YouSaid · the spoken record

Dan Crenshaw

lines on the record: 72
first: 2024-07-25
most recent: 2024-07-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Everybody wants that simple answer, right? If we just change this, if we stop gerrymandering, or if we had term limits, like, sorry guys, none of that will change anything or campaign finance rules.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's not because that tendency has been there forever. But they didn't have a way to group and organize and influence the way that social media gives them that platform because normal people are like, I'm not getting into the, I'm not fighting with people online. I'm not getting into the comment section or I'm not going to the party local party meeting. It's like, no, I have other things to do. And so this is what has caused extremism on the fringes on both sides. And so everybody wants to look to Washington. And I'm like, well, Washington's just a reflection of you. Hate to break it to you, but this is a representative republic. And it actually does function that way. You just don't like what you see because maybe because you're normal. But did you show up in your primaries? Did you walk, did you block walk for somebody? No, then okay then. Like you got to be.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the most passionate extreme people are the most likely to show up. And so there's an outsized participation rate from people on the fringes because they're passionate. They're like, they're going to go vote and they're going to comment online. They're going to create a narratives. And again, back to our social media conversation. Social media has just amplified that.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If the American people want that, they'll get it, but again, the Democrat and Republican Party people got people actually got to show up and vote in primaries. That's the key here. I mean, you got very low participation rates in primaries, very low. So many of my friends ask me, Dan, when are you up for re-election? Like three months ago, man, were we in the vote? We had 14% voter turnout for a primary, and that's not a healthy state of affairs.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's not what he did as president. It's not clear that's what he would try to do this time. There's a real exhaustion with people breaking our laws and getting away with it.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, we don't, it depends on what he means by mass, right? He doesn't speak in details. And I think what people think when they hear that is sort of like this door-to-door, I don't, you know,”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We can disagree. But nevertheless, I would, you know, yeah, it was unfortunate that we didn't come to a deal because members like me were like, look, well, let's secure, we got to secure our border and Ukraine's. You can do both. It's not either or. And, you know, it just that our leadership just failed to do that. I have misgivings about that for sure because I don't see another bite at the apple on order, legislatively speaking.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not even sure it would be true to say it would have passed the House and Senate because it was just dead as soon as it came out of the door. And, you know, that was unfortunate because, again, voting for Ukraine aid is a contentious vote that I knew we just had to do, again, for the reasons I've explained. By the way, you said Biden has said all the things I've said, I take issue with that. No, he hasn't. Flowery rhetoric, a kind of a top line that somebody wrote for him is very different than what I just than the explanation I just gave you. And nobody's ever done that in a very frank way that I think people can actually understand. So I just know he has not led. I know he has not said what I've just said on why we actually do what we can do.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't know if Trump said that publicly, and I don't know what he said privately, but the reality is, as you suggested, that they came out of the negotiating room and got shot in the face as soon as they came out. And my criticism at the time was, guys, we haven't even read it, let alone digested it. It's complicated. Immigration law is complicated. You have to know immigration law as it stands, and then you have to understand how this would change it. And yeah, there was a lot of benefits to it. Know, but I've never even had the chance to take a stand on it one way or the other because it was dead on arrival”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I'm like, you know, I don't understand it. And because I think he meant it at the time. And so I think that's concerning. I know Trump. You can't help but like the guy. I'll be honest with you. And he's not fucking Hitler. He's not a bad person. And just flawed and everybody has disagreements with him and everything. But I personally am surprised by that because I just, I've never called anybody Hitler and anybody. So it's, well, I've kind of likened to Putin to him a little bit. But besides that, And for good reason.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he's the running mate. That's what I think, you know. I don't know. I'm not sure what extra both he's bring in for Trump. It's an interesting choice. And there's certainly some policy disagreements, I think, with. For good reason. And Trump almost got assassinated recently, as we all know. I think it's logical to say that rhetoric can lead to making people, crazy people, even crazier. And calling Trump Hitler, what do you do with Hitler? You should kill him. And that's what you should do with Hitler. So Trump has always called Hitler and too many people on the left column that. They make it sound like the world's going to end if he's elected.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hard to say he's close with Don Jr. The Trump team tries to get everybody in, right? That's just good politics. And Tucker will suck up to them as much, even though he hated Trump, right? Oddly enough, we've got some people in his inner circles who absolutely despise the man before. I don't understand that.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. He's a But that aside, and he's just a, you know, he's a griper. There's so many things to say about Tucker. Where do we even begin?”