The Empowering Humility Podcast

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Empowering Humility, where we're on a mission to promote human flourishing by restoring humility as a common denominator in society today. Let's dive in.

Giancarlo Newsome: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Empowering Humility Podcast. I'm Giancarlo Newsome and I'll be your host for this podcast. Really excited about our guest today. a little bit of background to frame what humility's about and our guests and how blessed you are to hear from our guests today. empowering humility.

We believe humility is the root virtue for human flourishing and everything good. We believe literally humility is the root of everything. Good. Innovation, relationships, effective politics. And that's what we're gonna talk about today with the next governor of Maine.

A little more on Bobby just a second. Part of this podcast is we want to enlist you to help us to not only restore humility, but be an advocate for seeing technology such as tomorrow's a AI and our Web3 technologies be [00:01:00] employed for good. Because we know these algorithms, they are not wired to refresh and reinforce humility.

So a little about our guests for our new listeners. They all have a clear passion and purpose that's greater than themselves. Our guests, you know, people talk about, Hey, they demonstrated a life of x. I would say our guests demonstrate flow state. They live in it. They are fully self-actualized in painful forward, goodness and selflessness.

And we say in a big summary statement, empowering humility. And it, we will probably talk about it In the show today, but humility is not this weak, where you're a doormat. Humility is actually the first step that precedes courage. And you're gonna meet one of my favorite friends who every time I've worked with him, he's displayed empowering humility.

Basically success today is you being able to hear some great stories from a great guest. You'll be rewarded if you can [00:02:00] learn from how they have led their lives and their organizations. Most of 'em are leaders in empowering humility. So let me tell you a little bit about our guest.

Our guest today is the Honorable Bobby Charles, we became friends while working together, for several major international aerospace companies. I immediately recognized and valued how his integrity and brilliance was tied, not just to a genuine love of our country.

He's, again, I've told people about Bobby, that he's like a modern day. Founding father, I've never said that about anyone else, so I hope you'll enjoy getting to know him as I have. But he's also perpetually embodied humility. He, also a veteran. He's prior service naval Intelligence officer. I'll, I'll also share on the chatty, just did a wonderful Memorial Day tribute.

We'll make sure that YouTube gets posted, with this, podcast. We also have a similar upbringing, both Boy Scouts, I think, Eagle Scouts to boot. Anyhow, he has displayed, [00:03:00] openly displayed deep reverence and a consistent defense of the virtual humility. So, with no further ado, let me introduce Bobby.

Bobby's great to have you here.

Bobby Charles: I appreciate being with you, Giancarlo, you embody the principle that you're talking about, but I'm happy to give background and talk a little about the future too as you want.

Giancarlo Newsome: I'm gonna say it, the future governor of Maine, and we're gonna talk a little bit about how Maine right now is a poster child for hubris the opposite of humility. But, so let me, I'm gonna tell, actually, I am kind of going through a script team. I hope you guys will forgive me for that, but there's just too much great stuff with Bobby.

Let me get a little more bio on Bobby here. Apart from being a small business owner, running a small research company in Washington. DC Bobby is a constitutional scholar. I always loved when I worked with him how he had, he always could reference back. The Constitution was constantly in his head space.

It was awesome and just a genuine love, but also [00:04:00] intellectual capacity to recall it and reference it.

Bobby Charles: we didn't rehearse any of this, so this is all just off the top of my head. But, you know, to me, you know, Christ spoke personified, humility and asked us to personify humility.

But what humility in many ways comes back to is gratitude for everything. Okay? And I will tell you that my life story. Is, a lot of merit. Yes. A lot of opportunity. Yes. A lot of making big decisions. Yes. But it all goes back to the beginning. I, you know, my father was enlisted In the Navy and he's buried at Arlington with my grandfather, who was an academy guy.

But my mother ended up raising four kids, more or less on her own in rural Maine, not far from where I sit right now. And our home upbringing was very, very modest. Of course we didn't really know it was modest at the time. There were, you know, I had sisters and a brother and we. We, we would cut four quart of wood every fall, and we would cut it two years ahead and put it in our [00:05:00] woodsheds.

We had big woodsheds and the reason was, we had no electric, heat in my home, even up here, right here in Maine. So we, I never really thought it was a bad thing. I actually thought it was a good thing. we had three.

Three wood stoves were in constant use all winter long. We would stock them early. I was the one that split all, we used to joke that, somebody, did you have a wood splitter? And I'd always say, yeah, it was me. And then after me, it was my brother. And so we had an ax in a mall and a sledge, and we would cut the wood, we would put it away.

All of that gives you the kind of appreciation for being close to the earth. It gives you an appreciation for what real work is about. Real work is mental, but it is also manual. And all of those things in a way make you, I don't know if it does for everybody, but for me and for my siblings, it made us very reverential.

we grew our own crops and we took care of, some animals and we were basically close to the land. My father had never gotten a college education. When everything was said and done, my mother, who was an elementary school teacher, said, you need to get out there and get a.

An [00:06:00] education. Well, we had no money, so you know, we just took it on trust that if we worked hard, something good would happen. And my sisters did that and I did that. And it turns out to be true. If you work hard and have faith and keep things in perspective, the world will work out for you. No matter whether it's what you planned or whether it's something you didn't plan.

