Brigadier General Blaine Holt joins Kim Munson to share insights from his three-decade military career, which includes strategic leadership positions and global operations in logistics and defense. The conversation unveils how his upbringing and education laid the foundation for a successful military journey, and how his experiences in Kyrgyzstan during a critical time were both challenging and transformative. As we discuss the systemic issues of the military-industrial complex and logistics’ critical role in warfare, General Holt provides an in-depth look at his post-military endeavors, where he applies innovation to solve modern challenges.
SPEAKER 05 :
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Munson.
SPEAKER 10 :
And welcome to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. And the show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy, France for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings. returned stateside realizing we need to know the stories of our military and our veterans, and hence America’s Veterans Stories was born. Very pleased to have on the line with me Brigadier General Blaine Holt, United States Air Force, retired. And he’s a decorated combat veteran, global strategist, and innovation champion, serving as Senior Aerospace and Defense Advisor at Zariant, Inc., where he helps drive cutting-edge advancements in defense and commercial technologies. And he has a distinguished military career that spans over three decades, with leadership highlights including his pivotal command in the Kyrgyzstan Republic during the Afghan surge, one of the Department of Defense’s most complex logistics undertakings. And under intense sociopolitical unrest, Blaine stabilized a key regional hub, earning a Bronze Star and selection as a military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. General Holt, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, what a pleasure to be with you today. And thanks for that kind intro. A lot of adventure there.
SPEAKER 10 :
And we’re going to want to hear about that. But let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up, General Holt?
SPEAKER 04 :
So, it’s a very fair question. I have lived all over, but I was raised in Georgia, and Georgia’s where I spent most of my life. But I’ve been an expat kid living in Hong Kong, lived around the United States. Dad was a corporate guy and a World War II vet, but most of my upbringing is there. And I graduated from the University of Georgia, where I got my commission as an ROTC cadet.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. And… Why did you decide to join the Air Force?
SPEAKER 04 :
I wish I had some grand visionary principled reason for wanting to do that. But since I was three years old, I’ve wanted to fly airplanes. And I never wavered on that, never got off of that. And when when I got in fact, I turned down a photography scholarship in high school to a prestigious school. school and they said what are you going to do and I said well I’m going to try to be an Air Force pilot and they laughed at me but I went to Georgia and they said what’s your major and I said I don’t know what do you want it to be I’m here because of you and And it really wasn’t until I got to be my second airplane. I started out being an instructor pilot in supersonic advanced jet trainers, the T-38. And it wasn’t really until my next airplane, a crew airplane, a big C-141 cargo hauler, airlifter. where I saw that I was responsible for enlisted folks in the back and that there were innocent civilians getting on my airplane who expected me to take care of them. And then it dawned on me that, wow, I’m an officer and I’m a leader, and maybe I should look into more of that. And it kind of grew out from there, and then my love of Constitution, love of country. But really, I just wanted to be a zipper-suited son of God to start.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s so interesting. In my experience since 2016 interviewing all these different guys, I had interviewed a guy that was flying P-38s. And, of course, they didn’t get a lot of training as they were preparing to – because we were at war – And I remember him telling the story when you said instructor. His instructor was giving him some instruction on what to do on one of his first takeoffs. And the guy in front of him crashed, burned, was killed. And the instructor looked at him and he says, you might want to pull up on the stick a little bit more. I thought, oh, my gosh. That’s amazing. And these instructors, I have great regard for them.
SPEAKER 04 :
I love that job. You’re basically taking your life into your own hands three times a day with the person in the front who has no wings, but a lot of bravado. My godfather was a World War II pilot. He was a P-51 Mustang pilot, but he started out as an instructor. And he told me, he said the accident rate was much higher in training than it was when they went off to war. And it was just, you know, they didn’t have the training standards that they did, and they had to get so many through the program. When I got him a simulator ride in my T-38, he looked at me and he said, you know, you kids have it easy these days.
SPEAKER 10 :
Oh, you do, for sure. And I better make sure that I have my plane right. There was P-38s and P-51s, right? Am I remembering that correctly? Okay. Okay, great. Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about how those first years in the Air Force, how that really structured you with discipline and leadership. Sure.
