EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,488 words- 0:01 – 1:49
Cancel culture whiplash: “problematic” hobbies, blackface, and outrage fatigue
- JRJoe Rogan
If anybody's got the answers, it's Jocko.
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Got any answers?
- JWJocko Willink
Oh, uh, I'm not quite so sure about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJocko Willink
I'm not sure how this movie ends.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
This is the dumbest fucking movie ever. Do you know Magic the Gathering is now racist?
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs) I don't even know what Magic the Gathering is.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's some dorky-
- JWJocko Willink
What is it?
- JRJoe Rogan
... game that, that nerds play.
- JWJocko Willink
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sorry, nerds.
- JWJocko Willink
How is it, how is it racist?
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, I don't know. I was just reading ... I only saw the title of the article that they're, they're trying to cancel Magic the Gathering. I'm like, "Oh, Christ."
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales) I thought that's what you guys liked. I thought they liked Magic the Gathering.
- JWJocko Willink
I, I have no idea.
- JRJoe Rogan
Everything's, everything's, everything's problematic. Everyone's getting canceled. It's amazing how many people did blackface.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJocko Willink
It's very strange. It's very strange. (laughs) It's, it's very strange. I mean, it was on, but it was on primetime TV, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, yeah, a bunch of times. Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
I mean, like, in the modern world-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
... primetime TV.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jimmy Fallon was doing ... Well, he's doing a Chris Rock impression, which, by the way, you used to be able to do. When I was in high school, my friends were Mr. T for Halloween. Nobody gave a fuck. Nobody was like, "Jimmy, what's wrong with you?"
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- 1:49 – 3:41
A “perfect storm” for social breakdown: politics, pandemic shutdowns, and George Floyd
- JRJoe Rogan
I just don't ... I mean, uh, it seems like a perfect storm. Like, if you wanted to engineer the downfall of society-
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... you would do it in several steps. You would have a reality show president who ... where everybody's mad at him, and- and then all the liberals get their feathers in a ruffle and everybody gets real super uptight. And, and then there's this big divide between the left and the right that's kind of f- you know, manufactured. And then you'd have this disease.
- JWJocko Willink
Just lock everyone inside.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Unprecedented. Lock ev- shut down the economy. Force people to not work. So, if your business falls apart, you could be the most hardworking, diligent, disciplined person who's always at work a hour early, always has your Is dotted and your Ts crossed, and you still go broke, and you're still fucked. And then you have this George Floyd thing, and then boom. It just ignites the powder keg.
- JWJocko Willink
The other thing that you have to wrap a- around all this is the social media-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- JWJocko Willink
... which is, uh, you know, "I'm only gonna post things that are just gonna completely make everyone that sees whatever I'm posting emotional and, and filled with rage, whether you're on the left or you're on the right. My goal is to enrage people."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- JWJocko Willink
That's the goal. And then that just gets spun up over and over, so you're taking all these little incidents and you're multiplying times thousands and thousands of views.
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- JWJocko Willink
It's ... And, and then on top of that, mainstream media is the same thing, right? It's not like there's this huge difference between what the mainstream media shows and what social media ... they're both, it's both emo- emotional media just trying to make people emotional, which is the worst possible thing. No one makes good decisions when they're emotional.
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- JWJocko Willink
I spent my adult life trying to train humans to not get emotional in pressure situations. Why? Because it's gonna end up bad every single time, every single time. And yet, that's what our, that's what our society is based on right now, b- it's based on these emotional reactions.
- 3:41 – 8:29
Clickbait news and outrage headlines: incentives that distort reality
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, because of social media, I think, and because of things like YouTube and user-created content where anybody can kind of m- make videos, so many things are vying for folks' attention that mainstream media has resorted to clickbait-y type shit, whether it's, uh, New York Times articles, which, you know, used to be beyond reproach. They, they're, they've gone social justice warrior and clickbait-y. And all these other websites are 100% clickbait-y. That's the only way they can get people to pay attention. Like, I saw, like, the, the dumbest fucking article. I couldn't believe how dumb it was. It was an article on Ozark. It's like, "Has Ozark been canceled?" And I'm like, "Fuck, they canceled that show? That show is amazing." So, then I click on the article. The entire article is about a guy who couldn't find season one on Ozark-
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... because there was a glitch, and then he found it, and so it's not can- ... So, the whole article was just bullshit.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But they got me.
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They get everybody.
- JWJocko Willink
They got you to click.
- JRJoe Rogan
They got me to click.
- JWJocko Willink
They got their advertising dollars because they can show the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
... engagement with the audience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly. Well, here's a good one. CNN showed, uh, a guy got shot yesterday in San Bernardino, um, a Hispanic man got shot in San Bernardino, so that's the title. The title of the article is, "Hispanic Man Gets Gunned Down by the Police in San Bernardino." What they leave out is the guy had a gun and was shooting at the cops, so this guy's got a gun. There's photos of this gentleman with a gun, and there's a cop on his knees about to shoot the guy. The guy's standing in front of a gas station. There's gas pumps. I mean, I, I may- maybe he felt like they wouldn't shoot at him because the gas tanks were right behind him? The, the, the pumps were right behind him? But why would they leave that out? "Guy with Gun in Gunfight with Cops Dies"-
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... is the right title, not "Hispanic Man Gunned Down by Cops." Like, they're literally trying to incite anger and violence. They know that you read that and you see, "Hispanic Man Shot by Cops," like, "These motherfuckers, they're murderers. They won't stop," and they leave out this picture of this man with a gun pointing it.
