The Most Perilous Time

The Steady State Sentinels, produced by The Steady State, a community of former national security professionals who spent their careers safeguarding the United States, at home and abroad. Today, we continue that mission by staying true to our oaths to defend the Constitution, uphold our democracy, and protect our nation's security. Join our expert hosts as they interview field-tested guests whose unique experiences shed light on the crises and challenges facing our nation. You're listening to the Steady State Sentinel from the Steady State. I'm John Seifer, a former officer of the CIA's Clandestine Service and the founder of Spycraft Entertainment. Our guest today on the Steady State podcast is Terry Virts. Terry is a retired astronaut, commander of the International Space Station, and an Air Force fighter pilot. He's now running for Congress in Texas' 9th Congressional District. He's also a friend. And for our new listeners, and for you, Terry, the Steady State is an organization made up of hundreds of former intelligence, military, law enforcement, and diplomatic personnel who seek to put country over party based on their oath to defend the Constitution. The group works to promote democracy and the rule of law via media outreach, articles, podcasts, blogs, and support to legal challenges. All right, well, it's great to have you here, Terry. Thanks so much. Yeah, thanks for having me on. All right, so Terry, you studied at the Air Force Academy and in France, you served as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force. space shuttle pilot and even flew on the Russian Soyuz space capsule to the International Space Station. And now you're running for Congress. So the notion of service must be important to you. How did your sense of service start and how has it evolved? I don't know how much studying I did at the Air Force Academy. I existed at the Air Force Academy. So, you know, I have an interesting story. When I was a kid, we had an exchange student stayed with my family, actually several from New Zealand and from Spain. And so I love like foreign countries. We, I studied French when I was in middle school and high school. And, um, it was just something I liked in eighth grade. They said, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I said, uh, I want to be secretary of state. So when I was 16 years old, I joined an organization called AFS American field service and world war one, they had been the American ambulance drivers and it turned into this exchange student program for kids and i went and lived in finland and i got this letter um and it said you're going to finland and i was like cool where's finland so i ran inside i had to we had a family atlas and i i had to go to f finland and figured out where that was and uh uh so i i i lived there with a family tried to learn the finnish language which is crazy by the way i think you and i have you know we have some friends that's a crazy language you were based there weren't you yeah that was my first language i had to learn when i was in the in the service oh my god and i remember looking out the window like in arlington where i was taking finnish language and saying you know i can see more people in my field of vision here than there are in finland altogether while i was suffering with that crazy language yeah so i lived with a family and we lived on a lake in imatra and on the other side of the lake was the Soviet Union. There was literally like a buoy in the middle of the lake and there was a guard. So I was 16 years old, 1984. I could see Soviet tourists would come over and they'd have to walk in a line and they always had a handler. And I'd read 1984 in high school. So all of this stuff really made an impression on my young teenage brain. And I agreed with Ronald Reagan. It was the evil empire. And so I joined the Air Force when I was 17, raised my right hand, swore an oath to support and defend the constitution. So it's just been part of who I am. You know, I always loved World War II history and I kind of was shocked at Vietnam history. And so that's just been something I've always been interested in. And when I see what's happening today, it makes my head explode. I think your head probably is long since exploded. And I'm just not willing to stand by and watch the constitution go up in flames, which is what this administration is trying to do. So I got tired of yelling at Twitter and I decided to run for office. Well, let's transition then a little bit because that's not easy, right? So in the roles where you answered not to a political party, but to a mission country and a team, what lessons do you think you learned that will be applicable to elected public service? Can a politician operate above partisan politics or at least maintain a sense of service? It can. I think many do not. I mean, they should. I think my personality has many flaws and defects, but one of them is if my tribe or if my team is doing something wrong, I'll call them out on that. For example, I'm running as a Democrat, but I'm very critical of the Democratic Party. I'm a Christian, but I'm pretty critical of what the quote unquote church is doing in many cases. And so personally, I don't have a problem with calling out my team when they do something wrong. And I think that's any healthy organization. If you have an organization of yes men, that things are not going to go well. For example, I'd hate to be the guy in Russia whose job is to tell Vladimir Putin that