Lt. Col. (Ret.) Oliver North warned Americans that moral depravity will be the nation’s undoing. The American military hero and best-selling author sat down for a longform interview with Todd Starnes. Following, is a rushed transcript or you can listen to the entire interview above.
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Starnes: [00:59:38] I want to go to the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker Line always an honor to have a great American patriot and hero with us. His brand new book, The Giant Awakes, coming out today. And you’re going to want to read that one. Folks, we’ve got a link to it on the website. It’s our good buddy, retired Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. Ollie, good to have you back with us. [00:59:58][20.4]
North: [00:59:59] Todd Starnes, it’s great to be with you again, my friend. You know, we’ve launched the last four books have all been launched with you. So obviously you have been good to me and I’d like to be good to you. I just want to hold my stomach every time I hear something about this God awful raid that was pulled on the president, former president. [01:00:15][16.5]
Starnes: [01:00:16] You know, and I mean, it reminded me of how they treated you and your family back during the day. I mean, you’re no stranger to this deep state coming after someone, coming after their family. What was your reaction when you saw what they were doing to President Trump? [01:00:32][16.1]
North: [01:00:33] Well, you know, we ended up actually being treated a lot better because we had a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, and we had a good attorney general, not a crook, not a criminal, not an awful person like we’ve got today. Ed Meese was the attorney general. And so even though it was the special prosecutor and the Congress of the United States that was putting us through hell itself, it was because we had good friends that we were allowed standing. We were given an opportunity to defend ourselves. I mean, look what’s happened in this Congress, particularly the troika that is leading our country right now, the speaker of the House, the majority leader of the Senate and the president of the United States are acting as a troika in a regime that is basically obviating the constitutional protections we’re all supposed to enjoy. No one’s supposed to be above the law and no one’s supposed to be below the law. And what you’ve got happening right now is this country is being led to perdition by the leadership of this country. And that’s why these books come out when they do. Because I want the American people to me, we’ve got one last chance to turn things around. It’s going to be the election this November and the election in November of 2024. We have a chance to save this country from the crazies that are running it right now. I’m sitting here, Todd you’d appreciate this. Next time, I’ll see if I can bring one of these mugs with you. Back in my day, the FBI was a great organization, okay? The FBI alerted my family to the fact that terrorists were on the way to kill them. I was on a trip with the commandant of the Marine Corps, and they sent FBI people to our house to protect Betsy and the kids. Get them out of the way. Because six terrorists launched by Islamic Jihad from Libya were on the way to our house to kill Betsy, my kids, and they’d already killed the dog. Unbeknownst to us, they’d actually been in the house before. They went and got the house plans. You can’t do this anymore. Just walked in and said, ‘Print me the design for the house that was approved for 703 Catlin Drive in Great Falls, Virginia.’ And they printed it off for them. And the evidence, some of the evidence that was gathered against them was they had that map with them, but not the maps, the blueprint with a copy of the blueprint. And on our bedroom they’d written husband, wife in Arabic. And then the door that connected the garage to the lower level of the house because it was a split level. They had sometimes plural, sometimes left open. So they’d actually been in the house before. The dog had been poisoned. We thought it was something that the dog had eaten. It turned out it was actually strychnine. And so my friends in the FBI give me things like this. This is the coffee mug I’m drinking out of right now. It says, ‘good morning. I see the assassins have failed again.’ That’s the cup I drink coffee out of. [01:03:18][165.3]
Starnes: [01:03:18] Wow. [01:03:18][0.0]
North: [01:03:19] I write books about things like the FBI agent who’s in charge in this book is a good guy. He’s an undercover FBI agent. He’s a former Marine. Okay. And so it just happens, the two Marines know how to read and write, and we sat down and wrote this book. We’re already working on the next one. [01:03:36][16.9]
Starnes: [01:03:37] It’s you and Joel Rosenberg. You have, your novels come out and they really are for such a time as this events, I mean, almost prophetic in nature. And this is one of them. [01:03:47][10.5]