- JWJocko Willink
Uh, you're looking at me like I'm gonna say some kind of really profound answer.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJocko Willink
I got nothing for you.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm hoping you got it.
- JWJocko Willink
Because, because you're, you're exactly right. That, what is, what do they set up that headline for? It's to g- outrage people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JWJocko Willink
Anyone that actually opens it up and reads, would actually probably say something like, "Hmm, sounds like the cops did a good job on that one and killed a bad guy before he blew up a gas station and, or killed a bunch of innocent people." But that's, (laughs) that's obviously not the...
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- JWJocko Willink
I mean, think if you tried to write a headline the other way.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JWJocko Willink
Of how these heroic cops face man with gun, eliminate him before he can cause terror in this neighborhood. That would be a nice headline to read. But you're not gonna see it. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You're not gonna see that, not today.
- JWJocko Willink
'Cause it's not gonna drive enough people crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Today, if your wife tweets, "All lives matter," you can get sh- you can get fired.
- JWJocko Willink
(sighs)
- 8:29 – 9:55
George Floyd consensus, yet deeper division: “defund,” chokehold bans, and bad solutions
- JWJocko Willink
And unfortunately, what, you know what, you know what they're saying? They're saying, "Defund the police."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
They're saying, "No more chokeholds," right? Which-
- JRJoe Rogan
I think is crazy.
- JWJocko Willink
... is crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
If you wanna get someone to be under control and you can't choke them, you know what you have to do? You have to hit them in the head with a baton.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
Seven times. And you gotta risk giving them brain damage, permanently injuring them. If people know what they're doing, I, I mean, o- obviously if people know what they're doing, oh, we'll put a chokehold, they'll wake up, they'll be cuffed.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
We're, we're all good.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, obviously. But, you know, it's the people that are doing it wrong is the problem, the people that shouldn't be doing it in the first place. It's untrained people, it's ...
- JWJocko Willink
(sighs)
- JRJoe Rogan
But if you're, if you're in a, you're a cop and you're in a fight for your life and y- you can't use chokeholds, that's fucking crazy.
- JWJocko Willink
It's insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're gonna get shot and killed, or somebody else is gonna get shot and killed. Someone's gonna take your gun.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah. And, and the, the idea of defund the police, and I, I, I, I understand the premise, okay? And this is once again where many people that say defund the police, they don't mean, "Hey, just get, get rid of the police." Of course there's a, there's a fraction of people that are saying defund the police means we don't want any more police anymore. There's a, a portion of people saying that. There are some people that are saying, "Well, if we defund the police, we can relocate some of that money and we can do, you know, better schools and we can put money into the infrastructure inside these neighborhoods."
- 9:55 – 20:01
Fixing policing: scenario training, de-escalation, recruiting, and psychological screening
- JWJocko Willink
But here's the problem. You know what the police need more than anything else? They need money for training. And the, the way the police departments are set up, they do the most ridiculously minuscule amount of training for what their job is. So, as you know, I was in the SEAL teams. We would train for 18 months, 18 months we would train to go on a six-month deployment. Cops, they train, they get like two hours or four hours of combatives training a year. A year. (laughs) Th- that's, that's complete insanity.
- JRJoe Rogan
Insanity.
- JWJocko Willink
It's complete insanity. Uh, the thing I've been saying is w- cops should train one-fifth of the time. One-fifth of the time you should be training, whether it's two hours a day four times a week, or whether it's one day a week where you're gonna go and you're gonna go through scenarios. You're gonna do combatives, you're gonna work with simunition, you're gonna do deescalation drills. Because it's really hard. The, I mean, being a cop is, I, I think is the hardest job in the world. And by the way, they're not gonna have to worry about defunding the police because no one's gonna wanna be a cop anymore. Who is gonna be fired up to be a cop right now? Who's gonna think, "You know what? When I grow up, I wanna be hated by entire, you know, by a massive portion of the country. I wanna be viewed as someone that's, uh, that kills innocent people." The, the, the, the recruiting in cop for, for police is gonna go down so hard. It's gonna be ridiculous. It's gonna be ridiculous. And then who are you getting there? You're gonna get people that are worse level people, worse level humans are gonna show up to be cops. So, the training piece though, (sighs) they should do very, v- very scenario-driven training, right? Where you come into a room, and this isn't like super expensive stuff either. You come into a room. There's a person there. They appear to be compliant.You ask- you, you learn how to talk to them. You very quickly learn that instead of yelling them out of the, out of the gate, you say, "Hey, man, what's going on? Hey, w- what's your name? You know, uh, what- what's going on? Uh, we got a call here. Is everything okay?" You just immediately deescalate. Then you learn what to do when they're not- when they don't respond the way you want them to respond. Then you learn what to do when they start to do something drastic. "What's the best thing for you..." And you play through these scenarios. It's just like jujitsu, in the fact that (sniffs) what- what makes jujitsu good? What makes jujitsu good is we can go hard against each other over and over again and not really get hurt, not really get killed. So you get really good at it. That's what you need to do in training for police. You need to go through these tough scenarios over and over again, 'cause you do get better at it. You do get better at it. You become ... You learn how to mentally detach and not get emotional and realize that there's other things that are happening. When you see the, the George Floyd case, uh, uh, uh, a couple of the other cops, two, I think two of the other guys were complete rookies, right? They had been on the force for a very short period of time. No one in that group of four ... Obviously you got the killer himself. He's- he's actually conducting the act, but all the other guys are not paying attention. They're, they're all emotional themselves. "Hey, stay back." And, and they're probably watching him saying, "What's the ... Why isn't that guy moving?" And they're just caught up in it. Whereas if someone would have showed up on the scene or one of those guys had been through some good training in their