things aren't going well in Ukraine. Right. I don't think they do tell him. I think that's the problem with a system like that. Yeah. And so what we need is more people who are willing to who are willing to stand up and say, hey, guys, Joe Biden's too old. Joe, it's time to not run for office, right? If the Democratic Party would have had some gojones, we wouldn't have President Trump today. We need Republican, well, that's not going to happen. The Republican Party has been taken over. But what we need is guys like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney who are willing to stand up and say, hey, we're going in the wrong direction. So America's in terrible need of brave leaders who put country over self and country over party. And unfortunately, in politics, what we have a lot of times is party over country. How, as you meet with voters and you get out and do that thing that those of us who worked inside as public servants didn't do, how do you communicate to them the importance of this idea of country over party rather than just leaning into partisan shorthand? And separately, do you get pressured by the party to like try to, you know, stick to their talking points? So this journey I'm on right now began in the Senate. I started running for U.S. Senate six months ago. I was the first guy to announce. My basic premise, my theory of the case there was a Democrat hasn't won in Texas in over 30 years, right? Like Pearl Jam was at the top of the charts the last time a Democrat won here. That's a modern music phenomenon for me. I'm even older. Exactly. Well, and imagine somebody with my background as a fighter pilot and astronaut that might be interesting statewide. And that's why I ran for Senate. The Senate race is very crowded right now. And I switched to House, which is great. But when I was running for Senate, there was a lot of pressure from the National Party insiders. Don't do that. Fall in line. Schumer's the guy. Now that I'm running for House, it was very refreshing. They're like, look, Terry, run against the Democratic Party. But you're running in Texas. We know that. You've got to win. Bash us. We don't care. Just win. It was super refreshing to hear that. And I've heard that about Nancy Pelosi also. So I never met her personally, but a lot of other candidates who ran in red states as Democrats, Nancy would always say, look, use me as your negative ad. I don't care. Bash me all you want, just win. And that's the, that's the opinion that, or that's the attitude I think that any leader needs to have, like do what you need to do, but win. Cause that winning, if we don't start winning elections, we're not going to have any more elections. And I think that day is rapidly approaching much faster than any of us would want. You can be pure, but if you lose, it doesn't matter how pure you are. Democrats are so bad about ideological, about purity tests. We need to just flush purity tests down the drain. And you know what? What works in New York City is not going to work here. The district I'm running in is a largely Latino refinery district and farmers. And so basically I have refinery, you know, working class folks, shipping channel, working class folks, and agriculture, farmers and ranchers. these guys are not going to be voting for the things that gets Manhattan excited, but that's okay. What works there, works there. What works in Texas, works in Texas. A little later on, I'll ask you, are there any sort of national security or foreign policy things that seem to resonate with voters? But first, let's go back a little bit into your career. Can you tell us a little bit about how, you know, why you chose the Air Force? Yeah. What it was like to be a fire pilot and how do you transition into being an astronaut? not. When I was a kid, I lived in Maryland. I literally lived in the Naval Academy Congressional District. And we had a boat on the Severn River in Chesapeake Bay. I spent my summers riding up and down on the bay crabbing and doing that stuff And I remember I was sitting on the couch My mom called and she said Terry you going to get one nomination from the congressman Do you want to go to air force or Navy Cause I applied to both And I was like uh I mean Navy would have been really easy My girlfriend was there when I you know when I was a teenager and my family was there and I was like, uh, air force. And I just wanted to, I wanted to go see the world. And I figured it's, I want to be a pilot and it's the air force. And I didn't want to be on a boat with 5,000 of my best friends for six months. golf courses in the air force too i think air force and the i was talking i was at a campaign event this week and there were some navy guys and they're like oh my god you guys have the the officers quarters are better and the base housing is better and the golf courses are better there's a funny thing when i was at nasa we got army navy air force marines we got the whole thing there and civilians and and you i'm sure you've seen it there's 100 variations but there's a joke about there's an army guy sitting there with a gun and a swamp and he's like this place sucks and then there's a special ops guy, uh, or the, there's a Marine. And he's like, I love it how much this place sucks. And then there's a special ops guy with a knife. And he's saying, I wish this place sucked more. And there's an air force guy with his remote control and TV. And he's like, their cable TV's out. This place sucks. And like truer words have never