At Ease: Marcus Luttrell and other special ops soldiers sound off

April 01, 2015

WRITER

The Glenn Beck program aired a unique special last night featuring four former spec op soldiers, some lawn chairs, a bucket of beer and some microphones. This is simply something you don’t get to see every day - elite American soldiers sounding off on the VA, ISIS and more.

Watch a preview below - TheBlaze TV subscribers can watch the full episode on demand HERE.

Pete: How do you guys feel about Iraq right now? I mean, we all fought there. We all lost friends there. How do you feel about watching basically everything we fought for just—?

Marcus: Is it still there?

Paul: You’ve got to go get an x-ray. If you x-ray it off of your body, does that count that you have it?

Chad: I asked him if I could do a hostage picture with a newspaper behind the missing leg. Here’s the date, the leg’s gone.

Marcus: I didn’t lose it. It’s not like I misplaced my leg.

Chad: Anybody that served in Iraq called it. I mean, why do you have all these brilliant military minds that you’ve chosen to promote to four-star general and admiral and all that stuff, and then you discount everything that they tell you about how to fight a war? So, you decide to pull out early so that you can make political gains, and this is what you’re going to get.

Paul: No, the colonels were telling everybody, and then they got out. Then the people that went lockstep with them for the majority, the guys that went lockstep in that mentality of just whatever, those are the ones that are the four-star admirals and generals.

Marcus: That is a bit baffling. I mean, you don’t join the military and get elected or appointed straight to general or admiral.

Chad: Everybody called this.

Paul: You know, it’s hard to even care. If no one else does, then just don’t put our troops there.

Chad: Look at two of the top commanders in ISIS, they were former Republican Guard Colonels for Saddam, you know? So, now you’ve got these guys who actually were trained at some point in time in the United States leading the biggest terrorist organization in the history of the modern world.

Paul: I think it would be a lot easier for me to care about it, and maybe you guys feel different, but it would be a lot easier for me to care about it if when you watch 70 guys that are crossing across to go fight ISIS and 700 military-age men are cheering them on, I’d stop and be like, “Hey, man, get in.” When they care, then maybe we should care a little more. That was the disconnect when we were over there going FID and everything else.

Marcus: Look, here’s the deal, man. They’re not stupid. So, every time they do something and we talk about it like hey, we’re discussing this, we disagree with what you’re doing. You disagree with somebody getting strung up, heads cut off and burned. I’m sure they really care about the fact that we disagree with them over here. That means absolutely nothing. I mean, the only way you handle a terrorist, and it should go for over here as well—we’re not talking about a criminal. Somebody breaks the law, yeah, you put them through the justice system, and then you put them in prison and let them do their time. We’re talking about a terrorist, somebody who is trying to eradicate or destroy and kill multiple people. You kill them right there. It’s right there.

Pete: Lawrence of Arabia, what he said, you know, an opinion can be argued with, but a conviction is best shot.

Marcus: What are they afraid of? Why would they be afraid of us?

Paul: President Obama.

Pete: They’re afraid of the six [indiscernible] a day. I mean, that’s just a devastating show of force.

Chad: I mean, if you want to talk about a leader, look at King Abdullah. You’re going to burn my guy, let me put on my flight suit. I’m about to get in my Cobra.

Paul: That’s his lineage. That’s where he came from. I wouldn’t expect any of our politicians, but at least let the guys that would jock up and go over there and hand somebody their…you know, let them do it.

Marcus: That female prisoner there, the terrorist, you better get your prayers in, because it’s going to be ending tomorrow.

Chad: Yeah, but instead we’re alienating the only ally, the true ally that we’ve had for, you know, the Israelis, you know? I mean, you want to go down that road.

Pete: I mean, at what point, you guys watched the whole Arab Spring go, rolled right across northern Africa into Syria. At what point do you just have to stop and go, “Are we intentionally aiding?” Are we letting this happen for a reason? I mean, because we’ve done absolutely nothing, and we’ve watched all of—and you knew what was going to happen in Egypt. It wasn’t like…they were like, “Oh, there’s going to be democracy and democratic elections.” You have the Muslim Brotherhood stepping up across the board.

