Absurd Truth: Jack Carr Joins Us Live In Studio

Dana Lashes of Sir Truth Podcast sponsored by Kel-Tec.

It's his life mission to make bad decisions. It's time for Florida Man. Man, I read this whole story and the only part that I cared about was ever at Tampa Bay Times was this Florida woman won a $144,000 jackpot in an illegal casino and when the casino wouldn't pay, she called the police. Katero, illegal casino. Key word being illegal. The casino is called The Come Up.

Looks totes legit. Shiny dollar signs, all that. Katero Walters Powell visited her, she was visiting a restaurant, she saw the casino, she went over there and didn't have, I guess, I don't know, like there's a bunch of stuff with illegal casinos. She printed a ticket after she struck a jackpot, $144,000. And she's like, she said she printed a ticket like she did at Hard Rock, but she says the security guard snatched it, called it void. She said, the guard said she couldn't print her own ticket.

Another employee hung an out of order sign on the machine. The guard called the owner on speaker, the owner said they're not paying for that. Walters Powell said, I paid my money.

How are you not, how can you not pay out? You know, this is illegal. Well, yeah, it's a legal casino.

So she called the police and the police are like, it's an illegal casino. Like what? It's like that. I because I keep seeing this referenced over and over and over again. It's this viral. This viral meme. It says I never thought that I never thought leopards would eat my face. I was the woman who voted for the leopards eating people's faces party. So what did you think was gonna happen?

It's literally an illegal casino, right? Like, what? How did you think it was gonna go? This? Oh, my gosh, this is WFLA. Kane found this one. This is the lunch meat guy, the lunch meat bandit.

Man arrested if you're throwing lunch meat at a Florida officer. Now, I mean, has he not seen the price of stuff lately? I mean, hi.

I got I have like, kids it's summer. So I was, you know, like I get ham for ham sandwiches. Have you seen the cost of ham?

I'm just saying. A man was arrested last week after he threw lunch meat at a police officer. They said they were called to a smoke shop as Port Orange on Tuesday, last week, after a worker reported a man disrupting the businesses and threatening workers. Some of it's on video, and he was being questioned. He said the smoke shop said he was bothering customers. The officer says you've trespassed you got to leave.

And then he started getting violent. He said come on blank. You think I don't know what he said. I can only imagine they just have it.

They have it redacted. He yells, come on, you think I can't do it? I've got a black belt and karate and a black belt and judo. You're going to be in a world of hurt. And then he threw lunch meat at him. He threw it right at his chest, a piece of lunch meat. So he's arrested, taken to Volusia County Jail.

I don't know what the charges for that. But I mean, he's an older dude. And he's wearing a black t shirt with I think a cat on it that says die. Yeah. So it didn't go so well for him.

I mean, to just you know, and also I got one more and I got time and this is a deli meat person. We also have the Florida homeless man stole a police cruiser with a canine inside. I know he crashed it into several cars. The canine better be okay or I'm going to go to Florida and I'm going to swing this dude around by his ears. The officers were on the officers running the scene 21 year old menulik.

Jared Winterhaven. And so he's being held with no bail charged with burglary of a business grant that was a motor vehicle, a bunch of charges. The canine Logan was found safe. There was another person who was injured. They were okay.

They just had some head pain, but the canine was found safe. That's what matters here. You've heard me talk about my friends at Caltech for years.

And it's because I really believe in them as a company and as innovators. Their firearms in design and function go above and beyond like with the Caltech P 50. A revolutionary award winning pistol that packs a punch in a compact package. The Caltech P 50 is perfect for home defense for rain shooting or just even having some fun. And with its top mounted Picatinny rail, you can easily attach your favorite optics or accessories to make it truly yours. Whether you are a seasoned shooter or you're just starting out, the Caltech P 50 is the perfect pistol for anyone looking for power and precision in a compact and easy to use package. Their firearms in design and function go above and beyond. Learn more about the P 50 pistol at CaltechWeapons.com. That's K E l t e c weapons.com.