At the end of the day it will work. And so. I applied to this college, Dartmouth College. I had no links to it of any kind. I'd only been there once. I passed through the town. I loved it and I thought, gosh, wouldn't it be great to go to a school like that? And lo and behold, I got in. But I had no money, so my mother said, take the family car and go over there and explain to them why you're a good investment.

That's exactly what I did. I had little 13 points why I'm a good investment in you. I said, I will not let you down. I will work hard every day with the education you give me. I will do good. And ended up giving the address to the college in Phi Beta [00:07:00] Kappa. I get a scholarship to Oxford University for two years and studied economics and then got a.

Another scholarships to Columbia Law School and worked through there and eventually clerked on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a Reagan appointee, who was also a US Marine. Just a wonderful experience and kept up with him and his wife to the ends of their days, had worked in the Reagan White House.

I got a few months in the Bush 41 White House was a litigator and just basically kept litigating, until I discovered that I really don't like litigation. I, I had always thought that I would grow up and become Daniel Webster, and it turns out Daniel Webster's dead. The whole principle of being Daniel Webster is dead.

There's an awful lot of, money chasing that happens in litigation, and I just felt that, first of all, I didn't go to sleep feeling good at night. I had litigated in New York. I'm also a main attorney and, and eventually found myself in dc but I just. Thought I can do more with what God has given me. You know, use your [00:08:00] talents, don't hide 'em under a basket.

And frankly, I'm sure there's a line in the Bible that says, don't just work to make big companies rich. I decided, that I was done with that I was gonna prosecute. I got an offer to prosecute as a federal prosecutor. At the same time, Newt Gingrich won control of the house.

I ended up being the chief counsel and the staff director for the largest part of the oversight committee. We did the Waco hearings, we did intensive investigations into waste, fraud, and abuse for five years.

I mean, just day after day of investigations, subpoenas, criminal referrals, it was extraordinary. And then, as you may remember, toward the end of that time, because I also had the TSSCI clearances, I thought on the civilian side, I thought, you know, my father was Navy, my grandfather was Navy. I have an awful lot of relatives going back on my mother and father's side all the way back.

I have more than a hundred relatives who fought in the American Revolution. My brother's the genealogist. I'm not. But it came to the point of, you know, do you're at the end of the age [00:09:00] bracket where you can get in or not. I went through that process, became a naval intelligence officer. As you may remember, I started a company shortly after that working chiefly with nonprofits Dare America Partnership for Drug Free America.

Doing some work, as you know, with companies that had a, a. An ability to help America, and yours was one of them. Also working with a lot of veterans who were dedicated in their organizations and law enforcement in helping America. And then we worked for these different combatant commands because what they really needed from us was a field understanding of what was going on out in.

CENTCOM or Ucomm or africom or Southcom or paycom. So we would go out there and try to gather as much information as possible and bring back the goods and do the analysis so that they could make decisions on what they chose to do operationally. I had kind of just gotten into that when, nine 11 happened, and, of course I was Naval Naval Intelligence.

I had [00:10:00] my two years of training, Pensacola, out in, Coronado and whatnot and in DC So I was ready to roll and, I actually was already in the Pentagon. I was working periodically active duty in the Pentagon. And on nine 11 by an odd chance, because I was also, I was a reservist who was volunteering for active duty a lot.

I and the company in some ways could run itself under, under a couple of great people that, that were working with me. I was on a plane headed for Phoenix to give a speech to law enforcement that morning, and that plane left 45 minutes before the plane that hit the Pentagon. As it turned out, the plane that hit the Pentagon hit my unit where I would have been, uh, killed.

Killed all of my shipmates, and so I immediately volunteered for active duty. They put my plane down in Wichita. I was back within 24 hours, volunteered for active duty, began training the active duty who would then have to basically keep the intel shop running. We were the guidance for the chief of [00:11:00] naval operations.

So that's what our job was. So. Anyway, I did that for a while and then rolled off, and I thought I was finally back in the course of running my business, which a lot of it had to do with strategic and management consulting and just trying to help nonprofits and other parts of the government and some good businesses get up off the ground, particularly in your world aviation.

And, as it turned out, I get another call, and this call is from Colin Powell. And he said I would, I actually literally had my cell phone in hand and I said, are you sure you have the right number? You know, I'm like, really? But sure enough, he and Rich Armitage, his deputy, who we just recently lost, two great men anyway,

he said, how would you like to come be? My assistant Secretary of state manage basically $2 billion of operations, so I managed the air wing there. We had Blackhawks armed Black people don't know what we have at State, but it's a huge air force and we use it in environments where we cannot use marked aircraft.

So we [00:12:00] obviously used it in Columbia, Bolivia, Peru, but we also used it in other parts of the world. That was part of it. The other part of it was because I was trusted by people like Gingrich over on the hill. They had asked if they could put another billion dollars into the task, particularly where I had to manage it, of training the Iraqi police, setting up all the training for the Iraqi police, Afghan police, and of course we managed Kosovo in Columbia.

So to be honest, it was 24 7. Always on alert with the ops center. It was a management experience with thousands of people and billions of dollars, but I always felt that what I was, I, I felt like God kept me alive for a reason and I. I think that's true of all of us. By the way. If we're still breathing, there's a purpose.

Giancarlo Newsome: Amen. Yep.

Bobby Charles: he, you know, he did not keep us alive just to sit and twiddle our thumbs. So my goal was to try to live up, to be equal to my time, [00:13:00] to live up to what was required of me. And I did that for a couple years. And after Powell left, I had a, a little bit of time with rice and I said, you know what? I do not need the corner office anymore.