been spoken. I was always happy to be in comfortable on my F 16 looking down. There might've been surface air missiles coming at me, but at least I wasn't on the ground. So maybe even space force is going to be even more cushy in the future. Space forces are sitting there at their computer, you know, sending commands to satellites. So, um, I, God bless the army. God bless the Marines. I, uh, in the Navy, but I was, I was, I'll, I'll own it. I'm proud to be in the air force. I'll, I'll own that. And then how do you trans you, you, you are a pilot and you flew missions and things. And if you can tell us a little bit about that, but then how did you trans transition into NASA and What was that like? Yeah, I flew F-16s for 11 years, basically. Around the world, I flew in. My operational bases were Florida, Georgia, Korea, and Germany. And when I was in Germany, I spent a lot of time in Iraq. And it was awesome. I was very lucky. My whole Air Force time was only doing operational tours. I never had to go do like in training command or do any of those other tours that nobody really wanted to do. and then I became a test pilot and then a test pilot school day, NASA said they're going to have a class of new astronauts. And so I applied and I was, I was very fortunate. I got picked. I was the youngest pilot here at NASA. And then, so I had 11 mailing addresses in 11 years in the Air Force. And then I've lived here for 25 years, ever since I came to Houston. So I've lived here way longer than I've lived anywhere else in Southeast Houston. Very nice. And so tell us a little bit about what it's like to be an astronaut. Was that fundamentally different from being a pilot, a fighter pilot? Yeah, very much. So as a fighter pilot, the knuckle dragging fighter pilot, you know, you wear your green bag, your green flight suit every day, you're around fighter pilots. So the language is not necessarily safe for suitable for work. And, you know, you're giving each other a hard time and you're like, sometimes you die. Unfortunately, I have too many widows that I stay in touch with um it's a dangerous job it's a um fighter pilots are pretty funny just ask us um so there's a certain culture i'm sure in the agency there's a certain culture and then at nasa you have to be an adult and all of a sudden you're wearing you know i was wearing a polo shirt every day to work and um everybody was a civilian and it was just it's a different uh universe and so it was awesome and it was fine with me i'm a pretty uh you know i i was i was one of the better behaved guys in my squadron so to say the least i never did anything wrong so um when i came here it wasn't the transition wasn't that big but it's definitely a different culture and everybody at nasa is an engineer what's weird in air force space command which is now space force there's only i had a friend who was a four-star commander he was lamenting they only had like 10 percent engineers. Most of the people at space command, we used to call them basket weaving majors, like they weren't engineers, but at NASA, everybody is like, you, you can't get a job at NASA unless you're some kind of technical science or engineer. So that was an interesting difference. And, um, it's civilian, right? So we're launching civilian space shuttle missions. We're building the international space station. We're flying with Russians, which I loved. I, I loved learning Russian, spent a lot of time in Russia, which made the security people's head explode you know you got to update your clearance every five years and it was so funny you have to write down all the countries you've been to i'm like guys come on and you go in for the interview and they're like have you talked to any you know international people and i'm like you mean this morning or this afternoon you know so um i'd like to feel for you there but like the amount of polygraph crap that i had to put up with too yeah well i never had to do polygraph so um but yeah so So it was an interesting thing. I enjoyed the culture shift going to NASA, but they were both awesome, very different organizations. But I was very blessed and lucky to have worked at both places. What's the difference between being on a Russian Soyuz capsule or an American one? Is it fundamentally different? There's a lot of differences. So first of all, the Soyuz capsule is very small. You're in there crammed. It's basically the same capsule from the 60s. um uh america actually paid for some upgrades so they did get a little bit more modern displays and stuff but it's basically the same thing it's mostly automated the commander who's a russian guy sits in the middle has some buttons he needs to push and some things he needs to do but for the most part it's it's automatic um the uh uh they have a control stick and the button to talk on the radio is there. But they basically said the control stick was just to give the cosmonauts the feeling that they were in control. It was like an emotional thing. