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E dot net. Enjoy your exploration. Hi Trevor, how are
you doing today? And please as we start begin the
process of sharing your inside of this retribution, because in
order to put this book together, you had to have
lived it. Because it feels like that you've invited me
over for a conversation.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir at what was an interesting process? You know,
most of the literary stuff. I have a co writer,
Jim D. Felice, real professional, So what's out him? You know,
I don't know if it would be be elegible.
Speaker 1: One of the things that when when it comes to
having that person at your side, when it comes to creativity, that.
I mean, that's that's trust, that's hope, that's actually you know,
relinquishing control. I have problems with that. How were you
able to deal with that? Because it's like you want
to do what, Okay, give me a chance to you know,
to iron this out with my writing. Let me figure
this out. How did you deal with it?
Speaker 2: That's you know, I feel the same exact way as
you do. I like to have, you know, that control
of I think, you know, part of it was just
that Jim was just like such an open, honest, like
relaxed guy that it was kind of just easier to say,
you know, when he would say okay, and I want
to write it like this, and I go, you know, no,
like I don't like how that sounds. He's kind of like, well, look,
this is a book. You're not going to just be
telling everyone like you would talk to like your best
friends at home, you know, and like this is for
an audience which is going to read this as a book.
And so it was easier to kind of compromise with
Jim on those sorts of things. And you know, luckily
I had him on my side to kind of, you know,
argue back and forth with the publisher about certain stuff.
Speaker 1: US Marines fight for justice. This inspires me so deep
inside my soul because it means that you did not
give your voice away. You still have your voice, You
still have your your your determination, your perseverance, and that
you knew that you needed to make a difference. And
it grew from that inside self. What was it like
to shake hands with that intercore that's going, Uh, Trevor,
We're not done yet. We've got it. We've got We've
got to create a wave here. Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, as far as as the Ukraine part of
it goes, I felt like I had to go there,
first of all, just so I could be myself again,
and then second of all to help the Ukrainian people.
As far as writing the book goes, that wasn't my idea.
My parents really wanted me to do that, and I
told them, you know, just hostage diplomacy isn't something that
a lot of Americans care about, and I didn't think
that they would be very interested. And my parents said, well,
maybe not, but they're going to be interested because of
the revenge aspect in the Ukraine part of it. Afterwards,
you you know, going back to fight the Russians and
they'll read it because of that. But in the process,
you know, they'll learn about hostage diplomacy, what wrongful detainees
and hostages go through in their families. And so they
kind of they kind of guilt tripped me into it
and said, basically, you know, I have a chain as
to help people and if I don't, if I don't
do this, then you know, I'll be kind of abandoning mom.
So that worked and I felt that I had too.
Speaker 1: How did you deal with that moment of going into
Ukraine and the reason why? And this really hits my
soul in the way that because of what I studied
as a martial artist, where my SOBNYM sat down with
me and he would he would try to get into
my thought process as an activator. And then and then
it took the Grand Master to come in from South
Korea to come in and talk to me. How because
they would sit there that would say, I understand where
you are, but what is the repercussion of what you
want to accomplish? How did you deal with that personally?
Knowing when you stepped inside Ukraine, what was your journey
and what was the purpose in the plan.
Speaker 2: I didn't really have such a defined plan. I knew,
I knew that I was going to go to Ukraine
as soon as I found out that Russia had invaded
did Ukraine. I knew what the Ukrainians must be going through,
and I knew, you know, that I had the training
and the experience to help them from the Marine Corps contracting.
So I ended up going out to Ukraine and meeting
my former team leader from Afghanistan, and he had already
been part of a unit I went out there. Eventually
went to a different unit where I met the guys
on Rogue Team who would become my teammates, and you know,
we started conducting combat operations I think a day or
two days after I got to that unit, and continued
to do that for months until you know, finally I
was wounded at the end of our final operation.
Speaker 1: What I love about this, Trevor, is that for the
past two to three years, I have sat with more
people in the military and those on the outside that
have served as humanitarians, and I said, how many of
our men and women are over there tight lipped? Everybody's
been tight lipped. You I don't think you understand how
much of a blessing it is that you are here
with me right now because I've dedicated so much of
my time to get the word out of Ukraine of
people from America that are going over there to help
them out. I mean, Ben Doucing, I've been with, I've
been with with Joe across the street, Linsley, who's done
things I mean. And now I've got you, and it's
like we can pull from you, and we learned from
you and that that really this is a humanitarian thing.
And your book opens up our hearts to say, my god,
we can make a difference, because they did.
Speaker 2: I hope. So you know, that's the message that I
wanted to to send us. You know, if you're you're
an American, there's always something you can do. So my
parents' campaign to get me out of there, everything that
they did, you know, all other Americans can also do
that if they're family members are unfully detained or held hostage.