This is not really my world. I'm not a government guy. I had created a lot of accountability and I rolled back out into the company and began working again with combatant commands. The interesting part is life teaches you things when you don't expect you're going to learn things. And yeah, sometimes those are the lessons that are the most important.

And there were many times early in my life when I was behind the Iron Curtain for some reason or somewhere else, and honestly, um. I think it's an incredible strength that people of faith have. I got myself into bad situations, in Iraq, Afghanistan, but even before that, in the former Soviet Union in Poland, I was, at one point in time, I was, uh, one of those kids that thought he was immortal.

You know, I could run around the world and do stuff and not pay a consequence for making stupid mistakes. But in Poland [00:14:00] and a couple other places, I almost paid that price. So why not? Well, because I did turn back to prayer. And why prayer? Because my mother raised us, all four of us, with the idea that.

Prayer and your humility is really, truly the secret to you. Or you will either go forward in life and fulfill whatever that expectation or destiny is of you, or you will not. And if you will, just leave your ears open, and my ears are big enough to stay open almost all the time. But you know, if you can leave your ears open, your heart open, and you can keep listening and then acting on what you understand to be.

What is the next step in whatever that destiny is, then you are doing the right thing. And I found myself, you know, the bottom line is I got back here to Maine, Giancarlo, my kids are grown now. I, you know, and their kids of faith and strength. And I found that the [00:15:00] state that I left, that I was grown up in, that I went to high school in, that I worked for World War II Vets in and loved, was now no longer that state.

The state of Maine, unfortunately, has been decimated. We've gone from five overdoses a few years ago to 10,000 overdoses last year. We lose between 40 and 70 kids a month to the big drug traffickers in fentanyl and methamphetamines and heroin and crack cocaine things. You and I worked to try to get out of the system.

But you know, lo and behold, we were able and. People like you, Giancarlo. And with me working, we were able to get folks like the Cali Cartel outta business and the Medellin cartel outta business. And I come back here to rural Maine and I find that the Dominican traffickers and the Mexicans and the Chinese are right here.

So my number one reason for running for governor and people can go to bobbyformaine.com and help me. But my number one reason was to help save these kids because it is a tragedy beyond belief. I meet almost every day. [00:16:00] With parents who've lost their kids to drugs and it is crushing, they never get over it.

None of us ever get over it. And the other two big pieces which I'll end with are the state has been financially mismanaged in the extreme. We are the number one state in the country for property taxes. I am gonna cut them back down to almost nothing. And I am gonna cut the income tax. And the reason is older Mainers we're the oldest demographic.

We're the oldest state in the country in terms of our population, average population. These seniors are many of them on fixed incomes, and those fixed incomes are not big. And the Democrats in the last decade have tripled property taxes. And you might say, well, well wait a minute. I. You know, that's a local decision, and that's true.

But the problem is if the state pushes mandates down on towns and on counties, they have only one means for paying for those mandates, and that means is the property tax. So what's happened is older people are being pushed out of homes. They paid the mortgage [00:17:00] on, they did everything right. They thought, Hey, I paid it off 30 year mortgage.

My kids are grown. They now continue to pay rent to the government for something they own, and at the end of the day, they can't afford it. And so they end up in residential homes. And now the state of Maine is closing down senior homes. So it is an outrage for seniors. The second part of it is seniors can't afford day-to-day things like prescription drugs.

And this governor, this democrat governor in the Democrat legislature just rose raised the tax on prescription drugs again by raising it on pharmacies. So that's a huge issue. Young people can't afford to buy a home in this stage, Giancarlo, these young people under the age of 35, many of them are staying with their parents or a friend or an aunt or an uncle.

And the reason is that the average, I'm sorry, the median income. The median income for any mannar under the age of 35 is $200 short of the median rental cost,

Giancarlo Newsome: Wow,

Bobby Charles: they can't not even afford to rent. Nevermind that [00:18:00] the American dream that you and I had where you. You save up your money and you eventually buy a little house, or you build a little house and you raise a family, they can't do it.

I was talking to a Marine, a young Marine in his twenties the other day and he said, Bobby, when you come talk to the young people, and this was sobering, really sobering for me, Giancarlo, he said, when you talk to the young people, I want you to remember something you grew up under the influence of the World War II vets.

You. Have these values that you believe in the future. You believe things can be better tomorrow than they were today. You believe in the American dream? He said, most of us, now I'm different. He said, I'm a Marine. I believe that we can do this. But most of my age bracket, they don't believe in the American dream anymore.

They don't believe they will ever own a home. They don't believe they can get there. And so what do they do? They take money from the government, they sit on their parents' couch, they wish that they watch YouTube. Things that say you can get rich quick, which [00:19:00] you obviously can't and, and so that is a tragedy.

The fact that affordability in this state has gone. Nobody can afford to live in this state. And the last part of it that really bothers me is that the state of Maine had one of the best educational systems in the country in 1992. We were the best educational system in the country by fourth grade and eighth grade reading and math scores this last year we're number 50 out of 50.

If that is not a betrayal of the children of this state, I can't think of a bigger betrayal. 70% of our fourth graders, Giancarlo cannot read or cannot read the level, and almost the same number of eighth graders can't do basic math, algebra, division, multiplication. So how are you going to succeed in life?