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't control the... But there's this... Like on a ride at Disney World. At Disney World, exactly. On the roller coaster when you got the thing, it doesn't do anything. So it did have a button for the radio. And the commander had a trigger that could release the parachute. after you land you have to release the parachute so you don't get drug across kazakhstan um and so anyway there there were a lot of operational differences um it was the soviet style the soviet pilots on their radio like american you dial in the frequency uhf radio you know 238.2 and you dial it in and you talk that wasn't the way the soviets were they had pre-programmed the radio so you you couldn't call up you know uh frankfurt control and defect that you only could talk on the soviet channels and that was kind of the the the working of the soviet capsule is just to execute what they told you whereas on the space shuttle you could type in manual anything you wanted to and make the vehicle do whatever you wanted so um that was always a difference in philosophy between the Soviet pilots and the American pilots. And that's why our pilots are so much better. Those guys were not, they didn't think. They just did what they were told. Why the Russian army sucks so bad. As cosmonauts, as American pilots, as American astronauts, and I'm sure in the agency, you do a mission, you have a debrief. And when you debrief, like, there's no rank. And there shouldn't be. Anyway, if the lieutenant did something good, he gets kudos. If the colonel screwed up, he hears about it, right? that's the way it should be because you're not just there to stroke your ego you're there to like get better the next time and hopefully not die like that's the main goal is to not die whereas in russia we would do a simulator this two or four hour big space simulation and afterwards the only purpose of the debrief was the cosmonauts fighting tooth and nail to not get blamed for anything because like in russia if you get blamed for something you get shot or you get sent to Siberia. I mean, it's a century-long horrendous culture that they have. They just have a profound bad culture. And I'm sure you know about that. Yeah. And we're seeing it on the battlefield. And you and I are in a signal chat with a bunch of people who are very focused on Ukraine and Russia. And when I was talking, Ukrainian was on there mentioning that he had been in Kursk and he talked about how the North Korean troops were almost like, you know, 17th century France or something just would stand up and walk across fields at them. And they, they felt awful. They would just mow them down, but they like, like robots, you know, they do things one way. There's no thinking involved. I had in the nineties, we had this thing called partnership for peace when we were trying to integrate former. I remember. Yeah. And I had a Hungarian pilot one time. It was a Meg 29 pilot. First of all, I had bought this old 1984 bmw 7 series lead gas i paid three thousand dollars for it when i showed up at the squadron and three and a half years later i sold it for three thousand dollars um and he he was amazed at this beautiful big he called it the boat he was so amazed at my big car i'm like this thing's a junk it's the squadron junker that we just hand down to the next guy but he we i tried to put him in an f-16 simulator he couldn't fly it like he was unable to fly the thing and it was really bizarre. I'm like, dude, I don't know. When I was 22 years old, when I first got in the F-16, I flew it just fine after about three seconds, and he was unable to fly the thing. And the West German Air Force integrated the East Germans when the wall came down And there was a base called Laga It was a Meg 29 base in the former East Germany We used to go fight these guys But what they found, every single East German fighter pilot that they tried to integrate into Luftwaffe couldn't hack it. They literally had to take every single one of the East German pilots and put them in some kind of ground job or just let them have a job so that he'd get a paycheck. None of them could hack Western fighter pilot standards. That's a whole different mentality, but at least probably there was more vodka in the Russian Soyuz. In the Soyuz? Yeah. Yeah. There was definitely, you know, in the space shuttle, there was zero. So, yes, anything greater than zero is greater than zero. Well, let me ask you a little bit. So now, you know, you're making the rounds in Texas and, you know, and you talk to young people and that are, you know, hopefully get them excited and politics can actually be something positive. What advice do you give to young people? Either ROTC cadets, people who want to go on the space program or people who want to go into politics? Yeah. I mean, so my first advice I tell everybody, young people and old people, is don't tell yourself no. If there's some, I got a whole story I could tell about my career, but the bottom line is don't tell yourself no. If there's something you want to do, you have to go for it. If you tell yourself, no, you're not going to get it. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, you know, service is super important. And you and I and other folks are always debating, do we tell people to go into this career of State Department, CIA, military, and in today's environment? My daughter just did a Fulbright program, which is, you know, one of the top flagship programs for young people. It's the State Department. You go around the world, you either study or teach English. That's the Fulbright program. You get a big cohort in Slovakia. None of them are going to the Foreign Service. None of them are joining the State Department, which is like generationally tragic. That's really bad for America's diplomatic corps for the future. But so many people are turned off by what's happening nowadays. And I get it. And I understand that. But, you know, we need you. Hopefully, knock on wood, in 2026 and 2028, we can start turning