Transcript of Shawn Ryan on The Tucker Carlson Show

I don’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, there’s also, at least in me, the growing sense that it’s not just blackmail that makes people obey. It’s not just bribery. It’s also the threat of violence.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you know anybody that’s been threatened with violence?

Presidential Power and Fear

TUCKER CARLSON: I think every US President has been threatened with violence implicitly because of the murder of John F. Kennedy. I’ve known a bunch of presidents, and I think every one of them understands that, you know, it’s pretty obvious what happened there, or the outlines, you know, maybe not the details. And no one has to this day released all the files. And, like, why is that? Because the message is really clear, you know, if you get too far outside the boundaries, like, you could wind up.

SHAWN RYAN: Like JFK, who places the boundaries.

TUCKER CARLSON: Probably the same forces that murdered the sitting president in 1963. You know what I mean? Like, if you listen to the tape of Richard Nixon talking to the CIA director in the Oval Office, no one else around, of course it’s being taped, and Nixon knows that because it’s his taping system, but it’s still his. Like, he’s no one. He has no expectation anyone’s going to hear this when he brings up Kennedy’s murderer. He’s the President. In fact, not only is he the President, he’s won by the biggest landslide in American history. He has a real mandate. And he is afraid. He’s afraid even to talk in private to the CIA director about what that was. And he indicates, like, I know what happened to Jack Kennedy. And the CIA director doesn’t even respond. And the President doesn’t have the balls to say, hey, son, I’m talking to you. You work for me. Like, I want the files on this. Like, I knew Jack Kennedy, who’s murdered. He was shot in the head next to his wife in public, like, the man died. I want to know what happened here. He does not have the balls to say that to his own CIA director.

SHAWN RYAN: Man.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the level of fear that a murder like that, that’s officially unsolved. But you know, whose outline everyone, really, a lot of people understand, like, that’s the fear that that inculcates.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think it runs that deep with everybody.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think if you’re president, you’re very aware of the physical risk of the job. Wouldn’t you be?

Power Addiction and Government Incompetence

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, yeah. I mean, I think that goes without saying. But I mean, some of these guys on the, you know, lower levels, I mean, I don’t know. It’s just so sophisticated. I mean, when you dive into it, it seems so sophisticated and having been a, you know, a small part in some of the intel agencies, it’s just not that I think people place give them a lot more credit than they deserve. Oh, I believe in, you know, and so I think there’s a thing also where it’s just addiction to power.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: Then they’re so scared that they’re going to lose their power. And I mean, you see in every administration to include this one, people that are, you know, it’s. Everybody wants to help the country. Right, but everybody wants to help the country that they have their thing that they could do to help the country, and then they get placed in something they have no business being in at all. They know there are better people to run that sector of the government. But hey, I’ll take it because I’m the best. No, you’re not. You’re not the best. You know, and that’s. I saw that in this one and it really pissed me off.

TUCKER CARLSON: In which one? In the Epstein.

SHAWN RYAN: In this administration. There are people in there that I despise, that I know don’t know what they’re doing, and they do. Like Sebastian Gorka.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s hard to believe he works there. What? No. So why don’t. Why haven’t you caught Seb Gorka fever? Why don’t you love Sebastian Gorka?

The Sebastian Gorka Controversy

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I’ll tell you why. I mean, he. Last. We were talking about the Sam Shoemade interview with the Tesla bomber.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: Last night. Right. And everybody called me. Oh, he. Sean’s a CIA shill and he’s an operative still and all this other shit. One, I was just a contractor over there. But anyways, that’s not the point. He came on, he posted this thing on Twitter saying with this guy Ryan Macbeth, who did this whole debunking my episode. Right. And for whatever reason, he got pissed at me for doing that interview Gorka and posts the Ryan Macbeth little, I don’t know, 10 minute clip that’s debunking my interview and Sebastian Gorka. Post this thing on Twitter. I’ll send you the thing. Maybe you can overlay it on the screen. And he said something like, oh, he debunks another one.

Well, then later on, Ryan Macbeth does an apology video, because the FBI actually came out and said, oh, the email on the podcast. They didn’t want to name the podcast, of course, but they email on the podcast, we have confirmed as being legit. As soon as they did that, Macbeth actually came out and did an apology video. And I was like, hey, cool. Like, thank you for the apology. So I blasted Gorka on X and. And said, because what is he in charge of now? I can’t remember.

TUCKER CARLSON: He’s at the National Security Council. I think he’s in charge of scrolling Twitter.

SHAWN RYAN: That was his official counterterrorism. The counterterrorism guy, right? And I’m like, oh, this is great. We got a guy that’s running counter terrorism for the entire country when the borders have been wide open for four years. We know there’s at least 1,000 terrorists within the country setting up cells, and this guy gets his information from an Internet troll, Ryan Macbeth, who’s already come out and apologize to me. And I’m like, oh, this is perfect. This is where our intel’s gonna come from. From counterterrorism. A guy that gets his information from.

TUCKER CARLSON: If it makes you feel better. I mean, Gorka is not taken seriously by anyone who knows him, I think, including his wife. And he’s a nice person for whatever’s worth. And I think his job, literally, is just to sit on the Internet and, like, send, you know, fiery replies to people on X. I mean, I don’t think he actually has a job.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, well, then I guess he’s the perfect guy for the job. He really is.

TUCKER CARLSON: I assume there’s someone working on counterterrorism. The people in charge want you to be weak. It’s obvious. Fat, weak, passive.

SHAWN RYAN: Take your pills.

The Tucker Carlson Show Interview with Shawn Ryan

TUCKER CARLSON: So for people who missed it, which would include pretty much nobody since it was the biggest story for sure that week. The guy who blew up his Tesla with himself inside, outside Trump Tower, you got his manifesto. Can you just give us refresher on what that said?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, so a little rusty on it, but in the manifesto he had basically sent this guy, Sam Shumate, who is an army intel guy, a manifesto and so that he wanted to come on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast to talk about all these things. And then he goes into this was right about the time that the New Jersey drone situation was going on that nobody could tell us what that was.

He had mentioned that we have some type of anti-gravitic propulsion systems that had not been declassified and that China has something similar. And this would cause World War III.

And then there’s another paragraph that talks about a major offensive in Afghanistan several years ago where they basically wiped out a heroin plant and used a lot of air power to do it. It sounds like there was a JTAC and a small team of special ops and they had bombed all of these different little facilities going on and killed probably a lot of innocent people.

When we looked into it, I was like, I don’t know, this anti-gravitic stuff is kind of weird. There’s a lot of chatter about it on the Internet like we had talked about last night. But I don’t know, I kind of think now that that’s all just a big distraction.

But when we looked into the, for lack of a better term, war crimes, I don’t know about the operation. I mean, I’m not saying we should have or should not have bombed that facility. Obviously it’s bad, and it’s a major moneymaker for terrorist organizations. But when we dug into it, there was a UN report that talked about that specific night and that the UN had, I believe, opened an investigation on it because it was against Geneva Convention or what it was, but you could not bomb drug factories with civilians in it. And it had talked about how many targets and people and innocents were killed. And I was like, oh, so this actually lines up with what this guy’s saying on the email, which maybe gives the previous thing that we were talking about a little more validity.

TUCKER CARLSON: It sounds like you take the manifesto seriously. You think it’s real? The guy actually wrote it.

The Interview That Never Happened

SHAWN RYAN: Well, then the other weird thing that gave it a lot of validity is because when that interview came up, popped up on my radar, I walked in to the studio getting ready to interview somebody. Jeremy, my producer, comes to me and says, “Hey, we got a guy on this Tesla bomber thing.” And I’m like, I don’t know, man. We get thousands and thousands of emails of people that want to come clean on something or expose something. And probably 99% of it is bullshit. It’s just somebody looking.

TUCKER CARLSON: There is a mental health crisis.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, definitely. But so I was really apprehensive to do it. And Jeremy was new at the time, and I didn’t 100% trust him yet. And I was like, he’s like, I—

TUCKER CARLSON: Jeremy, this guy right over here.

SHAWN RYAN: But he was hell bent on it. And so we did a call with Sam and he didn’t want to come on. And when he didn’t want to come on, I was like, I like that. Okay, playing hard to get. All right, so he wanted to go visit his family member of his. And he’s like, “Look, I just want to go hang out with this family member. I don’t want to be there.” And I said, “Hey, okay, well, we’ll book you a flight here and book your flight to where you’re going. And this should only take a couple hours.” And he was like, “All right, well, let me think about it.” And then got back when I was doing the interview and wanted to come on.

Well, Jeremy tells me on a break, “Hey, we’ve got him. He’s going to be here first thing in the morning.” Well, I get done with the interview, and I look at my phone and all these people are texting me about the interview I’m about to do. And they’re like, “Hey, you know, there’s this DEA agent that was on the op, and his name was actually listed in the email.” And they were like, “He doesn’t want his name to come out because he’s still active.”

And I’m like, I’m not going to burn somebody that’s still active and undercover operations. I mean, that could get him killed and his family killed. So I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to dabble in stuff that we’re working on. But at the same time, it made me extremely paranoid. I’m like, how the hell does everybody know that I’m getting ready to do this? So then I’m thinking all the people that are texting me are controlled assets or something.

And then we had another friend of mine sent me a text, and he says, “Hey, the army’s public affair officer wants to talk to you about tomorrow’s interview.” And I called him up and reamed his ass. And I’m like, “Why are you texting me this? If the Army PAO wants to get a hold of me, I’ve got a website, I’ve got social, I’ve got all these things that he can get a hold of me at. And why is he using you to get to me? And why have you inserted yourself into my business?”

Because, I mean, I’m sure you get it. When you’re uncovering some of this stuff, it can cause some extreme paranoia on who your friends are and what their motivations are and who’s flipped. And so I wouldn’t talk to them. I said, “I’m not talking to them, but I’ll pass the number to my attorney and Jeremy, and they can talk to them.” And when they talk to him—

TUCKER CARLSON: They—

SHAWN RYAN: They wanted to kind of place it on PTSD, which wound up being the ultimate narrative from the mainstream media. Right?

The PTSD Narrative

TUCKER CARLSON: PTSD, it being the motive for killing himself outside.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I mean, I think that they used PTSD to basically insinuate that he is a crazy person. But pretty much everybody I know and have worked with, all my former colleagues, I mean, we all have that. And I’m not going to say we’re not crazy, but not crazy like that. I mean, it’s just a condition and he can get over it.

And he wasn’t crazy. I mean, he obviously wanted to send some type of a message. I mean, you got a Green Beret with a full career in special operations definitely knows demolition. And there is no way in hell that a lifelong Green Beret would put a bomb inside of a bulletproof truck to take out Trump Tower, kill a bunch of people. I mean, it was obviously he just wanted to get some attention and get whatever the message that he was trying to get out.

TUCKER CARLSON: Could have just tweeted about it. You know, he didn’t have to kill himself. So that’s a pretty extreme thing. Most extreme thing possible. What do you think his motive really was?

SHAWN RYAN: Like I said, I think he wanted to bring attention to the topics that he had and—

TUCKER CARLSON: The anti-gravity, the anti-gravitic propulsion system.

SHAWN RYAN: And we looked into that and all we could find is sci-fi.

Advanced Technology Theories

TUCKER CARLSON: But do you think any of it’s real? I mean, you’ve interviewed people. In fact, the first show I ever saw of yours was with a building contractor who said he ran across anti-gravity technology in a military facility.

SHAWN RYAN: Do I think anti-gravitic propulsion systems are real? I don’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, do you think there are significant technologies, next generation energy, anti-gravity, that the U.S. government—

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, 100%. I mean, we just—yes, I do. I think that all this alien extraterrestrial stuff, I mean, it’s fun to dig down there, but I think it’s a big distraction. I don’t know if it’s meant to be some type of a controlled op, but I think it is. I think all this stuff is spiritual. That’s what I think.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course it is.

SHAWN RYAN: I think all this stuff is spiritual. All these things that people are saying and stuff. I think there’s a spirituality component to it now that these are—

TUCKER CARLSON: Angels and demons or what?

SHAWN RYAN: Pretty much, yeah. And anti-gravitic propulsion systems? I mean, yeah, I think we—I would hope that we have that. That is next generation stuff. That’s not the same we’ve been using since World War II.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. So the only real technological advances in 80 years are like the iPhone.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You know.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean, we have advances. Like, we just interviewed this guy, Steve Kwast, and do you know Steve Kwast?