Secure your world with Caltech, CaltechWeapons.com. Tell them Dana sent you trailer that hit last Saturday for our friend Jack Carr and his new book, Only the Dead. And I have it in my hand. This is a I think this is bigger than his other ones. You can tell he got really excited at this point in the story. This I'm very excited to have Jack Carr in studio with us, our second studio guest and the studio audience goes well. Hey, studio audience. So Jack Carr joins us in studio.

Welcome back to Texas. Thank you so much. I love being in the studio. Such an honor to be here. This is really cool. Really cool to come by the scenes and always love to see you guys.

So thank you so much. Well, it's like I said, always good to have you and this this is this Am I crazy and thinking that this is longer than your other ones? It's the longest so far.

So I didn't start out with that in mind. But for me, it's all about the story. So it doesn't matter how long it is. And usually these books are a little over 100,000 words. And I blew right past that right by 110, 120, 130. So this is about 139,000 words. And for me, I don't get to 100 and say, Well, it's about time to start wrapping this up, because that's where these things should be.

And I'm coming up on a deadline. For me, it's all about that story. And this one took 139,000 words to get it where it needed to be. And it's also the most brutal to date.

So really, there's that yeah, and that's saying something if people have read my ones, but for sure the most brutal and the thickest so you can use it as a blunt impact weapon or a doorstop if you need to. Well, it's great. And if people are unfamiliar, which I don't know how you would be with our good friend, Jack Carr, Navy sniper, New York Times best selling author, I know you've watched his series The terminal list on Amazon Prime starring Chris Pratt, which was so good. Thank you. And I know you were very excited.

You were very well behaved and tight lipped about it as you should be because you can only say certain things when you can say them. But I know there's going to be a second season that was already announced second season announced and a spin off announced as well. So a spin off with the character Ben Edwards by Taylor kitsch, who was a Texas forever out here for yet number 33 on Friday night lights. And Taylor is just amazing.

It's one of the characters that I think was more fully developed on the page for the script than in my first novel. And then Taylor just brought it to a whole nother level. And when we saw him and Chris Pratt do their screen test together, it was like this person is Ben Edwards.

100% Yeah, he crushed it. And so we thought, well, at the end, it's might be spoiler alert. So earmuffs for everyone who hasn't read the book or watch the show. But he has a ending. It was he wouldn't continue on. Let's say say that. So we went back and did a pre it's a prequel origin story. So more of an international espionage story that shows how he goes from the SEAL teams to the CIA. And instead of revenge thriller, conspiracy thriller action thriller, like the terminal list, it's one goes international.

And I am fired up. It is really good. It's on pause right now because of the writer strike. So we're about and writing wiser about episode ready to ask you about that.

Yeah, so it's so it'll push things to the right a little bit, probably. But once we dive back into it, then then we'll start filming whenever we whenever we can and knock this thing out of the park and then roll right that that one right into True Believer, which is my second novel, starring Chris Pratt and Chris will be in a few of the episodes of the spin off as well. The the casting for this and we're talking with our friend Jack Carr who's in studio with us and you can also check out his danger close podcast in addition to all of his best selling books.

The I know you were involved in some of the casting I or at least you could influence some of it because when you mentioned Taylor kitsch when I first heard that he was going to be cast in this I thought this is going to be interesting because that is such the Ben is such a I don't want to say convoluted, but he's a difficult character. He's a very different doesn't seem that way initially, but he's a very difficult character. And it's very hard to get to like someone. And then you're I don't want to give anything but you're not going to like him.

I'll put that right. He does it very well though. He's he's very amiable.

Yep, exactly. And people already like him as a person. And so he brings that with him to to this role anyway. Same with Chris.

Yes, you want to like this person. He might do some use in the Mario movie crying out loud guy was on the Mario. Exactly how that's not possible. So he brings this to the role anyway for an audience that might need to forgive him. For doing a couple of things because it is violent. It is visceral.