SPEAKER 04 :
So my leadership really kind of started to flourish when I got into crew aircraft. And the C-141 and C-17 were my primary birds that I flew most of my career. And I flew in special programs supporting different government agencies that would bring me to 135 countries around the world. And most of those countries don’t have any Air Force bases, no support structure. You’re basically the only Americans in that country supporting maybe the embassy or some other operation. And that’s where I really kind of cut my teeth on what it meant to to be the stand-up person in front of the crew, take the responsibility for things, keep them calm in times of emergency. And I really then just kind of became a leadership junkie at that point. And I read as much military history that I could get my hands on, modeled myself after leaders that I really appreciated, read about leaders that I did not appreciate, and really started to form – the basis of what my leadership philosophy would end up being. And that would serve me well going into my senior years, but The amount of little war stories that you pick up along the way, working with different people, their problems, and taking people who are struggling with one thing and then trying to get them to be optimized to be the best they could be for the mission. I just love that. And so eventually I would go on to be a squadron commander in C-17s. I was the 80th pilot in the C-17, so I was very early to the program. And then I was brought back after 9-11 happened as a C-17 squadron commander. And it was just a dream come true for me. I adored every second of that, even though I was probably ill-prepared to deal with 170 people and their families’ worth of problems in a time of absolute endurance-type war pacing. My crew members, they all lived at 35,000 feet. We were flying so much into and out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
SPEAKER 10 :
Wow. And I think I’m hearing it, but what is your leadership philosophy?
SPEAKER 04 :
So I am absolutely welded to the idea that the so-called hierarchy or the pyramid should be turned upside down. that the person at the top is really at the bottom, and that servant leadership, much as was espoused by my favorite general, General George Washington, is absolutely where you need to be if you’re going to be taking on really difficult challenges, especially when you start talking about combat, signing off on crew orders, putting people in harm’s way, never asking them to do something that you wouldn’t do yourself, never putting somebody into a situation that you weren’t capable of doing yourself, and then just providing them the resources and the things that they need to be successful, but not jumping into the micromanagement realm, always looking to see if you have a delegation role, always looking to see if you could teach. Teaching is essential for good leaders, And that’s basically where I sit. And then I would try to encourage them to further their own education. I took my own self-education journey, and I really, really tried to push my airmen and my officers to do the same.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, in being prepared, you said 170 crew members, their families. There’s all kinds of emotion on that. But I noticed one of the things in the information that was sent over is that you were a specialist, if you will, in logistics. And I had never really thought about logistics until I went to Normandy. And one of the guys was 101st Airborne. Then it jumped in behind enemy lines on D-Day. And he had to have his parachute. He had his clicker. They had to have rations. And I hadn’t thought about just what it entails to make sure that everybody has what they need for success.
SPEAKER 04 :
You win or you lose based on your supply chains. And I love the stock phrase or our cliche that amateurs will talk tactics and professionals will talk logistics. And in my career, because of my airlift life, and I had basically a schizophrenic career. I have one track where I’m a logistician, and I would call myself the palate whisperer because I understood intuitively about combat supply chains and what it meant to get bacons, beans, and bullets to the fight. And I worked with our command’s four-star at an early age to re-wicker the way C-17s were flown in combat. Much the way that our General Tunner did in World War II to make more equipment and material get to where it needed to be on the least amount of resources possible. And in my other life, I have a foreign policy life, a foreign policy existence. I was an exchange officer in the Belgian Royal School for my staff college. I went on to speak quite a few languages during the time. Later in my senior years, I would… pick up a language out of necessity just to save our base. And so the blend of the two, logistics with foreign policy background, really set me about, you know, you have people say, hey, thank you for your service. And I always say, thank you for your taxpayer dollars in my adventures, because the two entwined together really made for a life of adventure and a career that I just adored so much. And it always comes back to the people.
SPEAKER 10 :
It really does come back to the people, that’s for sure. I’m talking with Brigadier General Blaine Holt, a retired United States Air Force. And before we go to break, I wanted to mention a nonprofit that I dearly love, and that is the Center for American Values, which is located in Pueblo, co-founded by Drew Dix, Medal of Honor recipient, for actions he took during the Vietnam War, and Brad Padula, who is an Emmy Award-winning journalist. documentary maker. And they focus on these values of America of honor, integrity, and patriotism. I’d highly recommend that when the kids are out of school to take a road trip to Pueblo and visit the Center for American Values. That website is AmericanValuesCenter.org. AmericanValuesCenter.org. Be sure and check that out. And we’ll be right back with General Blaine Holt.
SPEAKER 08 :
Remax Realtor Karen Levine helps bring to life the individual stories of our servicemen and women. With her sponsorship of America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson, Karen honors the sacrifices of our military and is grateful for our freedom. As a member of the National Association of Realtors Board of Directors, Karen works to protect private property rights for all of us. Karen has a heart for our active duty military and veterans and is honored to help you buy or sell your home. Call Karen Levine at 303-877-7516 to help you navigate buying or selling your home. That’s 303-877-7516.