life, they would have said, "What's happening here? Hold on. My partner over there has been on this guy for two minutes. He's not moving anymore." I'm going to walk over and say, "Hey man, let me take over. I got this." De- go over there and decompress. This takes training. You have to train people. And I got ... I saw this over and over again in the SEAL teams, training guys. You get a young kid that's coming through training for the first time, and they go into a room and they're getting shot with simunition bullets, or there's someone yelling and screaming, or they ... We'd put, we'd put Arabic women coming, walking out of rooms. We'd have people get blown up with wounds. We would do this to them over and over again so they realize, "Okay, I just got to relax. I got to take a step back. I got to detach from this situation so I can process what's happening and I can make a good decision." Because as I said earlier, no one is making a good decision when they're panicked, when they're freaked out, when they're scared. As a jujitsu guy, when someone puts hands on you, you're not actually scared, right? You're like, "Oh, okay, I know what to do here." If you don't know jujitsu, if you've never had someone grab you before or you haven't had someone grab you in 17 months or 14 months, no one's laid hands on you 'cause you got a badge and a gun. So people, when you tell them to do something, 95% of the time they go, "Okay, yeah, I don't want to get in trouble." But then if somebody grabs you, you're instantly ... Your, your emotions are spiked, your adrenaline's spiked, and the only way to overcome that is through consistent training that, that happens on a regular basis. You can't just train somebody one time. It's like ring rust. You know? You can't just train-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JWJocko Willink
... somebody one time and, "Oh, now I don't need to train anymore." No, you need to do continuous training. So, so that fact right there, we ... If we wanna r- if we want to help the police through these situations, we need to invest more money into them. We need to get them better training. We need to pull them out of the field to train and pull them out of the field to decompress, because ... You ever done a ride along?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- JWJocko Willink
Like you, uh, whether you're doing a ride along, whether you're going into any situation where you're thinking you could be killed, and even if it's just a remote chance, but you're doing that all the time, all the time. And you're hearing, you're seeing on the news, you're, oh, you hear this, oh, your buddy got shot, your buddy got whatever, this other guy got, you know, take- his gun taken away. Like that stuff happens. That stuff happens. People get killed. I mean there's been, I think there's been 31 cops killed this year. 31 cops killed this year. And a- a lot of those, that's not including, you know, like a car accident or COVID. There's been a bunch die to COVID, but just people that have been engaged with bad guys and they got killed. So you're a cop. When another cop gets killed, you're thinking that could be you. So that's your mindset, and that mindset builds and that mindset builds and you're working 10-hour days and you're working 12-hour days, and there's no training and there's no breaks. Where do you end up? Right? Where do you end up? You end up being a little bit paranoid. You end up being a little bit angry. What happens when you get in a fight with your wife? You know? It's like all these things, you add them together, it's a freaking hard job. And from a, from a, like an entire systemic way of training and recruiting and, and keeping police ready to do their job, w- whatever that job entails, 'cause let's face it, most of the time that job entails, uh, well, I guess most of the time it entails, "Hey, I'm gonna go have a bad ... I'm about to go have a bad relationship with another human being." That's what's about to happen, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJocko Willink
Whether I'm pulling you over, whether I'm, I've been called to your house 'cause you were yelling and screaming and people heard your wife screaming or whatever, that's what's happening. I'm showing up in a bad relationship. You don't like me and I already don't like you. That's where we start. That's where we start. So we gotta train people for that. We also gotta train them for all the times that they go in to help people, save people. They're the first people on the scene at car accidents. People are bleeding out. We gotta train them for that. And then they have to also be trained for, hey, this is a bad guy that's gonna ... This is the guy that you just talked about, at a gas station with a weapon that wants to kill a bunch of people. You got to be prepared for that whole spectrum as a police officer and yet we send them to a three-month-long police academy and then we send them out in the street, and that's what they do day in, day out, day in, day out.
- JRJoe Rogan
It seems to me that they need to be vetted too, much better than they are now, just like the SEALs. Like you can't get through BUD/S unless you are a superior human being. You have to be able to tolerate a bunch of shit that most people are gonna fall apart during. And this is- this seems to me t- this is a great way...... to weed out people that j- just don't have it.
- JWJocko Willink
(sighs) Yeah. There's ... W- Well, one thing that's interesting, just from a physical perspective, most police departments don't even have a minimum physical requirement to continue to be on the force. Li- You have to be at a certain level to graduate from the academies, but oftentimes there's no standard beyond that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I've seen cops before that were like, "This is hilarious." Like, what is gonna stop someone from closing the distance on you? Like, you, you, you ain't getting to that gun.
- JWJocko Willink
Yep. But the mental aspect is stuff that you can get better at.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JWJocko Willink
You can get better at it, but you only get better at it through training.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JWJocko Willink
And you only get really comfortable through training a lot. And yet, we put these people in these horrible positions over and over and over again, and we get ... We don't give them the proper training.
- JRJoe Rogan
And now, there's these politicians that because of the current social climate, they're encouraged to want to defund the police. That's a great way for them to get brownie points from their constituents. The people want the police defunded, which is the wi- it's the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life.
- JWJocko Willink
(sighs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, it's so crazy that this is actually gaining steam to the point where in Minneapolis, because they're trying to quiet down the mob, they've actually gone ahead and done it. What the fuck is Minneapolis gonna look like in a year from now? It's gonna look like Mad Max.
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, it's gonna be crazy.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah, it's gonna be ... It's gonna be crazy. It's gonna be, uh ... You know, criminals will go there to commit crimes if there's no, if there's no police there. Are you crazy?