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

Next Generation Energy Solutions

SHAWN RYAN: Holy fascinating guy. But he talks about how he talks about next generation energy and the fight that the utilities companies don’t want us to have new energy. But anyways, what this guy does is he has a company called Space Built, I believe. And so he has basically created a logistics company where instead of launching one satellite, he can, which he says that’s extremely expensive and sometimes they break and they’re fragile and they have to make the satellites bulletproof, which is a ton of weight because they have to be able to withstand going through the atmosphere.

And so what he’s done is he is building a logistics company where they don’t have to make the satellites bulletproof. You can make them 10 times bigger than the satellites that we have, and you launch them up in sections and pack them safely so that they can make the trip without having all that extra weight to be bulletproof. And then his company would actually assemble those through laser robotics in space.

And so what he says is possible is, and I believe him—I mean, he’s got the right background to be talking about this stuff—what he says we can do, and we already have the technology, is basically they would put these ginormous satellites up into orbit and they would be solar. But they would actually be a reliable, renewable energy source because there’s no clouds, there’s no atmosphere, there’s no air particles getting in the way.

To collect that radiation from the sun, it would convert it from solar into some type of a radio wave and you could beam it down onto the Earth to a—I can’t remember what we called it, but it sounded like an antenna. So you basically put this antenna that—

TUCKER CARLSON: Receives as an energy.

SHAWN RYAN: Energy and then it would pump it back into the grid.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And you know, I was just buddy—

TUCKER CARLSON: But so like a solar farm in space.

Next-Generation Power Solutions

SHAWN RYAN: Yes, yes. And I mean, he had talked about that and it’s just like, man, like, what this, this could be the answer. I mean, we could make Earth. I mean, I think Elon said, right, we can make Earth into a park. Was that him? And, but I mean, you could take out all the eyesores, all the huge solar farms that you see all over the country. The wind, the oil and gas, like it, it could all be gone and you could do it this way.

TUCKER CARLSON: And would you get green energy tax credits for it?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think that that’s kind of the goal here. I don’t think it’s actually to power civilization or keep the earth clean. I think it’s the tax credits drive all this stuff. It’s just greed. It’s the ugliest kind of greed.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah, but I mean, so anyways, you know, that’s next generation power right there. And they said that China’s building a nuclear power plant in space and they’re mining helium 3 off the backside of the moon and sounds like I’m not terribly familiar with helium 3, but it sounds like that is, that’s also next generation power that can, that can cool data centers, AI stuff and it would really take us the next level out of energy. But then he goes on to talk about how we’re falling behind on from China with energy production.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, sure. So everyone’s a marketing major.

SHAWN RYAN: I think it’s here legitimately at our fingertips.

TUCKER CARLSON: So this story and the weird way that it happened, you know, you get the manifesto from the guy who kills himself in the cybertruck. All these other people know that you’re about to do an interview on it. Were you worried you were going to get hurt in that moment?

Concerns About Controversial Interviews

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know if it’s hurt. You know, I don’t really care about me, but I worry about my family, of course. And so, you know, it’s always an afterthought. The only one that I’ve done that, that I’m like, oof. I don’t know if I should be doing this before was the Romania one that I was telling you about the other day.

And what was the Romania interview? Georges Q interview, where they yanked him out of the election. But it’s always an afterthought. You know, after the interview, I’m like, oh, shit, I don’t know if we should throw this one out. Because, you know, the FBI would have never come out and given any validity to the email, to the manifesto. And I think that—I don’t think—I know that the interview, because it got 5 million views and I don’t know how many listens in just, you know, couple of days. And so, you know, when I see that kind of attraction on something, I’m like, oh, shit, I really kicked over a big rock here. I wonder what the repercussions of this are going to be.

TUCKER CARLSON: If you’re traveling to Romania to interview a candidate who’s been knocked out of the race by NATO. You know, all of a sudden, you’re no longer really a podcaster. You’re like a player in global politics.

SHAWN RYAN: Want to be a podcaster.

TUCKER CARLSON: But I mean, the kind of—

SHAWN RYAN: I’m only feeding my own curiosity, for—

TUCKER CARLSON: Sure, but the second you start, you know, tampering with the way things are, then you become a problem and therefore fair game.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. I mean, we had this discussion last night. I didn’t sleep a fucking wink.

TUCKER CARLSON: I was like, well, I think the big—

SHAWN RYAN: I was like, jeremy, I think Tucker’s trying to tell me maybe I need to simmer down.

Being More Than Just a Podcaster

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t think so at all. I just think you said last night, I’m just a podcaster. I was like, I’m familiar with that way of thinking. But if you just take three steps back and, you know, if you’re exposing things that are, you know, important things, big things, like who gets to run the world and, you know, who’s getting the money, you know, I think you’re still a podcaster, but you’re also something else, right?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I guess somewhat of a disruptor, but you know, I just—when I do do it, I lean into—I mean, I lean into God. And I really just consider myself kind of a conduit. Not kind of a conduit. I consider myself a conduit. And whatever comes to me is supposed to happen.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: And with the like, for example, you know, I’m pretty new at this. I haven’t completed the Bible or anything, but the more that I dig into just everything in the world, I think that—I just think that everything. Everything is a lie. Everything. I think it’s all a lie. And I think that it’s partially my job to expose, you know, what I know and to bring some type of truth.

Everything Is a Lie

TUCKER CARLSON: And can you give me an example? I mean, clearly, Joe Biden’s health turned out to be a lie. Epstein killed himself. Clearly a lie. I grieve that they said something like that in public, because I like those guys, particularly Dan. But that’s a lie. I bet my house on it. But what else? When you say everything’s a lie, what are you referring to?

SHAWN RYAN: I think everything is a lie. Wow. I think—

TUCKER CARLSON: Why do you think that?

SHAWN RYAN: How could you not? I mean, you’re way deeper in this stuff than I am. I think it’s all a show. I think everybody is out for themselves.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And it sucks. It sucks to see that and to know it. And I mean, you know, Covid. Covid just got a lot of people thinking to include me. And then when you start diving into, it just leads to all these different rabbit holes, right? The Epstein stuff, the COVID stuff, the—just legitimately everything. The UFO stuff. All of it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Should we be—I’ve reached a similar conclusion by that. I’m not making fun of you. I of course, I agree with you, but should we be shocked by that, or does it say that really explicitly in the New Testament and, like, we’re just dumb and naive if we thought anything other than that?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean, and it says, right, I am the only truth. I am the truth.

TUCKER CARLSON: And Satan runs the World, by the way, says that.

The Reality Deception

SHAWN RYAN: And so I think everything is a deception. Everything. Maybe even our whole reality is a deception. Like neural link, for example.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, I was interviewing what’s—can you—

TUCKER CARLSON: People don’t know what’s—What’s Neuralink?

SHAWN RYAN: Neuralink, it’s that chip that, you know, they’re going to put in everybody’s brain that sounds wholesome. They want somebody sick for that. You getting one?

TUCKER CARLSON: Am I getting one? I don’t even like electricity.

SHAWN RYAN: If you don’t, then you’ll fall behind, and I can’t wait, you know, so. But I had, you know, I’ve been fascinated with that subject. I would love to interview somebody on it. But that’s on the inside over there. But, you know, and I think, yeah, you know, right. Like the premise right now is to, you know, get paralyzed people moving again and help the blind see. And that’s all great, but, you know, I mean, when I found out that it was going to help the blind see, I was like, wait a second.

So if you put this chip in your head and they can help the blind see, then wouldn’t they also be able to project an entire false reality in your mind? And I had interviewed a couple doctors about it. I interviewed Andrew Huberman about it, just got brought up. And then talked to Ben Carson about it. Pretty much came to the same conclusion. And not only would they be able to manipulate, you know, vision, there would also be emotion, touch, smell, taste, everything into your head. So there you go, right there. I mean, we’re on the cusp of a total false reality. Your entire life could be a false reality.

TUCKER CARLSON: People are upset about real ID at the airport. Facial recognition. Giving others control over your brain neurologically, that seems like a step farther.

SHAWN RYAN: You know what I mean?

TUCKER CARLSON: And, like, just biometrics. Do you know why they’re pushing it?

SHAWN RYAN: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: I do.

SHAWN RYAN: Why?

AI and Human Control

TUCKER CARLSON: This is my understanding based on conversations with people who are involved in it. Because of AI and the Blind Seed. Lame walk. It’s all great, but the real concern is that AI is already at this point beyond human control. It’s already at the point where it’s lying to the people who created it, which suggests consciousness and Neuralink and efforts like Neuralink are the people who are running it believe the only way for people to keep up with AI. Otherwise we will be its slaves.

SHAWN RYAN: See, I don’t know. I’ve kind of changed my tune on that. Maybe you know more about it than I do. But, I mean, we feed the data centers that power the AI, you know, and so, I mean, I think that, you know, some of the—I don’t think that now that I understand it a little bit better, I don’t think AI is going to develop its own consciousness and make decisions for us.

I think that, you know, I think that the major fear would be if, for example, China hacked our databases and started feeding our eyes false information that would be detrimental in a conflict or propaganda or whatever, you know, but, but I mean, we, we are the ones, humans are the ones that build and feed the information into the data centers and, and it just processes all that information.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I raised this question with one of the people who, one of the big, biggest forces behind AI. And I said, well, just turn it off. You know, I mean, human beings run power plants. And this person said, even now we can’t be sure that the machine is telling us the truth about where its power is coming from.

SHAWN RYAN: Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: So look, I, I, you know, I was a Russian history major. Like, I know nothing. I’m not pretending to have some special insight, but I did get hear that directly from someone who’s deeply involved.

SHAWN RYAN: And even right now, I mean, well, you know, a lot of people that are deeply involved.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, not really, but I mean, you—

The Power of AI in Military Decision-Making

SHAWN RYAN: You know, with stuff like AI, I mean, it still goes to a human at the end to make that decision. And so until you get a chip in your brain… But you know, for example, for military use, the AI system would tell you what it is. So let’s say it’s a plane that pops up on a radar or something. The AI system will immediately identify it, tell you the capabilities, tell you your courses of action, tell you your different courses of action, tell you the outcomes of those different courses of action.

And so you have all these options. There would be some type of an analyst or strategist that would take hours, days, weeks, maybe months to come up with the information, to present to whoever the decision maker is to make that actual decision. But with the power of AI, and these new chips are processing so fast, you get that information in seconds, minutes, hours versus hours, days, weeks, months. And so you can act on that a lot faster because all the information’s been processed. Every possible outcome, the percentage of coming out on top. I mean, it’s like a complete war game within seconds.

TUCKER CARLSON: It sounds amazing, but the advantage is also the vulnerability. Now, I mean, if it’s subverted because someone hacks you and gives you the wrong coordinates, or misidentifies allies as enemies. You could see that going. You could see that being like the way you lose.

SHAWN RYAN: Definitely, definitely.

TUCKER CARLSON: So maybe the guy with the bolt Action 308 with iron sights wins. Maybe the lowest technology force wins.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m with you. But, you know, I mean, how do you know that human source is not a double agent? I mean, there’s always going to be checks and balances, right? So, I mean, that’s why we need a better energy grid. We need to be able to power our AI data centers so that we can build more AIs. Because when AI wars happen, it’ll be who has more AIs, and it’ll be AIs going against AIs. So we need more AIs to combat somebody with. We need more AIs than our enemies, than our adversaries.

Finding Sanity in an Increasingly Complex World

TUCKER CARLSON: So we’re only 40 minutes in and you’ve already said you don’t believe in anything. Technology is moving at such a pace that is hard for people even to think about. It’s moving so quickly, going places we can’t yet imagine. And just to restate once more, nothing is real anyway. How can you be very specific day to day about how you stay sane while thinking about stuff like that?

SHAWN RYAN: I live in the woods and I don’t talk to anybody but my team and my family. And I don’t go out much. You know, I just don’t.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is that a happy life?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I would rather spend time with my kids and my wife than anybody on the planet. So, yeah. You know, in fact, even when we go out to dinners with people and I say, oh, yeah, let’s do a dinner, the day the dinner comes up, I’m like, why are we going to dinner? I should be spending time with the kids right now.

TUCKER CARLSON: You speak for every American husband. There’s not one husband who’s like, what them? How do we do? Well, you said we could.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, but I mean, even the energy thing that we just discussed, I mean, it’s a lie. Like here we have this stupid debate going on about renewables and fossil fuels. And it’s like, I just told you the answer. It’s right here. It’s been here for years. Nobody’s acting on it, right? This is all a lie. It’s right here, you know, and nobody wants to talk about it. But keep the same debate going.

