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Off The Record: Interviewing an Army Ranger, Marine Raider & a Navy Seal

#directaction#marine#navy#specialoperations#marines
the transcript auto-captions · entered into evidence

0:00 seems like you guys are all influenced by some sort of trailer trailers trailers work right trailer trailer you drive a lot of inspiration from you know like from what you see yeah for me it was GI Joe and then I got what brats are they in yeah that's a good question [Music] welcome back to an insanely special episode of careful boys today we have with us three remarkable human beings that are all different special forced branches wow um it's it's an honor to have them here if you can starting uh with trunk can you please introduce yourselves and the special force branch that you're affiliated with hi my name is Trump I'm a former Army Ranger um Michael Dowd and I was a Navy SEAL

0:50 I'm Don Tran and I was a marine reader very cool yay all right so uh for the people out there um I think a lot of times people they they hear Special Operations and they just hear okay for sure these guys are super Elite can you get each kind of go into um what you guys did and what was your mission and then uh maybe from that people can kind of like discern the difference maybe starting with you yeah so the 75th Ranger regiment is tasked with direct action we're basically a light infantry unit but more advanced work uh tasks to go out there kill capture bad guys during the G white War all the way up to now and this has led on to other missions that we're capable of and most of you guys are airborne getting into yeah we're Airborne

1:40 qualified you know being able to operate in the Hilo being able to fast whip off helicopters and stuff like that and then what about you kind sir uh if you've seen the movie Navy Seals with Charlie Sheen that's pretty much it uh no we're uh chairs of the Sun with Bruce Willis it's the exact same oh okay exact same those are Navy Seals I saw Delta Force with Chuck Norris yeah that's different we don't have it so would you say most of you got your your missions start from the water or no no like when when the 20-year War kicked off in in the desert everyone kind of moved over there um but our primary specialty was uh direct action Mission so going in uh to

2:31 a place like a house capturing killing so it sounds very similar yeah kidnap not kidnap the the arresting yeah like that yeah both those okay okay we'll figure out the difference after that Don what do you do yeah and then uh the Marine Raiders started in World War II as a small unit that specialized in amphibious raids on small rubber crafts but now you know when we reformed it in uh 2006 it was just more stock and then we went to the same 20-year war and deploying over to the Middle East so um direct action special reconnaissance and then really the fit Mission which is foreign internal defense so training a partner Force to go fight with them so this is like is that too much overlap like all the branches kind of doing the same ████ there's there's like one fight and everyone's

3:21 just trying to figure out how they can all get in all of it and uh I think that's what happened is it like the movies where crime happens in the FBI the local police and then everybody gets together they go I got jurisdiction I got jurisdiction and then like everybody [Music] wants to be the cool unit that gets the mission to go over to the direct action missions which is the coolest one this direct action a euphemism for something else it's like hearing hits raids can be yeah so at the the special force level every like Navy uh Marine whatever right that's their unit of Special Force right like like like yours is Marine and then

4:11 that's and then do they all work together or do they have their own teams like the if this was the NBA right you're like the Bulls and you're like the Lakers or whatever but do they ever Harlem Globetrotter well like the All-Star Game the All-Star yeah yeah so there's so Socom which is actually the like the headquarter unit for all these Special Operations here so calm like the game or the novel right exactly and then there's also the jsoc which is like the even higher level which is the joint ones joint Special Operations Command that's when they like don't fight they fight with each other and Joe to top it off there is a unit the unit Delta it's actually they recruit from all branches so there were guys in the Delta Force units they're Navy uh that are uh marines that are Air Force they they open recruitment to

5:03 everybody damn and do they all do the same jobs like arresting assassination like there's no specialty not assassination yeah direct action direct action well excuse me I come from the gang world so um maybe we go down the line too like explaining what uh made you guys each join the respective uh branches to so starting with oh we heard your story we'll start this one yep absolutely um well in the Marine why did you even join the Marines to begin with versus army navy Air Force whatever oh I was a kind of a mess up in in high school so just trying to get away from that life and trying to do something new and something