How are you gonna go work at Bath Ironworks? How are you gonna start a little company? How are you going to, you know, whether your company is aviation or pizza? How are you gonna do it if you can't read and you can't write? And the answer is you can't. And [00:20:00] so I finally, I was never thinking I was gonna end up trying to be governor, but I will tell you.

I finally got sick of it and I finally said, you know what, no one else is stepping up with the quals to do it. I will step up, I will do it, and I will fix the state, and when I'm done, I'll come back to my little house. I'm not rich. I'll come back to my little house. I'll love life.

Giancarlo Newsome: that, I love it.

Bobby Charles: Cool.

Giancarlo Newsome: I love your post and you did one that was called, pretending to be God.

Like that's the, there's some politicians, and you know, you think of these, you think of how much pride do you have to have to watch from 1992 to 2025 to go from the top of the, of the charts to the, to the bottom 50 out of 50 in education? How like, and it's. It truly is contagious, you know, pride or humility and, I guess maybe you could unpack a little, the, why doesn't Bobby run for Congress?

So I'm thrilled that you, I really, and you [00:21:00] know, I've noticed this too, Bobby. There's a lot of folks, there's a young man that's coming to mind right now. Super humble guy. He was just doing some basic research for his masters about, you know, this blockchain technology could really help protect people's property rights in third world countries.

You know, where a coup can come in and wipe it out. And he just quietly, humbly work, study this. Next thing you know, he's like, leading a major national blockchain. Council, national level. And likewise with him, I'm like, bro, you know, step up out there. Folks need to, and he's also in the army with me and he's, it is funny 'cause he's a captain, so he still calls me, sir, but like, we're not on duty.

I'm like, bro, this is, you are doing stuff that I really feel is a game changer for our nation and actually the world. And even that type of technology, if you look at kind of where it came about, the whole, Satoshi Naka and the Bitcoin papers, it happened out of [00:22:00] 2008. Again, like you mentioned, massive mismanagement of finances and people said, this isn't right.

We've gotta have zero trust protocols. We have to have much better transparency, much better accountability, I guess, as you wrote about, these politicians that are in effect. It, it's weird to see how they're hubris, how they pretend to be God. I guess what they say sounds good, but they don't have any accountability as to whether they're doing any real good.

Bobby Charles: know a Giancarlo when I wrote that piece, all of the pieces I write come from my heart, even if they're analytical. I was more specific than that. When you get into the business of trying to define what a boy and girl is, and you're gonna disagree with God because God has made clear what a boy is and what a girl is, you are playing God.

Okay?

Giancarlo Newsome: Yeah.

Bobby Charles: When you get into the business of endangering kids' lives and indulging, and legalizing, or trying to, or essentially looking the other way because you've [00:23:00] undermined law enforcement, big, dangerous drugs like fentanyl and heroin and crack cocaine and methamphetamines. You are killing children.

Obviously if you get into the business of late term abortion and all that, which these Democrats passed a bill, allowing, you're also playing God, okay? When you get into the business of saying, I'm gonna run seniors out of their homes, and I don't give a damn, and I'm not gonna let young people have the rights and opportunities that I had, nevermind under Title vii, but under any title, you're playing God.

And when you say, you know what, I got a great education. Apparently you've forgotten a lot of what came outta your education. You know, there was that World War II generation that taught the current generation that's sitting in a lot of these offices. They were humble people. They saw their best friends killed around them and buried around them, and they came back here.

And the people I worked for genuinely saw that. I mean, one particular veteran that I knew very, very well for 380 days killed Germans. He was the quietest, simplest guy in the world. He came back here, raised two [00:24:00] girls. Quiet, quiet, quiet guy. What did he teach? He taught sometimes you have to stand up to evil.

And even when that's all done, there's nothing to gloat about. All you should be doing is saying, I'm grateful that I lived through this and my friends unfortunately didn't get that chance, and I am gonna try to live up to the values that they died for. And I fought for.

That's the kind of humility that we were raised with. I worked for another guy that was a tail gunner in the Pacific, and he had a temper, but you know what? He was still. He was angry with himself when he got angry. He was not an individual that thought that was right, even in his own mind's eye. And another guy that was in the Pacific who had seen a lot of horror and he was quiet as a mouse, tough as a tough, as a, you know, tough as some, you know, I don't know.

Tough as nails, but at the same time. Quiet, thoughtful, earnest. So they didn't tell us anything. Giancarlo did. They, they didn't really tell us. They just, we went to church every Sunday. They lived a life. Many of 'em didn't even go to church every Sunday, but they lived a [00:25:00] life that was true to the values that do embody gratitude, giving hard work.

Knowing where you fit in the picture, perspective and humility. They were that kind of person. And now I, the reason I wrote this piece pretending to be God is I think all a lot of the Democrats in this state, including this ridiculous governor and, and Secretary of State and, and attorney General, I. Who, who think they can, they can break the law because they got power.

They can ignore fairness and they can ignore procedural due process. 'cause they got power they can try to throw Trump off the ballot 'cause they got power. They can decide they're gonna redefine boys and girls and push, you know, men into girls locker rooms. If that had happened with my daughter, who's now 23, I would've been in their face immediately.

They would never have heard the end of it. And they would've been sued

Giancarlo Newsome: sued and can. I can't. And you know, I think that one, I just don't get how the Democrats can't drop that issue. When you think, especially since they say they're so pro woman, what you have, like [00:26:00] you have a daughter. I have daughters. They work hard.