It is primal. It is rooted in the realities of modern combat. And it's a revenge thriller from with someone who has nothing left to lose. So same thing with Taylor even though people know how he ends up in the terminal list going back Taylor just being who he is and what he brings to the role and the story now itself now that we've written it out is it's he can pull it off people will be on board even though they know in the back of their head where it's going to end up down the line. I think that they'll be 100% on board really because it's it's tailored because the scripts are so good. I'm very excited about it. And I you've I mean, you keep every every time you come up with a book, you're already writing your next thing. So I know that you have the spin off you you you also have targeted a series that's coming. Tell me about this is right.

That's right. So I always wanted to do nonfiction, but not the here's why time in the seal team. There's plenty of that out there. And people did so much more than I could ever have hoped to have done in the military. Nobody actually knows the extent of what you've done. I have to say you are very mysterious, which is I mean, I know that I understand how it works.

But there's there's you know, I everyone is always so humble you included. I had a good run. And it was all there's timing.

That's timing. But I get to take those emotions and feelings and apply them to a totally fictional narrative. So for me, I'm kind of writing about the things that I did, but not actually what I did, but the feelings and emotions behind what it was like to be in an ambush in Baghdad in 2006. Or what it was like to be a sniper in Ramadi at the height of the war, but I bring those two completely fictional narratives to bring those for you to very good job at that.

Thank you. Because you mean it's things that most people unless they've been in that position, they can't even remotely imagine. And so I don't have to go out there and interview somebody who was a sniper and then have their answers get filtered through other interviews that I've done other research that I've done documentaries, movies, books I've read, it all comes from my heart and soul right onto that page.

So if the feelings and emotions feel real to the reader, that's because they are. And my plan was always to write nonfiction eventually. And I always wanted to go in and study these different terrorist events that were very impactful to me as a kid. So it just made sense to start with the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, because I remember that cover of Newsweek and the cover of Time magazine in our local paper.

And I write on Instagram and put those out there in history posts, because I want to keep those alive so that we don't make those same mistakes going forward. So in that particular instance, there's a lead up to that event. So April 83, there's the United States Embassy is bombed in Beirut, Lebanon. And then there's some really declassified documents from the Reagan administration that talk about who was wanted to put Marines ashore in Beirut, and who wanted to keep them on amphib ships in the Mediterranean, and how that decision was made. And that leads into the October bombing, which has the largest number of Marines killed in a single day since World War Two since Iwo Jima.

And then there's an ending to it as well. The person who planned that attack is killed in 2008 in Damascus, Syria. And he's killed in what was probably a joint Mossad CIA operation, though neither intelligence agency has ever claimed responsibility.

But he's in Damascus, Syria, 2008, gets behind the wheel of his car, and his headrest explodes. I probably shouldn't, if people don't know this, I should probably wait till the book. No, no, tell us more. But there's an investigative journalism side to it as well. So and I'm writing that within a historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist, James Scott, who writes primarily about World War Two. An amazing guy.

So that's coming out in about a year and a half. So much of we're talking with our friend Jack Carr, so much of what you do is ripped from the headlines. And it's, it's very familiar. And I think it it's, it makes it very current. But it also makes me wonder, because he puts out the best boxes.

I have this huge box here behind me. I feel like it should have included a tinfoil hat, though. Because some of the stuff you read it, and you think, okay, yeah, I know what was happening when this was written. I know what was going on when this was written. And you, I know a lot of people ask you for your thoughts and your positions on all these different issues. You you kind of, I mean, if they read your books, you kind of put it in there.

