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Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on IHart Radio.

My guest today is Garrett Exner, a former Marine Corps Special Operations Officer and a fellow at the Hudson Institute and executive director of the

Public Interest Fellowship. Hi, Garrett. So nice to have you on. Thanks so much for having me on.

So I've known you for a bit and I feel like when I came across something, maybe you tweeted

that I thought was funny or interesting and I was like, I don't know enough about Garrett. So

here we are where I'm going to find out everything about you.

Start at the beginning.

First, you were born.

Yeah.

You know, a kid from Connecticut, right outside New York, Fairfield County, Connecticut, born and raised there.

And then decided to move across the country to go to college down in Texas.

Went to college down in San Antonio.

My sister was in the World Trade Center on 9-11 and got out alive, but it was a period of

town where I didn't know that she had made it out alive, and that kind of the trajectory

of my life.

So led me to

commit at that time to join the military, didn't know where I was going to go, but just said I

have to do something in the wake of 9-11, ended up joining the Marine Corps, uh, and spent about 14

years in the Marine Corps, most of that in special operations, and then

came to D.C. at the request of my, my lovely wife, who wanted to work.

...