- JRJoe Rogan
By the way, this Jocko energy drink is the shit.
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It's very legit.
- JWJocko Willink
Right on.
- JRJoe Rogan
I love it. Um, yeah, I just don't understand where they think this game ends. They're not ... I d- I don't think they've planned it out. They're, they're not playing chess.
- JWJocko Willink
The, the other, the other thing that y- you know, you're talking about this brownie points for the politicians. And, and there's brownie points and there's people trying to create sides.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 20:01 – 39:29
Community trust like counterinsurgency: relationships, ride-alongs, and humanizing the “other”
- JWJocko Willink
"It's my side versus your side." And that's a completely political thing, right? And all that does is increase the divide between the police and the civilians. And, and this reminds me a lot of, of a counterinsurgency, right? So a counterinsurgency, the insurgents are, you know, bad guys inside of a country. The country's not bad. There's some bad guys in a country. So, what you have to do is you actually have to go out and build relationships with the good people inside that country so that the good people inside that country can help you get rid of the bad people. What happens if you go out ... And this is ... So, this is Ramadi, Iraq. This was my last deployment to Iraq. There's a bunch of just totally normal good people, Iraqi people, that are living in the city of Ramadi. What do they want to do? You know what they want to do? They wanna send their kids to school. They wanna run their little market. They wanna ... Do whatever that t- Whatever it is that they do, that's what they want to do. They have the same goal as a normal family. They're just a normal bunch of people. And inside that group of people, there's a bunch of bad people. And these are insurgents. Some of them are foreign fighters. Some of them are foreign regime elements from Saddam, but they're bad. And they want to create chaos and mayhem.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JWJocko Willink
So, Americans, we go in there. If we go in there super heavy-handed and while I go to capture or kill one bad guy, I kill or maim a couple of those normal civilians, what happens? Well, a couple of those normal civilians' family go, "Wait. Y- You guys aren't good. You guys are bad. You guys just killed my brother and he didn't do anything wrong." And then we do it again, and then we do it again, and then we do it again. And each time that we do this, we're, we're creating more animosity from the local populace, who, by the way, like I said, they're just n- good, normal people. So, what we had to do is really focus on going out and building relationships with the local populace. How do we do that? And one of the things ... Uh, this, this happened after I left, but y- you remember the surge that took place?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JWJocko Willink
And they sent a bunch more troops over there? Part of the reason that they sent that surge and part of the reason that that was allowed to happen was because the Battle of Ramadi, where I fought, went very well. And since it went well, people said, "Well, maybe, maybe we can pull this off." So, they sent more troops. And one of the directives that General Petraeus gave is he said, "There can be no more drive-by counterinsurgency." And what he meant that, by that was when you go to a neighborhood, you can't just drive through the neighborhood in your Humvee, in your bulletproof Humvee with your windows up, drive through, show of force, and then leave. That, that doesn't work. What you have to do is stop your vehicles. You have to get out. You have to talk to the local populace. You have to ask them what's going on. You have to ask them if they need anything. You have to build relationships with the local populace, the good local populace that just wants those insurgents out of there. And that's what I don't see happening. And the more we increase this divide between the police and the civilians, the worse that's gonna get. And so, the police have to start doing a better job of outreach, of, "Hey, we'll ..." You know, I- I asked you if you did a ridealong. They should be offering ridealongs all the time to the, to the local kids, 17-year-old kids, 15-year-old kids. "Hey, come and see what my job is like. Come and help me out." That 15-year-old kid, he knows who the bad actors are. He knows who the good kids are. You know, bring that kid along o- on a ridealong. Let him see what it looks like from your angle. Get out and meet the parents. Meet the families. That's wh- we're failing to build relationships between the police and the civilians, and that causes th- that, that causes these problems.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think you're 100% correct, but I don't hear anybody repeating what you're saying.
- JWJocko Willink
(sighs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what's terrifying to me. I think everything you're saying is logical, it makes sense, it comes from experience. I don't hear anybody saying this.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah. Uh, and, uh, well, I think maybe it's because people just don't recognize what's happening 'cause they're too in it, right? They're too in it. They're, they're wrapped up in it.And, uh, and, and that's another part. You know, I talked about recruiting, who you're recruiting. Recruit those kids. Recruit those kids, but you have to build a relationship with them before you can a- before anyone's gonna go into the police. And look, the, I think it's the, I think it's the LA Police Department, if you look at the LA Police Department compared to the racial makeup of LA, they, they're pretty equivalent and they're pretty equivalent on purpose. They do that for a reason. So you gotta get that, you gotta continue to build that, those relationships so that we talk to one another. You know, we actually communicate with each other. Because anytime, you know, I'm allowed to sit over here in my area and you're sitting over there in your area, we're building animosity. We build that kind of animosity between each other. And now the littlest thing, the littlest thing... I mean, there was a woman that was killed in Minneapolis like t- t- two, three years ago. Do you remember this one?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Yes.