I do. And I always thought it was interesting. No, not very subtly, because I think if you're getting in the mind of a character, and you're seeing this situation through, in this case, his eyes, I want to know the other things that he's thinking about. So if my character is, let's say, on the road in Northern Virginia, and takes an exit and goes into Washington, DC for a couple minutes before he can circle back around, he's going to think about being a felon for a couple minutes, because he's got this pistol on him or whatever it might be. Other authors might not think of that or other, maybe publishers don't necessarily want the protagonist to alienate anybody or any segment of the audience. But for me, that's not a concern at all, because it's all about this story. And it's very natural for someone in this position, James Reese, my protagonist, to think about those things. And it would be unnatural for someone with his background, not to think about those types of things. So for me, it comes very naturally to put his worldview and his evolution as a person, as an operator, as a leader, as a citizen, seeing things changing in his own country. And he asked those questions, is it worth still fighting for this country? What if I need this country in order to do something like I need to do in these novels, which is either get revenge or whatever it might be?

Well, you have to rely on this entity that might not have the citizen's best interests at heart. So I explore all of those in the in these pages of these novels. I mean, wokery does not even escape you.

The wokery in the military does not escape. You even you even touch on AI. I read an interview that you gave recently where you were talking about AI. And I had the quote that you had, I thought it was very, you said as a society, we've shown a propensity towards using new tools for what most would term evil, the manipulation of thoughts and behaviors to reach a desired end for a particular group or entity.

I mean, it is a tool. But I do worry about the degradation of morality and how that's affected every aspect of everything in America and how that how I mean, how do you deal with implementing AI or relying on tech like that, considering that. And now it's not even a question of could we or should we exactly here, exactly. And it's accelerating and moving into our lives faster than we ever were conceived of in years prior. And the first this writer strike that we just talked about a lot of that is about AI. At first, it was going to be about streaming and the changes that have happened over the last decade, when it comes to series television and streaming services. And now with the advent of AI becoming such a big part of our lives, now a lot of these talks are about this AI and how is that it's going to affect writers in Hollywood. And I think this is going to be the first time that we're going to see a union get together to to deal with this issue.

And I think we're gonna see it in a lot of other industries going forward as well, everything from truck drivers to every segment of society, because AI can take a lot of these jobs. And in this book, there's a thing that we talked about that is that had Brian Moore on the podcast, you wrote a book called The Able Archers, about a situation in 1983, where we almost had that was a very, it was a very good. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. And it's so if that person who was on watch in the Soviet Union in 1983, had been AI, because protocols in place, and top down pressure dictated that this person should have launched against the United States, because there was a launch from the United States against the Soviet Union. But it wasn't real, but their computers were showing that it was real. And this one person happened to be on watch, because the person who was supposed to be there was sick. So this one person is in there who had studied the United States, studied the Soviet Union, and thought, you know what, this is not real, this can't be real, he didn't launch, he's probably the one person in the Soviet Union that could have been in that seat, that wouldn't have done it.

And he had a he had a bad ending later on. But because of that event, because he didn't follow orders, essentially. But imagine if that was AI, that was the point. Imagine if that was AI, that sees this launch, it's a glitch. And what would they do? They're not going to be that human element there to say, wait a second.

And now we have a nuclear winner. Exactly. That's such a great point, talking to our friend Jack Carr, you know, I have to ask you this as well, because you know, you, you, you touch on in, you know, in your series, the, I don't want to give anything away, betrayals, things that are certain government entities are doing that they shouldn't be doing that we end up finding things out about and like, it does make you very because you you see this in headlines today.

And then you read about this very personalized account with your protagonist, James Reese. I look back at I see this question about this, because I see, I don't know if you want to call it a psy op or whatever it is, I see this group, Ken and I were talking about this the other day, the Patriot Front, Joe Biden went out and gave a speech at a historically black university. And I mean, it was very interestingly timed, it seems like that group only comes out when he's giving a speech or making remarks. And I've never seen people arrested before, you know, out of protest, and they were allowed to keep their disguises on their neck gaiters and their hats and their sunglasses and they were all arrested.

And they were all very similarly proportioned and wearing the same outfits. And, you know, we joke about it. But then, you know, you go to an escape, and you're reading your book, and you're like, you know what, this is true, it can totally happen.