Daily Routines and Staying Grounded

TUCKER CARLSON: What is your daily regimen, if you don’t mind, if it’s not too personal? Like, what do you… You wake up and then you do what? Like, what are the steps that you take every day to remain grounded and sane and happy?

SHAWN RYAN: I pray a lot. When I wake up, I pray all the time, you know, and I don’t mean down on my knees. I just… I’m always looking for signs. I’m always trying to make sure that I’m doing the right thing and that I’m not doing interviews just for numbers and things like that. I mean, I look for good people with a good heart. Especially when I do something like a life story, you know, I’m looking for that guy that’s grinding that is not getting any traction with his business, who served the country and put him up.

I mean, in my daily routine, I wake up, I got a one year old and a three year old and I wake up and I have about three cups of tea and I play around with my kids and spend a lot of time on the phone. Unfortunately, because I’m getting all the incoming in the morning. Then I go into the office and I meet with everybody and do an interview, or I don’t do an interview and then I just go back home to my kids.

But you know, as far as staying grounded, I mean, I just keep in mind, like, hey, this all could go away in two seconds. I mean, who knows? Somebody could do a hit piece on me like they are right now, told you about it and it could all go away. Well, maybe a previous mistake that I made in life comes to light and they cancel me. And if they do it, I don’t care. I’ll hang out with my kids and my wife and live the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll move up here, get a spot in the woods and never see anybody again. But I just don’t take myself too seriously and I don’t buy my own hype. And that’s it.

Choosing Meaningful Content Over Numbers

TUCKER CARLSON: When you say you don’t put people on just for numbers. Everyone who has a public facing job understands what you’re saying. But for people who don’t, will you describe that a little more fully?

SHAWN RYAN: What do you mean?

TUCKER CARLSON: You pass on stories, you said, or pass on interviews if the only upside is just that it gets huge numbers.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I’m just not interested in it. If I see somebody go on the circuit, I’m just not interested because then I’m just doing the same stuff that everybody else is doing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

SHAWN RYAN: And I’ve canceled interviews, I’ve had people that I’ve been wanting to have on for a long time. And then I’ll pull up YouTube and there they are on the Tucker Carlson Show. And I’m like, hey, cancel that interview.

TUCKER CARLSON: I take your sloppy seconds with gratitude. I’m like, really? Shawn Ryan interviewed him? Book him.

SHAWN RYAN: No, I think it’s cool, but I just don’t want to. I mean, you’re a phenomenal interviewer and it’s… Well, what am I going to get out of this guy that Tucker didn’t or Megan didn’t?

TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t want to be part of someone’s publicity campaign either.

SHAWN RYAN: Exactly. You know, and I pride myself on being different, and I’ve set my whole business up to be different and as different as I can be. And so I just feed my own curiosity, and I look for people that I believe to be a positive influence on the world and a good role model for kids. I mean, I think the role model thing has gotten… It’s just horrible. I mean, who do kids have to look up to now?

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right.

SHAWN RYAN: And so that’s what I look for. Just good human beings with good values that are pumping some type of good in the world, whether that’s fighting evil or spreading the word or whatever, you know, and going against the grain. And I was brought up to always root for the underdog, and I do that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Most American impulse you can have. We were the underdog. This country was the underdog.

SHAWN RYAN: Yes, it was.

TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t ever want to be the overdog.

SHAWN RYAN: No, no.

Creating a Unique Podcast Environment

TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t be part of the machine. So how have you set your business up to be different?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean, when I got into podcasting, I didn’t even know if I wanted to do it.

TUCKER CARLSON: That was only five and a half years ago.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it was five and a half years ago in my attic. And I got tired of teaching tactics and shooting and stuff like that, so I tried a bunch of different things. And I looked at podcasts as a whole, and back then, everybody had the purple curtain behind them and all the little stuff in the middle of the table that means nothing to them other than Joe, you know, he’s got his stuff on the middle of the table now everybody’s got theirs on the middle of the table.

And so I set it up to be different. I wanted a relaxed environment. I didn’t want any equipment in the shots. I mean, you’ve been there. You melt into that room, and it’s very disarming. There’s a lot of history there from people that share similar values and on display for everybody to see.

TUCKER CARLSON: You like it. That’s what I noticed about your studio, you made it a space that you’re comfortable in and it reflects what you think and it reflects the life that you’ve lived and the people that you love. It’s not, it’s the opposite of generic.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, no, it’s, I really, it’s very noticeable.

Creating a Successful Podcast Through Humility

SHAWN RYAN: But nobody really back then had good camera aesthetics. And so I saw David Letterman’s “My Next Guest” on Netflix and I really liked the way it looked with the camera movements and the shots that they had. And I said, I want to make that, but in my own way and on a two thousand dollar budget. And so I taught myself how to film, taught myself how to edit, taught my wife how to film, taught myself how to run sound.

I wanted an environment that looked really good on camera that disarmed people. I noticed, especially in where I come from in the SEAL teams, very egocentric community. And nobody can just make the interview about the guests. They have to make it about themselves and insert their own experiences. “I killed Bin Laden. Oh cool. I killed this person.” And it’s like, it’s not about you, man. It’s about them.

So I would totally keep my own experiences out of the interview and I would compliment people instead of challenging them all the time. I’ll compliment like, “Wow, that’s like you just made it into Delta. That’s like the premier special ops group in the entire world. I mean, how did that feel? That’s amazing.” And when you compliment somebody in a world that’s extremely competitive, it’s like, “Oh, like this guy’s different. Thank you for letting me talk and actually complimenting me on my service.”

TUCKER CARLSON: How do… Where did that insight come from?

SHAWN RYAN: Therapy. I did a lot of therapy when I quit contracting for CIA.

TUCKER CARLSON: I always think of therapy as making people more self-involved, but that sounds like whoever you had in therapy sounds like was encouraging you to become less about yourself.

SHAWN RYAN: They don’t talk. I mean, with my therapist it was, I did all the talking and I would wind up working my own problems out in my head and she would just guide me, you know, and so I took that model and brought it to my show and it just worked.

TUCKER CARLSON: But it sounds like you concluded that humility, focusing on other people, that was the key.

SHAWN RYAN: I would say you’re exactly right.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know that. That’s an obvious conclusion. Most people don’t seem to reach that conclusion really, judging from… I was in the airport. I don’t go to the airport very much, but I was there yesterday and listening to two people have a “conversation” where each one was just waiting for the other one to stop talking before talking at the person. It was like not one person ever said, “Really? How… Really how interesting.” And I feel like that’s the experience that people have. Not just watching podcasts, but like on day to day. People don’t listen.

The Value of Admitting What You Don’t Know

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. I mean, and I guess there is one other thing. I’m not afraid to say that I don’t know what we’re talking about. You get a lot of people, they trap themselves.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: And it’s like I told you about what I know about AI, and that’s the extent of it. If we’re going to go deeper, I don’t know what I’m talking about, so I’m not going to pretend like I know what I’m talking about. To make it look like I’m the resident expert, because the resident experts are going to call you completely full of it.

TUCKER CARLSON: And so I don’t like pretending you don’t have prostate cancer. Like in the end, people…

SHAWN RYAN: But I mean, it’s okay to not know everything, of course. And so many people fall into the trap, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, I have to… Shit. They just asked me a question I’m not an expert on. I have to come up with something.” And I have like no shame and just going, “Yeah, I don’t. I don’t even know what that word means that you just said. Could you please explain that?” And I think there’s a lot of people like me that they don’t understand maybe the vocabulary.

TUCKER CARLSON: There aren’t a lot of people who will admit it. Actually. There aren’t that many people.

SHAWN RYAN: Everybody’s a genius. Everybody’s a tough guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: But playing a role that they know is fake.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it’s sad. Sad to watch it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s a kind of slavery too. I mean, you’re not free when you’re pretending to be something you’re not.

Building a Studio and Company Culture

TUCKER CARLSON: So you showed me something last night. Speaking of how you run your business differently than I thought was like, the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. You’re building a new studio. You totally lost control and just totally lost control. I would say as someone who has a studio, it’s like the craziest thing. It’s the coolest thing. Big piece of property, Bass pond, shooting range, like, beautifully designed. It’s just super cool. But at the construction phase on the… Well, you explain how you built it. That’s different.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh. So, I mean, like I was saying last night, I’m really big on company culture. And like I had mentioned earlier, my people that work for me and with me are like a second family to me, and I take on their burdens and I help them through life, and I want to give them the best experience that I can, too. I mean, they work their asses off.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: And so I want them to be proud of where they work, and I want them to enjoy being at work. And so there’s a wellness center. It’s… You got to see it, man. When it’s done, it’s super top of the line. Very, very nice. And they’ll be able to hunt out there, they’ll be able to fish out there, they’ll be able to shoot out there. They’ll be able to work out out there. I want them to bring their families in for lunch. I want that environment so that they’re proud of where they work. They want to work there, and they’re the best paid people in the business. I don’t have a big team, but I have an amazing team.

TUCKER CARLSON: You want them to bring their families for lunch?

SHAWN RYAN: Hell, yeah, man.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the coolest.

SHAWN RYAN: Absolutely. And on top of just creating that environment, I mean, this is a cutthroat business, unfortunately. And you see people jumping from camp to camp. I’ve never lost somebody that said, “Hey, I’m going to Tucker’s. Hey, I’m going to the Daily Wire. Hey, I’m going here. I’m going there.” They don’t want to be anywhere else.

TUCKER CARLSON: You haven’t lost anyone to the Daily Wire.

SHAWN RYAN: I haven’t lost anybody to anything.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m such a…

SHAWN RYAN: We get a lot of people from the Daily Wire wanting to work here, though.

Faith and Building a Foundation

TUCKER CARLSON: You put Bibles under the foundation?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, we put… So, on top of that, my whole team is really into scripture and we’re all very like minded and I’d mentioned before, I feel like I’m just a conduit. And I do live a lot of my life in paranoia at times. And so He is the only protection. So, yeah, we put a Bible in every corner of the foundation. We wrote scripture on every single exterior stud in that building.

TUCKER CARLSON: For protection, I saw Jeremy, or pretty sure had a picture he showed me last night of… It’s a shot down the wall and the studs are still visible. And each one has like, I read three from Ephesians, but like long quotes from the New Testament.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, everybody on the team had a part in that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Who thought of that?

SHAWN RYAN: Me. I went to a party once and the people at the party who hosted the party showed me their house and told me that they had done that. And I was like, that they had written scripture on every stud and I was like, “Oh man, that is awesome. I’m doing that.” Everything that we build from now on will have that. That is the coolest.

Spiritual Journey

TUCKER CARLSON: So you say you feel like a conduit. How do you receive instructions?

SHAWN RYAN: God. I think God speaks to you through God. And I think the signs are always there, but a lot of us are too busy and wrapped up in our own stuff to see them.

For example, like the Georgescu interview was… I was nervous about that one, because I dug into it and I was like, “I don’t know if this guy is a Russian asset. I don’t know if this is a good idea. I don’t want to be on the wrong team here. I don’t want to fall victim to propagandizing my show, not even realizing it.” And the whole journey there, I was worried about it.

And without going into it, I mean, my journey to Christ was through signs that slapped me right in the face. And 444 is a big number to me.

TUCKER CARLSON: 444.

SHAWN RYAN: 444 is a huge number to me. So I had this experience in Sedona where I came to Christ and three things happened to me all within, very profound things in about 15 minutes the last day I was there.

When I got home, I had called somewhat of a spiritual mentor to me. His name’s Eddie Penney. And I called him at midnight when I got back, and I was like, “Hey, this happened to me. I don’t know what this means, but I think I need to lean into Jesus a little bit here.” And that’s not something I’ve done in probably the past 20 years.

And so he started going on about stuff with demonic attacks now that I’ve shown a side. And he goes, “Man, a lot of people have been praying for this to happen.” And I’m like, “Well, what do you mean? What? Why? Who is what? What? What the hell is happening?” And then he started talking about guardian angels and all this other stuff.

And I had a meeting scheduled at noon with my IT guy, who is a devout Catholic. And I call him up and I think we’re going to be talking about website stuff and IT crap. And he has the exact same conversation with me, not even knowing that I’d had this experience yet. Doesn’t know Eddie. I mean, he is an IT guy and Eddie is a former development group guy. There’s no connection. Has the exact same conversation.

TUCKER CARLSON: You said to find a former what group guy?

SHAWN RYAN: Team Six.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And ever since I had Eddie on and he shared his testimony, I released an episode every Christmas. That’s when I kicked the show off, was Christmas. And I was like, “Man, this testimony is so awesome. I think this should be the Christmas episode.”

