Dan Crenshaw

Daniel Crenshaw (born March 14, 1984) is an American politician who is the U.S. Representative-elect for Texas's 2nd congressional district. A member of the Republican Party, he is a former Navy SEAL officer. He was elected in the 2018 election.

Living with duty means having a duty to those who aren't able to complete their mission because they would want you to keep going. They would want you to live life with a purpose. That's a message for civilians; that's a message for veterans.

It is quite the challenge to examine your own attributes, your failings, and then attempt to extract the lessons from your past that make you who you are today. This book is largely a product of that journey.

Dude, don't get blown up. It sucks.

You ever wonder why we are always doing inspections in the military? Why do we obsess over perfect creases, shiny shoes, and crisply made beds? It's simple: If you can't get the small stuff right, you won't get the big stuff right. If you ignore the relatively unimportant details, then you are more likely to ignore the very important details, the stuff that actually counts. This is true of running a town, a city, or a country, but also for running your own life.

The ability to deal with adversity, to accept pain, to be calm under pressure- these are the traits we look for. Some can be taught, much is innate.

If you want to be a person who doesn't freak out just because you're scared or whatever else you're doing, then decide to be that person. Every time you fall short of that goal, look back on that situation and tell yourself you're going to do better next time. Eventually you will.

Quotes

2018

• As a long-time supporter of Israel, I will ensure that our alliance does not waver, and that America continues to support Israeli security, advocate for her on the international stage, and contain the threat from Iran and terrorism across the region.
  • 19 April 2018 or earlier

• Israel is our most important ally in the Middle East. We must always stand with Israel.
  • 19 April 2018

• I've always supported President Trump, I didn't always support candidate Trump.
  • 9 May 2018

• I always ask the question, like what? You know, like what is he undermining exactly? You know what – what democratic freedoms have been undermined? We just had an election where we switched power in the House. Democracy is at work. People are voting in record numbers.
  • 19 November 2018 on CBS "Face the Nation", reported on by Fox and Town Hall

2019

• Tonight I voted no on the spending bill. Here’s why:
  I reluctantly voted against this bill,
  There are many things to like in this bill and many examples of good-faith compromises. But this vote was about the border security debate, an issue which shouldn't be debatable in the first place. There are approximately 400,000 illegal immigrants apprehended while crossing our border each year, and this bill does not take the necessary steps to fix the problem. This issue is not about who wins arbitrary political battles; it's about the security and sovereignty of our nation. When will we start taking it seriously and finally give our border agents the resources they've requested?
  • 14 February 2019

2020

Fortitude (2020)

Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage (New York: Twelve Books, 2020), First edition April 2020.

• I recognize my corpsman's voice, as he works on my wounds.
  I say, "Dude, don't get blown up. It sucks."
  He laughs and tells me to shut up.
  • p. 20

• My mother spent half a decade staring death in the face, burdened with caring for two small boys whom she would not live to see grow up. She lived day to day in ever-increasing pain. The cancer afflicted her- and the cancer treatments afflicted her, too. Six rounds of chemotherapy on top of radiation treatments are a brutal experience for even the strongest constitution. Self-pity is never a useful state. But if anyone had reason to feel sorry for herself, and to complain a bit, it was my mom. She never did.
  • p. 22-23

• A little perspective can be the difference between spiraling into dark despair and clawing your way back to the light. A brave young woman fought through despair twenty years before, which meant I could do it now, suffering in darkness in a sterile hospital room in Germany. So when the doctors told me I had virtually no chance of seeing ever again, I just heard one thing: Virtually.
  • p. 23

• As my career progressed, I took note of the leaders I respected. I thought about their actions, their manner of speaking, their habits. I noticed the way they incorporated humor to give a successful briefing, interacted gracefully with their subordinates, and thought creatively about tactical situations. I observed how some leaders would react too emotionally in tense situations, and how the team reacted as a result. Calm breeds calm, and panic breeds panic. Were these great leaders the fastest or the strongest? The best shooters? Not always. The qualities that made SEAL leaders great were rarely physical in nature. They listened. They empowered their team to be successful, carefully entrusting individuals with additional responsibility. They highlighted good performance publicly and criticized bad performance privately. They didn't waste their men's time. They were prepared and thoughtful with mission planning. They were articulate but also genuine. They came across as real people with humor and emotions instead of just robotic military men.
  • p. 46