I'm just like curious as to your thoughts on all that. Yeah, well, specifically, we go back to the pages of history, I like to go back to the pages of history, because usually there are clues there. And for one reason or another, we neglect to go back in those pages and take those lessons and apply them going forward as wisdom. So if we did, we would find that this is a technique that has been used over and over again in order to instigate to get to a desired end state.

So for me, it's always about asking, who's manipulating me and why. And I think that's the case here. But we can also we talk about these institutions in our federal government that stray from their mandates. We can go back to the church hearings and the pike hearings of the 70s. And after that, there was a reorganization of the CIA. But to think that they wouldn't go back to some of the things that they typically were doing in the 50s and 60s and the early 70s, and not do those same sorts of things today, just because we were reorganized when this government has gotten so much more powerful over the last of the preceding 20, 30, 40 years. Well, maybe we should spend a little more time in the pages of these history books, take those lessons and apply them to current situations. And because really, we're not making these decisions for for us. It's for our for our kids, for our, our kids and our grandkids going forward. And they're the answers are out there. It's true. They are our friend Jack Carr, and you can always tell you can kind of get the only the only tell that he has about how he feels about something is his voice will drop ever so slightly just a bit.

Otherwise, you can't tell you have no idea how he can't tell you how he feels about something. The book only the dead by our good friend Jack Carr, congratulations on all of your successes. I cannot wait to watch the latest series of terminal is can't wait to watch targeted. I can't wait to watch the spin off all about Ben was starting Taylor kids. I can't wait. I'm so excited. And I'm so happy to see someone who's so reason and well written and well spoken doing so good. So congratulations. Thank you for joining me in studio. Thank you for having this is amazing. And thank you for all you have done and continue to do for freedom. Of course, appreciate it.

Appreciate it. And now all of the news you would probably miss. It's time for Dana's quick five. So first up, a Soros back prosecutor. Now, do you remember the story that came yesterday, the guy who was attacked with a bat? So the guy who attacked him this 40 49 year old man, he assaulted two congressional staffers with a metal bat. He was previously charged with assaulting a police officer, but a local Soros back prosecutor declined to pursue the charges. According to court records, Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano, his campaign was backed and supported by George Soros to decline to prosecute the man Juan fam in 2022 when he assaulted a police officer. That's according to court records. He attacked two staffers at a Democrat Virginia at the Democratic Virginia HQ of Representative Jerry Connolly was his district office. He hit him with a bat Monday morning.

So he's been charged with aggravated malicious wounding a malicious wounding. He's been held without bound according to ABC seven, but see came back to I mean, that's it came back to bite them. That's unbelievable. Well, not really because you know, they supported that a Colorado man tries to trade places with his dog to avoid a DUI arrest.

Don't try this. This is associated press press in Springfield, Colorado. A driver was pulled over for speeding and he tried to switch places with his dog so he wouldn't get arrested. The officer literally watched him maneuver inside the car and switch places with his dog in a town of about 1300 people in eastern plains.

The man said it was not me. And the police said that he showed signs clearly of being drunk. And then when the officer asked him how much to drink, he got out of the car and ran away from the officer. And they promptly caught him within about 20 yards. So he was taken to the hospital.

He was arrested on suspicion of charged driving under the influence. But where's the dog though? Like I want to know where the dog is the dog was like probably like I'm so glad you see me from this dude like help me. I mean, gosh, ooh, this is kind of wild burglars beware scientists to find a way to collect human DNA from literally almost anywhere including the water and air. Scientists say that DNA can be detected from the air, even a footprint on the beach. And they said this could be vital for when murderers refuse to say where they bury their victims.

Wow, I mean, we're getting close to not nothing being unsolvable anymore. China has sentenced a 78 year old US US citizen to life in prison on spying charges. Details of the charges against John Xing Yuan lung who also holds permanent residency in Hong Kong have not been publicly released.

He probably blinked at you know, Xi Jinping's general direction incorrectly or something. So they he's he's sentenced to life in prison on spying. Thanks for tuning in to today's edition of Dana lashes absurd truth podcast. If you haven't already made sure to hit that subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.