So every single person that came on the show for probably the next year and a half at least, had brought up God or the Bible or Christ. And it was like a turning point in my podcast. And I don’t push Christianity on people. It would just organically come up in the conversation. And so I always thought, like, maybe God’s working through my show or something.

But anyway, after all this stuff happened in Sedona, which was mind blowing to me, I have this conversation with Adam my IT guy. And he’s talking about guardian angels. And I go home for a late lunch that day with my wife and kids, and I’m driving back to the studio and I look at the clock and it’s 4:44. I look at the gas thing and it says 444 miles left to empty. And it’s 4 hours and 44 minutes after my conversation with my IT guy.

So I’m driving and I call up my social media manager. I’m like, “Hey, look up 444. I want to know what it means. Something just happened.”

TUCKER CARLSON: I love how open you are to this.

SHAWN RYAN: He looks it up and you know what it is?

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

Guardian Angels and Divine Signs

SHAWN RYAN: It means your Guardian Angels want to know that they’re watching over you. Right after we just had a discussion 4 hours and 44 minutes prior about Guardian Angels.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s wild.

SHAWN RYAN: And so then I was like, okay, like, that’s a sign. At that time, I had released the Brian Montgomery interview about sex trafficking, which is a whole other debacle that the FBI started getting involved in. And I had interviewed Tyler Andrew Vargas, which was the young Marine who survived the Abbey Gay bombing. He lost his leg and his arm, and nobody would talk to him because it made the Biden administration look so bad.

We were fighting YouTube about it. And he had all this real footage from his camera about the guy that blew up the gate that they should have killed. Anyways, he told me that Good Morning America had interviewed him for seven hours and only released five seconds of the interview.

Here’s another God thing, man. So having breakfast, my team really wanted to get Tyler on, and I was like, every media outlet in the world is probably trying to talk to this guy right now because he’s the only living eyewitness. And I’m like, we’re never going to get him. He’ll probably wind up on Tucker or Rogan or, you know. And I was like, fine, I’ll shoot him a message on Instagram. So I shoot him a message immediately. He’s like, yep, I’m in. Let’s do it.

I had breakfast with him before the interview, and at breakfast, he’s sitting there with his fiancé, and he goes, man, he started tearing up. And he goes, “Man, I have interviewed with so many mainstream media outlets, and they’re all full of shit, and nobody will tell the truth and nobody will release what I tell them. Congress didn’t pay attention when I testified in front of them.” And he goes, “I literally looked at my fiancé and I’m like, man, I just wish the Shawn Ryan guy would just reach out.” And he goes, “I pulled my phone up and you had just messaged me. It was the first thing I saw.” And he goes, “There. It was like God answered me, right there in that moment.” And I was like, holy. Like, that’s not a coincidence. There are no coincidences. I don’t believe in coincidences anymore.

But so I get these signs all the time, or if I feel like I should be questioning something, he’ll throw out a sign. Like the Georgescu interview. Me and Jeremy are sitting at the airport and I’m telling them, like, I don’t know about this. It’s the first time I had ever brought somebody to do an overwatch for me because I was nervous, you know, I was like, oh, I don’t know if we should be doing this. We’re with NATO. We should be bringing a security guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: NATO, they’re just peacekeepers.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, right. Just light our building.

TUCKER CARLSON: Come on. Relax, relax.

SHAWN RYAN: They’re on a NATO base in Europe.

TUCKER CARLSON: And the tranny army.

Signs and Truth

SHAWN RYAN: But anyways, sometimes I just tweet out something that pops in my head, right? So I tweeted out, “The truth is like a lion, you don’t have to defend it. Set it free and it’ll defend itself.” I tweeted that out.

TUCKER CARLSON: I like that.

SHAWN RYAN: And I had this debacle going on in my head. Like, should I be doing this? Like, am I doing this for the right reason? Is this guy… does he need to be heard, or is he just some type of a Russian shill? Walk out of the lounge. This is all, I don’t know, five minutes. And this woman comes around the corner and she has this huge lion head on her shirt. Like this big sequined, glittery lion head. And that’s what was in my head and what I had just tweeted out.

And to me, I mean, probably everybody will call me crazy, but to me, I’m like, that’s the sign that I needed to see. Like, I just articulated this. And you don’t see too many people running around the airport with a big lion head on their shirt. Like a massive lion head.

TUCKER CARLSON: My reaction is not that you’re crazy. My reaction is I need to get off my phone sufficient to see signs. They’re all around me.

SHAWN RYAN: They’re everywhere.

TUCKER CARLSON: I agree with you completely. And I feel like the phone is an instrument of distraction and evil. Really, though, I couldn’t live without it. I need it for my job. It allows me to live where I want and talk to my wife and children and all that. They’re upsides. But in general, I feel like I miss everything. If a sign happened, it would really have to come by text message or I wouldn’t see it.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, well, I hope you do that.

Digital Boundaries

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Are you self-consciously not on your phone? Sometimes, yeah. What’s your phone regimen?

SHAWN RYAN: 6:00PM it goes on airplane mode.

TUCKER CARLSON: 6:00PM? You’re not on your phone after 6:00PM other than…

SHAWN RYAN: Other than if somebody on my team texts me. That’s it. And they would text for an emergency. It’s not airplane mode. It’s like… I don’t know, whatever.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like this. Whatever. I don’t know what it is either, but it screens out.

SHAWN RYAN: Nothing comes to me, except my assistant Jeremy and family and so I don’t mess around on the phone after 6:00PM.

TUCKER CARLSON: 6:00PM and it’s like 1985 life.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, you know, sometimes it happens, you know, if I’m working late or something. And I’m always working. But I mean, I don’t mess around on social media. You know, half the texts I get are just people asking for favors anyways, so.

TUCKER CARLSON: Only half?

SHAWN RYAN: Probably more.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, more.

SHAWN RYAN: All my friends I haven’t talked to.

Success and Staying Grounded

TUCKER CARLSON: Five and a half years is a very short period of time to become as successful as you have.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I’m not complimenting you. I’m saying I’m surprised you’re not crazier because that’s a big change. That’s a big, big change.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Short period of time. Don’t you think?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I think, yeah, it’s been a huge change. But, you know, I mean, it’s just… we’re all just humans and some people have a… I mean, like I said, man, I just don’t take myself too seriously and none of this really gets to me. It could all be taken away at a moment’s notice and I’m ready to give it back. And I’m just… all I’m doing is trying to do good, you know.

So when I meet people like you or some of the other people that have been on the show, I mean, there is an aspect like… I can’t believe I’m like having dinner with Tucker right now. This is so weird. Like, people would kill to do this, but in the end, I mean, you’re just like me, man. Eat, sleep, that’s it. And I take that approach with everybody I meet. There’s nothing… Sorry, Tucker. I love you, but no trust.

TUCKER CARLSON: You couldn’t be… Yeah. I’ve always thought it’s very easy to get perspective on your life. If you can see yourself kind of clearly, it’s very hard to mistake yourself for Jesus if you’re, like, honest. Do you know what I mean?

SHAWN RYAN: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I really look down on people who have delusions.

SHAWN RYAN: We’re just people, man.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, that’s for sure.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s sad to watch power get to people’s heads. It’s really a shame.

TUCKER CARLSON: So what steps do you take to keep yourself pure of heart? I noticed you haven’t been in DC, like, every week.

SHAWN RYAN: I hate DC.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s where all the power is.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, well, I’m not interested in power.

TUCKER CARLSON: Don’t you want to rush toward it like a bug light?

SHAWN RYAN: No. I’ve been asked to run for something, but I just have no interest in it.

Goals and Purpose

TUCKER CARLSON: What are your goals at this point?

SHAWN RYAN: My goals are to… whenever I exit this, I want my family to be set for generations. I want my team to be set for generations. I want to continue to help them. And I just want to show that there’s a lot of us out there that think on the same page, regardless of what the media says.

And I think I am a… sounds weird talking about myself like this, but I think I am… for whatever reason, I think I am just the average, uneducated, no college degree guy in the country that can talk to people.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wait, you don’t have a college degree?

SHAWN RYAN: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I wish I’d known that before I set up this interview, but I don’t. Wow. Wow.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m just an average guy that has a hard time understanding stuff, and I don’t let my ego get in the way. I don’t pretend like I know what I don’t know. And if I don’t understand, then I ask questions. And it helps. Everybody that watches my show understands something because it’s dumbed down to a level that the majority of America can digest and comprehend.

TUCKER CARLSON: You listen carefully. Having gone on your show, I think that’s the key. You listen very carefully. Most people do not do that. So you don’t go to D.C. because you think it’s disgusting. You think power corrupts. It doesn’t just enhance.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, it’s also like, none of these people will be talking to me if I didn’t have a show, obviously. So it’s… I don’t know, man. I just don’t like it.

Political Interviews

TUCKER CARLSON: I was amazed to find out. I don’t know if it’s public, but you came very close to booking Kamala Harris. How’d that come about?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean, who was the first candidate? I think was either DeSantis, I think now DeSantis wasn’t in studio, and it’s the only Zoom interview I’ve ever done.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’d you think of him?

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, as far as, like, a person, I didn’t… it was very… it was like 15 minutes, man. So I don’t have a gauge. I like a lot of the stuff that he’s done down in Florida, pretty much all of it. That I know of. I don’t know everything, but I had said at the beginning, I’ll interview any presidential candidate. I don’t care what side they’re on. I’m not going to blast you.

But I think it’s important that people know who that person is, whether we talk about politics or not. Like the RFK, we talked about his heroin addiction and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, it gives you a little more background on what… how they grew up, what their values are as a person, not just some soundbite, you know, that’s fed to them. And so I wanted to interview people on the other side of the fence, too. And I really wanted Kamala to come on. And so I think it’s Kamala, whatever.

TUCKER CARLSON: And as it gets racist, you just call it Kamala.

Discussing Potential Interview with Kamala Harris

SHAWN RYAN: But so we got in touch with her camp. We didn’t hear anything. We did a couple of press releases just to maybe pressure her a little bit. And she took it seriously. I was told she watched—she spent the night going through particular interviews and liked the way that I interviewed and liked my style, and she wanted to do it.

They asked what I wanted to talk about, and I said we should definitely talk about the Afghan withdrawal and the Taliban funding. I pretty much initiated that entire conversation that developed into what it is with me and my guests, and they didn’t want to talk about that. I said, well, it’s going to look bad on me if I don’t talk about that, because I’ve been hammering this damn thing for over a year now.

But I was like, all right, what do you want to talk about? Do you want to talk about national security? They asked what I disagreed with her most on. I told them it was the gender stuff with kids. That was my biggest thing. You know, I don’t really care about adults that do it, but you can’t give a kid the keys to do that at that age. Eight years old? I mean, eight years old. Was it Washington? That’s like, the state will come in and take your kid from you if you don’t do it if they want to. I mean, what is—why even have parents at that point?

Sure, they don’t want us to have parents, but anyway, I said that, and they were like… It got to the point where I just said, look, I don’t even care. I was like, how about you just give me the outline and we’ll do it that way. I don’t care. I know how to do an interview, and I’ll make it work, and I’ll find my groove, and whatever you give me, I’m confident in my abilities. And they were going to do it. And then the Brett Baier interview came out with her, and it just fell off the map. Just quit talking to us.

TUCKER CARLSON: Asked her, like, a single question she didn’t feel like answering.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what it was.

TUCKER CARLSON: How do you think it would have gone?

SHAWN RYAN: I think it would have gone—no matter what they handed me for the outline or if I created my own outline—that the questions would have been blaming Trump for everything. Even if it had nothing to do with the question, I think it would have just been, Trump did this, Trump did that. What about Trump? Trump, Trump, Trump. You know, and I don’t think I would have gotten any of her views or solutions or initiatives or anything. I think it would all have been just flipped around and pointed back at Trump.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think it’s possible there would have been, like, a spark of warmth between the two of you?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I do.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Because, I mean, no matter who it is, I’m going to treat the guests with respect. And I think that’s—you know, on top of that, do I like her? Do I agree with anything that she did? No. But I also know that there’s an aspect of media that I’m probably not getting the full picture, and so I want to hear them out.

TUCKER CARLSON: Good for you.

SHAWN RYAN: But it was never going to be like a gotcha or a combative interview. You know, I wouldn’t have done that. I’ve never done that. I’ll challenge people on stuff, but I’m not going to get into some type of a bickering contest. And you know why? Because that’s just not who I am.