- JWJocko Willink
Female.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JWJocko Willink
Like a yoga instructor called the police, the poli- called the police to report a disturbance. The police showed up and there's no v- video, no footage. She gets killed by the cops. She gets killed by the cops. It's insane that th- that these things happen. But we also have to remember what, like I said, what is a police officer thinking about and what kind of training have we given them and what kind of psychological screening, to your point-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
... what kind of stri- And it's not just one-time psychological scr- screening 'cause guess what? People get burnt out and it happens at different times to different people. You take 35 guys in combat, I've got some guys at the end of a six-month deployment, they're... you know, what they're telling me? "Can I stay longer? I'm doing fine." You get one month into that deployment and you've got other guys that are saying, "Hey, uh, do you need anyone to head home early?" Right? That happens. So you think in a police force of a thousand people or whatever size your police force is, you're gonna have some people that are steady, mentally stable. They can deal with it. They can go, they can, they can be in an officer-involved shooting today and tomorrow they can go back to their job and be perfectly fine. There's other people, they could never work again after they're in an officer-involved shooting. What kind of investment are we making into this psychological health of police? And, and look, uh, I, I hope it doesn't sound like I'm sitting here just putting it all on the police because everyone is playing a role in this. And one of the things that you need to look at as well is how to get arrested, right? H- h- there should be a public service course on how you should get arrested. This is what you should do. If the cops are pulling you over, if the cops ask you... if the cops approach you about something, here's what you should think. One of the things you should think is, "Okay, this cop may not be bad. This cop may be looking out for my welfare right now. That's a great hopeful thought." The other thing that you have to think is kind of worst case scenario. This cop might be agitated. This cop might be looking for somebody that fits my description. This cop might, might have just been in a fight with his wife. He might have just lost a partner. There's a million bad things. Use that scenario in your head. Use that scenario in your head to s- to, to contemplate how you're going to interact with a police officer, which is, you know what they're looking at? They're looking at your hands. You know why? Because that's where the threat comes from. The threat comes from your hands. So when you're making quick movement with your hands, don't do that. Listen to what they say. Move, move slowly when you move. This should be public service. The police should be putting out, "Hey, if you interact with the police, we hate to have to say this, but since our police sometimes are in bad situations, here's some things we recommend and we highly suggest and we beg. We beg that you do this." We beg 'cause what happens to these cops when they kill somebody? What happens to them? Their f- their lives are to- totally destroyed.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, that was the thing about that guy in Minneapolis. He'd already killed people. He'd already been involved in, I think it's at least two shootings and he had more than a dozen complaints against him.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not good.
- JWJocko Willink
Not good.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, it's obvious by the end, by the end result.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That, that's the, the type of guy he was. It's pretty obvious by the, the fact that he was able to do that to a man. The guy's literally calling out to his dead mother, you know? I mean, the, the, the type of man that can stay on someone's neck while they're doing that, when all that guy did was have a counterfeit $20 bill. That's it.
- JWJocko Willink
This is where, when you talk about psychological-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
... screening. And that, that's why I'm saying it has to be-
- JRJoe Rogan
Constant.
- JWJocko Willink
It has to be constant.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
Because people, people change, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 39:29 – 45:13
Leadership vacuum and political incentives: why division keeps paying off
- JRJoe Rogan
It seems incredibly difficult to be a good leader. One of the, one of the more interesting things about what you're doing, uh, with your platform, whether it's your podcast or the Instagram videos that you put out, you're showing what good leadership is. There's not a lot of people, when you look at... If you get a thousand people, how many of those people are going to be a real good leader?
- JWJocko Willink
Well, this is what's... This is what has become my career after-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
... the SEAL Teams, because... I got very, very lucky in the SEAL Teams. Very, very lucky. First of all, my whole career was just luck. I- I was the luckiest guy ever in the SEAL Teams. And I happened to be in the right places at the right times, and I got some great experience in some very tough situations. And then the last thing that I did in the SEAL Teams, for almost the last three years I was in, was I ran the training, the tactical training, not the training where guys carry boats on their head and carry logs around. I, I didn't do that. I didn't... Well, I went through it, but I didn't run that training. I ran the training where... Everything I was talking about. You're running scenarios, you're putting people in bad situations, you're using simunition, you're doing all these things. So I got to see over and over again, leaders get put into pressure situations and how their leaders responded and then how the team responds to that leader and what these different things wash out, how they wash out. And what's interesting is, and what I really realized when I was in that position, is that their leadership is a skill, uh, and you can get better at it. Now, just like fighting, just like jujitsu, there's certain people that have a natural propensity to be good at it. You got some... Let's say someone's really strong, right? They're gonna have an advantage. Let's say someone's super flexible, they're gonna have a little advantage. Let's say someone has, uh, uh, they're big, right? These things are advantages in fighting. In leadership, it's the same thing. Let's say someone is super articulate. That's helpful. Let's say someone doesn't have a bad temper, that's very helpful. But everyone is at a different level. Well, just like you can take a bunch of different sized and shaped and athletic ability people and you can make them better at fighting, you can take a bunch of people with different levels of leadership characteristics and you can improve them. And then there are actual moves. There's actual moves that you can do as a leader that are just like a jujitsu move. "Oh, Joe comes to me and he's yelling and screaming at me that he didn't get the, he didn't g- I didn't give him two extra people to go on his job." Instead of me going, "Sh- hey, Joe, shut up. You don't know what you're talking about," instead I actually listen to you. Right? I listen to you and say, "Well, uh, uh, hold on, I didn't know you needed that many people. What do you, what do you need them for?" So I show a little sense of urgency. I kind of reflect what your emotions are so I'm not just creating a fight between you and me. Because if you and I are fighting, you and I are not finding a solution. So I'm gonna reflect a little bit of your emotion, and then I'm going to diminish it a little bit so you and I can have a real conversation. So there's moves that you can do...... as a leader, that function like a jujitsu move. And they're very, very powerful, and the more of them you learn, the better off you'll be. And you need to practice them. You won't be good at 'em out of the gate. It's gonna take some... Just like if I showed you an arm lock and you've never done jujitsu before, you're not gonna be able to just get on the mat and do it to somebody. You're gonna have to try it a couple times and you're gonna have to learn the little nuances to the move. So, there are ways that leaders can get better. And yes, there's absolutely natural leadership qualities that make people just a natural better leader. But they... even those people can improve. So, your question of, out of a thousand people, how many really good leaders there are. Well, you have to ask... okay, you ju- just talking about how many people are just naturally born great leaders, your... probably your suspicion is correct, it's not a huge amount. But how many of those leaders can you improve exponentially in their ability to lead? And that's what, you know, I have a company, National On Front, that's what we do all the time, is we go and work with companies, we work with leaders. That is exactly what we do. And we take companies of... I mean, we work with companies that have 150,000 employees, and you start getting everyone, all the, all the leaders aligned, and getting the frontline troops understanding where the, where the leadership is and what they're thinking, and... So, you can become a much, much better leader over time. Now, how much of this do we see in the civilian sector? How much do... even more directly, how much of this do we see in the political world? The answer is, h- h- a- an unbelievably small amount.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JWJocko Willink
