Welcome to the Eric Mataxas show with your host Eric Mataxas.

Hey there folks, welcome. This is the Eric Mataxas show. As you know, every now and again,

I have guests that I'm excited to talk to. Today might be one of those times because I was told by my producer

that we might be able to get Lieutenant Colonel Alan West who's running for governor of Texas.

Lieutenant Colonel Alan West, is that you?

This is me and it's good to be with you Eric and it's good to see you again and just want to wish you a happy new year.

Happy new year to you. I really, I'm excited to talk to you, but you know, as much as I've admired you over the years,

I'm the idea that you're running to be governor of Texas is hugely exciting. So I really want to talk to you about that.

I want to talk to you about yesterday and the January 6th, which my head's going to explode with anger at how the left has been portraying that in cooperation with the quote unquote mainstream media and the conservative media.

Let's let's just talk about you. Some people know you some people don't. Where did you grow up? What you've got an amazing background, obviously being Lieutenant Colonel being a member of Congress.

Tell us a little bit about yourself if you would.

Well, I was born in 1961 in the inner city of Atlanta, Georgia and the blacks only hospital. I grew up in the same neighborhood that produced Dr. Marloth the King,

and the year is called the old fourth ward neighborhood in Atlanta. My elementary school was right across the street from Ebenezer Baptist Church.

I had two fantastic parents. My father was a World War II veteran, an army corporal served in the European theater of operations, and my mother did a little over 25 years of civilian service to a Marine Corps headquarters there in Atlanta.

My mother was a Marine at Vietnam at the age of 15. My dad chalice me to be the first officer in the family because he and my older brother were both enlisted.

So I started wearing a uniform back in 1976 in high school junior ROTC, and then I went on to the University of Tennessee in on 31 July 1982. I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army in the field artillery.

I served 22 years active duty in the United States Army 13 different countries, three different combat zones I retired in August of 2004.

Been married for 32 years. My wife her dad also was career army 24 years. He's bearded and all into national cemetery. He served two tours of doing in Vietnam.

We have two daughters, oldest is 28 and that's Aubrey. The youngest is 25. That's Austin and we have one grandson. His name is Jackson Bernard and he is seven months old.

That's way too much information. Can you cut it down to about a sentence?

I'm so funny. Normally when you interview people you really want their story and you are one of the very, very few that actually gave me exactly what I was looking for. Normally people will kind of do kind of the false humility thing and say, yeah, I'm just a, I'm just a dad.

Yeah, we know you're just a dad, but tell us about listening to your background. It's thrilling because it reminds us really that their folks out there like you.

...