You know, with Ukraine, obviously, I don't think I don't
think that everyone should just be going and taking up
a rifle and going and fighting in Ukraine. But you know,
each each person can help in their own their own way,
and it really really can make a difference. And part
of writing that book was, you know, in addition to
showing people what my family did, I also wanted to
show them what the foreign fighters and the Americans who
are fighting in Ukraine, you know, go through over there,
and just their their courage and their bravery because every day,
even though they are in my friends, you know, I
would look at the guys and just just see heroes.
Speaker 1: Well, listeners need to understand that you went through a
process before you even went into Ukraine. I mean, you
have the arrest day in Russia. How did you mentally
handle that? Because I know how we're trained as martial artists,
how to go into a moment of silence or meditation
or to calm down the senses. How did you keep
your wild imagination and maybe fear under control.
Speaker 2: You know, it's exactly kind of how you described martial arts.
I'm a martial artist. Also where I was I did
wrestling in judo for about nine years, ten years, mixed
martial arts for a year, and then the rink where
I was a rink where martial arts instructor and it's
very similar. So you go kind of into this internal
space and then you have to find something to focus
on to drive you, you know, throughout the rest of
that fight, that engagement, whatever it does. And you know
the way I did that is I focused on resistance
so that you know, I made that My whole soul
was I'm going to create as many problems in here
and make this as difficult as possible for the Russians
as I can. And I just focused on that and
made that eventually, you know, part of my my sole
existence for being basically Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that I find inspiring about that
is that you can still use that tool today in
everything that you're doing today. You pull from that treasure
chest of experience and you're able to piece things together.
Whereas most people might say, ah, I'll get around to
that next week, but when it comes to you, Trevor,
it's saying we're going to get to it now, we're
going to deal with it now, we're going to grow forward,
and we're not going to sit here and basically become
stool pigeons.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I think anyone, you know, I want to
be clear about that too. I think anyone can take,
you know, these kind of techniques that I used in
Russia and Ukraine and apply those two completely different situations
just in their regular life. I hope that no one
listening to this as ever going to be in a
Russian gulag or in frontline combat in Ukraine. But you
can take that mindset and apply that to almost anything.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Trevor Reid coming
up next the name of his book Retribution, A US
Marines Fight for Justice. We are back with Trevor Reid.
One wrong step though that did you have to remind
you of that? Because dude, I talk to myself. I'll
sit there and call myself out in a heartbeat. And
so when you put yourself in a position of making
that decision to take a step, I mean, the wrong
step would be a fifty to fifty choice, would it not?
Speaker 2: Be? Sure? Yeah? And you know I did have those
thoughts occasionally in combat where I would be like, wow,
you know I can sure I wanted to be here.
But it just comes down to, you know, in those
moments of stress that caused you to doubt yourself, you
have to think back to everything else that's happened before
that in your past and then just focused on finding
that feeling and bringing it back.
Speaker 1: What did you learn from that? Because I mean, all
of a sudden, it's almost like the universe said, Trevor,
You've done such a fine job, but I need you
to become even a stronger student and leader because I'm
gonna need you up here. You don't see it yet,
but you're going to when you get there.
Speaker 2: What I learned from it, I guess I would say, is,
you know, one of the things, right, even being in
solitary confinement for months and months and months at a time,
one thing that experience taught me is even though you
may be alone, you're not really alone. And another thing
something about you know, the Russian part of the experience
taught me was sometimes you can use your weaknesses to
your advantage and use you know, your enemy strengths against them.
I like to think of it, you know, in a
martial arts context of you know, with judo, right, you
have a guy that's a lot bigger than you, a
lot stronger bull rushing you, right, and you can just
throw him with a toemonagu and then just kind of
use his momentum to throw him with his own weight.
And so you know, when it comes to life and
my experience in Russia, I found that that was largely
the same. So Russia had this brutal system out there,
crossing you US, but I was also able to use
that brutality and show the world like, hey, you know,
this is what Russia is like and sort of turn
that against them. So just little things like that that
you think your weaknesses, you can always take those and
turn those into strengths.
Speaker 1: Interesting that you bring it up, because so many times
many of us have been convinced through propaganda as to
this is what the picture looks like overseas, and all
of a sudden, here comes your book retribution, and I'm going, oh,
this is an authentic photograph of what we should expect
to see, because I mean, you're you're giving us the
real deal and and the stuff that we assumed, Oh
it's real. It's real because you're talking about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there's there's a lot of misunderstandings about
the war, there, things that are going on. Russia is
very very good at propaganda. That's maybe, you know, one
of the few things that Russia really excels at. And
unfortunately a lot of that has made its way to
the US, and you know, in our social media sphere
and a lot of people don't know you know, so
they'll see their friends reposting whatever it is and think, oh,
you know, like this must be true. But you know,
you have to understand that Russia has a whole part
of their government, a large part of their government, which
is dedicated specifically to trying to elicit that response. They
want that propaganda to reach our social media, reach your friends,
you to see it, you to believe it, and then
you think, oh, well, you know, I don't why do
I care about Ukraine? Why do I care about this guy?