SPEAKER 01 :
All of Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Munson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmunson.com. That’s kimmunson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 10 :
And welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. And very pleased to be talking with Brigadier General Blaine Holt, retired United States Air Force. And what an amazing career. But during the Afghan surge, when you were serving there, you led some very complex air operations. In fact, some of the most complex in military history. So tell us about that.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, so this is the assignment really of my entire career where, and I was a little downhearted. I was told, you know, the rumor mill when I was about to go become a full bird colonel as a commander full bird colonel. I was already a full bird colonel. And the rumor mill was rampant that I was returning back to the C-17. I was going back home to my home base of Charleston, South Carolina, and I was going to take that wing. And then all of a sudden the four-star called me up. He said, oh, no, you’re not doing anything like that. You’re going to Kyrgyzstan. and our logistics base there, which I knew well. But he said, your skills are needed there in a variety of ways. And when I started researching that, I found that I was going to a command that might not exist. The very corrupt regime there was evicting the Americans. But at the same time, my task was to reverse that because secretly I knew at the time that we were going to be doing the Afghanistan surge. General McChrystal was coming in, and 98% of the logistics for the war in Afghanistan were going to be coming through me. So not only was I to go there to hold the base, but I was there to triple its capacity. And when I got there, I was convinced I was going there to whip that base into shape, get everybody combat-ready and ready to do their job. What I learned was that the Kyrgyz people themselves over many years, 11 years, had developed a deep hatred for the United States and Americans. And what I found was an ugly American thing. We weren’t going outside the base. The corrupt regime was pocketing all the money, and we didn’t have any friends. And I was able to politically maneuver the straits to keep the base and get it extended, but But what I found was my presence and my efforts were needed outside the gate. I learned Kirkus. I started to meet people in all walks of life. I supported women’s programs, women entrepreneurship, got businesses started, got college kids employed. We built schools. I mean, we did everything we possibly could. But what I learned from the people on the ground was that trouble was brewing with this regime. And by the spring, I knew what was going to happen. We had a bloody, violent massacre downtown, a revolution. And all of those relationships that we had made and invested in, all of those things is what allowed us to keep the base and go back to operations afterwards. But we’re talking 71 dead that day when the massacre happened, 2,000 injured. And me out there with the new interim president that I helped install, Rosa Ottambieva, we held up her government. We held up the country. We were feeding people. everybody that we could and restoring stability. And then they announced that we would be allowed to stay and we resumed combat operations into Afghanistan shortly thereafter. But the emotional experiences from that really was transformative in my own life and how I view just about everything these days.
SPEAKER 10 :
And what year was that, General Holt?
SPEAKER 04 :
This was 2009 when I arrived and then 2010 on my departure. I had even asked at the end of my year there, as we were saving the last Peace Corps kid with Kyrgyz forces in the southern part of the country, I had asked General Petraeus to stay another year. And he said, no, I’m sending you to a special place. You’ve gone native here. You speak Kyrgyz, you build yurts, you build schools. It’s time for you to go home. I loved it there.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. So what did you do after that then?
SPEAKER 04 :
So then I headed on to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, and I lived there for a year. And I learned tremendous amounts. But I was also there to tell my story of what was going on in Central Asia and how to take a new approach to things rather than, you know, we called it COIN at the time, counterinsurgency methodologies. I told General Petraeus I didn’t do any of that stuff. I was leveraging language and culture there. In other words, when we did a project in Kyrgyzstan, I didn’t go buy a bunch of contractors to go build a school. We actually got airmen volunteers to go get hammers and get our civil engineers out there and teach Kyrgyz how to do it themselves and then contract with them later. We were doing co-partnerships. I’m no more important than you are. I’m just here to help because we’re all going to be good community members. And I was able to kind of teach that. as I was learning a lot about how banking, economics, entrepreneurship, other foreign policy spots worked at the council. I worked with some people that might be considered by some of your listeners to be quite bad dudes, dudettes. But, you know, you learn from them, too. And my education there, I’m very, very grateful for.
SPEAKER 10 :
So General Holt, we went to Afghanistan. I should know this, but you’re an expert in the geopolitical spectrum. We were there because we were trying to accomplish what?