They compete to have it just undermined. I mean, the hubris you know, I think. You know, I love, you know, you come from a rural background, my mother saw World War II firsthand. I heard those stories and you're right, they all had that undercurrent of gratitude. But I really think in the sixties, there's a good portion of us, and I think now it's largely in the political left.

That's just, I summarize it. If you look at most of their positions, it's freedom without responsibility. But it's self-defeating, like

Bobby Charles: I think I would go further than that. Giancarlo, I would say they feel entitled to be reckless with your life and my life and our kids' lives because they just decide that they're smarter or they have power and power. What's the, you know, was it Byron or, or, uh, Lord Acton or Berkeley? One of them, you know, one of them said, uh.

You know, power [00:27:00] corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And in this state, they have absolute power. They own the house, the Senate, the governorship, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the treasurer's position, the House and the Senate, of course. And then the, the school boards and the, the, a lot of the county commissioners.

And so their attitude is, you know what? We run the show the way. Mayor Daley ran Chicago. We run the show. Get out of our way. Well, you know what people in the state of Maine have begun to say, just like nationally, they said it to the Bidens, you know what we're done with all your corruption, all this corruption.

Taking away the rights of children, taking away the rights of parents, taking away the rights of people who just want a good job taking away the tax dollars. They've doubled the budget in this state. Almost doubled it in six or eight years now, the state of Maine didn't overnight become twice what its size was, but people who are on an average income of $42,000 a year now have to pay twice the number of taxes that they did seven

Giancarlo Newsome: or eight

Bobby Charles: ago.

Giancarlo Newsome: years ago. And, and, you know,

Bobby Charles: [00:28:00] tolerable.

Giancarlo Newsome: and, and again, you know, I think that 50 out of 50 in education, obviously the drug, everything you mentioned, I, I really, that's why I'm, I'm looking forward to when seeing when you become governor of Maine, that, it, you know, I think it, but also this is a call for not just your governorship, but the people of Maine.

And not just Maine. 'cause this is a podcast that has, we, our, our listeners are all over the nation. We're all over the globe. It's, it's actually a call to, to pause and reflect and say, Hey, have I got caught up in my own biases? Like how truly humble am I am? Because we do know there's a lot of statistics that are out and there's the great book by, Jonathan, he the Anxious Generation.

Talks about how damaging social media is where it reinforces some of these crazy ideas and, and it's reinforcing that it's okay to be 50th in education. That it's okay that I don't have to read and write, that it's okay that if I'm excessively overweight and [00:29:00] killing myself, like guys and, team fellow citizens, let's. You know, let's, it's not for me, it's not even a left or right thing. It's become a left thing that they represent this crazy level of hubris. Some people say, ah, you know, the Republicans look at Donald Trump. He's, you know, and how do you say that's humility? I would argue if you listen below sometimes the rhetoric, he does listen to other counsel, you know, and I love the new format.

That's why I love doing this podcast also for you where, you know, for me, Bobby, I, I have to confess, yeah, after watching some of those long form podcasts where I got to hear the candidate speak and hear firsthand, not through a filter, has been game changing for me. Like now, every time I turn on the TV and if there's a filter, another pundit or another talking head, I turn it off.

I go search for the raw. I want to hear directly from President Trump. I owner hear directly from,

Bobby Charles: So

Giancarlo Newsome: secretary Rubio.

Bobby Charles: Let me pick up on that Giancarlo first. I think Donald Trump. I think we all, I watched it [00:30:00] with Reagan. Um, I've seen it with other people. When you go through a life and death experience, it fundamentally reinforces or reawakens the humility that you had. It deepens it. He was almost killed twice.

It changed him. I think in a way that made him realize, I have limited time on Earth. I need to do what I can do while I can do it. It reminds me of the old prayer by Stephen Rele, who was actually one of the King's Musketeers in France under Louis the 16th. And he left, came to the United States of America during our revolution or after, just after.

He converted. To Christianity and he was in all the hospitals and he was in all of the prisons. The famous prayer that he left us with is, I shall pass this way, but once Lord, give me the power to help those that I can while I can for. Help me not neglect or delay for I shall not pass this way.

Again, that is the spirit that actually moves the best leaders we have ever [00:31:00] had in this country. It currently, I believe, moves Trump. It definitely moved Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln. You know, people who understand. It's almost as if you know, you know, I work a lot with Buzz Aldrin, and I once asked Buzz, you know, what was exhilarating about being on the moon and whatnot, and he basically boiled it down to the fact that Bobby, an extraordinary number of people were.

We're waiting on, depending on Neil and I to do the right thing, not to mess it up. The biggest thing on my mind was not that I could put my thumb over the earth, none of that. The biggest thing in my mind was I had been vested with incredible responsibility. I couldn't screw it up. I had to get it right.

And I think one of the reasons Donald Trump has moved so fast and why Ronald Reagan, after his assassination attempt said the rest of my life belongs to God. And began to do things that were daring trying to bring the Soviet Union to its [00:32:00] knees during his own tenure. That's a pretty highfalutin aspiration.

Try to get the taxes down and out. And he cut a quarter, I think of all the income taxes, try to restore a lot of the confidence that the nation once had under our founders. These things come to people. Who realize incredible responsibility lies on your shoulders, and it also lies on a governor's shoulders.