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, it's a problem. There's a divide in the Republican Party there, and I blame people like Tucker Carlson for that mostly. But again,”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up there having a frank discussion with the American people about why we need to do what we need to do and selling them two things. One, this actually is in your interest. It's definitely in your kids' interest because you want America to still be the powerhouse in the world. When you don't call it America first when you're letting China and Russia just do what they want around the world, that's America last. That's the first thing. The second thing is it's more likely if you let Russia win in Ukraine, it's much more likely you actually get us into a shooting war because of what I just described. You're on the border for more NATO countries and you've given Putin the green light that we don't support our allies. That has the potential for a massive, massive miscommunication between us and the Russians.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give them any of that. And what's the counterfactual? Russia plows through Ukraine, no problem. And now they're on the border of four more NATO countries. And guess what? Putin's also under the impression that we don't support allies. So you think he doesn't have intentions with the Baltic states, like just listen to him. He does. There's ethnic Russian speaking people there. He believes they're his. He's very hilarian language in a lot of this too. It's like, well, we need to expand our security perimeters. We need to save people who are like us. You think they don't have an interest in building a land bridge between Russia and Kaliningrad and the Baltics? Of course they do. So you've got to explain to people, one, how it, this is the problem. Biden's never done this. Biden has never and Kamala now has never said anything close to what I just said. In fact, no one from the administration has said that, which is very frustrating. There's zero leadership. There's zero people.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But in the real world, people like Putin have a say and they have no intention of stopping. And I remind everybody the counterfactual. Counterfactuals are really important if you're going to assess foreign policy. The counterfactual here is pretty simple. Never support Ukraine. Don't give them stinger missiles. Don't give them javelins. Which is what prevented those Russian tanks from getting into Kiev in those initial days”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should have been stronger from the beginning, and you wouldn't be in the situation right now where you've got a stalemate. But in the end, a stalemate hurts Russia a hell of a lot more than it'll ever hurt us. And because what's the goal? What are our missions? People ask that like they can't figure it out for themselves. And I'm like, the goals are very simple. Make Russia regret it. Make sure there's no more wars of conquest. It's that simple. And there needs to be better tactics and strategies to get there quicker. But in the end, that's the cards were dealt. They're like, well, why can't we advocate for peace? You're just getting Ukrainians killed. I hear that one sometimes. I'm like, I hate to remind that's a nice fantastical view of the world where you just ask for peace. It happens. What a nice thought. Go to write a fucking fiction novel about it.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And global economics gets seriously upended when there's global war. And there's global war when dictators and tyrants like Putin or Xi Jinping realize that nobody will stop them if they just take what they want by force. It has major, major implications for your kid's future. And so for 5 to 10% of our defense spending, just letting somebody else fight the war for us, not a bad investment. The other thing I always tell people is you're fine. There's a lot of excuses made. So no, I want Ukraine to win, but I want to see a better strategy. And I want to, me too. I think Biden screwed up a lot of things there by slow walking a lot of the aid. You should have.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Complex and but now mature supply chains that really uplift the entire world and especially Americans in an enormous way. And there hasn't been enough education for people on like why do you have, you can complain about a lot of things that's popular to complain. That's sort of the point of politics in some ways, I guess. But you still have it better than everyone else had it forever. Okay. And especially if you live in the United States There's a reason for that. And the reason is largely because of American leadership in the world where we're just like, hey, we're going to be the most powerful and we're not going to let everybody just fight all the time. And we're going to enforce global trade and we're going to be benefiting. We're going to benefit from that. And, you know, this kind of populist movement that says we haven't benefited from it. I mean, it's obviously true that certain areas get hurt by global trade. And that's an issue that needs to be addressed. But if you throw the baby out with the bathwater, you're really going to screw everybody.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believed that he said it. So that's, you know, deterrence is such an important concept. And Trump did inherently understand that. If you're going to do strength through peace, you got to actually have the strength part. So my criticism of the anti-Ukrainian aid folks is you're removing our deterrence for 50, I don't know, forever because you're making it very clear that we just will not stand with an ally and that it's okay to engage in wars of conquest. And if you greenlight this idea that it's okay to engage in wars of conquest, which hasn't really happened since World War II, then you're setting yourself up for a pre-World War II war or world. That's not good. Life wasn't good before World War II. We didn't have space travel. We didn't have Amazon delivering us everything we wanted in five seconds. We didn't have these incredibly.