the battleship around. But your stories of Hungarians and East Germans and stuff is makes sense at this time, because in some ways, this administration wants public servants and wants institutions to just do whatever they say and not not come to them with advice and question things and that type of thing. And, you know, Americans want to be, you know, involved and they want their opinions to matter. And, you know, they will follow along if it makes sense. But just to be told, do this, do that, it's just it's not in our character. Texans. Let's not text them for that. Although, John, it's Ted Cruz. Yeah. It's Greg Abbott. Donald Trump says, hey, we want five. I'm running in one of these gerrymandered seats. Donald Trump this summer said, I want five seats. He knows he can't win on issues. So he's got to steal the seats. And Greg Abbott, our governor, salutes smartly and goes and gerrymanders and steals five seats. So I'm running the Texas 9th is my district. It's like ground zero for gerrymandering. If you win it, that's going to be, it's going to anger Mr. Trump. It'll be a punch in their nose. That's what I'm doing. It's very much a national, it's only, you know, it's a local congressional seat, but it's a national problem there. And many of them are probably not, I mean, many of them are very tough. There was another one that I was being recruited to run in where Kamala got 33%, right? That's going to be a tough district to crack. um the district i'm running in is a lean republican but beto would have won it in 2018 so like this is a winnable district and so i i need to win it because i we can't let them just steal because you know what california is doing fighting back against what texas did that's not a victory it's necessary and you have to fight fire with fire but in nuclear war and i did nukes when i was in f-16 pilot i had the nuclear mission i had a town actually that was my town. Learned everything about it. And I was going to go drop a B-61 gravity bomb on it had I been called to do so. But I knew if Russia dropped a bomb on us, I might be called to go drop a bomb on them. That's not a victory. It's necessary. You have to be able to do it. You have to have mutually assured destruction. But nobody wins a nuclear war. Nobody wins a gerrymandering war in the same way. I mean, some of the folks that did public service are doing very well in politics. Abigail Spanberger is a friend, former CIA officer, Alyssa Slotkin in Michigan, Mikey Sherrill, and they ran essentially five or six points above where Kamala Harris did. And so we'd like to think in Texas there's a chance now with the way things are going. And again, you know, those of us who worked inside, I mean, I worked for Republican and Democratic presidents and very much did the same thing because we saw ourselves working for the American people. So, you know, we almost don't want to be in a position where we're having to talk about five points of this and five points of that. We want to try to say, I'm working for the people. Here's my policy and maybe the best policy win. But we're in a different time. Yeah. I've never seen anything like it. The country has never been through anything like what we're doing right now. And the Civil War, yeah, of course, it ended up in a war. But it was different. I think this is the most perilous time that we've ever been in as a nation. That's why we need good people to run. And by the way, this whole thing about manifest destiny and God has ordained that America be great. And no, that's not true. Like we've had a good run. We could lose it very quickly. And so we need, unless we keep, you know, good people doing this. And here's an important point. And this is super important point. And here's something I want everybody to remember. Our founding fathers were amazing. They made some huge mistakes. Slavery, three-fifths of a person. And I think the electoral college, they made some dumb things, but they gave us this incredible blessing of our system of government and checks and balances. They knew human nature and our founding fathers anticipated Donald Trump. They knew that Donald Trump would come. They knew that there would be a man who wanted to be a King. And that's why they set up the system that they set up checks and balances, what they didn't do. And this is another failure of the founding fathers. What they didn't anticipate was Mike Johnson. they never thought that the leader of the house of congress of congress would just submit to the president they always assume that he would want the best for congress and he would be jealously guarding congressional power and the courts would jealously guard you know and they he they thought there would be this healthy tension they anticipated donald trump they did not anticipate mike johnson and that's why we're in such a bad place because there are no checks and balances there's none right now. Crazy time. And also, you know, this year is the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. And so that's starting to get some attention because the administration doesn't want museums and historians to talk about the ups and downs and the good and bad of that time. They want to put out an administration favorable view. But Ken Burns has a big show coming out like he did for Civil War and Vietnam War on Revolutionary War. Rick Atkinson's wrote a bunch of big sort of books on the Revolutionary War. And Jill Lepore just wrote a great article in The New Yorker about this time. And the Revolutionary