SPEAKER 04 :
I asked General Petraeus that one day. You know, I don’t think I got my answer either. You know, spending trillions of dollars to get… a country out of the seventh century and into the eighth century is not a very good use of resources i always from 2001 on as a young major onward looked at the afghan war as a very different way that we should have handled it in fact i if we were going to call it the global war on terror my thought as an airman was okay we’re never going to employ hundreds of thousands of combat soldiers anywhere we’re gonna we’re gonna use our technology we’re gonna use our best to thwart terrorism on the minimal amount of resource possible so we can keep our war going for as long as possible. Well, look how wrong I was. The lesson we learned in Afghanistan is unfortunately the same one we learned in Vietnam, so I’m not quite convinced we’re not learning lessons. And to be a little cynical, and I try not to be, but to be a little cynical, there are business interests in every war, and we see it playing out today in Ukraine. War Incorporated has to take a third or a fourth row of to good, effective strategy and what’s necessary for our nation’s defense on behalf of the country. No problem after 2001 going and getting the Taliban to be held to account along with al-Qaeda, but there were other ways to do that. And when you go ahead and invade with hundreds of thousands and you occupy it, well, then you bought it. And then you saw the tearful way that we left Afghanistan, which was an absolute disgrace and an insult to every single veteran who served during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. And I joined many vets when that happened. That’s what started my media personality or my media career. But I joined many vets to get Afghans that stood by us out, and we did a lot. I’m still to this very day working to get a young woman, a brave young woman, out of Pakistan because that’s as far as we could get her, and she’s been stuck there for three years. But that’s how strongly the vets feel. It’s about a commitment, and we don’t turn our backs on our friends. And then the folks in D.C., they see things much more cynically, much more clinically, and they don’t understand the value of our service in my own personal view.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, I don’t think they understand the value of each human life because that’s somebody’s son, daughter, husband, wife. Yeah. You mentioned business interests. Eisenhower, after World War II and when he was president, talked about the military-industrial complex. So how would you address that in 2025 America? Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
We’ve done nothing to heed the president’s advice, which was well placed. And what he could not have foreseen was the replication. So if you see in the military industrial complex this monopolistic mess where there’s this unholy trinity between Congress, the lobbyists, and anti-competition-minded modelists, then why not replicate that across the entire government? And that’s how our government has exploded. You’ve got the State Department industrial complex. You’ve got the forestry industrial complex. You’ve got the education industrial complex. And this is how we find ourselves $37 trillion in the hole right now with debt and And a financial crisis. But what’s even worse is the unelected have basically replaced we the people. I know. We are supposed to be a self-governed people. And the unelected propped up. And then they look at you as if you’re a rube because you’re not in on the grift. And that’s what I find so interesting. It increases anger everywhere amongst Americans. And I call it, look, there’s two entities out there. There’s the swamp. And don’t listen to the lies. There is no aisle there. And then there’s ROTC or the rest of the country. And where I find hope and optimism is that our country is waking up and has had it. And that’s what needs to happen. We don’t need our sons and daughters to go off to stupid wars that a neocon dreams up as the next big business adventure. People die in these things. Look at Ukraine, Russia. Money and weapons, no strategy. And what does it get us? A million five dead people. the most dead in any war since World War II, and the media, who’s also in their back pocket, won’t talk to that. And this has got to change. All things eventually get to their break point, and there’s where my optimism is. I believe we’re at the break point. And my favorite quote, I’ll end on this, is from Winston Churchill when he said, you can always trust the Americans to do the right thing after they’ve tried everything else. Well, I think we’re there.
SPEAKER 10 :
I definitely I have heard that as well. And I think that I’ve posited this with a number of different guests that I think that we’re in our third founding of America. Obviously, there was the Revolutionary War, but we had the Civil War. And now we’re in this great battle of ideas. And people are waking up to this, I think, General Holt.
SPEAKER 04 :
It is. If you think about it, we’re at least in a cold or an ideological civil war, and we’re in a global war. Look at how China has eaten up our lunch, and they’ve infiltrated just about every walk of society, whether it’s extortion, bribery, blackmail. It doesn’t matter. Their so-called united front is – It’s working to undermine our society. And internally, we’ve got to find out who as a nation we are. Do we have American values or is that just a bumper sticker? Is the Constitution and taking an oath to it real? I think the biggest challenge the Trump administration has right now – and look, I think they’re doing a lot of great things in these first days – But but if you don’t take the accountability seriously and you don’t convert these executive orders to legislation, well, then you’re in a lot of trouble and we could lose our republic that way.
SPEAKER 10 :
I think that you’re absolutely right. So we are in such a time right now. And, of course, your service, your military service, has given you such a perspective on all that’s going on right now. So we’re going to continue the discussion. Before we do that, though, you mentioned that there is a nonprofit that you dearly love. And so what is that?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, so up here next to me in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, we have Heroes Homestead in Spokane. And what these wonderful people and volunteers have done is nothing shy of amazing. They are committed to stopping and halting and blunting veteran suicide and all of the programs that they support that go with that. And so Heroes Homestead, if you go up on Facebook or if you go up on their website, just visit them because they’re They are the real deal. I spoke at their big event two weeks ago, and I can’t tell you how inspired I was.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay, and again, check that out, Harrow’s Homestead. We’re talking with Brigadier General Blaine Holt, retired United States Air Force, and we will be right back.
SPEAKER 03 :
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SPEAKER 05 :
God bless.