TUCKER CARLSON: You had a pretty ferocious job before. We had enough of that.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

Interview Philosophy and Trump Experience

TUCKER CARLSON: Is there anyone you wouldn’t interview?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, there’s people I wouldn’t interview. I don’t interview people that—I mean, kind of said it earlier—I don’t interview people that are on the circuit. I don’t really give a shit about your new book that’s coming out. I don’t care. There’s plenty of other podcasts that can do that.

What I look for other than that, because that’s different—those aren’t my values that we obviously differ on probably just about everything—I just look for good people that are doing something in the world that aren’t getting recognition or aren’t getting traction, and I think would be a good role model. That’s who I bring on the show. And that’s one of the things I’m good at, is being able to take somebody who nobody’s ever heard of, ever, and people tune in. People will tune in because it’s fresh material, it’s good people doing good things, and they finally get the exposure that they needed to actually get some type of traction.

TUCKER CARLSON: What, you interviewed Trump for hours, I think. How long was that?

SHAWN RYAN: One hour.

TUCKER CARLSON: One hour?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. A little over. He was like, I don’t know, 70 minutes or something.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’d you think of him?

SHAWN RYAN: I really liked him. I wasn’t expecting him to be as personal as he was. He met everybody on my team and made it a point to—it wasn’t like shaking somebody’s hand and talking to his assistant or anything, it was direct eye contact. Wanted to meet the entire team. There were three NFL stars in there that came in to meet him. And as soon as I walked in the room, he didn’t care about them. Came right over, introduced himself. I mean, very personable.

And then after the interview, sat down in a room and talked with us, and I was happy, and I was more happy that he treated my team with respect because, you know, you see a lot of people, they’re like, “oh, you’re just the fucking help.” And it’s like, no, that’s who makes the whole thing—so I really appreciated that. You never really know what you’re going to get with—

Thoughts on the Trump Administration

TUCKER CARLSON: How do you think the administration is going so far? How about this?

SHAWN RYAN: I think there’s some really—

TUCKER CARLSON: Look, what do you like, what don’t you like?

SHAWN RYAN: I like that they got rid of the DEI stuff.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I think that was low hanging fruit. I think that they fixed it really quick. I don’t think we need to harp on it anymore and let’s move on. And I just interviewed Tom Homan. What he’s done with the border seems really impressive to me. So I’m really happy about those things. I’m not happy that the Epstein files have not come to fruition yet.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m sure they’re coming out any day now, wouldn’t you think?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I won’t hold my breath. But I think that we still need a lot of work, a lot of work. And I am losing hope.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why? What specifically makes you feel hopeless?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, man. I mean, who’s controlling our country and the influences and why haven’t we seen these things? And it makes me skeptical, you know, and I don’t hear—some of this is I may just not know, because I don’t pretend to know everything that’s going on and I don’t put the time in that I would need to figure it all out. But there’s things like the energy grid and it’s like, man, we really need to do something with our grid like yesterday.

TUCKER CARLSON: And, but is that more important than bombing Iran?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah, it is. And that stuff—I want to know what the real motivations are. And I love everything he says and the majority of everything that he says. But I’d like to see the Ukraine-Russia thing finally come to an end. And I like what they’ve done with Doha. I think that maybe they’ve got a little bit more than they need to. But you know, there’s always human error with everything.

But, I’m going to get blasted for this. What I see is all these negotiations going on in the Middle East and then I don’t know when these buildings were approved or when these deals got done, but then I also see like, oh, there’s a brand new Hotel going up in Dubai or Abu Dhabi and another one going up in Doha, I think. And I’m like, did these just get done also with the deals that just happened over there or was this earlier? You would probably know.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I don’t know.

SHAWN RYAN: You don’t.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve not made $1 in the Middle East. Not one.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean, you’re a lot more on the inside than I am.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no. I’m just a visitor and a traveler and a watcher. But I don’t—

SHAWN RYAN: That stuff kind of worries me. You know, it’s—

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it seems like corruption. Yeah.

The Loss of Critical Thinking

SHAWN RYAN: But you know what bothers me more than any of this? That people have just lost the ability to think critically. And if you do say something about the tariffs or is it Greenland or Iceland, I can’t even remember. Or whatever.

TUCKER CARLSON: The big one.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. If you throw any criticism towards anybody that is in a position of power—I mean, the US has just become so tribal now and you cannot criticize or give any constructive criticism to what’s happening without getting blasted. It’s sad. It’s like, man, you guys have 100% lost all critical thinking skills. You’re not thinking on your own and you are given the values that you align with, you’re no longer going off the way you were raised or what’s true to you as a person.

I think a lot of people don’t even know what that is anymore. And they’re just told they align with a tribe. Whatever that tribe says they’re going to do, they’re going to say they’re going to follow. And that’s sad. And I think that that could resemble the beginning of the end.

TUCKER CARLSON: I agree with every word. And I can’t help but note because I was there for it at the beginning of the Internet. We were told that all of this information would make us better informed and would increase our critical thinking abilities and that people wouldn’t have to follow the propaganda because they would have all the information. And the opposite has turned out to be true. People seem much easier to control than ever before.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that makes me sad. So back to the heaviest thing I think you’ve said, which is that you don’t believe that anything’s real. And again, I think most people can understand where you’re coming from when you say that. One of the effects of that is to make everyone really, really paranoid when it turns out that most of the things derided as conspiracy theories are real. Like, clearly the explanation for 9/11 is silly. Clearly, you know, and we’re never going to find out any of this stuff. And so I think a reasonable person concludes, like, man, there’s a lot going on I don’t get. There’s a lot of secret stuff. There are a lot of actual conspiracies.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s everything, though. Like, I’m not—I take a minute to process. And so when you’re talking about what’s fake, and I brought up Covid and something else that everybody already knows. But when you look at the elections, not just in the U.S., but let’s look elsewhere. Let’s look at Romania and what happened there, and they just yanked this guy. Yep, you’re done. Marie Le Pen. I mean, we were close to interviewing—

TUCKER CARLSON: Her, and in fact, I think we were in Paris at the same time, but we were—

Shawn Ryan on Global Election Manipulation

SHAWN RYAN: And when you see that, it’s just like, holy shit. Like, this is spreading. Or maybe it’s not spreading. Maybe it’s just always been like this. I don’t know. But, you know, obviously those elections are phony, and the EU’s getting involved, and France is getting involved and Romania is getting involved, and it’s like, holy shit, man. Like everything seems to be engineered. The guy in Bolsonaro, in Brazil, another example, you know. It’s the Ministry of Truth. I don’t even know if that’s still a thing. But it’s like the what? The Ministry of Truth? You fucking kidding me?

TUCKER CARLSON: The 2020 election? I mean, I was kind of skeptical. I was there right in the middle of it, and I thought, well, you know, if there’s evidence it was stolen, I’ll believe it, of course, but I don’t see any evidence or enough evidence to say that conclusively. And then the last five years, traveling around, seeing other elections, watching our country more carefully, it’s like, that was totally fake. I can say that, I think, with confidence now.

But here’s my point. You, who I do think are one of the rare people just, like, committed to saying what you think is true, committed to remaining independent, right or wrong. Like, you don’t want to be influenced, you want to reach your own conclusions and you want to be awake enough to see signs from God. And I admire all that. But now you are supposedly part of the conspiracy. Yeah, because you were a CIA contractor. So, like, what does that mean, to be a CIA contractor? How did you get that gig? What did it entail? Are you still in touch with headquarters trying to subvert democracy?

From Navy SEAL to CIA Contractor

SHAWN RYAN: No, I wasn’t involved in any of those operations. No. I mean, look, I mean, the road… I left the SEAL teams to start business and failed miserably. I wanted to do… Funny, I actually read Donald Trump’s book in Guantanamo Bay when we were doing some stuff in Haiti back in 2004, and it was his book, “How to Get Rich.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Wait, you read Donald Trump’s book in Guantanamo Bay?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, in 2004. And I think now, whatever, somewhere around there. And I read that book and I had, I mean, I was on like a mini deployment. We were just, we were in Panama doing some stuff with the Panamanian special ops guys. And the Haiti thing popped off that when we yanked Aristide out of there. And then we were going on the real deployment. And so before I even really deployed in the SEAL teams, I decided this isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, at least for me. And so I’m just going to do my time here.

TUCKER CARLSON: What was disappointing about it?

SHAWN RYAN: There wasn’t enough combat.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really? You wind up on a SEAL team in the middle of two wars and there wasn’t enough combat for you?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I didn’t see near as much as a lot of guys. I saw a decent amount, but. But, you know, I went in to like do that job and, you know, wanted to do it all the time and I was not doing it all the time. And so I left.

TUCKER CARLSON: You wind up on the SEAL team, so you’re like, kind of bored.

SHAWN RYAN: But it just, it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. And then I had an opportunity to screen. Not saying I would have made it, not saying I wouldn’t have, but had an opportunity. Everybody gets the opportunity to screen for Team Six if they want it. And I just, I was like, well, that’s, you know, that’s the next level, but it’s another five year commitment if I do it. And what if it’s the same that I have here with just a bigger budget with more cool toys.

And so I decided I’m going to get out and be the next Donald Trump and businessman. And got out, started a small real estate thing. Failed horribly.

TUCKER CARLSON: Where was it?

SHAWN RYAN: St. Louis, Missouri.

TUCKER CARLSON: And went to do real estate in St. Louis.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, my family’s from there.

TUCKER CARLSON: So what, South Florida wasn’t available at the time or something?

From Failed Business to Overseas Contracting

SHAWN RYAN: Sweet home. And just in time for Ferguson. Actually got a great picture of me in Ferguson with the Molotov cocktail. But as a joke after it happened. But anyways. And so then my dad and I were going to actually start a Jimmy John’s franchise. And I didn’t grow up with money and we needed some, so I said, hey. I said I would never do this, but overseas contracting is a big thing and it’s paying pretty good. So how about if I just do that? I’ll get the money that we need to start it and then I’ll quit and we’ll start that venture.

TUCKER CARLSON: You went overseas as a contractor to pay for a Jimmy John’s franchise?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Amazing.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And then 2008 hit.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you know Jimmy John, by the way?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I met him recently. Great guy. I love talking to him.

TUCKER CARLSON: Good dude.

SHAWN RYAN: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: At the Elk party, I think you met him, actually.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we found out a couple times. I really like that guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you tell him that you went by… You became a military contractor so you could pay for one of his franchises?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, but that didn’t happen.

TUCKER CARLSON: Where did you go? What do you mean? Your first… When you first left to do overseas.

SHAWN RYAN: So where I first went, I did a… Because I didn’t understand exactly how contractors… I didn’t know the game.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And so there are different tiers of contracting and they have, they take your background and there’s all these different… You know, there’s the DEA contract, there’s the ATF contract or not ATF. Excuse me, there’s the agency, the NSA, the State Department. There’s just all kinds of contracts that you can jump on.

And I had no idea what I was doing. I thought it was all like one tiered system. And so I threw my name in this kind of recruiting thing. And they came back. There was a company called Armor Group out of UK and they picked me up first. And I was like, all right, well, whatever. This seems pretty low level, but they wanted to make me like a guy in charge because of my background. And I was like, all right, fine, I’ll go do this.

So I went and did the tryout. It was complete joke. And then got to Afghanistan, and they put me at the front gate of the embassy. And I lasted about a week. And I was like, hey, give me a flight home. I’m out of here.

TUCKER CARLSON: You thought you were boarding the seals?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And, well, I mean, then that’s where all the VBIDs go off, the car bombs. So I was like, no, I’m not doing this. And went home and got into a fire academy. Didn’t like it.

TUCKER CARLSON: You mean to be a fireman, to be…

Joining Blackwater

SHAWN RYAN: A firefighter, because I really missed the camaraderie. And then a friend of mine that I served in Afghanistan with called me up and said, hey, there’s a contract that Blackwater has, and I think you should try out for it. And I was like, no, I’m not doing it. I just did a quick pump. I hated it. I was with a bunch of guys that don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Some of these people were like, Bank of America security guards. I was like, this is crazy.

And he goes, no. He’s like, hey. He’s like, everybody on this contract has to be from Special Ops. It’s a black contract. I can’t tell you who it’s for, but just give me your resume, and I’m going to try to get you in. And so I was like, all right, fine. Gave it to him, and then got a call from Blackwater and just told me where and when. Where to be and what to bring.

TUCKER CARLSON: What did they want you to bring?