I mean, it's a ridiculously small amount.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
It's a ridiculously small amount. Why is that? I bet there's a, there's a lot of reasons. First of all, who, who at this point in, in the world thinks that that sounds like a great job? Right? "Hey, I'm gonna go get attacked from all sides, I'm gonna have my personal life picked apart, I'm gonna get... you know, make... I'm gonna work really hard and really not... uh, I'm gonna have a pay cap on how much money I make." There's all kinds of reasons why becoming a politician doesn't look like the best job for, for most people that would look and say, "Hey, would I rather be the CEO of a company and make a ton of money and m- create a huge product and leave a big impact and influence thousands of people that work at my company i- in a positive way? Or would I rather go and get ridiculed and get broke down and have to try and get my job again in four years or two years, or whatever the case may be?" It's a tough... that's a tough job too. And a lot of people say, "Uh, I'm not gonna... w- why would I jump into that game?" W- I, I know I say that. Why would I jump into that game? Why would I wanna go and be a politician right now? Right? It's crazy. Like, for me to, to... for me to want to go into the, into the political world, there would have to be complete and utter chaos in America. I mean, way, way beyond, um, beyond where we're at right now.
- 45:13 – 56:22
“The Rock” as a unifier: independent politics, legitimacy, and leadership presence
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you thought about this?
- JWJocko Willink
Y- yeah. I mean, I'm telling you what I think. When-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
... when pe-... 'cause people ask me, "Oh, you should do this, you should do that." I say, "Um, you know, we're not at a point where we need this, the kind of-"
- JRJoe Rogan
We might be about four days away from it. (laughs)
- JWJocko Willink
We could be. I think the answer... you know, let's get, let's get, uh, Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
- JRJoe Rogan
I agree with you.
- JWJocko Willink
He's, he's the guy that could really, I think, unify people, and I think he would have to run as an independent, and I recommend he does it right now. Right, right now. He should be like, "Yeah, you know what? I'm in. I'm in."
- JRJoe Rogan
I think he would win.
- JWJocko Willink
I think he would win.
- JRJoe Rogan
I really think he would win as an independent.
- JWJocko Willink
He's obviously a smart guy. He's super articulate. He listens. You can tell that he listens. I mean, when you see him interact with people, he's, he's very genuine, how he interacts. He's built businesses, right? He's built big, well, uh, r- r- really, uh, productive businesses that are doing great. He, he's... uh, I think he'd be great.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's got a fantastic work ethic.
- JWJocko Willink
Got a fantastic work e- work ethic that he... you know, he built. He came up from nothing, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
He had seven bucks in his pocket. We all know the story. And, and he has more bucks in his pocket than that now. So... a- a- and most important, I think, I think he's just a popular guy. You know, he would get up and, and when the country's going through hard times... You know, I was talking to a friend on the way up here, and they were saying, "Hey, you know, p- people want leadership and they're looking for it, and, and they're not hearing it." And a lot of times people don't even recognize the fact that they don't have leadership.They... you don't even recognize it. It's a leadership vacuum, so they don't even know what they should be thinking. Look, let me give you an example. Your... let's take a SEAL platoon. A SEAL platoon raids a house, there's some explosions, there's some gunfire, and no one's really sure where it's coming from and no one's really sure what to do. Now, that individual, a lot of the individuals in that platoon are just kind of holding on security. They're holding their... the- they're not really sure what to do, and they're not really even recognizing that there's a leadership vacuum. But then someone comes in, the leader, the platoon chief, the platoon commander comes in and goes, "Everyone get to the f- roof right now." And everyone goes, "Oh, cool. Now we know what to do." So, same thing happening in America right now. There's no kind of voice saying, "Hey, everyone. This is what I just saw on this video. This is what I just saw. This was a heinous crime. This obviously... we have some deep-rooted problems that we need to fix. Here's the way I'm gonna move forward addressing these problems, getting to the bottom of them, and here's how long the timeline is gonna be. And by the way, my ears are open and, you know, wherever the play is... you know where I'm coming right now? I'll be in Minneapolis tomorrow afternoon." That's... you know? Like, "Oh, we got a problem like that? If we have a problem like that, I am going on the ground. I will be there..." I'll be there. What do... I- I'm the... I guess I'm the president, so I'll be there in, what, two hours? I'll be there on the ground. I'm gonna find out what's going on. I'm gonna meet with people. We're gonna talk. I'm gonna listen. I'm gonna find out what this means. I'm gonna get to the bottom of these problems." That's, that's what... Then you can actually speak from a position of, "Okay, I just spoke to these nine people. Matter of fact, they're coming with me. We're gonna come up with a plan. We're gonna come up with a plan together."You know, that's another huge leadership... Everyone thinks in the military that the, that the leader sitting at the top going, "All right, gentlemen, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna approach this building from the west. We're gonna assault the front door." No. That's not the way it works. That's not the way it should work. The way it should work is, I say to you, Joe, I say, "Hey, Joe, here's the target I want you to go after tonight. Come up with a plan." And you say, "Okay, cool." And then you, if you're a good leader, you get with your team and say, "Hey guys, here's the target we're going after. How do you all think we should do it?" And now you all come up with your own plan together, and then you come back to me and say, "Hey, Jocko, here's how I wanna do it." And I say, "Looks good." And maybe if I gotta make a little adjustment I say, "Hey, make this little adjustment here or maybe use this weapon over here," or whatever. I make little tiny adjustments, but it's still your plan. And from a leadership perspective, that means you are... You and your team are totally bought into the plan. You made it up. As opposed to me coming down and barking orders at you and telling you how we're gonna do it. Doesn't work. I mean, I can force you to do it 'cause I outrank you. "No, I order you to do this." That doesn't, that doesn't fly. You know how many times in my entire military career I said, "Hey, I'm the boss. You better do what I tell you to do"? You wanna know how many times I said that? Zero. Zero times. No one thinks like that. So, in a leadership position what you have to do, do is say, "Hey, I'm gonna come. I'm gonna find out what's going on. I'm gonna talk to people and we're gonna put together a plan to figure out how we're gonna get this solved." This is not acceptable in America.
