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September 17, 2025 • 13 mins
Meet Valley Station native Joel Willett. He joined the military after 9/11 and eventually worked for the FBI and CIA.

He's now back home and running for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky.

Joel and Terry Meiners discussed a variety of issues on WHAS Radio. Click to listen to their conversation.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, I woke up this morning and saw another phrase
bouncing around the interwebs, fight like how for Kentucky. I thought, well,
there's an interesting take. That take belongs to Joel Willett,
who's in the studio with me now. He is running
for the United States Senate. Welcome Joel, go to have
you here. Thank you, Terry. You're a local guy. You've
You've done a lot of service on behalf of America.

(00:21):
Thank you for that.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
So you grew up here? Did I read this writer?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
No?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
I saw a video that you launched this morning. You
joined the National Guard right after nine eleven. I did. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
I grew up in Valley Station in the southwest part
of town, went to Valley High School. September eleventh happened
my senior year of high school, and that submitted in
me a desire to serve this country in uniform. You know,
I spent a couple of months trying to talk my
mom into it, and I'm sure that wasn't an easy
thing for a mother to do in a time in
national crisis. But she signed signed the paperwork, and you know,
it started, you know, my life of service. So it

(00:56):
started in the US Army, served for four years in
the National Guard, got a great Kentucky education. As I
was concluding my military service, went to University of Louisville
fore undergrad did a graduate degree at the Patterson School
at the University of Kentucky, and then went on to
a career in national security in Washington.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Well, I read about some of that national security things.
You were in the situation room. I understand. Yeah, though,
I mean that's pretty high level of information. It is
the first just to take you through DC.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
I went to the FBI first and then was recruited
into the CIA's director of Operations. Served both domestically and overseas,
and my last year in government I was detailed to
the White House Situation Room. I was not a political appointee.
I served in the middle of obama second term, but
what not in a political role, nonpartisan, a political there
in the situation room with my colleagues from the FBI,

(01:47):
the State Department, Secret Service, and other places, and our
job there was to make sure that the president and
Vice President and all their advisors had the best intelligence
information from which to make national security decisions.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
That's really walking tightrope there. I mean, that's some treacherous work,
and you've got to pay attention, you've got to focus,
and that whole are pretty intense, right. Oh. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
It's a twenty four to seven operation and it's staffed
by dozens of committed civil servants who are there to
serve the presidency, not the president, not a single man.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Right exactly. So it's not about party. It's about the position,
and your job is to make sure that that position
is well informed. That's exactly how I always say it.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
To make sure that the president and his advisors and
the vice president are well informed so that they can
make the decisions. They're the elected officials that they are
their decisions to make. But intelligence professionals and civil servants
are there to provide the best information.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
You've said publicly multiple times that you are not a
political animal. You did select the Democrat party, I did.
The reason I bring that up is because I understand
that your clearance is no longer valid and the Trump administration,
the second Trumpet administration, then made some move after you

(03:03):
made some reference to maybe running for office. Yeah, it's
an interesting timeline.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
They canceled my clearance that Tulsea Gabbard, the Director of
National Intelligence because I guess she has nothing better to
do than to seek revenge on Trump's opponents. But she
released a memo canceling my clearance and the clearances of
thirty six other people. Best I can tell, they were
upset for two reasons. One, I signed a letter as
a private citizen exercising First Amendment speech in twenty nineteen

(03:32):
that I thought Donald Trump had behaved inappropriately by soliciting
interference from Ukraine in the twenty twenty election. He wanted
Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, and I thought that that
was impeachable, and I signed a letter saying So they
seem upset about that. But the timing of this is
really interesting because I've been exploring a Senate run. As
you can imagine, that's not an easy decision. And as

