NCFP Weekly Update: Interview with Brian McGinnis

Hello, Brian.

Hello, Patrick.

How are you doing today, my friend?

Hey, I'm doing well.

Thank you.

How are you?

Wonderful, and so excited to have you on the program.

So I've told our listeners a little bit about your story, and I know this isn't what defines you, but I think just kind of to set a framework, if you could walk people through your experience in D.C.

I know that video and that story went, dare I say, viral and caught the attention of a lot of folks.

So first things first, kind of walk us through that experience.

Well, I feel it was a blessing that it all happened that way.

You know, I'm a Marine and I'm married to a Palestinian woman.

I was a Marine first, chronologically.

I took on a lot of indoctrination to defend this country to my death.

And that really does a thing on your mind and makes you believe certain things and maybe have mental dissonance.

to justify whatever you're doing and what we're doing is very lethal.

That's my background.

Then I met my wife and fell in love with her and realized the hard facts that lie with the Palestinians and how they've been under military occupation and how brutal that's been.

And like I just told you, I was part of the elite fighting force, the Marines, the thing that I wanted to join and be the best of and part of.

I had to detangle all that within myself How did I believe what I was doing right? Yet now I see my wife and her family who are so wonderful and loving and kind and generous and not a threat.

So I had to detangle all that and come to terms and then I had children and then all this humanity just came pouring in.

So I had this large conflict in my mind.

Then the truth just overwhelmingly pushed over my ego and the justifications I had for the...

the death and destruction that I was a part of and what has continued today.

I kind of like compartmentalized my military experience as a once and done.