- JRJoe Rogan
That sounds fantastic, but what if you're a Republican and they're Democrats, and then you get on the ground and you have a mayor that's non-compliant, you have a governor who disagrees with your strategy, they don't want you there in the first place, they wanna work it out themselves, they wanna defund the police. They're voting unanimously-
- JWJocko Willink
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to defund the police. They don't like what you're saying.
- JWJocko Willink
Cool. O- Okay. If that's where we're at right now, let's, let's come up with a plan. Let's see how we get through this. Here's some things I'm worried about. 'Cause if you, if you're telling me you wanna defund the police because you think that this police department is completely and u- utterly corrupt, okay, let's, let's explore that. 'Cause you could be right. You could be right. This is where a lot of leaders make a mistake where it becomes an ego thing. Especially, like you're talking Republican and Democrat, so that means if I'm a Republican, no Democrat can have a good idea, ever. And if I'm a Democrat, no Republican can have a good idea, ever.
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly.
- JWJocko Willink
That's completely wrong. That's completely wrong. So, even right now, like, when you threaten me right now, right now, you're like, "Hey, what if I tell you I wanna defund the police?" And I wi- I tell you I don't want the cops. And I wa- You tell me all those things. As a good leader, you know what I'm gonna say? "All right. There must be something really bad going on here, beyond even what I just saw on this video. I'm coming and I wanna hear what's happening, and I want you to tell me what your suggestions are. And if your suggestions are to defund the police, let's explore where that, where that plays out. Let's see where that ends up." Because as we start peeling back the layers, even the most, even the most, uh, ardent anti-police person, y- you're gonna get to a point where you say, "Okay, when my house is..." When, when one of your constituents house is being broken into, who are they going to call? What, what mechanism are we gonna put in place for security? How are we gonna keep people safe from crime? And then they've gotta answer that question. And, and maybe they come up with a good answer. I, I don't know yet. But as a leader, you have to listen to other peoples' ideas. And we have to... You, you absolutely have to do that. There's a, a saying from Patton. "A leader on the front line is alway- always right." The leader on the front... "The leader on the front line is always right." So I've always tried to embrace that theory, not just from a leadership perspective, but even from a human perspective. You know, when you wanna tell me something that I don't know about, I'm gonna listen to you. I'm actually gonna... I'm actually really gonna listen to you. I'm gonna try and ask myself, "Well, let's see. Joe lives in this city and Joe's here with this community, and Joe is telling me right now that we should have no police here. Well, could he be very emotional? Yes, he could. Does that mean I should not listen to anything he says? No, it doesn't. It means I should monitor your, your emotions and I should take that into account. But I should also be saying, "There's gotta be some core to, of truth to what he's saying." Now, is it possible that Joe's just a bad actor and just evil? Yes, it is. How do I know that unless I listen to you? The answer is, you don't.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know what I'm hearing right now? Jocko and The Rock 2020.
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what I'm hearing. Come on, son.
- JWJocko Willink
I think-
- JRJoe Rogan
America needs you.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah. Well, um, I really hope it doesn't get to that point.
- JRJoe Rogan
What you're saying all makes fantastic sense.
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- 56:22 – 1:10:57
Communication collapse: social media, Zoom life, and isolation making everything worse
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs) N- There's no clear path, path to sanity if we don't talk to each other. And right now, we're not.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
We're not. I've seen a ... You know, the p- people are so (pauses) just angry a- just angry when you talk to them about this stuff, just anger comes out. It's horrible. It's horrible to watch.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. What, what disturbs me is that I don't see ... I, I mean, in the past when there's been disputes or things have been wrong, it seems like there's a, a clear path to, to sort of work things out. It doesn't seem like a clear path. It s- it seems like every day, it kinda gets a little worse. Like, people get ramped up even more. And then there's this event that's looming on the horizon, this November event, this election event. Uh, no matter what, whether it's left or right, whether B-Biden wins or Trump wins, there's gonna be madness and chaos.