(03:55):
soon as my name kind of surfaced as a potential
candidate two weeks to the day later, Tulsea Gabbard revoked
my clearance. And I don't think those two things are
a coincidence.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's interesting that it's only thirty seven people. There's a
lot of people that have worked for obviously Democrat administrations,
but only a few cherry picked. And are those other
people running for office elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Not that I can tell I have been in contact
with some of those people. For the most part, these
are people who were in private life, not public figures.
Some of them actually worked in the intelligence community from
what I can gather from public reporting. But I want
to be clear that I don't think most people in
Kentucky care much whether I have a security clearance or
the administration revoked it. But I think what they should

(04:39):
care about, Terry, is that the government used all of
its power and all of their right wing social media
trolls to try to shut someone up who had simply
disagreed with them. As soon as I raised my hand
to fight for working class people and working families in Kentucky,
this administration weaponized the federal government against me, And I
think that that that should be a scary thing for

(05:01):
most people to see the government doing it.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Obviously, wouldn't stated that way too. And you know, just
in general, let me ask you then that this is
an individual thing about you, just about the CIA in
general and the protective veil that's over America. They have
the current administration diminished it to a degree where you
don't feel we're as safe as we used to be

(05:26):
or is informed.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, I think those two things are very interrelated. A
president and senior officials cannot keep the country safe if
they are not well informed. And I think what they
have done is shown that dissent is not welcome. Anything
that challenges the party line or what Donald Trump is
saying publicly is not welcome. The director of the Defense

(05:48):
Intelligence Agency was recently fired because they have the audacity
to release an assessment that said, maybe the strikes in
Iran weren't as effective as the President had said publicly,
and then that guy's fired. So yes, what you have
is a chilling effect, a chilling message being sent throughout
our federal government that you toe the line that you
just serve this president publicly. And what is really concerning

(06:12):
to me is that the Director of National Intelligence seems
to be beholden to the right wing social media and
who is employed or not employed, and who has a
clearance and doesn't have a clearance. I wish that this administration,
from the director of the FBI to the Director of
National Intelligence to the President himself, would spend more time
governing and keeping us safe and get off of Twitter

(06:34):
and social media. This is not what they're elected to do,
but it seems to be the only thing they have
time for.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
We're speaking to Joel will and he is running for
the US Senate as a Democrat here in Kentucky. There
a few other people who are in the race. Let's
learn more about you. I know your loving parents went
through some challenges. I read a little bio on you
care to dive into any of that.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Sure, it's a hard story to tell, Terry, but it
is not unique to me story. It's a story that
I think many families have been down the streets of
Dixie Highway, Radcliffe and other parts of this state. I
think it's a story familiar to many of them. My
dad was a Union ironworker. He was a golden gloves boxer.
You know. He was always taking me around. We met
Muhammad Ali here in town many times, and he was

(07:17):
an incredible baseball coach. But when his body broke down
from the work that he did, doctors push pain killers
and he got hooked. And the same thing happened to
my mom. And probably from the time I was, you know,
ten years old, I knew that they were struggling. I
had some awareness that there was an addiction there. I
went to Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School, an amazing
school in West Louisville. And in fifth grade, I remember

(07:40):
the DARE program showed up and the police were there
showing us, you know, posters, and I was always trying
to be the kid that you know, pleased adults and
got the answers right. And I knew most of those
pills on that chart, you know, at age ten or
eleven in fifth grade. Finnell eventually took my dad from
me in twenty nineteen during Trump's first administration. And it

(08:01):
is one of those things that, like, what is interesting
to me about being in this race isn't isn't necessarily
the Senate, but it is truly the opportunity to fight
for families and people who grow up in families like mine.
We have a country that you know, profits from addiction
but does nothing to treat it. We have a system
that knows only punishment and not rehabilitation. We're not investing

(08:23):
in communities, and we're not creating a system that makes
life easy for working class families in this country. I
was one of the lucky ones because of my grandparents,
because of my church family, because of the army, because
of civil service. Because of good public education, I was
able to live my American dream. And I am just
so concerned that the American dream is dead or dying