5:54 special but why Marine Corps versus Navy or Coast Guard I saw that the dragon slang commercial where there's a race that was that was like yeah people always said the Marines were the hardest the coolest yeah the most badass [Laughter] and did you know you're gonna go into Special Operations from the get or was it after you joined you're like oh ████ there's more levels to this stuff yeah uh I don't even know what I don't think the Marine rate or actually the MARSOC just started when I joined so I joined in 2006. um but I didn't know anything about it and one day I just stumbled across from one of the trailers and there was some guys in like different uniforms they had like Velcro on cooler boots and stuff like that so I was like

6:45 man I want to do that so I walked in there and started the process of becoming a Raider a marine Raider yeah and then what about you Mike uh since I was a kid like 12 13 years old it was a Discovery Channel documentary of uh Navy Seals I don't remember being like that's what I want to do and my mom was like no way just 12 13 yeah yeah it was I don't know like and it was just always in my head and then it just took a while for me to you know make that happen but seems like you guys are all influenced by some sort of trailer trailers trailers work right trailer trailer you drive a lot of inspiration from you know like from what you see yeah you know yeah for me it was GI Joe and then I got what brats are they in yeah I don't even know that's a good question

7:35 super Elite so for you knowing that at 12 did you already start like physically preparing for it I don't know if I was physically preparing at 12 but I definitely had it in the back of my mind with everything I was trained for like when I would play paintball I'm like I'm maybe Seal training right I don't even know what that meant but but yeah yeah I think it is the the marketing yeah which is probably why we make so many ████ movies and uh am I love to swear yeah as much as you want yeah ████ yeah you could say assassinations too uh I would maybe call it like terminating like bugs yeah yeah yeah termination and then what about you I started with the VHS that my mom's friend sent to my

8:27 mom about her son graduating Ranger school then really what Don said to the lineage of the Rangers all with dating back when they used to fight the Native Americans of Roger Rangers so we're at the whole lineage behind that and you know World War II Point D Hawk when they stormed the beach of Omaha Beach and all that that's that's what got me like if this is something I want to do wow how come you guys didn't did you guys ever like go maybe I should have did this one or like you guys were just stuck in exactly what you wanted this ultimate question yeah I mean if you've seen Navy Seals with Charlie Sheen you would know come on come on dude I gotta add that to my watch list dude it's really good really you guys never seen it I saw Rambo and I was hella like I want to go but then I felt like if I was there I'd be like the Vietnamese bad guy and then they'll be

9:17 shooting at me so you're like I don't like that you're like I don't like this Charlie's Charlie's in The Wire yeah because I I was actually gonna join the Army and then I went down to you know all the recruiting stations are usually like back to back and then I talked to him I was ah he gives me weird Vibes then I went to Navy and that guy kind of gave me like used car salesman Vibes and then I went to the marine recruiter and I was like hello hello and then there was no one there I'm like what the ████ she's empty and then this guy comes out from underneath the desk he's like trying to join the Marines I was like oh I think I found my people not real yeah the Montebello and then he was already in like um daddy just killing all my incredibles in here right now uh PE shorts and then uh I think either a Montebello High School or sure high

10:08 school t-shirt he goes all right make this quick because I'm gonna go coach wrestling and I was like dude this guy doesn't give a ████ about me I like him because everyone else is like come back we'll we'll get you we'll grab some lunch I felt like I was getting whined and dined you know this one I was like this guy don't give a ████ Straight Shooters so for all all three you guys like you knew what you wanted to do um you didn't join the military and go oh this is there's even more higher levels like it was just straight from the beginning like I want to be a seal I want to be a ranger like I didn't no oh okay figure it out on the way yeah so for you guys like when you learned about it um did anybody show you the ropes of like how to get there like you got to take this you got to go this way or like did you talk to like a like a military