- JWJocko Willink
(inhales) I, it seems hard for me to understand that Biden cou- it- could maintain his health, you know, through a presidency. That seems very challenging to me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
I mean, it seems like he's been going down, you know, with his coherence level. You can kinda see it over even months, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
He's on a really, really rapid downward spiral. It seems-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it seems stressful for anybody, eh, except Trump, for whatever fucking reason.
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That guy eats it up. But for most people, running for president alone, just the grueling ... just the, the schedule that's involved, and traveling and doing all these speeches, and it, it just breaks them down. I mean, one of the reasons why Hillary lost was she just wasn't willing to travel as much. There was all these different events-
- JWJocko Willink
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that she was supposed to go to. She just couldn't go. She couldn't take it anymore, and she thought she was gonna win anyway, so she just sta- laid back.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah, yeah. It definitely is a brutal thing. But it's really also just completely insane that the two candidates are these two people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, yeah, that they're-
- JWJocko Willink
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
... well, first of all, the, the best that Democrats could do ... I mean, they had all these other people that were well-spoken.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's, seemed like young and healthy, and there was ... You know, there's so many.
- JWJocko Willink
That is hard to comprehend.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Extremely.
- JWJocko Willink
It's, it's really hard to comprehend that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JWJocko Willink
... that you're looking at these, this group of whatever we got, 350 million people, 320 million people in America, and this is, this is who you end up with?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I mean, d- fucking anybody but Biden. Anybody. I mean, we don't even know who his vice president is, right? And that's gonna make a big deal. That's gonna be a big deal, because the vice president is compelling and interesting, and he says he's gonna pick a woman. Whether he picks, uh ... The problem if, if he was gonna pick Klobuchar-
- JWJocko Willink
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
But Klobuchar was responsible for, uh, a lot of those guys, uh-
- 1:10:57 – 1:20:45
Rebuilding purpose: American manufacturing, Origin’s mission, and jobs as social stability
- JWJocko Willink
This is horrible, horrible for society. Horrible for society. The, uh, the idea of coming to work in a place, right? The idea of, "Hey, I'm gonna show up and work at a place with other people," that is such a huge part of getting back to where we need to be. Like, when you pull everyone out of work, and you, and they're ... And, and even worse, and I'm not ... Even just beyond COVID, we ... You know, what happens w- we've moved all manufacturing overseas, right? So all those people that used to go and work in the same place every day, that used to show up and have a common mission and a common goal, they don't have that anymore. M- much of the middle class doesn't have that anymore. They used to have it. They don't have it anymore. And that's ... Interestingly, China's middle class is growing right now. Why is their middle class growing? 'Cause they're manufacturing, they're making things, they're filling that void of people that have that level of skillset. Of, "Hey, you know what? I just got out of high school. Uh, I can't afford college, so what am I gonna do?" Right? "Oh." Well, in China, well, you can say, "Okay, well, I guess I'm gonna work at a factory." Hey, it's a horrible sweatshop, it's d- whatever. We need t- th- they need to improve their, their conditions. But hey, these people have a job, they have a purpose, they're moving in a certain direction. In America, we've kind of, on a massive scale, gotten rid of that class of people's purpose.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's a big focus for you, right? With y- your company at Origin in particular.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah. Oh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Which, uh, by the way, I got the boots. They're fucking dope.
- JWJocko Willink
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You guys make great shit. It's like really high-quality, really beautifully manufactured stuff. Like ... And there is something very valuable right now about American-made. It used to be ... There's ... It was very divisive. Like, if you said American-made, like, "What are you, xenophobic? You don't like foreigners? What the fuck is wrong with you?" But now you realize, like, oh, w- well, with COVID, you know, we were cut off from even getting goods and supplies from other countries, and then we were getting so much of our medical supplies from China, and then we were getting so much of our vaccines and medicine, all these different things manufactured by China. You're like, "Hey, why don't we do that here?" "Well, we used to be, but, uh, it was cheaper by, like, a, a dollar a thing to send it over there." Like, oh, Christ. And people are realizing now there's a, there's a great benefit to making things here in America, and it's not just this idea of national pride.... national pride's great. But also, like, you don't, you don't have to go anywhere to get things and you keep jobs here.
- JWJocko Willink
Yeah. And I think, uh, Kanye West is looking to build s- same, the same thing as we're doing. He wants to manufacture stuff in America. Why? Because he knows when you have a bunch of underprivileged kids, the best thing you can provide a bunch of underprivileged kids is jobs, jobs that they can, entry level jobs. Hey, no, when I was a kid it was almost like, "Hey, if you're not careful, you're gonna end up working in the factory." Right? That's what's gonna ... You know, you could end up working in a factory. No one wanted a factory job. The thing is ... So, so that kind of became a mantra. "Oh, you, you don't wanna work in a factory, you better go to college." Well, there's f- first of all, factory work has changed. There's jobs that people do in a factory that takes a massive skill set, and the boots, you know, the, the Origin Boots, we were p- we're probably a, a year, two years, three years from losing the knowledge of how to actually do that. And luckily, my buddy Pete has started, you know, grabbing people that know how to do it and passing that information down to the next generation so we can actually be a self-sufficient country and we can bring back those jobs of people that, look, that's a, that's a proud way to make a living. These are craftsmen. Like you said, these are craftsmen and craftswomen by the way. Our factory is mostly filled with women, and they're out there, they have a skill set, they're learning a skill set. There's up- there's upward mobility. As you get better at your job, as you can do more things, you can make more money. And by the way, you're making something. You're making something with your hands, you're producing something here in this country. That's just like w- well, it's like when you go hunting, when I go hunting, you get something for yourself. There's a certain feeling-
Episode duration: 2:56:33
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