SPEAKER 10 :
And welcome to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. And we’re talking with Brigadier General Blaine Holt, retired United States Air Force. And I think people probably will recognize you. Just give us a little snippet about your media career, and then I’ve got some other questions about your other career as well. But you’re on TV on a regular basis. Yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, so you know my PR agent, Tamara Colbert, and it was back, and I’ve known her for a very long time, since I retired from the Air Force. But she always knew that because of my time in Kyrgyzstan, I was really going to stay off the air, no more media for me, but I’ll help a bunch of different nonprofits that me and Tamara were into. Well, then Kabul happened and the fall of Afghanistan and all of our disastrous decisions. And I had people who used to work for me on the ground there doing the best they could, and I was hearing their stories. And those airplanes that had people falling off of them, that was my flying squadron that I used to command. So you can imagine my blood was boiling. I was doing grief counseling for flag officers who were calling me with, I don’t understand what’s happening. And so I called Tamara up and I said, listen, any microphone, any pen, anywhere, any camera, I will talk. I will talk all the time. And I remember it was two weeks later after I’d done a bunch of different network interviews, the Air Force called me. I won’t say who, but it was at a very high level. And they said, hey, the chief of staff would like to know if you’re going to keep this up. And I said, oh yes, oh yes, I am going to keep this up. Never going to stop now. This is too much. And what I’ve been really blessed on, I settled into a contract with my team at Newsmax and And I absolutely adore them. They’re very entrepreneurial, and it’s just such a great experience, a humbling blessing for me. And I also write a column at Newsmax, usually weekly, and I’ve got my own column placed there. But I have found that I’ve really enjoyed this. And what I’ve really enjoyed is the quiet feedback I get from veterans all over the place saying, hey, thank you for calling balls and strikes and being out there and being a voice that we can’t have ourselves because we’re on active duty. And that means the world to me. And I take that responsibility very seriously.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, it’s a very important one, and I thank you for that as well. And so let’s talk more about your career, though. We had at the end of the last break, we talked about you at the Council of Foreign Relations. So what did you do after that?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I got a brief stint working for the chief of staff of the Air Force and the secretary of the Air Force running their communications directorate. And I think that was the final preparation before they put stars on my shoulders, which was about three more promotions than I ever thought I’d get in the Air Force. And I went on to Europe. I was at the U.S. European Command where I’d worked before, and I was the director of logistics for the European theater. And that was at a very interesting time. I was there during the Benghazi affair, and I was there during the taking of Crimea incident. Very interesting year for me there. And then I finished up by going to NATO headquarters, and I was the deputy United States military representative to NATO for my final assignment, which was really a joy for me, returning to Belgium, all my Belgian friends and many of my NATO friends. And I had known so many of those officers that were in the different delegations. So a really sweet way to cap off a career that I just greatly enjoyed and I’m very grateful for.
SPEAKER 10 :
And then after that, you retired?
SPEAKER 04 :
I did, and I decided I would skip right over that thing called the swamp. I didn’t end up at any of these big monoliths at war on some congressional staff. I wanted to get into business and see if my brand of leadership would serve me, and I did. I went to an aviation company. I did some financial turnaround work there, and I learned a lot about business. I did some startups there. Some went well, some didn’t go well. I’m never one to shy away from risk or failing. You just get back up on your horse and go do it again. And I am with Xerient right now. We’re about to go commercial with our very first product, and we’ve got an array of technologies. And we want to do it the right way, and we want to do contracting the right way, whether it’s in the private sector or with the government. But on a perpetual spiral of innovation, it’s such a thrill to be with this team, and we’re excited. Our first product is going to be replacing sheetrock. We’re going to have advanced materials that take plastic and cardboard boxes, put our goop on it, and now you’ll have a wall board that’s fireproof and waterproof. And with all the hurricanes and fires, who doesn’t want that?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, it sounds like it’s also a very creative way to use some of our trash.
