean, we're seeing that right now.
It's only been a few weeks andthere's been a lot of bad things
are happening just to normalAmericans. The billionaires are great,
(31:02):
they're loving things. Butlike the average car mechanic or
hairdresser man, it's a, it'sbeen a rough couple weeks. So we
need to have good people inoffice who don't have to lie to get
their job.
So, so what are you lookingat? I mean, Texas is a tough state
for I think anybody to getelected because it's very competitive
on the Republican side and,and Democrats have been redistricted
(31:25):
out and gerrymandered out andall that crap. How do you run from
Texas? And, and, and what racewould you think you'd look at?
Well, I, I don't want tospeculate too much. But I mean, I,
I, I used to, it's funny, Iused to say, I need to run for Congress
when I get out of the AirForce. And then, like, the more I
knew, the more older I got,the more experience I had, I'm like,
I don't need to run forCongress. I need to run for Senate.
(31:47):
And then seeing things thelast few years, I'm like, I need
to run for President. So. Butrunning in Texas is tough. A lot,
A lot of states gerrymander,as you know. And Republicans and
Democrats both do it, butRepublicans do it more than Democrats.
So even though you look at thehouse and it's 50, 50 rough, but
unfortunately it's 50 hyperpartisan Republicans and 50 partisan
(32:09):
Democrats. And it's because ofthis, the partisan primary system
we have, especially in Houseraces, leads to the most extreme
cat. In order to win theprimary, you have to be an extreme
person, which is not good. SoEven though it's 50, the, it's much
more partisan than, say, in 30years ago when it was, you know,
60, 40, or 70, 30. It was,they, they would still work across
(32:32):
the aisle.
And Texas had a long historyof being Democratic.
It was all Democratic.
Yeah.
When I was in the Young damnNational Committee, populated with
Democrats, and we'd haveconventions down there, and. Yeah,
those days are long gone.
Yeah. This, I'm reading abiography, Max Boots biography of
Reagan. And I stuffedenvelopes for Ronald Reagan when
(32:55):
I was in high school. TheSouthern Strategy, the Republican
strategy to take over thesouth, which was really, to be blunt,
it was, it was a raciststrategy, but it worked. The south
is all, it went from allDemocrat to all Republican now. But
we have 38 House seats here inTexas, two of them in the last election.
Two out of 38 were decided byless than 10 points. So there are
(33:18):
no competitors. There's maybeone. Or if you call 10 points, most
people call 10 points gettingyour butt kicked. So, you know, there's
two of the 38 are competitive,which means that 36 of 38 have to
appeal to the partisan base.So we have a lot of extremist congressmen
here in, in Texas, which isnot cool. And, and, you know, we
have John Cornyn in the Senateand his reputation, he's a grandfather,
(33:41):
and he's very bipartisan, andhe's, you know, nice guy, and he
works across the style. He'sjust a Trump rubber. I mean, the,
There are no more. There'svery few. Don Bacon's an exception.
There are some exceptions, butthere's Almost no exception, Republicans
who are anything other thanrubber stamps. And that's, that's
just not healthy for America.America wants and needs checks and
balances, and we don't havethat right now.
(34:02):
Over to Mode. You got another one.
I'm sorry. I wasn't payingattention. I'm sorry. I didn't see
your note.
Yes.
Yeah. So. So obviously, youknow, you're not throwing in the
towel. You know, think you're,you're still hopeful that America
is going to. The pendulum isgoing to swing back in the other
direction. What do you thinkwe need to be doing? Folks that want
to see a return to sanity?What do we need to be doing to try
(34:24):
to. I mean, obviously, I thinksome folks on the other side are
just. There's nothing you cando to penetrate that bubble they
live in. But what do we do totry to reach out to those folks in
the middle that might be opento reason?
Well, that's the key. Andunfortunately, right now, the Republican
Party is not a functioningparty. It's a cult. A party has debates.
(34:45):
Cults have witch hunts andthat, you know, so that the Republican
Party is gone, at least fornow. That's not healthy. America
needs at least two, if notmore, you know, healthy political
parties. And right now, theDemocrats are the only one. And I,
you know, I've been talking toa lot of Democrats and I've been
so encouraged because they allrealize and they all really want
to grow their party and to beopen tent. In the past, they didn't.
(35:07):
In the past, they were very,you know, you had to toe the line
on all these progressivepositions. And I think Democrats
have realized that, you know,America just voted. They don't like
illegal immigration. Theydon't want millions of people pouring
across the border. And I don'teither. America just voted. They,
they don't want an emphasis ondei. They. They just don't, you know,
they're. They. They wantpolicies that are good for all Americans.
(35:29):
And so I think the Democratsare opening up their eyes to this.
And all the ones that I'vetalked to or, you know, even the
progressive ones, and Godbless them, they, you know, I love
them, but the, the party, Ithink, is going to grow and welcome
those moderates that are, youknow, that they don't really like
Trump, but they just couldn'tstomach all those illegals pouring
(35:49):
across the border. Andfrankly, I didn't like it. I hated
that. I'm in. Here in Texas,we have lots of immigrants, obviously,
here in Texas. Well, everybodyin Texas is an immigrant of some
kind. Even the NativeAmericans here thousands of years
ago came across the Bering Seafrom Russia. Right. So everybody
came here from somewhere butit just needs to be done legally,
I think illegally. And thevast majority of.