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first of all, I wouldn't be so sure that Trump and Vance are on the same page here. Vance is very clearly against Ukraine aid. And I am very clearly in disagreement with that. Trump has never said that. Trump has walked a very interestingly fine line, if you pay really close attention to how, first, you got to know Trump and then you got to look at how he's talked about this. I don't believe that he has an intention of abandoning Ukraine. I'm not sure because he knows what he's going to do, but his history, because we've got four years of foreign policy to go off of, he was pretty strong on Ukraine as president. He made threats to Putin about his, you know, if you invade, we're going to bomb the shit out of Moscow. It's kind of famously quoted line. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it's often quoted and Trump's never denied it.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's honestly like, I don't know how to serve with people who did this, who challenged the election. And I'm like, okay, well, I mean, I agree with you, but let me give you their best answer. Their best answer is they followed a process in law with precedent. That's what they, that's what all the members of Congress did. Now, it's a separate story about inflaming a riot. Like, you know, there's certain rhetoric that, of course, leads up to that. And I think that to get to the meat of it, the rhetoric was telling people the lie that they could affect it. Like if you yelled at me enough that I could actually affect it. And I'm like, doesn't matter what I vote. It doesn't have any bearing at all on the election results because the Constitution doesn't let it.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you can disagree with the outcome that we want versus what you want. But, you know, if you're talking about a tax on democracy, using the court system is not an attack on democracy. And so I think we've got to check our rhetoric a little bit about what's true and what isn't sometimes. I talked to a new member, new Democrat member, because I was a speaker at the orientation the last, you know, after the last election. I was at Harvard, actually. It was Harvard's orientation. They do for members every election cycle. And he was, you know, he knew my history of being opposed to the whatever rapid on all that stuff on January 6th. And so he's talking to me. And he's like,”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I know that. And my point was always, look, there's a way to resolve that. And it's through the courts. I took a lot. I continue to like get on by the left because I signed the amicus brief from. Texas suing Trump. And I'm like, well, just hold on a second. Let's just be clear we're using the system. We're using the constitutional system.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so again, this is my view. I'm not somebody who says there was a mass operation to steal it. It was stolen. It was stolen in the sense of, I think, misinformation about Trump, the media turning out. There's a lot of other, when people say stolen, you have to do kind of dig into what they mean by that, you know, because you could argue that it was stolen rhetorically in a way. But as far as the nuts and bolts of an election.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, I just, well, I'll tell you, no, I don't believe it because I've never seen any evidence to suggest like a mass operation to do that. What absolutely does happen, though, is cheating. If an apartment, you know, there's plenty of examples of this. Ballots are mailed to people who no longer live at a location or dead. And what's to stop a person who is there from filling them all out? You know, is a signature verification?”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Having a rational conversation about this, people have understandable concerns about how elections were conducted in certain states. And you should be, right? Voter ID laws have like an 80% approval rating in America. It's not more. You should have an ID to vote. I mean, it's not crazy. When you move past all the angry rhetoric and the stolen election stuff, what you're really getting at is there should be really clear and firm rules surrounding a competition, just like we do in sports. And in the end, an election is just a competition. It's a game. Somebody has to win the game. But you don't know who won the game if you keep changing rules at the last minute. If you open up the end zone a little further at the last minute, you know, because COVID or something change voting times, do this, do that. It creates this massive distrust in the system. And what you really need is very, very strict rules that are easy to enforce.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, maybe. I don't know exactly what he said there. But, you know, he is concerned about his legacy. I don't think he wants, he definitely does not want another January 6th in the form that had occurred before.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was for completely different reasons than what it's assumed to be used for now. This is the Reconstruction era. This was a time period when competing slates of electorates were coming from states and there had to be a way to deal with that. It had nothing to do with Congress certifying. And of course, I penciled that argument. He's like, tell me to do whatever you want. I don't have any power to do any of this. That's the lesson that the entire Congress should learn. It's not just Republicans. It's also Democrats as well. You know, if Donald Trump wins this election, you think it's going to be, you think it's going to be objected to in the House? I'd be surprised if it weren't.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's great, but I can still find a million clips of pretty prominent Democrats, but it matters like leaders, like leaders. That process of that process of certification is completely unconstitutional. It should never have been allowed. It should be outlawed, or at least the law should be interpreted correctly. I mean, that's one of the main points I continue to make is that it's like from 1887 or something.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Isn't that a big difference here? Yeah, it would be if it were true, but the problem is I can find you about a million clips of Democrats saying that Donald Trump stole the election, the Russians stole the election, the election was illegitimate.