SPEAKER 04 :
It is. It is. It’s a very creative way, very green. We can all argue about carbon or not carbon, but I think we can all agree that getting plastic out of the ocean is a real good thing, and you’ve got to do something with all those Amazon boxes. Again, I love working with the inventors, the innovators, and the technologists, and everything from AI, data science, blockchain, hydrogen. things come to light because of the physics, the new chips and all of that. And that’s exactly where I want to be, right in the middle of it. And that’s what’s been my whole career. I want to be right in the middle of it.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and General Holt, I’ve always thought that if we got creativity and innovation in busy on these challenges that we have and get big government, get the swamp out of the way, that we can solve so many of these problems. I had on my other show a natural resource expert. Well, you’re in the West, so you know water in the West, although you probably have more water up there than we do in Colorado, but water’s a big deal. And I said, why doesn’t California… figure out a way to use that whole western seaboard, take water from that, desalinate it, and then that would reduce the demand that they have on the water coming down the Colorado. It would help all of us upstream from that. So I love, I guess the bottom line is I love the fact that you are using creativity and innovation to solve these problems and create a great product.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and it’s fun. But to your point, government, whether it’s a state government or federal government, they love the grift. And they have done more over the past 50 years to retard American innovation, to tie our hands. If you think about just alone what we could have done in pharmaceuticals or with quantum physics, just mashing up those two things with frequency healing. With the holistic things that are coming out now that we look at, they’re just trickling out. And honestly, government gets in the way. If it’s going to hurt somebody’s established rice bowl that pays for the senator’s campaign, well, they’re coming after you. And we’ve got to stop that, and we’ve got to protect our entrepreneurs and our innovators because, after all, that’s how we guarantee the future for our grandkids. That’s how we guarantee America will be here in another 250 years.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and we have a responsibility. You mentioned George Washington. And the fact that those men and women, but our founders, they put their lives on the line. Because why? It wasn’t because that they wanted to protect their fortunes or things like they put their lives on the line and their fortunes and their sacred honor for the next generation to pass on liberty to the next generation. And we’ve got to take those lessons from them and pass on liberty to our next generation, not a big, fat IOU, which is what we’ve been doing with all the spending.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s exactly right. Benjamin Franklin, I think, said it the best. It’s a republic if you can keep it. And I don’t want to be a member of the generation that failed our founders, and I don’t want to be a member of the generation that failed our grandkids and our future generations. We have to return to American values. We have to return to an observance of the Constitution. And we have got to put the brakes on what’s happening in the swamp. And so I would urge the Trump team to take that role seriously. You’ve got to codify these executive orders. And if you don’t hold the guilty accountable, well, then they’ll just keep on doing what they’re doing.
SPEAKER 10 :
So we’re in such a critical time then right now. 250 years ago, 1775, there was a lot going on, and there is a lot going on right now. But I hear tremendous optimism in your voice, General Holt.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, look, I see things on the technology side, like blockchain, accountability, zero-trust environments. And then I look at some of our intractable problems today, like election fraud, election integrity, the grift that we see happening with secret accounts, USAID money going everywhere. Well, these are technologies that can erase that, that can make those problems go away. So what we have to have the courage to do is to fight the political battles, to embrace these things that take that grift out. And I think if we can do that, if we can do that, if we can stand up and then… And then go back and go back to basics, teach our kids civics, history, an understanding that we have a checkered history. And it’s OK that maybe we don’t meet the exact ideals that we aspire to in our Declaration of Independence, the founding documents. but we aspire to it. And honestly, I had an argument with George Soros one night at the Council on Foreign Relations because they were all, the bankers were all talking about how we might lose world reserve currency. And I laughed and I said, you’re not the reason that we have world reserve currency in the first place. I said, you guys give yourselves way too much credit. We’re the only, we’re the most honest game in town and that’s our constitution. And it’s It’s the United States military that guarantees that constitution. And I said, and I think it’s an awfully arrogant statement to say that, because if you all were the reason for that, well, we would have lost world reserve currency shortly after we got it in the 50s. Wow. He didn’t like that.
SPEAKER 10 :
I’m sure that he didn’t.
SPEAKER 04 :
I got a talking to the next day.
SPEAKER 10 :
It sounds like you might have got called into the principal’s office more than once during your career.
SPEAKER 04 :
I will tell you that my principals knew me far better than my teachers did in my entire career.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s great. We’re going to continue the discussion with General Blaine Holt. Before we do that, though, a couple of things. I wanted to mention the USMC Memorial Foundation. And the official Marine Memorial is right here in Colorado. And Paula Sarles is a Marine veteran. She’s a Gold Star wife, and she’s the president. And they are working diligently to raise the money for a remodel. It was dedicated in 1977, and it’s time for a remodel. And so you can get all kinds of information by going to their website. That is usmcmemorialfoundation.org. And then we’ve been talking about government. And during my time when I was on city council, I had a really interesting experience regarding Hooters Restaurants. that wanted to come into the city and the proper role of government. Well, I waited until after I was off city council, and it was such a freedom question that given a few years after that, I reached out to them and said, would you like to be a sponsor of the show? And they said they would. And so Hooters Restaurants has five locations, Loveland, Aurora, Lone Tree, Westminster, and Colorado Springs. Great place to get together and enjoy their lunch specials Monday through Friday. And, of course, a great place to get together to watch the games as well. So we are going to go to break. We’ll be right back with General Blaine Holt.
SPEAKER 07 :
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SPEAKER 06 :
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SPEAKER 05 :
And welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson.
SPEAKER 10 :
Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. And we’re talking with Brigadier General Blaine Holt, retired United States Air Force. You can see him on a regular basis on Newsmax as well. And General Holt, as the second highest ranking U.S. military officer at NATO during that experience, what would you say was America’s greatest strength and then also its biggest vulnerability?