So if you were to run, youwould run as a Democrat, independent,
(36:12):
liberal Democrat or liberal conservative?
I don't know. I hate labels.And the late, you know, I just read
a book last year called theMyth of Left and Right and it just
dis like when you sayconservative and you know, brands
you a rhino. Republican. Well,he's actually the most Republican
in name only. I mean there'snothing about his policies that are
traditional. Free trade. Areyou kidding me? He's destroying the
(36:36):
global economy and ruining allof our long term friendships with
our allies. Stand up toRussia. Russia. He's on the side
of Russia. I mean that killsme to say that, but it's the truth.
He's literally on the side ofRussia. Small government. He had
the biggest ever debt of anypresident ever. So there's nothing
Republican or traditionalabout him. So I don't like to use
(36:57):
the labels just because theychange. It's more about tribe than
it is about any one particular policy.
Well, tell folks where theycan learn a little bit more about
you. Let's plug your book.
Sure. Yeah, sure. So I have awebsite. It's just terry ver.com
you can follow me on socialmedia. I'm Astro Terry on Instagram
(37:19):
and Twitter and Blue Sky. I'mtrying to use Blue Sky. I love Blue
Sky. Actually I don't spendvery much time on social media but
I, I, I can't doom scroll onTwitter. It's just, it's the hate
channel. So Elon has reallyruined it. So I, Blue sky is a great
app. Instagram. So yeah, Terryverts.com and you know for where
(37:40):
I do speaking and executivecoaching and that kind of stuff.
Well that's terrific. And, andso what, what's given you hope? You
know, Mo likes to talk abouthope at the end of conversations
and.
I, I love young people. Yeah,go ahead.
Oh, I was just gonna say I'mkind of the doom and gloom guy and
most the hope and, and changeguy. You know what, what do you see
(38:03):
out there that gives you hope?
Well, I'm a realist. I meanthere's some bad, there's some really
bad stuff happening and I'mnot going to stick my head in the
sand and say everything's perfagainst this, this stuff that's going
on. But I love young people.Like I said, my daughter is on a
Fulbright program. Man, thereare some smart 20 somethings out
there that are really smartand they really are want good things
(38:24):
for the world that I think thefuture is bright. I had a chance
to do a couple of Air Forcespeeches at dining ins and I did
an F35 graduation talkrecently and man there's some pretty
good 23, 24 year oldlieutenants that are flying F35 which
is a pretty good airplaneairplane. So I'm very hopeful about
(38:45):
that. I think Lockheed salesare going to crater if we continue
to crush our allies around theworld. No one's going to want to
buy American products. SoLockheed and Boeing ought to, ought
to start lobbying theadministration to kind of zip it
when it comes to bashingfriends. But I'm very hopeful that
these young people there are,there are some good and old people
(39:05):
like us, the old crusty men.Ah, these young people, they don't
know any. Back when we werekids, back when I was a kid I was
like a knuckle dragging and Ididn't know anything and these kids
are like super smart. So I'mhopeful for the terrific way for
you here.
And Colonel, we reallyappreciate your time and insight
and, and also your service toour country. A lot of risk involved
when you were in thoseaircraft and on, on the shuttles.
(39:28):
So we appreciate that. And,and also helping us understand what
really matters. I mean yourview of, from space of the Earth
I'm sure has given you aninteresting view of the world and
life. So we really appreciateyou taking some time time. And Mo,
I want to head back to you forone more thing. Could you do us a
favor and tell us about yourbook and where folks could get your
(39:50):
book really quickly.
Sure. You have a historicalnovels called Sovereign Oaks based
on events that took place fromwhere I'm standing right now. Historical
events that led to thedevelopment of western North Carolina
and 100% of the proceeds aregoing to Hurricane Helene relief.
So you can find it on Amazon.com.
And okay, so that's sovereignoak on Amazon.com folks and if the
(40:14):
this conversation made youthink or gave you a new perspective,
please share it, subscribe,leave a review and join us next time
for a deep dive. This has beenMuck U. I'm David Wheeler. Thanks
to Colonel Moe Davis for cohosting today. Our guest has been
Colonel Virts from Texas andplease stay informed, stay engaged
and take a moment to look atthe bigger picture as Colonel Virts
(40:35):
reminded us today. See younext time.
This has been Muck you, cohosted by colonel Moe Da Davis in
Asheville, North Carolina andDavid Wheeler in Spruce Pine, North
Carolina. Thanks to our friendand guest today, Colonel Terry Virts.
You can follow Colonel Virtson Blue Skyer X at Astro Terry or
Terry bir.com Muck you isproduced by American Muckrakers.
(40:56):
Copyright 2025. You can learnmore at American Muckrakers.com and
follow us on X and Blue skyunder American Muck.
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