Not for the nation, but for that group of people that are depending on you. They want to trust you. They want to understand that if you have a way to, fix a problem, that you will use that if you have training, you will use every ounce of your training. You will bring good people in around you. You will trust.

That you might not always be right. And so you will listen the way George Washington, you know, George Washington was pretty decisive, but he had seven generals who on occasion would by unison tell him, you can't do that. We can't do that. And so he never said, oh, we're gonna do it anyway. No. He said, okay, we can't do that.

I get it. We're gonna back off. He hated to retreat.

Giancarlo Newsome: Well, [00:33:00] and, and you know, to just, to pile in, you know, there's a lot of people that still have, a lot of angst with Trump. I'm like, here's a man, here's a leader who's publicizing his cabinet meetings. And also to, to tie into like, you know, you talked about all these leaders that prayed and how they changed with prayer, and they kind of, they humble themselves to something bigger than themselves.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I remember. He was interviewed recently and they asked, 'cause you know, and he has a Catholic spiritual background. He says, what's your taught spiritual habit? He says, I try to pray without ceasing. Kinda like what you mentioned.

Bobby Charles: So to pray without ceasing is directly from the Bible and it's also from the Greek Orthodox. Compendium, of the prayers of the monastics, the idea of pray without ceasing to me means you say prayers in the morning, you say them in the evening, but in the middle of the day, maybe you're.

In the middle of a task of some kind and it washes over you that you need to depend on God for the outcome of the task. You say a prayer, in my world, it would just be an awareness [00:34:00] without ceasing that we are indebted to a loving God and that loving God is always there in our lives.

He's always there. It's like that famous old, statement in effect, and every, half a dozen people have claimed credit for having put it out there. But the idea that, you know, there's an old, there's a man walking on the beach and there are two pairs of footsteps, and then there's only one.

He accuses God, he turns the blame on God and says, why did you abandon me? And he says, no.

Giancarlo Newsome: I picked you up.

Bobby Charles: that's when I carried you.

Giancarlo Newsome: That's right. You know, bomb. But I'm, let's go on, let's go a little bit edgy here. You bring up faith in implying kind of the church. And, um, and by the way, before I go on this trail, um. And I wanna come back to the footprints in the sand story.

I do want to tell the listeners if you guys have not heard, when, president Trump and, HHS Secretary Robert F. [00:35:00] Kennedy Jr. And the FDA, they're announcing an executive order. If you listen to that, you can watch. In my opinion, that is they are acting humbly. You can tell that the FDA, and I forgot the other three folks that work for, secretary Kennedy, but you can tell that they are nervous about the fact that they have taken on big pharma.

I mean, like, that courage, that humility, is pretty impressive. But I wanna drill into an edgy thought. I feel the church has weakened greatly since the sixties too. And I'll play into the footprints with sand poem. I feel the poem needs to, we need to, we need to bring another part of it back that's, that it doesn't finish with is there is a point where God puts us back down.

And the, I feel, again, same to this concept in politics where we've separated responsibility from freedom. We've also separated responsibility, truth from his grace. Most of the Evangelical Western Christian Church, [00:36:00] less so on the Catholic side. Has lost that fear and trembling and I was gonna pay forward a really cool, new habit I'm trying to have.

But when we say pray without ceasing, like you mentioned, it's, it's kind of awareness of his presence. But imagine if we can be humble 24 7, like on this podcast right now. Who are we to think that, that our creator is not frankly a third participant? So one of my new habits, Bobby, I think you'll like is among people that share my faith is like as soon as we talk, say, Hey, this is a three-way call and it's a two way.

And we just have that perpetual awareness of, of humility.

Bobby Charles: part of it, Giancarlo, when you talk about putting your feet back down again and how we've lost something. I think part of it is I. You know, I do not go around pushing my faith in other people's faces. I understand that if I am asked, I will attest and I will witness to that conversation.

Maybe this is just my style. I, but I am wholly unafraid to say [00:37:00] my prayers in public or in private. And George Washington and virtually every one of our founders. It's not about even being unafraid or unselfconscious. They lived their faith every day. So by the way, did the foot soldiers, I mean, whatever other bad habits they might have had, or the things that come with a war or the things that come with, poverty or the things that come with, fear.

They were by and large a Christian army. And the irony is people today think, oh, you know, isn't that quaint? That person still prays. Isn't that quaint? I, I was at an event the other day, which was actually not a church event. It was a public event about public safety up in Bangor. And we said prayers together afterwards.

Because honestly, if you're being true to the founding fathers, and if you're being true to yourself, you know you are not the author of all the things you've done in life, you know [00:38:00] it.

Giancarlo Newsome: Yeah. And you're not the author

Bobby Charles: all the things that are around you as you look around you. These are blessings that were brought to you and.

You know, I love the Beatitudes and I, I love certain portion. I'm not one of these people, Giancarlo, who quotes well from the Bible. I don't, I read the whole Bible at least once and in pieces twice, but I, I do believe that we have, we have forgotten where. Our blessings come from. This is why I wrote the piece about pretending to be God.

They do not come from us. Okay? We can be given the torch. We can be given responsibility to be a vessel of that mercy, that forgiving, that strength that. Ability to fight evil. That willingness to speak up without fear of consequences. When we're at our best, that's what we're doing because we're living up to the responsibility that goes with the privilege.