• The question is: How do we become the heroes we want to be? My answer: Sanctioned intellectual property theft, that's how. No one has a patent on good habits. You can steal them. Identify your heroes, and emulate the character traits that make them more successful than you currently are.
  • p. 49

• Details matter. Ignoring them can be the difference between success and failure.
  • p. 114

• In combat, attention to detail is the barrier between life and death. We generally don't like death, so we pay attention to details. We also don't like failure. We don't like failing in our mission and we don't like failing the people who are relying on us. Ignoring the small stuff leads to both of those unenviable failures.
  • p. 115

• You ever wonder why we are always doing inspections in the military? Why do we obsess over perfect creases, shiny shoes, and crisply made beds? It's simple: If you can't get the small stuff right, you won't get the big stuff right. If you ignore the relatively unimportant details, then you are more likely to ignore the very important details, the stuff that actually counts. This is true of running a town, a city, or a country, but also for running your own life.
  • p. 116

• A favorite memory of many veterans is their time sitting around grumbling incessantly about their circumstances with their teammates. I have to admit that we do this way more than the average group of people. It's like a continuous group therapy project. When the guys stop complaining, leadership starts to worry. What's wrong with them? Are they depressed? Something wrong at home? The reality is that in these high-performing environments, where everyone is a perfectionist and overachiever, people like to point out deficiencies in the most over-the-top fashion, usually with a side of sarcastic and cutting humor. The good news is that they also aspire to fix those problems. Or maybe we are just a bunch of divas. I don't know. Maybe it's both.
  • p. 123

• Writing this book was the first time I thought deeply about the lessons I'd derived from the SEAL teams, and life in general. It is quite the challenge to examine your own attributes, your failings, and then attempt to extract the lessons from your past that make you who you are today. This book is largely a product of that journey.
  • p. 245

• Some of my most important edits came from my wife, Tara, who knows me best. She is my rock and is responsible for the confidence I have today. She stuck with me through the worst of times, and she understands the lesson of fortitude better than anyone. She is also the first to tell me when I don't live up to those lessons. Thank you, Mom, for being the first to show me a true hero. You are the embodiment of fortitude, and my brother and I have spent our lives trying to live up to your memory. This book is for you.
  • p. 247

Modern Warriors (2020) interview

Modern Warriors: Real Stories From Real Heroes by Pete Hegseth. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. First edition November 2020.

• The ability to deal with adversity, to accept pain, to be calm under pressure- these are the traits we look for. Some can be taught, much is innate.
  • p. 115

• As bad as I had it, lots of people have had it worse than me. Lots of others had made the ultimate sacrifice. I've got the initials of eight of those guys tattooed on my chest. So even when you're lying bleeding on the ground, unable to see much of anything, and later totally facedown in a bed for six weeks, you know what? Your buddies don't even get to have that chance because they're dead. That sounds morbid, but it's true. It should toughen your spine a little bit and make you feel grateful for being here at all. Too many people don't show gratitude for the new mission that they might have. They complain. They complain about the Veterans Administration. They complain about their disability payments. They complain about their lack of opportunity. Well, your buddies don't get to complain at all, and I think they would be grateful for anything. Living with duty means having a duty to those who aren't able to complete their mission because they would want you to keep going. They would want you to live life with a purpose. That's a message for civilians; that's a message for veterans.
  • p. 118-119

• There's a notion out there that service members are victims somehow, that they were being used by some government overlord to do their political bidding. That's not true. We're an all-volunteer force and we love what we do. We understand that there are bad people out there that seek to do harm against the United States' interests. We are willing to go out there and fight them.
  • p. 119