So it's important to just always consider the source of
where those things are coming from. Sometimes they're a lot
more nefarious than you think.
Speaker 1: Your path, your journey, your decision was in a moment
where I'm sure you felt inside your heart I wish
this would hurry up and get over with. We all
complained about how fast time is flying. Was it flying
for you or were you sitting there trying to figure
out how to put fuel into time so you could
get through it as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit of both. So some of the
time there seemed like it did fly by pretty quick.
But you know, I'll just say, when you're in those moments,
when you're living out when you're wrongfully detained in a
foreign country. Every day that you're in there is like
a year long. I mean, sis, I've never had, you know,
anything comparable to that in my life, but it's every
day as an entire eternity. And after talking to my family,
I've realized that, you know, it was probably two eternities
for that.
Speaker 1: Being right there at the Russian gulag. We're talking about,
you know, a system of forced labor camps, correctional colonies,
a transit prison. Now, is it one of those situations
where you've got to put focus on your breathing because
as that martial artist, it's how they're breathing that determines
if you're going to win the jiu jitsu match, because
if when they're when they're breathing folds, that's your open
door to get out. Is that what you felt in
your moment where you said this is it go now,
make it move now?
Speaker 2: It was more of a slayer process really than that.
But I mean, the overall it is kind of it
is kind of like you know, you're fighting or you're
wrestling or grappling. It is this long, you know process.
But there are certain parts where you know you need
to kind of take that energy and then use that
to your advantage in those moments, and then there's other
moments where it's like, Okay, now I need to you know,
slow it down, control my breathing, get my composure, and
then just survive, you know, to just ride out that
last minute or whatever it does. So I think it depends.
It's a lot. It's a lot like a match. You know,
there's periods where where you need, you know, to to
give everything you have, you need to go in there
and shoot, you know, a million takedowns and try to
attack the guy. And then there's there's periods where it's like,
all right, I'm going to try to install this out
for the last minute.
Speaker 1: I love the way that you use a quote from
Patrick Henry to start the book because that really sets
the tone and every person that reads this is going
to go, yeah, now I get the journey that we're
going to be taking a walk on. I mean, it
was so fitting. When did you decide to use this
quote from Patrick.
Speaker 2: That was almost there at the very end. So my
care writer, yeah, my care writer Jim wanted to put
some kind of quote about retribution in there. And I
was like, no, man, you know, because this doesn't that
doesn't really capture what this was. I mean, retribution was
a big aspect of it, but it was a lot
more than that. And he said, you know, you're right.
I get that the book is called Retribution, so I
get it. But you know, so then whenever he came
to me with that quote, I was like, Okay, this,
you know, this is what it is. It's about, you know,
giving everything you have, live or die to be to
be a free man. And that I think is really
the fundamental point of this of this book, is that
you know that value of freedom that you will do
literally anything to have that, and that not just the
physical freedom part of it, but just to be you know,
mentally free, to be free and have your own agency
and be able to be yourself.
Speaker 1: If you were to slip your feet into your father's
slippers and all of a sudden you became your father
and your son came up to you and said you
were going to kill Russians, what would your reaction and
answer be your son wearing your your father's slippers.
Speaker 2: You know, it's real difficult for me to answer because,
first of all, I don't have any kids. But second
of all, I know what you know, my mindset was yeah,
And so you know, if I had been my father
in that situation and known how I felt inside, I
would have understood. And I think that my dad, you know,
did understand later. He just he didn't want to understand that.
You know, he wanted he wanted me to be home
and be safe. He didn't want me to risk my
life going there and possibly you know, be killed in action.
After all that he did, and my mom did, my
sister did, my girlfriend did to get me out, and
you know, for me to say that to him, you know,
I feel guilty about that to this day, that I
did that to my parents. But at the same time,
I knew that if I didn't go, I was never
going to be able to be myself again. And you know,
I may have been there and been alive, but my parents,
you know what, I've loved the shell of man instead
of you know, their solemn man.
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for serving this nation as
well as this world, because what you've done is you've
bridged a lot of things together that a lot of
us can't fathom. But your book opens up our heart
to really, really take a look at the realms of
reality that we dine with every single day. Where can
people go to find out more about you, Trevor, because
your story needs to be heard and we can grow
from your darkest times.
Speaker 2: To find out more about me, I'm not really sure,
but you could find everything you want about me in
the book. I think that's for sale pretty much everywhere.
And you know, I sincerely hope that when you read
that book, you you get a look and you think
about some of the heroes that are in there, like
my you know, my parents, Lena, the guys on Rogue team,
and then all of the people of the State Department
who do this for a living to get get Americans home.
Speaker 1: Wow. Please come back to this show anytime in the future.
The door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 2: All right, Yeah, thank you so much for having me, sir.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today? Okay, sir, Okay, you two