Or as you said a moment ago, the, responsibility that goes with the freedom. But at the end of the day, I. We have to [00:39:00] remember these things or we will lose this republic. And I think it was John Adams who essentially said this republic was designed for a moral people. If we should ever lose that compass as a people, you will lose your republic.

Giancarlo Newsome: Absolutely. That's where like I really, you know, for the listeners, we all struggle with pride.

Bobby Charles: Yeah.

Giancarlo Newsome: You know, we all have a little bit of authoritarian in us, but as Bobby mentioned, when we get consumed with that, that's how politicians can say, well, it's not my fault that, you know, we're 50 out of 50.

Or a corporate leader says, Hey, that's not my fault. The my predecessor did that, that we're. You know, have abusive labor practice or we're taking, or we are hurting our clients with health issues. Like you said, our republic is at risk. 'cause I think the level of hubris that is contaminant us in influences by a lot of AI and [00:40:00] social media.

If our listeners haven't seen Tristan Harris and the AI dilemma, it's a creepy future. So we need leaders like you, Bobby. To be governors of main because you embody that. And again, it's not that you or I or people that think like us are any better. We just recognize that humility is how we're strong.

It's also how I feel God reveals how we can take care of each other, do things better. And again, when you realize that we're not really responsible for the air we breathe, the sunlight that helps us. I mean, if you think about. So many things like you mentioned that we're not responsible for, it really makes you a steward and it can be really fun.

Bobby Charles: I think that times do come in our life as parents, as neighbors. And the Bible speaks to this. And as leaders in a community, where to borrow a phrase from Maine, you take your turn in the wheelhouse, you need to step up. My latest book, cherish America, was dedicated to those who step up and to my mother who did step Up too.

[00:41:00] And you know, it is incumbent upon us to understand that to whom much is given, much is expected, and we need to stop imagining that someone else needs to take care of our problems or that the things around us stumbling over needles in the middle of Portland, Maine or Bangor, Maine, is somehow somebody else's problem.

No, that is your problem. The fact that your neighbor. Is, you know, had their home broken into because they're drug traffickers. Because you, I mean these democrats in this legislature are, to me, there's one last thing I want to address. The state of Maine is suffering from what many blue states are suffering from.

And I'm not saying there weren't states that were at one point Republican that suffered from it too. But this state. Is horribly corrupt. We just had an audit done in this state that showed that $2.1 billion of contracting was sole source, non-compete contracts, essentially given to friends and family.

That is national, federal level and state level felonies. Those are felonies. They would even give [00:42:00] out dollars and they would, they'd write a contract up later to justify that they gave the dollars away. Okay, this is crime. 1 0 1. We have a governor who thinks that's fine. We have an attorney general who hasn't even bothered to do anything about what's in that audit, and that's before you get to things like.

Getting out there and actually legalizing criminal things, they wanna eliminate bail. They wanna get rid of mandatory minimum sentences. They want to, they basically want to take the, give the freedom to the criminals to do whatever they want and subject the law abiding people to have to put up with that.

That is a complete inversion of fairness, justice, equality, and constitutional rights.

Giancarlo Newsome: Absolutely. Well, and you know, I, the, you know, I think there are the wacky extremes on both that'll defend that type of behavior. But I really hope that the state of Maine will recognize that we can't sit on the sidelines anymore. That level of corruption is, we've gotta stand up, you know, and across the [00:43:00] nation too.

It's really a miracle I think with what's happened with the, election of President Trump. And I am, a person who's become, won over. I'm even grateful for his, you know, some of his rhetoric of, you know, the, like I felt sometimes was counterproductive, you know, when you're calling folks names.

But then again, I think. Sometimes being harsh or, throwing out crazy ideas. You get to find out where the other side is, so,

Bobby Charles: Well,

Giancarlo Newsome: know.

Bobby Charles: go a step again, again, I would apologize for interrupting, but I'd go a step further. Sometimes you need a disruptor in physics and in politics, inertia. Is a terrible force. It is the force, if you will, in politics of bureaucracy, make no change. Let me just, uh, you know, fluff up my little world here.

Let me keep growing government because there's government here and I, and let me expand my power over other people. No, that needs to be disrupted and that's what Donald Trump is doing, and that's what I'm gonna do for Maine. Frankly, I will bring a Doge to Maine. We will have executive order after executive [00:44:00] order followed God willing.

By the last few seats we capture in the House and Senate to give control back to the people of Maine. And when we give it back, we will reverse all of this garbage that we've experienced it. We've experienced it intensively in six and a half years, but as I said earlier, for 30 of 32 years, the Democrats have added barnacle after barnacle to the bottom of our boat.

And we gotta scrape those barnacles out off that boat. We are, we are just in a position now where we will sink if we don't get it right.

Giancarlo Newsome: Well, I'm kind of openly confessing Bobby as a citizen, a voter, to say I got a little too relaxed. It's part of me saying, you know, like that statistic, 50 outta 50 in terms of education. If that's not a call to action, a call to say apathy and how dare someone criticize you for saying, I wanna bring dogen, like, no.

Every citizen in Maine should wanna bring a doin. Everyone should be applauding Trump. When you look at the massive amount of money. It's funny, I had kind of picked up on, and actually in my paper when the Army had written, we talked [00:45:00] about how everyone knew that China, when they joined the World Trade Organization, that we opened our markets to them, but they never opened 'em up to us

Bobby Charles: Right.