(08:44):
for so many and no time in recent memory have
we had to be concerned that we are leaving this
country in a worse place than we found it. And
I am so concerned that the generation's coming up next,
and you know, my son's generation are going to have
fewer opportunities to get out of the quicksand of generational
poverty and addiction the way that I did, and in
the most prosperous country on earth. I think that's unacceptable.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, the argument against pharmaceuticals and you know, the big
farm and so forth. I mean, we've talked about this
so many different remedies that don't seem to go anywhere.
It's interesting how that all gets stuck in the mud. Yeah,
where it dies in committee, I guess is the point.
If you can make it to the US Senate and
then be a voice for Kentucky. Obviously Andy Basheer has

(09:31):
been very successful as a Democrat here in Kentucky, it
can be done. What would you bring as a backbencher,
because obviously you'd have to start from the beginning. Rand
Paul would become the senior senator here in Kentucky. What's
your vision? Give me a picture of that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
I think at the end of the day, when I
say I'm in this race to fight like hell, it's
because I think the billionaires have plenty of people representing
them in this administration and on Capitol Hill. I think
that there are plenty of lawyers in government, and so
I am interested in fighting like hell for normal people.
Even though I got to go have some pretty incredible experiences,
I'm still just a normal guy. I've gone on to

(10:10):
run businesses that have put hundreds of people to work,
but my family, you know, still lives a pretty humble
life in Valley Station. And I'm interested in fighting like
hell for working class families.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
What does that mean to me?

Speaker 2 (10:22):
It means again that I think the government's job is
to make things easier for people, not more difficult. This
administration is doing everything that it can to make life
more difficult for working families in this country. They're robbing
money from Medicaid, They're robbing money from rural hospitals across
this state to put four trillion dollars in the hands
of the ultra wealthy. And I'm not talking about doctors

(10:43):
and lawyers and others who make good money. I'm talking
about ultra wealthy folks like the ten billionaires that serving
Donald Trump's cabinet. I think that Kentuckians want a strong economy.
You can't have a strong economy if you can't stay healthy.
You can't have a strong economy if your population isn't growing,
and if so hard to raise a family. And I
think that government's job is to make that easier for people,

(11:05):
to unlock the potential and make sure that everybody who
wants a shot in this country can have one. So
those are going to be my priorities.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
You're referencing what was called by the Trump administration the
Big Beautiful Bill. Clearly you don't see that under that title.
They they kept telling me, the various people I've talked
to us, we're just purging fraud people, moochers, They're just
hanging on who don't belong on those roles. What do
you say to that.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, it was the Big Billionaire's Bill, is what it was.
There's nothing beautiful about it. Those tax cuts were immoral.
Uh and and many people weren't asking for them, by
the way, and so to take money away from the
programs that they did is to me unconscionable.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
And uh, you know you're you're you're talking about some
of the pejorative language that was used that I think
betrays how many people in this administration feel about working
class families. They think that they are moochers or takers,
and and you know that that was never what I
witness with families growing up. It's like some people run
into a string of bad luck. And it shouldn't be
the case that if you if you have some bad

(12:06):
luck in life, that it's over, that you end up
with no prospects and that you're just on you know,
the doll or the take for the rest of your life,
or addicted to to opioids or whatever you know, you
you might self medicate with. So I think we need
to invest in things in this country. And taking four
trillion dollars and putting that into the pockets, one trillion
of which is going to go to the wealthiest one percent. Uh,

(12:29):
I think is unconscionable.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
There's so many other issues we can get to. We'll
have to do it in a subsequent chat because people
will ask they're going to ask you about the border
situation and lots of other things now, so you as
a candidate, we'll just tackle balls down the road. But
it's great to meet you on this launch day, Joel.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Now, thank you for having me, Terry, and I would
encourage everyone to go for Joe, to go to Joelfurkentucky
dot com. This is going to be a fight that
requires everybody, and I would appreciate everybody chipping in so
we can get this across the finish line.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
Thank you so much, Joel Willetts. And that's the website,
joelf Kentucky dot com. Back in a minute on new
Is Radio ate forty w uh a SM
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