SPEAKER 04 :
I’d say our greatest strength is, well, first off, we’re paying for the entire bill, so that comes with certain privileges. But I’d say that our greatest strength is the ability to take some very disparate countries in Europe, meaning your more traditional Western European countries, and then you’ve got the Eastern frontier, who look at threats to the continent very, very differently. And I’d say that our… role is mostly in the role of an honest broker who could bring countries that were that disparate on things over very paltry resources together and get them to go in the same direction. So when we’re leading and when we express leadership there, then we’re at our best. And when we advocate leadership, as we saw in the last four years, Well, then it’s quite something else. They expect American leadership. I remember the French one-star, my colleague, he came into my office and he said, where’s America today? Why aren’t you guys leading on this one thing? Because on this particular issue, we were shut down by the Obama White House. But he said, you know, Blaine, we’re going to complain about America whether you lead or don’t lead. It doesn’t really matter. I said, I understand. But but but I people would always come to me from the United States and say, what’s the value of NATO? It’s a World War Two relic and we don’t need it anymore. I would say if you know your European history, you’ll know that this is a continent that has largely been at war for thousands of years. And that’s what they know. And and. For 75 years after World War II, you’ve had relative peace. A big part of that is because whether NATO has military capability or not, you’ve got now 32 countries that have to sit down five times a week, look each other in the eye and talk to each other at a military and a diplomatic level. That, I believe, is valuable. What I worry about and where I would challenge us to review whether we should still be a part of NATO is, is in exactly what Vice President J.D. Vance was getting at at the Munich Security Conference. Europe is unfortunately rolling back on Western values. You’ve got these globalists, little darlings from the World Economic Forum that have hatched into country leaders like Keir Starmer of the U.K., Macron of France, Ursula von der Leyen, who’s never been elected to anything in her life, but she’s the president of the European Commission. um and and they they’re going in a totalitarian manner with um so you’ve got all this migrant this illegal migration that has been institutionalized and it’s become quite dangerous i mean in the uk you’ve got rape gangs and if you complain about the rape gangs or you want to bring charges against them they’re in some cases locking up plaintiffs in germany and in uh uk and in sweden and so And J.D. Vance was quite right to point these things out. But my addition to that would be, look, if you’re going to walk away from shared Western Judeo-Christian values, then we should be reevaluating whether it’s in America’s best interest to not just be putting the bill, but to be participating in this. We’ve got to make that determination. And I hate to see Europe commit suicide, but that’s what it’s doing right now.
SPEAKER 10 :
We talked about Americans waking up to what’s going on. Do you think Europeans, the everyday people, are waking up to what’s going on?
SPEAKER 04 :
They are. But the problem is, so Americans are a pretty feisty nation compared to Europeans who have been used to socialism and depending upon the government for everything. Well, now their governments are turning on them. And they are waking up as you see these heinous crimes happen. And then censorship follows with that. And then they want to tax these people into oblivion. They want to force climate change down their throats. They shut down, you know, all money goes to Ukraine for more weapons and money because it’s a grift. And they’re taunting a nuclear bear while they’re turning off their own nuke plants to say that carbon is a bad thing. And it’s inducing food strains, food supply strains, potential famine, deindustrialization, and an entire continent that could find itself in an existential crisis of its own making.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and we haven’t really talked about it yet. We’ve mentioned Ukraine. So you’re a very trusted voice now regarding Ukraine, Iran, and China. What should people know about that?
SPEAKER 04 :
What they should know is that these things are not in silos. They are all interrelated. That At the very highest levels, you’ve got great power competition. But when I talk great powers, I’m not just talking about sovereign nations. I’m talking about the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, NATO. These are bodies that have gone full-scale interventionism, doing wars of choice rather than wars of defense. And if you look at Ukraine, it’s that way. People will say, because it’s a bumper sticker thing to say, oh, well, Ukraine was a completely unprovoked war. The Russians just came in and attacked. And it’s like, well, that is bereft of all historical knowledge. Going back to 2007, the Russians have warned us full well, even Merkel and Hollande. said publicly after this war broke out that the Minsk Accords were just a ruse and they wanted they were never going to honor them they just wanted to allow Ukraine to build up a military but who’s one here who’s one here who’s one here is the the defense companies the arms dealers and a bunch of folks who have been on the take and and that’s wrong when you think about a million A million five hundred thousand that are dead. A third of the country’s population gone and not coming back. Trillions in infrastructure damage. And then that’s related to Iran because Russia’s got a relationship with Iran, and we need normalized relations with Russians to deal with that. Russia needs to be into the European economy with its oil and gas so it can save its own economy. Europe needs that gas. And then China doesn’t need to be the backstop of Russia so that we see another axis come together that might be counter U.S. And now you see that China’s imploding because of their own poor choices. And I just wrote about this last week in Newsmax. When you corner a dragon, you better be careful about the results. And now we see an Indian-Pakistan war lighting up. in a very dangerous pre-world war three environment well china’s behind the pakistan side of this and um and so these are all interrelated the president inherited a pre-world war three hot mess and it’s economic and it’s it’s cyber and it’s it’s space and it’s at sea and it’s political and here we are with a politicized military that went woke And although if you think about World War II, we weren’t prepared to go into that war either. General Marshall did all he could from 1938 on to understand that we were going to go to war and we had to get caught up. If you love peace, prepare for war. I don’t advocate for any war. And I do laud what the Trump administration is trying to do to reverse course on some of these things that may not be reversible. And that’s what’s very dangerous. And so he needs our support in this.