10:58 counselor or somebody that that helps you with your career path just your leadership you know like guys I actually looked out for you they cared for you they wanted to put you in the right path um so that was like your commanding officer you just asked him like no no none of those guys no nobody that no officers like enlisted guys that were actually on the ground like in the fight with you those guys yeah and then so they'll be the ones that kind of be like yeah you got to take this class or this thing yeah I mean if they've done it before then it's easy for them to kind of guide you in the right path and um to do but in the military like these guys and there's so many different options and different jobs that you can do even on the small teams that we were on so what's the coolest ████ in your job that you would say uh like let's say you had your kid is like 10 or 12. like what would be the coolest story you would

11:49 tell them about what you did like each one of you guys do you guys have like oh like this is what I would say to inspire my kid about what I did to join the military no just a cool story yeah um like your dad is going down a rope with one hand and I was swinging my arm like you know just like what would be like what would be like to paint the hero's image for your kids yeah yeah trailer for your kids yeah yeah build a trailer build your own trailer you just show them Navy Seals just watch Charlie I'm Charlie Sheen in this yeah my last appointment we were in the Philippines I know it's like originally went over there to go train uh like the Filipino Marines and some other of their special operation guys over there but in the middle of the deployment there was uh a city called morale and Isis took over that City and we got to help take it

12:40 back there's Filipino ices the entire like yeah Filipino Muslims the entire deployment were like in plain clothes you know you got to grow beers and all that stuff if you wanted to so that was kind of like a really cool experience but on uh to where like to wear like civilian clothes yeah and clothes yeah but on Wikipedia if you look it up it says a Navy SEAL platoon was there so you didn't get the credit you gotta edit that out tell Wikipedia that's wrong I was there make a suggestion but it's not a good thing it's like where they got the information wrong and then you guys are the ones that actually know um I don't think it matters in that aspect of it but um yeah that was a pretty cool story no because we gotta help take it back you know I was like so I'm gonna beat our son okay I'm like so you wore jeans you think that's cool

13:31 dad you 14 year old civilian clothes these guys don't like it on missions Uncle Joe just told me he toured Australia and there's chicks that went on a bottom in the hotel room yeah how old's your kid that you're telling a story 14 12. all right I don't like that story better but a six-year-old maybe he'll be like wow you could wear a fake beard were you still during that mission were you still in charge of the um what is it like you used to do these like signals to get bombs yeah I was the j-tech yeah JTAG okay oh yeah can you guys hear what specific role you played in your unit yeah your job oh yeah can you redescribe the JTAG again from yeah it's just uh so you're like a you talk to the aircraft and coordinate the aircrafts in the ballast space so whether it needs to be

14:22 used for uh surveillance to check out maybe potential targets or whatever it is or to actually call an airstrike and what does jtac stand for joint terminal attack controller so are you like your job is like you're out there and you're just like all right I see them coordinates or Mike Jones and then like or like whatever yeah I mean honestly exactly like that yeah so and that's Jake jtech j-tech yeah like I'm the one wearing jeans 20 feet in front of me you have to mark yourself somehow how many um on average like for a mission like that how many times do you have to call in an airstrike like I mean it really depends on the mission are you doing a reconnaissance mission where

15:13 hopefully you don't have to drop anything if they found you and you're you know in a small team um or if you're like on a direct action hit with the Rangers I say that because those guys are always doing those hits but you might have like an AC-130 flying around and anybody that's played Call of Duty you guys know yeah and that is like ultimate Firepower on a mission yeah so it just depends really what about you Michael would be like this story to tell your kid show how cool dad was um I I think my my first deployment in Iraq uh we were doing night raids so every night we'd go out and you know capture people and uh just the idea of like night after night going into people's houses and like occasionally waking them up with your hand over their face and taking them out and just

16:03 um I think my kids would be like holy ████ that was cool that's way cooler than mine Uncle Mike is so cool I'm trying to the Navy dad as cool as that is then I would follow up with how many people pissed and ████ themselves from the fear and you as a new guy would all our new guys we would then put on gloves and have to search the the poopy pants oh so find anything good oh geez I think for like the senior guys that was a really cool Mission and then when you go home and you're like taking off poop gloves yeah um because they make the new guys do all the poopy work see people don't talk about the poop Arrangements people leave that outside in the movie yeah