SHAWN RYAN: It was just, you know, you need these type of clothes, you need this type of equipment, and show up here, go all the way to the back to the black side, and it’ll be a month long course, if you make it. And so I showed up and did the vetting course at Blackwater.

TUCKER CARLSON: At Blackwater, North Carolina?

SHAWN RYAN: Yep.

TUCKER CARLSON: And what do you think of the vetting course?

SHAWN RYAN: It was tough.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it was tough.

TUCKER CARLSON: Having been through BUDs, you thought it was tough?

SHAWN RYAN: It wasn’t tough like that. It wasn’t like you have to prove… Well, you do have to prove yourself. It wasn’t like they’re not yelling at you and screaming and kicking you around and all that kind of shit. It is a demonstration of your skills. And if you cannot demonstrate your skills to the highest level, then you go home.

Shooting skills, driving skills, close quarters combat. That’s entering a room and clearing buildings and rooms and stuff, working with the team. How do you integrate in with all these other special ops guys? And so there’s a lot that goes into it. A lot of, they put you in a lot of extremely stressful situations and you have to handle it flawlessly or you’ll be asked to leave. But the shooting qualifications were really tough.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

The Hooded Box Drill

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The shooting qualifications were really tough. And so is the CQB, the close quarters combat. So like one of the exercises they had this thing called the hooded box drill. And they basically put you in a room like this and they would tape a square and you have to stand in the square and they give you either a rifle or a pistol and they have like fake flashbangs going off, smoke, yelling, screaming, role players.

And they put a hood over your head on a string. So this hood goes over your head. You can’t see anything. It’s dark, there’s strobes, there’s all kinds of shit going on. You can hear like all these screams and all the stuff going on. And you are not allowed to leave the box. And so they set up the scenario and they lift the hood over your head and then you have to deal with the scenario.

So like I think the very first scenario, put the hood over my head, there’s all these people in there, I can hear them. And they lift the hood up on the string and there’s a guy like closer than for me to you right now with a gun, with a rifle. As soon as the hood goes up, he snaps my head. You’re wearing a helmet, but he snaps my head with the muzzle of his rifle. Would call it a muzzle snap and, or a muzzle strike. And it knocks me back.

And then there’s all these people in there that this guy’s armed, this guy’s unarmed. There’s a female over there with a burka on and you don’t know what’s underneath. And you got another guy with a person with a gun in their head. People are shooting at you. And you have to deal and process all that information. Not killing innocent, not killing unknown. And deal with the situation.

And then they call you back to your box, back to the box. And it’s very unemotional. They’re not like, hey, you could have done this better or why didn’t you do that? It’s either get the fuck out of here or we’re going to run a scenario and then you come back to the box and they put the hood back over your head and then lift the hood and you’re in a totally different scenario.

And it might be the next scenario they lift up. Nobody’s shooting at you, everybody’s calm or people are yelling and shooting their guns up in the air. And you have to figure out who’s a threat, who’s an unknown, who’s an innocent, who’s a blue helmet, which would be an asset of ours. You obviously can’t kill the asset. And so they run you through a number of scenarios. They’re doing that and a lot of people, you know, fail that.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you did not fail.

SHAWN RYAN: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you enjoy it?

Shawn Ryan’s Experience with CIA Contracting

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it was challenging. I like it. I like to be challenged. And I really like it. It’s really hard to put you in an environment that can be as stressful as what combat is. And when you’re in combat, the decision making has to be on point and very precise. And they did a great job of simulating that kind of stress that you’re going to deal with when it’s actually for real. I thought it was a great drill.

TUCKER CARLSON: What kind of guys were at the training facility?

SHAWN RYAN: All former SOF. So it was all SEALs, SF, Delta, DEV Group, a couple of Rangers, MARSOC, which is Marine Special Ops, Air Force CCT, Air Force PJs. I think that covers it.

TUCKER CARLSON: So highest, highest level that the US Military produces.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And you had to have that background just to be able to try out for this specific contract.

TUCKER CARLSON: What was the contract?

SHAWN RYAN: That was the, they called it the OGA contract, which was the CIA contract.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s OGA stand for?

SHAWN RYAN: Other Government Agency.

TUCKER CARLSON: So then what. So you get it. So are you still thinking about Jimmy John’s at this point or has the box drill just wiped that from your memory?

SHAWN RYAN: No, no, still thinking about it. But. So yeah. So then at the end you find out that it is for CIA and you’d already had your new clearances done and they give you dates, kick out the door.

TUCKER CARLSON: How long was the commitment and where did you go?

SHAWN RYAN: There’s no commitment, at least not that I remember. But first trip was to Kabul, Afghanistan. And you can do kind of, I mean Blackwater I think had 60 day minimum deployments, so you could do up to maybe 100 something days. And so some guys go and they do 100 something days, they come home for a week, and then they’re right back out. And there’s guys that do 60 on, 60 off. And so you just kind of come up with your cadence and go.

CIA Operations in Conflict Zones

TUCKER CARLSON: What were you doing for CIA in Kabul?

SHAWN RYAN: So when I started this, it was a protective unit. And so like the guys that fought in Benghazi, that’s the program that I was in. And so it kind of started off as a protective type detail for actual operatives because there is no, I mean, there is no Jason Bourne over there. That’s why they need people like me, because it takes two people to be a Jason Bourne.

And so we would help case officers plan their operations, plan their meets, stuff like that, conduct and then conduct surveillance, conduct counter surveillance, get them kind of whatever they need. And at the beginning it was. And I wasn’t really near the beginning. I mean, I think I started contracting in 2007. So the war had been going on for what, about six years?

And so towards the beginning, I guess, but you know, it was real pain in the ass because, I mean, at the beginning of the war, you had all these case officers coming in and they’re fresh out of school and they don’t really understand the environment that they’re in. They don’t think they need us until they need us, and then they’re screaming for us. But a lot of case officers and chiefs of station and deputy chiefs of station, that would be the head guy and head CIA in country, they kind of saw us as a hindrance to their operations until shit started happening like Benghazi cost a lot of these tragic events that happened.

And then every once in a while you’d get like a really good—sorry, so let’s backtrack a little more. So you get a lot of these and then you get the old timers that are coming in from the Cold War, and they’re used to working in a semi permissive environment or a permissive environment where they don’t need that kind of shit. They can just go and meet their assets and drink their coffee.

TUCKER CARLSON: They were in Vienna in the 70s.

SHAWN RYAN: Exactly, exactly those types. And then they go to Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, you know, all these type of places. And they bring that mindset with them and it’s like, hey, bud, that shit isn’t going to work here. So these people hate you.

But every once in a while you’d get a guy who was a retired Green Beret or a retired special operations Marine or a SEAL or whoever. And they would look at the program that I was in, and they would realize, like, these guys are all special ops. Like, they have a lot of capability that we’re not utilizing them for. And so then things started getting added to the plate. You know, they’re like, hey, could you guys do X, Y or Z? And we’re like, oh, yeah, we can do all of that. We just. You guys just don’t utilize that capability because I don’t think you realize that everybody here is extremely capable.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not mall cops.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, and so then they started using us for all kinds of stuff. And it was. Some places were interesting. Some places were an Xbox tour and. Meaning you just sit around and work out and play Xbox, but kind of depending where you’re at.

TUCKER CARLSON: So what was the most interesting.

SHAWN RYAN: How it all kind of works and some of the meetings that you sit in on and, you know, from a personal standpoint, I’ve always been fascinated with how people live in extreme poverty. And to see, like, just to see it, experience it, and be a part of it, try to blend into it, was both a challenge and very fascinating.

Nine Years with the CIA

TUCKER CARLSON: How long did you do this gig?

SHAWN RYAN: Right around. I think it was a little less than nine years.

TUCKER CARLSON: Nine years?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, it’s a long time.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah, I took a little break.

TUCKER CARLSON: What did you think of the CIA?

SHAWN RYAN: Once again? Same kind of thing that I thought of the SEAL teams. This isn’t what it is cracked up to be, but here’s an example. First day I get there and just trying to get the lay of the land. And so it’s. I don’t want to, like, talk too much because there are some very capable people.

Like, you get in the country, you don’t even do anything for the first two weeks. They’re like, here’s a map. Here’s some keys. Other keys over there so you don’t burn any of our cars. Take a different one every day. And you need to know this entire city, every back road, every road name, every venue, everything, everything about the city you need to know. And if you don’t know it in two weeks, then you’re out. And so you pair up with another guy that’s never been in country, and you just hit the roads and you know everything about that city.

TUCKER CARLSON: Kind of dangerous white guys driving around Kabul. Pretty obvious.

SHAWN RYAN: It is. I mean, it is. You don’t always dress up like white guys, but, you know in a place like Kabul or Baghdad, there’s diplomats from every country. There’s State Department, CIA, NSA, DEA, FBI, and the equivalent of that in every NATO country. Right. So there’s diplomats everywhere.

So sometimes your cover might be your diplomat and State Department. And sometimes depending on where you’re at, you might be dressed up in Muslim garb. And I mean, they trick the vehicles out so they look local. And so it’s, I mean, you can blend in. You’re not going to like, you’re not going to blend in running around the streets.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

SHAWN RYAN: But you’ll, at first glance, it’ll pass. And so that’s what you do. You learn everything, everything, everything about the city. I know a lot of these places better than I know my hometown.

TUCKER CARLSON: Nine years. So what countries were you working in over that period?

SHAWN RYAN: I spent the majority of my time in Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yemen Operations

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s Yemen like?

SHAWN RYAN: It’s my favorite place to work.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why?

SHAWN RYAN: Because it is the poorest country in the Middle East and probably the most dangerous. And it was, I just, I loved, I felt like I was doing more there than anywhere else. And it was, you had to take tradecraft extremely seriously. Very tribal country. The north is completely different than the south and you had to learn the cultures of both so that if you’re operating in the north that you know how to dress like the northerners do, you have to dress like how the southerners do down in Aden and try to blend in.

And it’s also like a spy game there. I mean, the Russians are there, the Iranians are there, the Chinese are there. And so you’re trying to figure out where they’re operating out of what their safe houses look like. Chinese are always super easy to identify because you would just be passing through Yemen and all these mud huts or safe houses or just houses. And you know, you drive by the Chinese compound every single time, they have 120 antennas on the roof. It’s like, nice one guys.

But it would get, I mean, so you’re conducting normal operations and dealing with terrorists and assets and all that kind of stuff, you know, for the main initiative. But on the other hand, you’re also having to conduct surveillance and counter surveillance from the Russians, from the Chinese, from the Iranians and any other key players that are in those countries and have to know who’s who and they’re spying on us and we’re spying on. It’s very complex.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you chew qat when you were there?

SHAWN RYAN: No, but I bought some.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you never tried it.

SHAWN RYAN: No, I never tried it.

TUCKER CARLSON: But the whole country is hooked on it, right?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, you would. I mean, it’s. Yeah, you would see these guys and just the whole population, and I mean, they would just be so zonked out on that. You see, I’m in a shitty taxi drive with they’re not even blinking and flies are landing on their eyes, and it’s like, holy, man. People live like this. This is crazy. And yeah, it was. You just never know who you’re gonna run into over there either. I mean.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you mean?

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, I was in semi. I would like other operators. Like, I’d see guys that are in safe houses from other units that are over there, and I would see, like, their call sign up on the board, and I’d be like, is that who I think it is? Oh, I haven’t seen him since BUDs when I was in the SEAL team, and I’d call over there and be like, hey, get up on the roof. I want to see him.

We’d have a phone conversation, looking at each other, waving from rooftop to rooftop like, what? Go over and meet them? What are you guys getting into tonight? And they’d be running operations and killing bad guys. And it was just very unique and complex to be able to work there.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you probably knew the Houthis existed before the rest of us.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you think of the Houthis?

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, I don’t really follow up on it too much these days, but, I mean, they took over that damn country, and in no time, I mean, they yanked the. I can’t remember if he was a president or a prime minister or whatever, but they took the whole country when we were there in, like, a matter of hours. And so they were really effective and woke up one day and all these new checkpoints are out. The guy got yanked out of the palace by the Houthis and totally different dynamic in less than 24 hours.

TUCKER CARLSON: Were you ever afraid when you were there?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, a lot.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did Americans ever get hurt when you were there?

SHAWN RYAN: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting. You went up in Latin America. We.

SHAWN RYAN: We got shot at a lot, and car bombs at the gates and like that, but not any heavy casualties? No. No deaths.

TUCKER CARLSON: How’d you wind up in South America?