Marcus: I get the perspective from what a lot of those people are saying that they don’t want to put boots. I get it, man. Why are you going to send us over there? The America soldiers, why are you going to send them over there? Why? To die. It’s going to happen. Soldiers die. We get paid. It’s a part of it, man. We get it. That’s not a problem with us. The issue is not a problem of us wanting to go. We’ll go, but why? So, it’s to secure what, nothing? Okay. You’ve got to have a reason.

People are dying. Yeah, people are dying, man. People die all the time. People have been dying over there for thousands of years, man. I mean, if you’re going to give a reason and have all the American public sign off on it and say yeah, it’s worth my boy going over there to die in a foreign land against a foreign land kind of deal, right?

Pete: I’m just saying an action across the board, not just military action. I’m not just saying military action, but look across action, any kind of action, sanctions. I mean, let’s just take it from a bigger picture. What did we really do? It’s like football. You build momentum, right? They have momentum right now. How do you take care? I mean, there’s one side of it where you say okay, if you walk into your kitchen, you turn on the lights, and there’s a bunch of cockroaches, do you walk in the next day, turn on the lights, and kill a couple cockroaches or do you turn the lights down, let all the cockroaches show up and then kill them in the dark?

Paul: They don’t scatter when you turn the light on. These cockroaches stay right there, and they “Here we are.” You’re right in one sense, Marcus, I think, but what do we stand for? I don’t know if I could walk into any military anywhere and say, “What does America right now in the world stand for?”

Chad: What was the statistic you gave earlier, the 27% or something?

Paul : In the Military Times, I think it was right before or right after Hagel was fired or quit or whatever happened there, they did a poll of the senior leadership, the junior people in the military. When you say senior leadership, I would presume that’s the O-6 and above level, and when they polled, they probably polled the E-5 and below, the E-5 Mafia down. They asked them, they said well, “Do you have confidence in your senior leadership?” Twenty-seven percent confidence. What’s Congress at? If you’re parallel with Congress, you’re in trouble.

Pete: Number one priority at Naval Academy, what would you imagine it would be just common sense? Like creating officers to fight and win a war?

Paul: Social engineering.

Pete: No, their number one priority is diversity above everything else at the Naval Academy. I don’t care how well you could lead. If we’re diverse, then we’re winning.

Marcus: Never had to question why I was doing something. It was because you were there. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m here. If everybody leaves, okay, I’ll go too, man, but if you’re going, I’m going—you jump, I jump kind of deal. Maybe an ignorant mentality, but it’s what keeps us alive.

Paul: But with phones and media and all the things and breakdown of leadership and unlawful command influence that happens constantly, which is, you know, it’s a horrible thing that when senior commanders are telling like the guy that had the counterterrorism—I hate to just throw it out, but the guy that was at West Point that taught the counterterrorism course that mentioned radical Islam and all that and then the secretary or the chief of staff of the army ended up getting involved. You remember all this? He ended up getting involved in this. Basically he’s a light colonel or a full-bird colonel, and they trashed his career because all the pressure from above, and you can’t say Islam when you’re talking about terrorism.

Marcus: Islam is the last thing you need to worry about me calling you.

Pau;: Yeah, right?

Marcus: I just say it how it is, man. That’s straight up.

Pete: But don’t you think it’s kind of scary that we’re not even acknowledging that it’s radical Islam, that it’s just extremism? Because to me that scares me domestically, because then, okay, if we’re going to battle extremists, well then you can make anybody an extremist. You’re a right-wing extremist. That to me scares me coming back, like we’re just battling extremists, so now hey, there you go.

Marcus: You know how hard that is for these younger kids, not us, not what we were in, these younger kids having to fight an ideologue? They’re not fighting a uniform. If I look at somebody, I can’t tell if he’s extremist or not.

Chad: It’s lack of knowledge. It’s lack of experience. Everybody sitting here has seen that airplane land in a combat zone and congressmen and senators and representatives get off, and they’re surrounded by PSD.

Pete: The 30th of the month, and then they stay until like the first or the second so they get two months tax-free.

Chad: They get two months tax-free, and then they stay for 45 minutes to an hour. They get back on the plane, and they leave. Then the first thing they do when they get home is they say I just returned from a war zone. It’s like no, you didn’t. You want to go to a war zone? Get in this truck with me. Hop in the truck. Jump in this truck and let me see what your pucker factor does.

Pete: Take your bloody cammies off. Put your nice cammies on.

Marcus: You spent all those months growing that beard out, and oh, you need to shave for the day. What?