North: [01:03:48] Let me just read a there’s an audio book out there, but let me just read to you from page 214. Understand this, Jake. This is Lieutenant. General Peter Newman talking to Jake Cruz, the protagonist of the book. China is our biggest challenge on the world stage. The Chinese Communist Party is out to destroy our nation by any means. Though chickens and terrorists like to cackle when they drop an egg, the Chinese know not to advertise their successes. In fact, for them it’s lie, deny and make counter allegations. Have you read this book? America’s number one adversary? Jake, shook his head. No. It was published in 2020, written by three senior staff members of Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council. Admiral John Poindexter and Bud McFarlane were President Reagan’s national security adviser, and Richard Levine was Reagan’s NSC security policy director. Reaching into his old, well-worn map case, Major-General Newman pulled out a copy of the book, handed it to Jake and said, ‘If you want the straight scoop of what the ChiComs are up to, read this book. In just a few hours you’ll read about all that PRC is doing to take us down. What happened in Ukraine didn’t change any of what’s in this book. Putin’s goal is to dominate Europe. Xi Xinping’s goal is to dominate the whole world, including us. Xi is a much more dangerous, is much more dangerous than Putin ever could be.’ That’s just from one page of the book. It’s current events. It’s the real thing. And as you know, I’ve said this before with you. If you change enough of the dates, times, names and places, you can convert what’s currently happening into a novel without getting locked up. And of course, we never give away real secrets. [01:05:25][96.5]
Starnes: [01:05:25] No, no, it’s fascinating. Folks, you got to get a copy of the book. It’s out today in bookstores, The Giant Awakes. You know, Ollie, there have been a lot of calls for the complete dismantling of the FBI. What needs to happen? …do you believe that they are are they beyond redemption or is there a way to salvage the FBI? [01:05:48][22.5]
North: [01:05:49] Well, the things that they’re doing now are beyond redemption. And so what’s going to have to happen is a whole new set of rules has to be done, not just for the FBI, but for our intelligence services. Look, what the Obama administration did was basically covering up crimes that were being committed by then the vice president’s son. Look, what they’ve done now is they’ve intruded well beyond what the Constitution and no president of the United States has ever been subjected to what this president, Donald Trump, was subjected to and still is. They’re going out now and they’re collecting up phones from members of Congress and state legislatures. All this looking for a crime for which they can then have somebody prosecute. The way that this is all being done, that’s what needs to change. That means leadership in both the Department of Justice and the CIA and the DCI and all of the other NSA, all of those organizations that participated in the attack, the original attack, the FISA violations, all those things really are violations of law. And people ought to go to jail for committing acts. Reorganizing the FBI could and you could end up very much like what happened with the Bush administration after 9/11. You could end up with things like the Patriot Act, which has all kinds of terrible consequences. And so what I’m suggesting is real leadership change that begins this November. It follows up with a change in the Senate, the House, hopefully this time around, and a new president who understands the word integrity for the American people. [01:07:20][91.7]
Starnes: [01:07:21] Now, I’m with you on that. And we’ve been reminding people over and over and over again, the president’s never been arrested, never been charged with a crime. I mean, and look, just the other day, the president went out and said, hey, they even stole my passports. The feds come out and say, we never did such a thing. That’s outrageous. CBS goes with it and then they turn right around. And then the FBI admits that they did, in fact, steal his passport. [01:07:45][24.0]
North: [01:07:46] Yeah, we didn’t mean to, though. No, no. What’s laughable is the fact that these guys are so ham handed. I mean, this could make a great comedy. You know, a Sacha kind of comedy of all the boneheaded things that they’ve done, but with vicious intent. This is, look at the goal of the Inquisition against me back in the summer of 1987. It’s that long ago that summer, the goal was to get enough information so they could charge with impeachment, Ronald Reagan. That was the ultimate goal of the special prosecutor, and everybody knew it. It was never in the paper that way. Nobody wanted to speculate, but that’s exactly what they were doing. They just picked the wrong two witnesses to allow them to testify. They required Admiral Poindexter and me to testify. And all we had to do is tell the truth. And so at the end of the day, all of a sudden, the case against Ronald Reagan goes away. The charge was violating the