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's already, of course, happened. I mean, it's certainly a turning point. But yeah, I mean, just speaking on the details of that, yeah, the big live 2021 was that Congress could do anything about it. And Democrats own a lot of this blame too because they've been challenging. I can't remember the exact number, but it's like, I think every election a Republican has won the last 20 years or so. And a lot of people know that. Now, they didn't ever got a senator to go along with it. They never had a riot that invaded the capital. So I understand the difference there, obviously.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but is that the only thing that members of the squad talk about or do they also engage in pretty dishonest and hap rhetoric and ad hominem attacks and half-truths? I mean, of course they do all the time. So it just and social media, again, going back to social media conversation, it just enhances all of that.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a general truth that there's a squad on the left and a squat on the right. We can split hairs about who's worse, and that's going to be informed by, I think”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the left, and then I maybe take some blame for this because I was like one of the first to really, really use social media in a very heavy way as a Republican. And then I think others maybe thought they were following in my footsteps, but not so much. Because again, like I try to, I try to entertain you in order to bring you into a serious discussion. I understand what social media can do, but you've got to still tell the truth and bring people into a rational place. And what it's become is the opposite. And I tell my voters all the time, like, don't be easy to lie to. It's really easy to tell you what you want to hear. You got to be more skeptical people telling you like singing from the same sheet of music. And, you know, the squad opened that up for the left in a really, really profound way hasn't done them any good.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It creates a sense that I think the extremes of both sides are more powerful than they really are. And that begins to affect another subset of the population that's, I think, susceptible to those voices. Otherwise, they would be kind of looking at their more regular sources of information. But instead get their sources from the comment section. I mean, like, I just, I mean, the thing that people believe about me, I'd laugh at it if it wasn't so disconcerting. It's just, it's just endless. I mean, some of the, and I'm talking about just from my own side, you know, the left hates me for whatever reason. But that's kind of how it's supposed to be. I like, we're supposed to have a left-right dichotomy. That's okay. You know, you want it to be fact-based and rational, but that's in the end, that's okay. That's kind of the point of politics. What's become different, I think, since the 2018 timeframe and the advent of the school.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Only God is emotionally capable of dealing with omniscience. You are not. Social media, it gives you a glimpse into omniscience in a way because it's sort of like if you're really deep diving, you see everything going wrong around the world and your psyche is, of course, gravitates towards negativity. That's a normal human psychological phenomenon. And it kind of makes you crazy. And sometimes people are like, I'm losing everything. Everything's going to shit. I'm like, well, get offline. Just get offline for 30 days. Go talk to your people in your community. And you're going to, I think you're going to be like, okay, we're normal. It's fine. But the other bad aspects of it are.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, where do we begin? Social media on net doesn't seem to be good for humanity. Like any new communication method, humanity needs some time to figure it out and adapt our brains to it. That was true, the printing press. It's true of written language. It's true of many things. But social media suggests, I mean, it's all that. But on steroids, and it kind of puts the world in front of you. In a very intense way. And I don't care who you are, you're not emotionally capable of dealing with that. Somebody said, and I'm just going to start stealing the quote instead of giving it to somebody, but I did hear it from somebody else.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they have a ton of veterans in those programs. They, that's why I say it's like, I'm not really joking all that much. I say it's kind of a common thing for seals and seal officers especially to do is I didn't wear my politics on my sleeve in the kind of outward way that I do now, but I have gone back to speak. I've gone back to speak in the classes of some of my old professors and it's been good. And if somebody has something bad to say, they've kept to themselves They might know my reputation too, which is to I don't take anything lying down. I'm always ready. But I'm also pretty rational, I think. And maybe that garners some respect”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I would take meetings and just kind of figure out what that next step is. One of those meetings with the staffer who worked for Senator Cotton at the time, he's like, I don't know, your resume seems like you should just run for Congress. Why are you looking for jobs? And I was like, oh, yeah, just run for Congress, just like that. And it's not like we never thought about it. I mean, you're familiar with the Kennedy school. They're trying to train politicians there.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pretty common path. And it really is more than you think. For seals enlisted or officer. What do you do? You got to figure out your next step in life. So a master's degree is paid for by the military. Might as well use it. And great year, honestly, I did the mid-career program at the Harvard Kennedy School because policy was always my sort of sidekick. I did international relations major at an undergrad, minored in physics. Just because I don't know. I'm a masochist. But I did my master's in public because I wanted to stay in national security policy and then I was trying to figure out what that meant. So graduated and was smucking around DC for a while, had a seal buddy who got me in touch with Congressman Pete Sessions actually who just gave me an intern badge to really just network.