Paul: Have you seen this?

Breaking point: Will America stand up to the mob?

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

URGENT: Supreme Court case could redefine religious liberty

Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images

The state is effectively silencing professionals who dare speak truths about gender and sexuality, redefining faith-guided speech as illegal.

This week, free speech is once again on the line before the U.S. Supreme Court. At stake is whether Americans still have the right to talk about faith, morality, and truth in their private practice without the government’s permission.

The case comes out of Colorado, where lawmakers in 2019 passed a ban on what they call “conversion therapy.” The law prohibits licensed counselors from trying to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation, including their behaviors or gender expression. The law specifically targets Christian counselors who serve clients attempting to overcome gender dysphoria and not fall prey to the transgender ideology.

The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The law does include one convenient exception. Counselors are free to “assist” a person who wants to transition genders but not someone who wants to affirm their biological sex. In other words, you can help a child move in one direction — one that is in line with the state’s progressive ideology — but not the other.

Think about that for a moment. The state is saying that a counselor can’t even discuss changing behavior with a client. Isn’t that the whole point of counseling?

One‑sided freedom

Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, has been one of the victims of this blatant attack on the First Amendment. Chiles has dedicated her practice to helping clients dealing with addiction, trauma, sexuality struggles, and gender dysphoria. She’s also a Christian who serves patients seeking guidance rooted in biblical teaching.

Before 2019, she could counsel minors according to her faith. She could talk about biblical morality, identity, and the path to wholeness. When the state outlawed that speech, she stopped. She followed the law — and then she sued.

Her case, Chiles v. Salazar, is now before the Supreme Court. Justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday. The question: Is counseling a form of speech or merely a government‑regulated service?

If the court rules the wrong way, it won’t just silence therapists. It could muzzle pastors, teachers, parents — anyone who believes in truth grounded in something higher than the state.

Censored belief

I believe marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God. I believe that family — mother, father, child — is central to His design for humanity.

I believe that men and women are created in God’s image, with divine purpose and eternal worth. Gender isn’t an accessory; it’s part of who we are.

I believe the command to “be fruitful and multiply” still stands, that the power to create life is sacred, and that it belongs within marriage between a man and a woman.

And I believe that when we abandon these principles — when we treat sex as recreation, when we dissolve families, when we forget our vows — society fractures.

Are those statements controversial now? Maybe. But if this case goes against Chiles, those statements and others could soon be illegal to say aloud in public.

Faith on trial

In Colorado today, a counselor cannot sit down with a 15‑year‑old who’s struggling with gender identity and say, “You were made in God’s image, and He does not make mistakes.” That is now considered hate speech.

That’s the “freedom” the modern left is offering — freedom to affirm, but never to question. Freedom to comply, but never to dissent. The same movement that claims to champion tolerance now demands silence from anyone who disagrees. The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The real test

No matter what happens at the Supreme Court, we cannot stop speaking the truth. These beliefs aren’t political slogans. For me, they are the product of years of wrestling, searching, and learning through pain and grace what actually leads to peace. For us, they are the fundamental principles that lead to a flourishing life. We cannot balk at standing for truth.

Maybe that’s why God allows these moments — moments when believers are pushed to the wall. They force us to ask hard questions: What is true? What is worth standing for? What is worth dying for — and living for?

If we answer those questions honestly, we’ll find not just truth, but freedom.

The state doesn’t grant real freedom — and it certainly isn’t defined by Colorado legislators. Real freedom comes from God. And the day we forget that, the First Amendment will mean nothing at all.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck joins Megyn Kelly LIVE — One night ONLY in Fort Worth!

Get ready for sparks to fly. For the first time in years, Glenn will come face-to-face with Megyn Kelly — and this time, he’s the one in the hot seat. On October 25, 2025, at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, Glenn joins Megyn on her “Megyn Kelly Live Tour” for a no-holds-barred conversation that promises laughs, surprises, and maybe even a few uncomfortable questions.

What will happen when two of America’s sharpest voices collide under the spotlight? Will Glenn finally reveal the major announcement he’s been teasing on the radio for weeks? You’ll have to be there to find out.

This promises to be more than just an interview — it’s a live showdown packed with wit, honesty, and the kind of energy you can only feel if you are in the room. Tickets are selling fast, so don’t miss your chance to see Glenn like you’ve never seen him before.