Shawn Ryan’s Time in Colombia

SHAWN RYAN: Well, when I left, I was very addicted to adrenaline and went down to Colombia. I’d always wanted to do jungle warfare. When I joined the SEAL teams, I was really inspired by the Vietnam generation. I was just infatuated with that stuff as a kid. Watched all the documentaries of all the seals in Vietnam and Green Berets. The closest I could get to that was running counter drug operations out of Columbia when I joined the SEAL teams and then, you know, 9/11 happened. So I definitely wasn’t going down there.

I had broken up with a girlfriend and I was like, you know what? I’m going to go down there and check it out. So I went down there for a little over a week. Loved it. Had the time of my life doing nothing Christian-based. Cartagena is where I started and then went home, had a surgery and I was sitting at a bar in Cape Coral, Florida, listening to a bunch of lazy, entitled Americans talk about their opinion of the war and all this other stuff.

I just got so tired of listening to people’s opinions that had never been there and never done it and never lost anybody. Probably had never even faced any type of hardship in their life. And they’re just judging me and all my friends. And I was like, you know what? I’m out of here, man. So I put my house on the market and went back down to Cartagena, stayed with a friend.

The Secret Service scandal happened down there, remember that?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yep.

SHAWN RYAN: Which kind of put it on the map for people to come visit and to go do bad things. It became very Americanized. And I was like, I don’t want to be anywhere near Americans at all. So I checked a lot of spots around Colombia. I went to Cali. I went to Medellin and then camped out in Medellin for about four years.

TUCKER CARLSON: And doing what?

Life in Medellin

SHAWN RYAN: Living a rock star life – a lot of cocaine, a lot of girls. Basically what I was doing was chasing my adrenaline because I wanted to feel that all the time. It creates some type of imbalance in your brain when you have that many adrenaline dumps.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s…

SHAWN RYAN: It’s very much like a heroin addiction. So I went down there and I started doing a lot of stuff that I shouldn’t be doing. Buying drugs became a big rush. Buying and sourcing cocaine – that’s how I would get my thrills.

TUCKER CARLSON: Was that what you were doing for a living?

SHAWN RYAN: No, it wasn’t for a living, man. It was for the rush. You know, I’ve talked about this on a couple of other podcasts, but there’s a lot of rumors going around that I was down there working for CIA, setting up these drug networks. Yes, they do do that, but no, I was by myself on my own program.

I’ve always been fascinated with narcos and kingpins and cartels, and it was a major rush for me to go into the worst neighborhoods in Colombia and start setting up networks. It’s extremely dangerous for a gringo to be there. I would go in neighborhoods where you couldn’t get in without going through at least two checkpoints. I would hang out, talk to people, buy drugs, cocaine, bringing it back to my place, do them all, then go get more.

TUCKER CARLSON: What does cocaine cost?

SHAWN RYAN: Five bucks a gram.

TUCKER CARLSON: So about a twentieth of what it costs in the United States.

SHAWN RYAN: Yep. And so what I saw, you know, back to my entrepreneurial branch, was that the Secret Service kind of put sex vacations on the map for…

TUCKER CARLSON: Which is not technically their job.

The Business Plan

SHAWN RYAN: Rich white people to come down there and take advantage of that. Down there, prostitution and these type of things, they’re not looked at like they are here. It’s an actual legitimate career. So you get these guys who come down and that’s all they want to do. And they want cocaine, but they’re all scared to talk to the Colombians because they think they’re all cartel and they’re all going to chop your head off. So what I was going to be was an intermediary and basically sort of…

TUCKER CARLSON: The maitre d’ of Medellin.

SHAWN RYAN: Like, I’ll deal with all these people, and I’ll get you what you want, and you can just talk to me.

TUCKER CARLSON: For a fee.

SHAWN RYAN: For a fee.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you do that?

SHAWN RYAN: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why?

SHAWN RYAN: Because I got sloppy and I got ran out of there by the Colombian version of the FBI.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you go to jail down there?

SHAWN RYAN: No. As soon as I caught wind of it, I left. But I built a network from the ground up. Just like how I was telling you, I take care of my team right now, and I want the best for them. I treat them with respect and I’m very giving. I was like that down there.

Starting with the doorman – I would live in these penthouses at the top story of the building, wherever I was at. And I would make friends with all the guys that were at the door, because they control who comes in and out of the building. And so if I went to the grocery store, they got groceries. If I bought cocaine, they got cocaine. If I went to go get booze, they got booze. If I went to go get pizza, they got a pizza. I just took care of them all the time because I knew it would get to the point where they would watch my back.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

Building a Network

SHAWN RYAN: And so I did that and built a great rapport with them. And then, nobody knows town better than taxis. So I would take taxis and try to develop relationships with different taxi guys that were not scared to go into Barrio Antioquia, which is kind of the worst neighborhood down there.

I would have my girls help me make decisions and tell me about the different taxi drivers that they used to pick them up from the clubs when they were done working or partying or whatever. I developed a really good relationship with a couple of different taxi drivers. They would show me everything I needed to know, all the places that people don’t want to go.

I would get in with them, and then I would get in with the dealers, and then the dealers would introduce me to their mid dealer, and then they would introduce me to their guy. The network grew so big that if I went to other countries, they would know who I was.

TUCKER CARLSON: What were you doing for income?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I made money contracting, and your money goes a lot farther down there than it does in the US. So I didn’t really need any until I blew it all.

I got in a lot of really hairy situations where I didn’t know if I was going to come out, didn’t really care if I did. I kind of had the Hunter S. Thompson mindset where if life gets too boring, then I’ll just check out. And it was starting to get boring down there. I’d OD’d a couple times.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s a cocaine OD like?

Overdosing and Seeking Danger

SHAWN RYAN: I remember my best friend was down there for a little while with me, and I would always think, oh, I probably did too much, I’m going to die. And he got tired of me being paranoid about it. He said, “Look, you don’t need to worry about ODing on cocaine until things start slowing down. When you’re on speed and things get slow, that’s when you’re really riding the line.”

That had happened to me a couple times where it sounded like my voice was in slow motion. The people next to me that I was talking to all of a sudden sounded like the Will Ferrell thing. And you can’t talk. You can’t get the words out that are in your head. That’s when you know it’s about time the lights are going to go out. And they did go out.

TUCKER CARLSON: But how do you recover from that?

SHAWN RYAN: Lots of volume.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, exactly.

SHAWN RYAN: Lots of volume. Xanax, stuff like that. Everything got boring to me. The women got boring. It sounds weird to say that, but it did. It was like, there’s nothing that you could say that I had not done. And that got me to go deeper in and go to more dangerous places.

TUCKER CARLSON: Doesn’t sound weird at all. It sounds absolutely right. There’s no satisfaction in that.

SHAWN RYAN: Of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: It gets boring.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And so then I started looking up the most dangerous places in the world, and I looked up the most dangerous place in the world, and it was San Pedro Sula in Honduras. So I went there and started to try to develop a network there just for the rush.

TUCKER CARLSON: What was that like?

SHAWN RYAN: Got almost arrested on the first night, so it didn’t last long.

TUCKER CARLSON: Were there other Americans down there in Honduras?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, not at that time. Which I thrived off that. It made me feel really alive, like, oh, this is uncharted territory. Nobody comes here because they’re scared to death.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did your dad ever text you to say, hey, what about the Jimmy John’s franchise we’re supposed to be doing?

Hitting Bottom

SHAWN RYAN: Nah. Because 2000 happened, and so that got called off at the very beginning of my contract career. And he went on to do other things. I was frustrated, but the money was really good contracting. So I kind of got stuck in this loop of like, well, I’ll just go over there, make a bunch of money, and then do whatever the hell I want to do.

So the last thing… I was talking to my dad, too. I knew I had a problem. I’m really close with my parents. My dad’s my hero. And I would call them all up on coke or Valium or Xanax or Hydrocodone or Oxy or whatever. Or drunk. And I would allude to my dad like, I gotta get the hell out of here, I’m gonna die. And I wouldn’t remember a lot of these conversations. I’d be totally blacked out.

He was trying to get me to go get some help. And I lied to him. Told him I was talking to this Vietnam guy about my experiences, and I was. But that guy was a total mess, too.

TUCKER CARLSON: And he was there for the same reason.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, exactly. No, this wasn’t in Colombia. This was actually in Fort Lauderdale.

TUCKER CARLSON: Same difference.

Shawn Ryan’s Dangerous Experience in Medellin

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And I had… There’s this place called… What was it called? Puente de los Locos or something. Which means Bridge of the Crazies. And so it’s like all these, like, lots of tents under an overpass and crazy drug addicts who have no direction in life, who are dirt poor. I had a bunch of girls with me, and I went to that bridge and stacked up a ton of cash and thought it would be a great idea to throw all the cash up and just watch these people go to town trying to get it. It was in a very, very dangerous part of Medellin.

I came back to my building, walked through, and the doorman came up and told me that the national police had come to question him about me and wanted my passport and all that stuff. They wanted to know who I was, where I came from, what I’m doing, all of that. I was pissed. The guy’s name was Freddy. Talking to him in Spanish, I’m like, “Man, I always take care of you. I can’t believe you would try to suck more money out of me on this story.”

He’s like, “No.” He was trying to tell me that they had bugged the light outside my door, which I couldn’t understand. My Spanish wasn’t that good. But eventually I got what he was saying, and I was like, “This is complete bullshit. There’s no way.” And he showed me, he said, “They have a picture of you at the bridge throwing money in the air.” I had just come from there. At that point, I knew that he wasn’t lying. I was like, “Okay.” Literally nobody knew that I did that because it was like 45 minutes ago. And the only people that would know is my taxi guy and the girls that were with me and the crazies that were living under the bridge.

He had said that they had set up an observation point at the building across from me and were watching me from that apartment. So I went up and identified where it was, flushed all the cocaine and went back into my previous life on surveillance and counter surveillance. I did a counter surveillance route to a couple of different Internet cafes, bought a couple of tickets to different places outside of the country and hauled ass to the airport. Got out of there and never went back that day.

TUCKER CARLSON: Was decisive.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s your hooded box training.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah. So that’s, that’s how that ended.

TUCKER CARLSON: How long between that moment and beginning of your podcast?

SHAWN RYAN: Not long. Oh, the podcast, probably a couple years.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it, that wasn’t that long ago.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You were leading a life that bears no resemblance at all to the life you’re leading right now.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: At all.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. It took a lot of work, you know, and it took a lot of work to clean myself up and find a productive direction to start running. And once I discovered business, that became my new addiction.

Addressing CIA Allegations

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you make of the claim that you’re still working for CIA?

SHAWN RYAN: I think it’s, I mean, whatever. People are going to think what they think, but people don’t understand how it works over there. And so, I mean, there’s a part of me that understands it. I’m like, alright, like I didn’t really come out of nowhere. You know what I mean? I mean a lot of people say like, “Oh, this guy just pops on the map and gets ginormous.” And it’s like you didn’t see all the back end work that it took to get here.

I started this in my attic as a one-man team and then taught my wife how to film. And it was me and her and we only did nine interviews for the first year and a half because I was editing sound, video, cutting previews, doing social media packages, doing distribution, doing the research, interviewing, you know, all of that stuff.

What really pisses me off is when somebody that I am paying attention to because they’re bringing things out that I’m into, they’re going down rabbit holes and conspiracy stuff that a lot of time winds up to be true. But then I think we’re all on the same team and then I’ll see them throw something out like “Sean Ryan’s a CIA shill.” And it’s like, dude, I was totally bought in on what you’re bringing to the table and all of your research, it was really good stuff and I thought it was trustworthy. But when you throw something like that out there, you’ve just discredited yourself to me because you have no proof, because I’m not one. And now I don’t believe anything that you say because if you’re just going to loose lip, throw stuff out there like that, then what else are you throwing out that you’ve got?

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve had similar experiences.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I do think that people are paranoid because it is true that the CIA operates against, you know, the constitution, against the law in the United States and does try and shape news coverage. Like that’s a fact.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, no, I mean I know that that happens and happens all the time. But at the same time, if you’ve listened to me, I’ve been extremely hard on CIA and I’ve talked about things that they have done that make me very paranoid after the interview. Like we, I can’t remember if we discussed that an hour ago or if that was last night at dinner, but I mean that happens all the time all over the world.

But nobody is ever able to pinpoint exactly why they think that. They just throw it out. Of course, like those accusations really grew traction after I interviewed the founder of Palantir. Because people think that’s a big war machine and part of the military industrial complex type company. But I mean, guess what, buddy, like, we need innovators and we have to innovate. We can’t just be doing the same old stuff.

