BUCK: First time on the show, our friend Shawn Ryan is joining us now. He’s a former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor and host of the Shawn Ryan Show podcast. Shawn, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate it.
RYAN: Thanks for having me. Thanks. Good to be talking to you guys.
BUCK: You know, first off, I wanted to have you react to this. You know, Biden gave this speech earlier today about immigration. And while we were talking a lot about asylum and the app that apparently now all the illegal immigrants are going to use to try to whatever. Point is, there’s a lot of other pieces to this as well, including the cartels and the fentanyl and how the lawless border allows for all this to happen. Here’s what Biden said about fentanyl specifically. Play 23.
BIDEN: For example, since August of last year, Customs and Border Patrol has seized more than 20,000 pounds of den… deadly fentanyl. That’s enough to kill — kill — as many as 1,000 people in this country. Twenty-thousand pounds of fentanyl. It’s a killer.
BUCK: I mean, 20,000 pounds of fentanyl could kill, I would just guessed more like hundreds of thousands, or maybe even a few million people. But, nonetheless, Biden doesn’t seem to want to do anything, Shawn, about the cartels. What do you think could be done? How do we secure the border when it comes to this threat?
RYAN: I mean, I think number one would be taking the reins off our Border Patrol agents. Number two would be putting a wall or some type of a structure up. I mean, a lot of people say, “That’s not going to stop anything,” to include a lot of the cartel-type experts who are talking about how they’re getting these things in. But I mean, just looking at the way… I mean, walls do stop things. It’s at least going to slow the traffic down. You know?
CLAY: Shawn, when you… Yeah, it’s always fascinating when people say, “Walls don’t work,” and then you find out that they live in a gated community.
RYAN: (laughing)
CLAY: It’s like, well, you know, it does… Explain. I’d love to hear the next follow up. Like when somebody says, “Walls don’t work,” and then you have the over-the-top follow up, “Well, why do you live in a gated community then?” Trump has come out with his own plan, and it basically would involve declaring the drug cartels a national security threat to America, which would allow us to basically treat them — my understanding is — like terrorists. Is that an irrational act? A rational act? What could we do if we really wanted to decide, “Hey, these cartels are public enemy number one.”
RYAN: I mean, you have to be able to send them a very stern message. And with the way our Border Patrol guys, their hands are tied behind their back, you know, and they’re scrutinized by the media. They’ve completely demoralized that entire agency. You know, and so they have to let these guys do their job in order to have any effect on this at all, you know, and you know, Buck, what bothers me the most is — well, maybe not the most, but — where all this is coming from. It’s not just the cartels.
BUCK: Yeah.
RYAN: The Chinese are enabling the cartels with all this fentanyl. That’s who’s training these guys to make the world’s deadliest fentanyl. And they’re already starting to transition. They’ve made the transition from heroin to fentanyl. Now they’re going to make another transition from fentanyl to this next thing, which I don’t think they’ve named it yet, but it’s already comin’ through the border.
BUCK: Do you think, Shawn, at this point, given how much money the cartels are making…? We’re speaking to Shawn Ryan of the Shawn Ryan Show, everybody, former Navy SEAL. Shawn, given how powerful the cartels are, we know that they’re able to pay effectively mercenaries off the global market to work for them to even train some of their sicarios. What do you think it looks like if we decided to get much more involved in the Narco War in Mexico, assuming the Mexican government would even allow that, do you think that we could make a real dent there? I mean, if the Mexican government said, “You know what? Fine. We’ll allow our special operations to train even more extensively,” I know there’s training that goes on already, but much more extensively “and even engage in joint missions on a regular basis,” do you think that could degrade the cartels in a significant fashion?
RYAN: Absolutely it would. You know, the thing that people don’t realize about these cartels is they’re very militaristic. It’s not… If they could go back to, you know, say, when we were fighting Taliban, Al-Qaeda, you know, they’d blend in with civilian population. These cartels are trained militaries. They’re pulling people off the street, they’re handing them an AK and a uniform, and they have their own turf wars going on inside Mexico, which is an all-out… It’s an all-out front. You know, and so if we interdict some of those areas, that’s going to disrupt a lot of the activity.
CLAY: Shawn, you’re a Navy SEAL. You’re a badass. You know, a lot of badasses as well. When you see how woke our military has become, what kind of conversations do you have with your fellow past and current Navy SEALs, and how much frustration is there with military leadership in general, in your experience?
RYAN: I would say on a level of 1 to 10, it’s a level 10. The conversations I have with the guys that I served with, they’re both out and wrapping up their careers. Most of the guys that I was in with are wrapping up their 20-year careers by this point. And, you know, once again, they’ve demoralized the entire military. Nobody wants to go into Special Operations. The guys that are in there, nobody wants to stay in Special Operations. Everybody wants out because of the woke agenda that’s coming into to all of the teams.
CLAY: How could you solve it? We get that question all the time, like how frustrated so many people in the military are with the culture that currently exists. Let’s say that you got to be in charge, you and your buddies at the Navy SEALs and you could go back in and de-wokeify the military. How would you do it? What would need to occur?
RYAN: You know, I mean, I try to look at both sides of the fence here. And if they do need more diversification in the military, then okay. So be it. What I would do is go to the combat-effective units and say, “Does this help with the mission? Is it going to help to bring this wokeness into the SEAL teams, into the Green Beret teams, into the JSOC teams?” No, it’s not. It’s going to create frustration. It’s going to create anxiety. It’s going to break up the team dynamic. What people don’t understand about Special Operations is the team that you’re with, you know them better than your family. You spend a good 300 days a year with the gents on your team and 50 days a year with your family, and so when you inject something that’s out of the norm, that puts guys in an uncomfortable situation, that completely destroys the team dynamic, and that team dynamic is (audio drop). That’s what drives everything. It’s the trust that the team has with each other, and that’s why they’re able to carry out these, I mean, next-to-impossible missions.
BUCK: Shawn Ryan Show, everybody, is really strong stuff. I mean, he does sit-downs long forms with warriors, Navy SEALs, Green Beret. He did a long form, Clay, with Erik Prince. That was fascinating. He’s done some great stuff over there, so I’d recommend people check it out. Shawn, thank you for your service and thanks for joining us here. We’ll talk to you again soon.
RYAN: Thank you, Buck. We’ve got to get you on the show too, soon.
BUCK: Any time, sir. Thanks for being with us.
RYAN: Cheers. `
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