War, you know, it's a really important time to go back and look about what did we fight for? How did this sort of group of this rabble of people fight against the biggest power on earth to overthrow a tyrant, overthrow a king? And so, I mean, it is a good time to look back at that period of time rather than just sort of cover it up. And so it's going to be interesting as we move forward. I'm reading a book right now called First Principles. I did a podcast called The Daily Stoic. It was really cool. And it's about how the Greeks and the Romans, how the ancients influenced our founding fathers. You know, we kind of know, yeah, they were Christians and Christian nation and all that. But they were influenced by the Greeks and Romans a lot. That's how the George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, John, they were educated in Latin and in Greek. And so it's really interesting to read this. And one of the takeaways from this book is there's really two foundations for America. There's two principles the nation is founded on. All men are created equal. All people are created equal. And power comes from the people, right, from the consent of the governed is how you derive power. Those are kind of the two foundations of our country. And this administration that we have right now, all people aren't created equal. People with the last name of Trump and billionaires and in his little circle are the top cast and everybody else is the bottom cast. And their power doesn't come from the people. They're trying to gerrymander the power away from the people. They're having politicians pick their voters, not voters pick their politicians. but kind of the two foundations of America, all men are created equal and power comes from the people, are being undermined badly. And that a really bad place This is why we need to start winning elections and stop this So many of us in the steady state organization worked in national security and foreign affairs You running for office in Texas. Are there any issues just of the recent weeks from this administration related to foreign or military policy that resonate with Texas voters, tariffs, immigration, striking boats in the Caribbean, Venezuela, I don't know, Ukraine, Nigeria? What are the things when you talk about national security that you focus on? So to be perfectly honest, here's what matters to voters. Healthcare, every single time I've had any event with voters, the first thing everybody talks about is healthcare. The prices are going up. The costs are going up. My own costs are going up. Healthcare matters a lot. Costs in general matter a lot. The tariffs matter a lot. In my district, it's refineries, shipping. the houston shipping channel is one of the biggest ports like there's a lot of stuff that comes in and there's a lot of stuff that goes out texas says 900 billion dollars a year in imports and exports as a state and a lot of that comes through my district um and then the other thing i have a lot of farmers like i said and ranchers and tariffs matter to them a lot like losing the soybean market in china and by the way that the chaos that trump is creating causes long-term problems and he might be able to get a deal that works this year, but in the long-term businesses require long-term stability. No business owner is going to invest serious money in any project unless he has long-term stability. What Trump has taught the world is you can't trust us. There is no long, whatever you think you're going to do now, there's no long-term stability. Whatever you think you're going to do now is going to change in the future. So that trust has been undermined and it's going to take a long time. What's the term? Build a thousand bridges. I won't finish that, but, um, you know, trust is hard to gain and easy to break. And that's what's happened. And that's hurting my farmers. It's hurting my ranchers. I just read an article this morning that we're subsidizing Argentinian beef and my cattle ranchers in my district are, it's going to hurt them. So in the soybean, the soybean stuff that the Chinese stopped buying from us here, The Argentinians are moving into that area at the same time that we're subsidizing a politician because Trump likes his. Because he's crazy right wing. And he's friendly to him. Yeah. And Brazil also. And China's agreeing to buy soybeans. Well, they've agreed to buy a lot less soybeans than they were buying before. Before, exactly. And they didn't exactly agree. They said they'll pay market price or something. So if the market price is not where they want, their agreement will allow them to not buy American soybeans. So Trump has really hurt farmers and he's really hurt ranchers. Unfortunately, a lot of those. And he's helped China. And he's helped China. How much has he helped Russia? Well, even today, I just was reading a couple of things. Pakistan's the Pakistanis have figured out how to play him well. And so they've given money to him and said he put him up for a Nobel Peace Prize and everything. So he's like supporting Pakistan at the same time that they're cracking down on democracy there. They've made the army chief of staff immune from any prosecution ever for anything. That's what Trump's trying to do, right? Yeah, and so I know foreign policy doesn't necessarily play on the local level for politicians, but for Americans at some point, they have to understand that those things actually do matter. I try to, look, you may not care about Ukraine, but my district is