16:54 he would have to fly back you have to fly back with poopy gloves and you're yeah I take them off the choice I made so if your job was the the phone in like strike guy you still had to do poopy Duty if your job was that no but my job wasn't that in Iraq oh so it's different depending on oh okay okay it's not like like you get one thing and that's your that's your specialty it's typically overlapping so he probably has like three or four other calls that he's not mentioning and then I would have three or four yeah and then he would be primary Jay attack I might be secondary and then I might be primary Intel and then if I get shot he could take over so we over we overlap it in case somebody

17:44 you know goes down right what are some other qualifications you have because so far dad you're lame yeah I was a Communications guy on my team so took care of all the radios I wish I had a different Dad yeah [Laughter] batch like do you have cook or like I am not I don't have a cook badge but we do cook a lot together as a team what are the yeah what are the main qualifications that make like a special operations guy like what's like super important like the top like three to five everybody has their own uh school or whatever that is to get through like the seals have the buds and you guys have your grass program right and then we have ours is uh what's called ITC or individual training course that's like the basic to get actually be a ranger be a seal or be a Raider so that's like one

18:34 of the ultimate cool ones then whatever your insertion platforms after right yep yeah so you jump or you dive or whatever that is your specific unit has to specialize in um so different units have Specialties like hey we need some amphibious dudes or like we need some jumper dudes like oh yeah but it could so you could all be uh like Marine Raider but then it's like the amphibious Raiders yeah we would have a guy team or a jump team um I don't know how there's a split up oh so what what where was your team can you say we had a jump team um for one deployment and then we did a dive team for another deployment so you switch sometimes yeah depending where you deploy what your job needs to be to uh overseas so what do you jump or dive or both both yeah that's tight wow ████

19:26 yeah damn I got I gotta I got a crazy one do you do you guys all have like a crazy like near-death experience or is it like every day like do you have one who was just like dude that was like bro you know or you're just like every day is like that the description so you know how to up your story this yeah I mean I remember one hit that we did was a night raid weed explosive reach we hit we secured the the ground level we're making our way up the spiral sterile case because we hear ████ individuals on top uh we were in the stack moving up we saw one hand drop a ████ grenade like no like ████ it landed right by my buddy's ████ foot but it didn't thank God it didn't go off

20:17 he kicked it it was a dud it didn't go off so we went upstairs so this big dude saw us come what he did was he ended up grabbing his buddy and Sheltering him he wouldn't let him go so we're like doing everything to get get him ████ off they're like get the ████ off get the ████ up or like hit him with the ████ butt sack of a rifle but he wouldn't let go then one of our team guys was like hey get out the way so we made a path and do Square it up and kick them right into ████ nuts from the back oh kicked them so hard that one of his testicles went up inside his ████ thing so when we brought him in with the medic had to ████ be like yeah you got you kicked him so hard as ████ nuts retreated into his ████ play at the like shake it back oh yeah that was like near-death experience for me I was like ████ a ████ grenade also you're lucky yeah

21:09 that's right that's your second what's the dud rate I know the dud rape you have a good luck charm on your teeth I don't even ████ know what it was it's probably one of those piece of s████ for sure man so we had a few like diving close calls uh because every time you dive underwater whether it's training or anywhere it's always real and uh but that I was never really scared I don't like flying and I had a close call one time and it was at Iraq and we we took off at night and all of a sudden this like bright explosion out the window of the C-130 happened boom a fireball and all of a sudden we're like four or 500 feet off the ground and the plane just started like swerving and swerving and we're like we're not gaining altitude

21:59 and if you already don't like flying this isn't like turbulence this is like oh ████ here we go it got so it got attacked with a rocket or something well you have no idea there's no like intercom like you know please take your seats you're just like kissing your ass goodbye and you know what it what did I plan in my will who's gonna get what and then the plane turns and it starts heading back and I and it looked like we're gonna we're gonna make it and we ended up landing and uh on land yeah landed landed back at the airport um at the base and then it turned out that we had hit a bird on takeoff and when the bird hit the engine made like some kind of flare the chaff which is also like bright fire had gone off uh