• Everybody I knew who became a SEAL wanted to be one for a long time. You wanted this. You knew that you were, or wanted to be, an outside-the-box thinker, a sort of renegade or rebel, but also a strictly disciplined soldier. So you became that before you got to BUD/S (basic underwater demolition/SEAL training). BUD/S just made you prove it and then trained you to harness that. You learn how to exist in two different mental states: those of an ultra-aggressive combatant and a chivalrous gentleman. And you can instantaneously transition between the two. That's a warrior.
  • p. 120

• In BUD/S the failures are more surprising than the successes. A lot of times, the most athletic, the fittest, the physically strongest candidates were the ones who quit. They should have been able to just crush it, but they didn't. Part of that is because they spent too much time on physical preparation and not enough on mental preparation. They believed that because of their physicality, their athleticism, they wouldn't be so surprised when faced with immediate failure. Those failures happen so fast in BUD/S. Your body fails constantly. That's what the program is designed to do to you. It is not physically possible to do everything that is being demanded of you. So you break down; you can't do every repetition of every exercise. We called them beatdowns for a reason. The instructors want us to break down and run away with our tail between our legs. They keep pressing us to go on, even after you thought that the activity was over. That happens to you over and over again. Your muscles fail you. And the instructors understand that difference between quitting- a failure of the will- and failing- your body giving out when you have already pushed yourself past what you once perceived as your limit. They respect that you hung in there long enough to truly fail. That's probably why you see so much anxiety and increasing suicide in our larger society. We have the most comfortable society the world has ever known. And that's good; I'm glad we do. But it's also made some people weak, and they break down when confronted with suffering. If you want to be a person who doesn't freak out just because you're scared or whatever else you're doing, then decide to be that person. Every time you fall short of that goal, look back on that situation and tell yourself you're going to do better next time. Eventually you will.
  • p. 121

• Politics is the social manifestation of a set of policies. When I speak to kids, I let them know that there's a crucial difference between politics and policy. If you want to go into politics, then you have to be a representative of other people. To do that, you have to be able to communicate well. So before you decide to run for office, you have to ask yourself a few questions: Do you care about just one policy or issue? Are you good at communicating? Are you able to frame and win an argument? What are you good at? I don't think that all elected officials or candidates think through answers to these, and lots of candidates don't win because they quit on that notion of self-examination. For me, politics happened overnight when an opportunity presented itself. Because the military makes you think you have to be uber-prepared for everything, I thought that maybe I'd have a seat in about ten years. We did it in three months.
  • p. 125

• I encourage the American public to look beyond the headlines. If you read beyond the headlines, not only will you be outraged, you'll be a better thinker. Even good journalists are defeated by bad headlines. They don't write the headlines. Editors do, and they are created more as clickbait than truth. they are designed to appeal on an emotional level. I can't make the media do anything different. I can't force them. I can't shame them all day long, which is what I do, but they don't care. So many journalists are so left-wing that they are fighting an ideological battle. They'll do whatever it takes to drive their side's biases home. And that's sad for the good journalists who are out there writing good and fair pieces.
  • p. 128-129

• It's up to us as consumers of information to be smarter, to take control. The only way a problem gets fixed is if you fix it as an individual. Don't just read to confirm your own preconceived bias. Do your research. Wait to form an opinion. You do no harm when you say you don't know and you don't have an opinion. There's no shame in that. There's a lot of shame in having a strong opinion with no facts. Too many people are very quick to feel a truth. You can't feel a truth. You can have feelings, but don't pretend that your feelings are what matter the most. Don't let your feelings drive your reality. A lot of people, veterans and civilians, fall victim to victimhood. They feel like they are victims. What are you doing, then? You're removing power from yourself. Now you're letting somebody else have control over you. That's a terrible existence. Even if you were really unfairly treated, you have to tell yourself a story of overcoming that. It's the only way out. Period. Full stop.
  • p. 129

2021

• Don’t kid yourself into believing that’s why we lost. It’s not. I’ll tell you openly. I'm not wrong.
  • 12 August 2021, rejection of the claim that the 2020 United States presidential election was "rigged" or "stolen."