heavily Hispanic. A lot of those young men and women join the army and join the military. And if we don't get foreign policy, right, they're going to have to go to war. That's the bottom line. And so the things that may seem like it's far away and don't matter, they actually matter very, very much to Texans' daily lives. You were a case officer, right? Right. So help me understand, if you were looking for somebody, if you needed to like, if you had a mark, if there was somebody that you wanted to get some information for, like what personality traits would they have and what might make them vulnerable to you being able to recruit them? And might our president share some of those same traits? I'd like to hear that. It's interesting. I'll send you, I wrote an article on whether he would be a good source or not. And so in terms of someone to recruit as a spy, you're looking for someone who has access to information you can't get any other way, that we can't get through diplomats or spy satellites or whatever. But then you're looking for something, everyone's different. You're looking for something in their personality that might make them willing to commit treason against their own country because, frankly, that's what they're doing. And usually there's a lot of reasons. Some people want money. Some people need housing for kids. There's a variety of things. They hate their boss. They hate their country. But ego is the biggest by far. As you play to somebody, you can play a much bigger role in the world stage by helping the Americans while your country does things that you don't like and stuff. So the Trump piece, if you want to get into it, yeah, he's easy to read. He's easy to play. But at the end of the day, for a spy, you want that spy to then follow your direction, to keep themselves safe, to keep it secret. And he's just would be awful. I can't imagine trying to control him and meet him on a corner somewhere to have him brief you on what's going on. He can't spit out more than five words that make any sense. hmm it was it's just interesting that was never my world but um yeah a crazy time it is yeah makes my head explode sometimes seeing what's going on the boxes the classified boxes in the bathroom um i mean i was i'm sure you were read into a lot more than i was but i had a time you know i had clearances with code words and when i saw the just the cover letters that were posted in the in the press i was like i was literally i had a violent like shaking reaction like oh my god you can't have that stuff out i remember as a pilot if if you had top secret or something but i was very i knew where the paper was i didn't let it out of my sight i treated that classified stuff with respect and to see um boxes of the stuff just in the mar-a-lago bathroom and hiding it from the FBI and actively hiding it and saying, well, yeah, we gave it all back and lying like that. That was just beyond apprehension. Well, I'm glad you're, you're, you're running. It's good to see public servants who have a sense of service trying to get into the political arena. I think we've taken plenty of your time. And so before we leave, is there a way if people will either want to support you or follow you, how do they find you? What can they do? The easiest is my website, terryverts.com, T-E-R-R-Y-V-I-R-T-S. There's a launch video on there. I did a short little video for me running for the house. There's donations. The money, John, sucks. It's one of the things that, but like you have to have it. If I want a stat, unfortunately, my staff wants to get paid. These guys, I'm like, you really need to get paid. They do. And I have a super small staff. There's only really one full-time guy and a couple others. But if I want to run ads, nobody's going to know anything about me unless I run ads. All that stuff costs money. The Republicans are hugely well financed. The amount of money they're raising already is insane. So TerryVirch.com, folks can donate. And that's hugely appreciated. Also, follow me on social, Astro Terry, and like retweet things and post things. And that helps out a lot. And tell your friends about me. You know, text your friends and family and go, hey, there's this. if you like me. If not, forget about it. But anyway, those things are really helpful, especially early in the campaign. When this comes out, we're still a few months away from the primary and the generals next November, November 26th. Right, well, very good. Thanks for your time then. We will let you know when this comes out, but thanks for what you're doing and what you have done. Thank you, John. Thanks for having me on. This was fun. If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe to The Sentinel and follow Steady State content. And give us a five-star review on Google. Those reviews help us get this important content to the widest audience possible. Thanks. Stay informed, stay engaged, and join us next Tuesday for another episode of The Steady State Sentinel. This is John Seifer, still standing watch. Thank you for listening to The Steady State Sentinel podcast. Don't miss out on more insights and exposés from America's premier global security experts. Also, subscribe to our Substack at substack.com slash at SteadyState1 and follow our social media and join us right here next week for another exciting edition. The Steady State is a nonprofit organization working to sustain our democracy and national security. Join us and support our mission by visiting www.thesteadistate.org. Music