Giancarlo Newsome: in, in five.

But, and now, 20 years later, i'm starting to recognize that no, this level of intensity is it's, it is existential. It really is.

Bobby Charles: is. And that honestly, to flip the page here for a minute, this Giancarlo is why I never thought I wanted to be governor and I don't really want to be, be governor. What I want to do, what I must do is fix my state. And the only way I can do that, is to be governor. That's become quite obvious. So I really want to encourage anyone who has moral compass in your world thinking about this podcast, maybe Maine's a far way away for them, but you will save thousands of kids' lives by giving to my campaign because I am going to drive the drug traffickers out of this state within 24 months.

Re-empower law enforcement, get drug treatment on the ground, get prevention back into the [00:46:00] schools, and make the public environment safe instead of losing 40 to 70 kids. A month, and then I'm gonna, frankly, I'm gonna get the taxes down so seniors can live their lives and young people can have the American dream.

And finally, and you just mentioned it, I'm gonna rebuild education in this state. We may not get quickly back to number one, but over time we can get up there and we at least will not. You only get one childhood. We are betraying these children because we're not teaching them during their childhood.

How to succeed the way we were taught to succeed. So I encourage everybody, if you have it in you, please go to bobbyformain.com. It's a very simple site. I'm encouraging people if you really want to save children's lives the way we would, if, you know, in the old days, we would give to care or we would give to, you know, uh, big organizations, this is a way to save kids lives.

And if you can max out at 2070 $5, and a lot of people can't, but I, I'm, I'm, I'm humbled, truly humbled by the. The people who I know do not have means, but they are [00:47:00] willing, in fact, to step up and to give everything they've got, almost like the widows might in order to try to put us in a position where we can actually save these lives.

And if I can model it in Maine. It will apply across New England and ultimately, potentially even across the country. There are very concrete ways to do this. I have a 30 point plan for getting rid of the, the traffickers. I know exactly how to get the taxes down, and I know what we need to do to rebuild education.

If we can do it in one blue state, we can do it in all the blue states.

Giancarlo Newsome: Absolutely.

Bobby Charles: Bobby, for ferma.com, please encourage everybody, go to bobby ferma.com.

Giancarlo Newsome: Please share this. I think you've heard the character, a person that Bobby is, and I've committed, also personally, to help Bobby, and again, he is modeling what I feel our country needs.

And it's, and Bobby, you know, we created empowering humility because as you know, we're both in, in defense innovation help with that. But what good is it if we do all these things? [00:48:00] This amazing ai, these amazing weapons. If we don't restore humility, you look at our founding, what was the purpose of our founding of this great nation, and which has been a light on the hill, is basically we said, we're not gonna kiss the ring of any king.

We're gonna, we're gonna, it is in effect, the constitution. Our democratic values are in agreement of shared humility that no one has all the answers, that free speech, go ahead.

Bobby Charles: No, I was just gonna say, I mean, you're putting something in my mind, Giancarlo, I love it and it's been personified in art, is George Washington's humility. Here's the founder of our country, who was a man of innate faith who, when things went really, really bad, whether it was at Valley Forge or Trenton or Princeton, or it didn't matter, when things went really bad, he bent his knee.

and He prayed for strength and mercy and help, and the Lord gave it to him because he had, even though he was the first president, even [00:49:00] though all those other honors and accolades he had, he had humility. And I love the piece of artwork and I cannot remember the artist right now of him kneeling, in a shaft of light with his horse beside him in cold weather at Valley Forge.

Just a personification of what we should kind of carry in our hearts around with us as long as well as the understanding of the Bible. Because in the end, none of us got anywhere we've ever gotten in life by ourselves. And that means that it is on us to help all those kids get where they need to go because someone helped us get along and we need to help them get forward.

And if we don't do that, it's more than shame on us. It's a condemnation on us. This is why I'm stepping up because I can

Giancarlo Newsome: do it.

Bobby Charles: I

Giancarlo Newsome: Problem

Bobby Charles: to fix these problems. I will fix these problems and then when I'm done, I'm gonna leave the wheelhouse and give it to some other young person who can get the next chapter written.

So I do encourage people to, if you can, go to bobbyformaine.com, please do. It [00:50:00] will be well worth your investment.

Giancarlo Newsome: I totally endorse that bobbyformaine.com. We've all heard that. Bobby, you're a great, I am, excited to hear when you are Maine's new governor, and it has been a delight any way we can support you.

Thanks for embodying, empowering humility. And, I look forward to following. I think, it'd be fun to see, imagine if we could bring, you know, you brought up growing up kind of in rural Maine and like having to build things yourself and, most of the people that I've met, that I've really, they all have that common background and I know like in the Japanese, the kids, they're working, they're cleaning their own school.

And then the other thing too, I was gonna also just leave you a seat. A suggestion when you become governor of Maine is one of the best ways I think that we aren't leveraging yet to clean up corruption and transparency is make Maine a blockchain and Bitcoin state blocked. So glad to help you on that front and, we're a hundred percent behind.

I am, I can't speak for empowering humility 'cause I have to embrace. The [00:51:00] differences, right of the community of empowering humility. But for me, Giancarlo, you have my full endorsement. Thanks for joining us today, and God bless you.

Bobby Charles: My pleasure.

Giancarlo Newsome: pleasure.

Bobby Charles: Thank you.

Giancarlo Newsome: Thanks Bobby. Take care.