2022

• This is what happens when angry little boys like @alexstein99 don’t grow up and can’t get girlfriends…
  • 18 June 2022 tweet about Alex Stein after Stein called Crenshaw a RINO in earlier encounter

Quotes about Crenshaw

In Congressman Crenshaw's mind, there is an important distinction between deciding what you want to do with your life and deciding what kind of person you want to be. Many of the decisions he's made in life have been based around the latter. ~ Pete Hegseth

• a super PAC called Conservative Results Matter is going after Republican Dan Crenshaw, calling him an “anti-Trump liberal,” in the two-way GOP runoff to replace retiring Texas Rep. Ted Poe. “‘Insane, hateful, idiot.’ These are the words so-called Republican Dan Crenshaw used to describe President Trump,” the narrator says in a new TV ad from the super PAC. “Crenshaw called Trump an ‘idiot.’” The attack mirrors a Facebook post by Crenshaw’s runoff opponent, state Rep. Kevin Roberts, which cites an old Facebook post of Crenshaw’s and says Crenshaw “openly [attacked] Donald Trump as an ‘idiot,’ ‘insane,’ and ‘ignorant.’”
  • 2 May 2018

• Not only was the SNL blowup a huge boon to Crenshaw’s campaign and public image, but it also totally blotted out any memory of the fact that the former Navy SEAL is linked to far-right conspiracy group “Tea Party,” which popularized the Pizzagate conspiracy. On August 31, Newsweek reported that Crenshaw and four other GOP nominees were or had been administrators on a popular Facebook group that bolstered the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, pushed Pizzagate, and provided a comfortable home for racist chit-chat.
  When Newsweek contacted Crenshaw about the group he was listed as an administrator and had posted two of his campaign movies to the group, Crenshaw told the publication he’d “never actively managed or interacted with that page.” He then removed himself from the group.
  • 12 November 2018 Jenny Singer of The Forward

• Congressman Dan Crenshaw has certainly made an impact since being elected to the House of Representatives for Texas's Second Congressional District. He ran as a Republican in the primary with very little previous experience and virtually no money to take on candidates with deeper pockets and more political and legislative experience. He won, like he has so often in life. Since taking office, he has gained in prominence within the Republican Party and is considered to be one of its young rising stars. That should come as no surprise given Congressman Crenshaw's bona fides.
  • Pete Hegseth, Modern Warriors (New York: Broadside Books, 2020), p. 116-117

• When he was twelve, Congressman Crenshaw's father suggested he read Dick Marcincko's Rogue Warrior. Marcinko was a Navy SEAL and the man who first commanded SEAL Team 6. His memoir fired the imaginations of many future SEAL team members. Congressman Crenshaw possessed a keen sense of adventure at an early age (he originally thought he wanted to be a spy), but after reading that book, he told himself that a seal was who he wanted to become. In Congressman Crenshaw's mind, there is an important distinction between deciding what you want to do with your life and deciding what kind of person you want to be. Many of the decisions he's made in life have been based around the latter.
  • Pete Hegseth, Modern Warriors (New York: Broadside Books, 2020), p. 117

• His father worked in the petroleum industry, and the family traveled a great deal: Scotland, Egypt, Ecuador, and Columbia. As a result, Crenshaw developed a perspective on the world that deepened his appreciation for America and what it offered. He also wanted to model himself after his mother. For five years, Susan Carol Crenshaw fought a battle against breast cancer. Her positivity and refusal to give in to a victim's mentality had a profound effect on him long after she passed away when he was ten.
  A 2006 graduate of Tufts University with a degree in international relations, Congressman Crenshaw was also enrolled in the naval ROTC program there. He commissioned in the navy immediately after graduation. He served for ten years, experienced five tours of duty, and was medically retired in 2016. In 2012, while on an operation in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, an IED explosion seriously wounded him. He lost his right eye and very nearly lost the vision in his left. His recovery was miraculous, and he later deployed to Bahrain and South Korea. He served with great distinction during his military career and was awarded two Bronze Stars, one with Valor; the Purple Heart; and the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Valor, among many others.
  • Pete Hegseth, Modern Warriors (New York: Broadside Books, 2020), p. 117-118