22:49 this is what we were told at least and there's this massive Fireball from it and then you know one of the engines went dead and so it actually was okay and the whole reason the pilot was doing this was he was like testing the controls and but when you're not privy to that info yeah that was just like I don't need the ████ like yeah so the pilot was calm he knew what he was doing but then on the back everyone's like holy ████ what the ████ what's going on yeah some more common than others I'm like on the other Spectrum or I'm just like you know Frozen I mean if you're in a war zone the first thing that would come to my mind is it got hit by a rocket or something like 100 right that's exactly what it looked like yeah like I'm flying Delta and then like trying to go to he's on Delta Delta Force and I'm on Delta Airlines like trying to go to

23:39 Houston it's like boom and I'm thinking oh yeah it's probably a bird you know but then like for you it's probably like that must have been crazy worst case scenario ████ that that's probably like the worst feeling that can happen because at least on the ground I begin to a gun fight we can control it by returning fire yeah when you're on a bird and that ████ happens you're like I I can't do anything yeah it's like God you know take Jesus Take the Wheel like up please yeah it's like that helplessness man I can't imagine so many other ways I'd rather die like yeah 100 try to get shot yeah way way more yeah way more do you have a cool story to end this segment dad and do it in three minutes because it might the camera might cut oh we were in uh Arizona doing um a training um Mission or whatever for this thing called WTI which is like weapons tactics

24:29 or something for the Marine Corps like the Marine Corps Top Gun School super like inserting a ground for us but we're not to see age 53 and we're on target at night time with the ch-53 it's a helicopter it's like the big loader that can carry tanks and stuff like that heavy loader but we were coming in on insert and blacked out and the pilots were coming in and it was a brown out situation with the sand and everything was kicking up so he didn't see a building in front of him so he flew the helicopter into the building the top rotors hit the building and then I was in the back and I was uh the Hearst master so I was in charge of getting everybody off the aircraft in time so I did the 30 second call I unclip and I'm like helping the guy look put the ramp down and as he was hitting that um all of a sudden the tail rotors bouncing back and forth up and down like really

25:20 really I think I bounce up and down from the helicopter at least like six or seven times like your whole back hit the top oh my God and then the tail rotor actually broke off of the helicopter holy ████ yeah [Laughter] that's my dad guys that's my dad you got it back you got it back so it was still blacked out the lights didn't work on the helicopter we had to get everybody off and the tail rotor was still spinning and then we were unloading everybody and we had like a partner Nation for us which was like just some regular CB Marines or engineer Marines come off and like luckily I put my nods on time because the kid was about to walk into Nazis or night vision or night vision on yeah yeah thanks for that exciting yeah pretty bad concussion after though Jesus ████ oh geez when it landed it was on

26:10 the building no it was like coming in on insert so he didn't level out enough and one of the front sensors was broken so he doesn't level out in time and then the front rotor or the the top rotor was still at an angle and it hit the building that's why you're okay bro yeah seriously you weren't knocked out from the boom boom boom I don't know maybe I was or not but I just remember like super my head was hurting I just because I just bounced up and down a few times you know I'm like dude we gotta get off and then you helped everybody off yeah I mean well my whole all our our team had nods so everybody dropped them off but the Infantry or the engineer Marines didn't have any night vision you know yeah I think like it doesn't even occur to most of us that in training it can be more dangerous sometimes than in the actual Wars I've had so many friends lost just in training and yeah because

27:01 when you mentioned that earlier I was like wow that's just I don't think none of us ever think of anyone dying in training it's like then you think more people are out there more like you know getting into more dangerous situations but it's like wow yeah so have you chosen which one you wanted your dad yeah you gotta pick well Don was my biological dad yeah and I was gonna not I was gonna choose a difference yeah that's cool yeah that's cool yeah it's a good choice foreign

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