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, yeah. I mean, we fought it for years trying to get medical waivers from Bupers. Bupers being the Bureau of Medical Personnel for the Navy. And yeah, they're just not very flexible. So I've actually created, I got it signed into law in NDAA that the DOD does have to look at creating career pathways for people like me who don't want to be medically retired, but have the experience that is still useful to the military. We've already got enough people that are trying to get medically retired for some bullshit. And, you know, just to get benefits for the rest of their lives. And then you have another subset of people who never wanted to be medically retired, but they kind of have to be. So that was basically, I mean, I could have been limited, what's called limited duty, but then you can't deploy. And if you can't deploy, like, there's really a ceiling to not going to get promoted. You're not going to become admiral McCraven. So, you know, what's the point? And so, yeah, in a sense, it was kind of.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, kind of. Recovery is a difficult question. I mean, within a couple months, by October of that year, I was actually back in the Killhouse shooting, learning to shoot left-handed. So not seeing that well, to be honest, I was wearing soft contact lenses at the time. We hadn't like gotten to what I wear now, which is the specialized hard contact. That's absolutely amazing. I would have been a much better shot at the time if I'd had that. But I still wasn't ranked last. So I'm really proud of that. Yeah, no, my goal was to get back into a platoon. But, you know, that just wasn't smart or possible. So I moved on to different activities that we do in special operations and deployed accordingly. So, you know, my next deployments were non-combat related. I mean, I worked in Bahrain. I've worked out of Bahrain. I worked in places like Oman, Lebanon. And then my next deployment after that, kind of like my son.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best way to describe getting blown up And then just praying and hoping for surgeries to go well. Because my right eye was gone. They removed that pretty immediately in Kandahar Hospital, actually. Because you want to remove an eye if it's so badly damaged, there's no point in saving it because you don't want your body to try and heal it. You want your body to try and heal the other one. And so the doctor's not allowed to have a lot of hope that I would ever see out of this eye well again. I mean, I could see some light. It was all screwed up. My lens was destroyed. My iris is still destroyed. Obviously, my retina detached just a few years ago from the scarring. But the surgery did go well and miraculously have correctable vision. If I take my contact out, I can't see anything at all. But it is correctable, which is a miracle.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could hear Rockman, our interpreter, and I knew, and I pretty much put it together what had happened and kind of just stuck it out for the next 45 minutes while I waited for Medevac. And I was able to actually get myself up and go. And then I was pretty much immediately put into a medically induced coma for the next, still not sure, maybe three to five days. Then they woke me up in Landstool, Germany. And the hell really started from there. I mean, it was a pretty hellish couple weeks. Just can't move. Your body's, I mean, it's like I got shot with a dozen shotguns. That's kind of how to describe what my body looked like. You know, the eyes were just the more permanent damage, but everything else was just shot up like you'd been shot with bird shot. Like he'd been, you know, it was just, and also had Tabasco sauce portal all over you. I think that's.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He lost all four limbs immediately. This was a big one. And also under very hard packed ground, it's one thing if it's in kind of softer dirt. It's quite another if it's under a lot of rock. And this one had a lot of metal in it too. I mean, I had like a bolt in my hand. So it was obviously packed with metal fragments, you know, the stuff that hit my eyes was metal. They removed like copper, my good eye. They removed copper wires and all sorts of things. And yeah, just knocked me over. I was like, what the hell just happened? Couldn't see anything, but figured I actually never thought I was blind, not until waking up five days later being told that. But I just thought there was dirt in my eyes and everything was fine. I knew I'd been hit. I immediately felt my legs, you know, reach down and touched, make sure, okay, so I didn't step on it, it's the conclusion I reached and I could.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. You know, we often grab locals and say, you know, show us the way they know. Empty compounds are generally fighting positions. So if it's an empty house, it's usually an indication that no one's living there, which means Taliban, you're using it as a fighting position, which means they usually aren't.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And pathways, they're just everywhere. And you're getting shot at. You're like, what's your first reaction run for cover? Well, not there. You're better off just getting down instead of trying to run to cover and potentially hitting an IED. And so our tactics have to move accordingly. You can't do your typical maneuvering in a place like this because you need to walk in a straight line only in a straight line where the path has been cleared and we were taking on a kind of an empty compound there early in the morning.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The one day we spent in Hellmand province, our operational area was Kandahar province, just in a sandwich between Hellmand and Pakistan. And we were tasked with partnering with one of the more elite, you can call them that, but the more elite Afghan units called the commando units. And so our job is to take them throughout the province. I guess in military terms, affect that red space, turn it into white space. try to support local leaders that are counter-Taliban, that kind of thing. It's a counterinsurgency sort of methodology. And so you get to know those areas pretty well. For this particular, we were tasked with at least maintaining presence in this bad area and sang in Sangen district of Helmand, I'd either everywhere. Just absolutely everywhere. And they're not just endorsed.”
2024-07-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 588 — Rep. Dan Crenshaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source