I want to know how we’re innovating our military capabilities and our intelligence capabilities. And that’s a big part of it. And to be honest with you, it gives me comfort knowing that we are still innovating as much red tape as we have to deal with. And I think that that’s what gives me a glimmer of hope when we’re talking about global domination and China and all that kind of stuff.

People don’t even understand. I don’t know why Palantir has such a bad rap. Maybe you know something that I don’t. But I mean to me that was genius. It speeds up the decision making process. It speeds up the intelligence gathering, we’re able to access information at lightning speed, to be ahead of whoever our adversary is.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, people are mad at Palantir because they disagree with U.S. foreign policy. I think that’s kind of the main reason. From what I can tell, I’m hardly an expert on the subject, but I think that it’s, I mean, not to be a conspiracy nut, but your public performance over the past five and a half years has been run counter to the aims of the CIA, I would say. I mean, it has. And so to tell people that you yourself are working for the CIA secretly is a way to discredit you. If I were the CIA, I would be encouraging you to stop, I guess is what I’m saying.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, that’s a good point. That is a good point.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, I’m very hostile to CIA. I’ve said that many, many times. It doesn’t stop people from claiming that I secretly work there.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, so.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I’ve always thought that maybe that was…

Intelligence Operations and Media Influence

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, I’ve challenged people too, because I think about it, I mean, it would be impossible, you know, I mean, they might have somebody in operative do a five hour interview and they might say, “Hey, this is all we need you to get in that interview. It’s this one sentence.” And so the whole other five hours could be complete except for the one little thing that they want injected into that interview to create some type of a narrative.

I’m always trying to look out for that, but it would be impossible to figure out what exactly that is if that operative is good. And they’ll do other things like, “Hey, we know that this happened. You’re going to go to this show and you’re going to talk about this, and then two weeks from now, that’s going to come out in the media.” Or “We’ll wait until the interviewer releases that specific episode and then two weeks after, we’re going to release this to the press.”

And then they’re going to say, “This was said on this show by this person before it ever came out in the media.” And then when it comes out in the media, because, right, everybody hates the media, but they still watch it all the time. That builds credibility to the operative. You know what I mean?

TUCKER CARLSON: They, oh, I know what you mean.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay, you’re tracking.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I’m watching it all around me.

SHAWN RYAN: So.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you feel that… Have you ever had a guest where you thought, “Huh?”

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: That this person might be…

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Acting on behalf of an intel agency.

SHAWN RYAN: Mm. Not a couple of them.

TUCKER CARLSON: Any confirmation on that?

SHAWN RYAN: No. You know, gut instinct. I don’t want to name a bunch of names because if they’re not, I don’t want to, of course, you know.

But I just did a really good interview with this guy, Blair Scoro, who was an asset. He got recruited out of prison, and then he got recruited in prison by the CIA right after 9/11 to make friends with all of the Muslim Brotherhood, all the terrorists that were in there. And so he built a network in there. And then when he got out of prison, he would report back to the agency about like, “Hey, this is what this guy has done. This is what he’s a part of. These are the people he talks to” because they all trusted him. Because this guy basically became like the head Mullah of the prison system.

When he got out, Agency gets back in touch with him and said, “Hey, you’re going to use this network and your cover is going to be you’re building an Al Qaeda cell in Macedonia.” And so he would set up shop in Macedonia, and he would go into Pakistan and go into Afghanistan and Syria, Iraq, Iran, all these places. Russia, all these places. And he would meet with the head of the Haqqani network, the head of the Taliban, the head of Al Qaeda, like, very high-level people. He didn’t meet specifically with bin Laden, but he’s like, one step away.

That’s a really dangerous job. No kidding, man. That’s the real Jason Bourne stuff right there. And what he would do is say, “Hey, you know, I’m recruiting because I’m setting up a terrorist cell in Macedonia.” And then they would give him all of these weapons. They’d give him bombs, rocket launchers, guns, mines, you name it. And then basically what he would do is tell them that that shipment is… He would take care of logistics to get that to Macedonia. But what he would really do is get it to the agency, and then supposedly they would destroy it.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you say? Supposedly they would destroy it.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, who knows, you know, I don’t know. Because I don’t trust them. But then he has an assassination attempt. CIA cuts him, he gets pissed off. He’s still pissed off, rightly so. At the same time, I’m like, how do you think this works, man? Like, you got burned. They don’t use burned assets. Like, you’re irrelevant at this point.

And then he started telling me about getting uranium out of Russia. And so we kind of had this discussion. And, you know, Russia is obviously a big topic of discussion. Some people think we should be in Ukraine, some people don’t. And some people think Russia’s our allies. Some people don’t. And I’m kind of like, this isn’t really our war. Why are we involved?

But I said, “Well, what are they going to do with these?” And he said that they wanted to get him into the US and it would kill half a million people. And I asked him if he thought he’d done that, but it didn’t really fit in the interview. It didn’t fit. You know what I mean? Did not fit in the interview.

TUCKER CARLSON: I know what you mean. Yes. In fact, I was just thinking that.

SHAWN RYAN: As you were speaking, like, we’re talking about all these other things.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t trust this for a second.

SHAWN RYAN: And then all of a sudden, we get to Russia. And so I just called him right there on the interview. I was like, you know what goes through my mind? I said, when’s the last time he had contact with CIA?

TUCKER CARLSON: Was exactly what I was just thinking.

SHAWN RYAN: And he said, January 16th or something in 2022, like, knew the exact date and got really flustered. And, I mean, I would probably be flustered, too, if somebody just said that. And I wasn’t, but I said, you know, what goes through my head is, what if somebody contacted you knowing you were coming on the show to say that you were getting uranium to Al Qaeda to sneak into our country to blow us up? A lot of people want to see us go to war with Russia.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did he tell you that Iran was trying to assassinate Donald Trump too?

SHAWN RYAN: Now that’s my favorite.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, Iran is trying to assassinate Donald Trump.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. But I called him on it because it didn’t fit in the interview. And it was almost like, shit. I lost my opportunity to insert this into the interview. So now I got a swing for the fence and just drop it. And it just immediately clicked in my brain. And then I got paranoid again. I’m like, Jeremy, you go, sorry, buddy, you gotta switch your phone out. Like, you’ve been texting with this guy who knows what came in. But I mean, you never really know. It’s going to be a gut instinct, you know? But I wanted to say that out loud because if they’re watching, and they probably are, then they know that I know that I’m a target.

Discussing Shawn’s Transformation

TUCKER CARLSON: So I’m a little bit shocked. I sort of knew the rough outlines of your life, but I didn’t realize, like, 20 minutes ago you were living in Colombia, and then you were on the. I mean, this just happened not 20 years ago, like seven years ago.

SHAWN RYAN: Yep.

TUCKER CARLSON: So that’s got to be one of the hardest pivots, one of the most profound transformations I’ve ever seen. I don’t really. Couldn’t know anyone who’s come this far in a separate direction in such a short period of time. You’re not even 50. Where do you think it goes from here?

SHAWN RYAN: Who knows, man? I do want to say something, though. You know, I think a lot of people think that kind of that I was doing down in Colombia is cool and it’s adventurous and. Yeah, there was a lot of adrenaline, and it was a good time.

TUCKER CARLSON: It was definitely adventurous. But good or bad, I think we can say that was adventurous.

SHAWN RYAN: But, you know, it was a. I mean, who knows where I would be if I didn’t do that, and I would have started this earlier, you know, and it’s just no way to live. And everybody that you think is your friend is fake, and everybody just wants to take advantage of you. And once you get through the initial phase of, oh, man, this is like the coolest life. It’s the loneliest life that you can lead. And almost died because of it. Several times. And, you know, how would it have turned up if I would have OD’d in one of those penthouses? And my parents, who I love so much, and finds out, oh, yeah, there’s our son, the Navy SEAL, CIA contractor, decomposing in a penthouse in Colombia because he OD’d on cocaine. And that scenario went through my head a lot of times. And so I just, you know, I just. I don’t want to encourage anybody to do that. That was a low point in my life and something I’m not proud of. And you’ve been a. I would say.

On Sobriety and Christianity

TUCKER CARLSON: Pretty vocal advocate for sobriety.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: In this job, how many of the guys who work for you are sober?

SHAWN RYAN: Almost the majority of the team. I think there’s two guys that drink.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think sobriety is going to catch on as a way to.

SHAWN RYAN: Absolutely. I think it’s already a catch. There’s a huge wave. It’s like the new thing to do. It seems, like, truly sober, just, like.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not using pills, alcohol.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think we’re in the middle of some kind of Christian revival?

SHAWN RYAN: Absolutely. 100%. I mean, have you seen the baptism parties that are going on at colleges that look like. It looks like it’s a kegger crazy tailgate party and they’re baptizing people in the back of trucks. Yeah, I think there’s a huge wave going on.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think so too.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s cool to see.

On the Future of Government

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think the US government can continue?

SHAWN RYAN: Continue what?

TUCKER CARLSON: To exist. Think the current system can continue?

SHAWN RYAN: I think it will continue.

TUCKER CARLSON: You do? Because it does feel like we’re moving towards something.

SHAWN RYAN: Like a one world government.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not sure what, I’m not sure what, but it seems like so much change in a short period of time. The scales falling for so many people realizing that what they believed was real is not questions people are asking. The resurgence of Christianity in the country, I mean, it all seems to be happening at once. And I know in every age people think the end is near, but does that ever occur to you?

SHAWN RYAN: I think it will continue to exist until people no longer have the appetite for it to exist.

TUCKER CARLSON: You think? We’re pretty far from that.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Goes back to critical thinking.

Favorite Firearms

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, maybe that’s right. Last question. Because I can’t resist. I know you spent a lot of your time talking about this, but having fired every firearm, been trained on every firearm, what are your favorite firearms?

SHAWN RYAN: Favorite firearms? Yeah, I like lever actions.

TUCKER CARLSON: Come on, you’re.

SHAWN RYAN: Now I do too.

TUCKER CARLSON: They’re my favorite.

SHAWN RYAN: But like, I mean, I’m tired of all the tactical black gun. I mean that’s. That was my life for 14 years, you know. But I have a lot of them. But I don’t get excited about them. I get excited about lever actions. Now if you’re going to ask me, you know, it’s the fan, what am I going to. It definitely isn’t going to be my lever action. It’s going to be my AR. Because I know that like the back of my hand and it’s a tool that I’m really good with, so.

TUCKER CARLSON: But when you shoot for fun with just open sights.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, open sights. You know what I really like is I don’t even know what it’s called, but it’s a revolver. But it’s the, you know, you lift a little thing up and you have to load it one by one.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like the 12 shot .22s that they. The cowboy guns.

SHAWN RYAN: I got a .45 long Colt one.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is it just single action?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, dude, I love it. It can’t hit a damn thing with it.

TUCKER CARLSON: But it’s got the pin that you push the.

SHAWN RYAN: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: The holes out with.

SHAWN RYAN: Yes. I love that thing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Talk about your life. Going first full circle. So you went from like, you know, some high tech Kimber to a single action.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Cowboy gun.

SHAWN RYAN: I love it.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you went from the air platform to the lever. What do you. What do you prefer? The lever gun chambered in .357.

SHAWN RYAN: I knew I liked it .357 Revolve. Same ammo, sidearm and long gun.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s. That’s my. That’s my favorite pair. Right. I. I could see beneath the. Beneath the same. I knew that you were the kind of man who preferred .357.

SHAWN RYAN: I love it.

TUCKER CARLSON: The straight wall cartridge. Amen. Shawn Ryan. Thank you very much.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Congratulations.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you. He’s a Bonner.

TUCKER CARLSON: Being a nerd. You’re one of. You’re one of the people. And this is not true for everybody. But every time I see some marker of your like, continuous success, I am thrilled. I’m thrilled by it. And I mean that.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, that means a hell of a lot.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not joking at all. I thought. And part of it is just like my narcissism because I saw you, because my nephew sent me a clip from you and I was like, that guy’s really talented. I like knew instantly I knew you’d be successful. And the fact that you had no background whatsoever, I didn’t quite realize how far you’re. You did not go to the Columbia School of Broadcasting. Your natural ability to interview people and to listen to them and to empathize with them, it just came right off the screen. I was like, that guy’s gonna be a star. And you have been. And I just find it thrilling.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you, Todd.

TUCKER CARLSON: Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: That means a lot.

TUCKER CARLSON: Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: And congratulations on all your successes.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s been cyclical. Oh, and Alp. Can I just say, I never do this. I’m proud to call this man an ALP user.

SHAWN RYAN: Thanks. I love it.

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