SPEAKER 10 :
So I think that we are very vulnerable. Some of the other interviews that I’ve done is that with the Chinese manufacturing, for example, our big electrical transformers, that they could turn those off. And I feel much better after this last election. I had this thing that I’m just very concerned about, what could happen to our country. And I still think that we’re very vulnerable, but… But I feel better that we’re trying to get this whole thing turned around. What’s your comments about having all this Chinese manufacturing stuff here in our country?
SPEAKER 04 :
You’re exactly right. We’ve got to replace things that make us vulnerable. So transformers can be built right here in the United States. I know an Indian transformer company that wants to be here very badly and build a factory here, and they can actually accelerate transformer build times by years. But that’s just one small example. My concern that you’re alluding to that I am getting at is, That last administration left the southern border wide open. So every terror cell is represented here. The state actors like the People’s Liberation Army, they are here. These folks are here on our ground. Things happen overseas. No American should just say, oh, that’ll stay overseas. These could become Main Street issues very quickly. And you saw this in the U.K. just last week. Just last week, an Iranian terror cell was interdicted and stopped just hours before they were going to create a mass casualty event. And so as we see the Iranians get back into a corner, rightly so, as we see China start to collapse and the potential Chinese Communist Party going away, and that’s a good thing, no one should forget that the door was left open. And we’ve got bad guys right here amongst us that could hit us. cyber terror, getting our water supply, the grid. And so, you know, people should be resilient. They should uplift their communities. They should help each other prepare with good emergency stocks and food and those types of things, because we don’t know what can happen in this very uncertain world. What I can tell you is, on the other side of this thing, I think things are going to be great. I think things are going to be really lovely. But We’re going to see some real tough stuff in the next nine months to a year, I think.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, we’re at a really critical time. This is our 1775 moment on us defining who we are. We’ve got just really probably a couple of minutes left. And we had talked earlier in the show that you’re a tech entrepreneur, and we just talked about national security. But I know you have a real heart for veterans. And how are you helping veterans in all that you’re doing?
SPEAKER 04 :
So, well, there’s the Heroes Homestead that I talked about earlier, but I am a coach and I help veterans who want to start businesses, who want to get into entrepreneurship, who, you know, and I advise on quite a few companies where there’s veterans that own them. But look, I think veterans, the 17 million of us are a tremendous resource. And I would just tell everybody on active duty or whether you’re a veteran, don’t settle. If you’ve got a great idea, your country needs you. And you have such skills and leadership and all these things in your bag that you had on active duty. Well, we’ll bring them into society and go build something. I tell people I spent 30 years building. learning how to destroy stuff, and now I’m spending 30 years on creating stuff. And I think that it’s just such an untapped resource that these folks are and have. And then if you’re not a veteran, but you have your own company or your own fund or your own build, Boy, go get a vet. Go out and hire a vet and just watch them go. And you’ll be amazed. And they’re Swiss Army knives, by the way. So if their resume says they can’t do it, they probably can’t.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and what a minute left. What would you say to our young people? Would you encourage them to get into the military?
SPEAKER 04 :
I would. I would now. Listen, we’re rebuilding. And what I would say is the military is one of the greatest things our country has because literally you could come in as a one striper And if you stay diligent and you get your schooling done and you work hard, you could leave as a four-star general. You could go out and start your own business. You could do incredible things. Our military is such a vehicle of transformation to come out of one walk of life and go into another. And honestly, isn’t that what America is really all about?
SPEAKER 10 :
It absolutely that is what America is all about. Brigadier General Blaine Holt, retired United States Air Force, truly an entrepreneur. And he’s with Ziriant, which is a very creative company. This has been a delight. And I thank you so much.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you. Pleasure is mine.
SPEAKER 10 :
And indeed, my friends, you can see that we stand on the shoulders of giants. So God bless you and God bless America.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thank you for listening to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.
SPEAKER 02 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