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What our response to Israel reveals about us

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

I have been honored to receive the Defender of Israel Award from Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The Jerusalem Post recently named me one of the strongest Christian voices in support of Israel.

And yet, my support is not blind loyalty. It’s not a rubber stamp for any government or policy. I support Israel because I believe it is my duty — first as a Christian, but even if I weren’t a believer, I would still support her as a man of reason, morality, and common sense.

Because faith isn’t required to understand this: Israel’s existence is not just about one nation’s survival — it is about the survival of Western civilization itself.

It is a lone beacon of shared values in the Middle East. It is a bulwark standing against radical Islam — the same evil that seeks to dismantle our own nation from within.

And my support is not rooted in politics. It is rooted in something simpler and older than politics: a people’s moral and historical right to their homeland, and their right to live in peace.

Israel has that right — and the right to defend herself against those who openly, repeatedly vow her destruction.

Let’s make it personal: if someone told me again and again that they wanted to kill me and my entire family — and then acted on that threat — would I not defend myself? Wouldn’t you? If Hamas were Canada, and we were Israel, and they did to us what Hamas has done to them, there wouldn’t be a single building left standing north of our border. That’s not a question of morality.

That’s just the truth. All people — every people — have a God-given right to protect themselves. And Israel is doing exactly that.

My support for Israel’s right to finish the fight against Hamas comes after eighty years of rejected peace offers and failed two-state solutions. Hamas has never hidden its mission — the eradication of Israel. That’s not a political disagreement.

That’s not a land dispute. That is an annihilationist ideology. And while I do not believe this is America’s war to fight, I do believe — with every fiber of my being — that it is Israel’s right, and moral duty, to defend her people.

Criticism of military tactics is fair. That’s not antisemitism. But denying Israel’s right to exist, or excusing — even celebrating — the barbarity of Hamas? That’s something far darker.

We saw it on October 7th — the face of evil itself. Women and children slaughtered. Babies burned alive. Innocent people raped and dragged through the streets. And now, to see our own fellow citizens march in defense of that evil… that is nothing short of a moral collapse.

If the chants in our streets were, “Hamas, return the hostages — Israel, stop the bombing,” we could have a conversation.

But that’s not what we hear.

What we hear is open sympathy for genocidal hatred. And that is a chasm — not just from decency, but from humanity itself. And here lies the danger: that same hatred is taking root here — in Dearborn, in London, in Paris — not as horror, but as heroism. If we are not vigilant, the enemy Israel faces today will be the enemy the free world faces tomorrow.

This isn’t about politics. It’s about truth. It’s about the courage to call evil by its name and to say “Never again” — and mean it.

And you don’t have to open a Bible to understand this. But if you do — if you are a believer — then this issue cuts even deeper. Because the question becomes: what did God promise, and does He keep His word?

He told Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.” He promised to make Abraham the father of many nations and to give him “the whole land of Canaan.” And though Abraham had other sons, God reaffirmed that promise through Isaac. And then again through Isaac’s son, Jacob — Israel — saying: “The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I give to you and to your descendants after you.”

That’s an everlasting promise.

And from those descendants came a child — born in Bethlehem — who claimed to be the Savior of the world. Jesus never rejected His title as “son of David,” the great King of Israel.

He said plainly that He came “for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And when He returns, Scripture says He will return as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah.” And where do you think He will go? Back to His homeland — Israel.

Tamir Kalifa / Stringer | Getty Images

And what will He find when He gets there? His brothers — or his brothers’ enemies? Will the roads where He once walked be preserved? Or will they lie in rubble, as Gaza does today? If what He finds looks like the aftermath of October 7th, then tell me — what will be my defense as a Christian?

Some Christians argue that God’s promises to Israel have been transferred exclusively to the Church. I don’t believe that. But even if you do, then ask yourself this: if we’ve inherited the promises, do we not also inherit the land? Can we claim the birthright and then, like Esau, treat it as worthless when the world tries to steal it?

So, when terrorists come to slaughter Israelis simply for living in the land promised to Abraham, will we stand by? Or will we step forward — into the line of fire — and say,

“Take me instead”?

Because this is not just about Israel’s right to exist.

It’s about whether we still know the difference between good and evil.

It’s about whether we still have the courage to stand where God stands.

And if we cannot — if we will not — then maybe the question isn’t whether Israel will survive. Maybe the question is whether we will.

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