Boland Amendment, for which there were no political consequences, no legal consequences whatsoever. Simply said in the defense authorization and appropriations bills, no funds made available by this Act may be used for the purposes or which will have the effect of providing direct or indirect support for military or paramilitary operations against the government and then… The Sandinista communist government. That’s all it said. And they could never, they could never hang a case on Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan declassified everything. It was stuff that was top secret code word, a couple of lines deleted and obliterated and deleted from the documents, but they were hung on this as the wallpaper at the spy museum when it opened two years later. [01:09:27][101.0]
Starnes: [01:09:28] You know, Ollie, when you go back and look and study political history here in this country, you realize that there really is a political ruling class. Ronald Reagan was an accidental president. I mean, that was supposed to be George H.W. Bush’s run for the White House. And there was that huge struggle, the huge fight between Reagan and the Bushes. And yet these accidental presidents like Ronald Reagan. And I think an argument can be made for Donald Trump. Those are the most history-making, culture-shaping presidencies of at least the modern American political era. [01:10:05][37.1]
North: [01:10:06] You know, and we’re blessed that Ronald Reagan had two terms. Yes. I mean, a lot of the things that Donald Trump started, for example, he tried to turn back on the research that was being done under prior administrations on hypervelocity weapons. These are very, very important weapons. It reduces the warning time. If a nuclear weapon is launched, a nuclear warhead is launched on one of those weapons instead of 30 minutes warning time, you could have as few as 11 minutes warning time. And so you could decapitate the leadership of this country unless we build defenses against it and build our own, not because we simply want to have better weapons. The only purpose of weapons and the people that we have in our armed forces is to deter war. And if you can’t deter it, to win it as quickly as possible at the lowest possible cost. That’s the only purpose of having an armed forces. This administration is obliterating our armed forces. The re-enlistment rate among senior noncommissioned officers is next to zero. The return rate of officers coming back and staying is almost zero. And they’re 30,000 short on new enlistments. Why? Well, I can give you one word: Afghanistan. The right thing to do was to get out of that war. Unfortunately, it was done the wrong way by this administration, and it’s catastrophic and it’s affected everything. It gave Xi motivation that if it hadn’t been for what’s going on in Ukraine right now. You know, we mentioned that in this book, if it hadn’t been for Ukraine, Xi would already be in the process of taking Taiwan. [01:11:41][94.9]
Starnes: [01:11:43] Olie, we’ve got about a minute or so. There are a lot of dumpster fires burning in this country right now. What’s the one that keeps you up at night? What’s the one that really concerns you? [01:11:52][9.1]
North: [01:11:52] Well, look at the moral depravity of this country, the lack of sanctity of human life. I’ve got 18 grandkids. My goal in life is to make sure that those kids know how to fight the good fight, finish the race and keep the faith. That’s not hard for a Marine to say. That’s what I want on the back of my tombstone. I want this country to return to its roots. That’s the book that came out just before this one. But that theme is carried forward in this book. I am hoping that there’s a moral, spiritual revival in this country to return us to the value systems of the only two documents that in the whole world to create a country, the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Jefferson and Madison go back to those two documents because of the only two in the world that pay homage to God Almighty in the crafting of them. That’s what this country’s gotta do, is go back to those terms. The oath that I took so many times as an officer to support and defend not a panoply of, not a political party, not a person, Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We need a president and a Congress that believes that and restores that. That’s what keeps me up at night. [01:13:00][67.7]
Starnes: [01:13:01] Ollie, we’re going to leave it there. Hey, congratulations on the new book and thanks for letting us launch this thing. It’s so exciting. Folks, I’ve got all of his books in my library and you need to have them in yours as well. Congratulations on The Giant Awakens. Thanks, Ollie. [01:13:15][14.1]
North: [01:13:16] God bless you, brother. By the way, discount by going to faithful text dot com. [01:13:20][3.8]
Starnes: [01:13:21] I love it. Always looking to save some money to go. All right, Ollie, good hearing from you. Take care now. All right. What a good man right there. And he’s an excellent author. [01:13:31][9.9]