Who Daniel Brent McKay · What The Presidency · Where The United States of America · When 2028 · Why "Be somebody" — Tillie's Bridge: Memoirs of Matilda Lillieqvist by Jean McKay · How You · Who Daniel Brent McKay · What The Presidency · Where The United States of America · When 2028 · Why "Be somebody" — Tillie's Bridge: Memoirs of Matilda Lillieqvist by Jean McKay · How You ·
Straight answers. Every one of them lived.
The moment it became obvious was in the St. Johns County Courthouse. The American flag stopped me in my tracks, and I declared under oath, in that same courtroom, that I was running for President in 2028 as an Independent. The judge smiled and wished me luck.
But that day only made it obvious. The reasons were built over a lifetime. If I could fix one thing, it would be to permanently discredit the idea that one race is superior to another: end that division and people work together instead of tearing each other apart. I've been through nearly every system this country has, from the projects to the military to Stanford to recovery, and I came out the other side with something to show for it. Nobody told me to run. I asked myself what the most effective way to actualize my vision would be, and the answer was this. It isn't for me. It's for everybody.
No party wrote my platform. My life did. Thrown is the platform, and every position in it is lived first, not theorized. A party would hand me talking points and expect me to vote its way. I'd rather answer to the people I've actually sat across from: in recovery rooms, in a jail every week, in family court, in VA waiting rooms. Independent is home. It's the only place I can say what I believe without asking permission.
One race. One earth. One tree. One heart. One love. One body. One mind. One soul. One God.
One race comes first because everything else rests on it. The genome proves it: we share the same root, and the categories we use to divide each other are recent inventions. Buddha, Christ, Bob Marley, Johnny Cash, Prince: different instruments, same song. The doctrine isn't something I invented. It's a principle I'm living, and every branch feeds from the same dirt.
It's my memoir and my manifesto: 36 chapters in six parts, one tree. It's the full record of where I've been and what I learned getting out, and it's the platform. When someone asks me a policy question, the honest answer is usually a chapter number. The Inside edition is going into every prison in America through Chaplain Ray's International Prison Ministry, because the system doesn't rehabilitate. A book in a man's hands at the right moment can.
Yes. I come from a legacy of service, and I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2007 to 2008 on Minuteman II ICBM systems with a DOD Secret clearance. That job has since been reclassified under the Space Force. My service ended with a general discharge under honorable conditions after a suicide attempt. I'm a service-connected disabled veteran. I live with PTSD and two traumatic brain injuries, and I don't hide either one. I believe no one should run for this office who hasn't attempted to serve.
I filed my disability claim in November 2024. The VA denied it in March 2025, then again in March 2026. I fought it the way every veteran has to, on paperwork, against a bureaucracy that treats a two-year wait as normal, and my VSO fought alongside me. As of October 2026, I'm rated 70% service-connected. I'm not speaking for veterans from the outside. I am the constituent. The men and women who come home broken built this country. They shouldn't spend years in a waiting room proving it, and the mental health care that should have caught me before my worst day should catch the next one. The full story is in Chapter 22 of Thrown.
I volunteer every week in the gang and murder unit of a Florida jail and run AA meetings inside. I know what a man needs in a cell because I've handed it to him myself. The system doesn't rehabilitate. The Inside edition of Thrown, reaching a man at the moment he needs it most, can. My own story with the system is in the book, start to finish.
Since July 12, 2009. I was twenty years old. That's 17 years. Addiction ran through four generations of my family, and it ended with me. I've stayed sober through divorce, loss, family court, and running for President, one day at a time, the same way everyone in those rooms does it.
Trauma is the disease, not genetics. Alcoholism runs through four generations of my family, so I sequenced my own genome to find out why. The data shows no genetic predisposition for it, and it's there for anyone to check. The war has never been on the man; it's on the wound. I ran Genesis Recovery and managed West Coast Recovery Centers. Treat trauma like the public health emergency it is, and stop punishing people for the injury that broke them.
There is one human race. Every family on earth traces back to Africa, mine included, and whiteness is only a few thousand years old: a sliver of human history, not a biological fact. I ran the DNA analysis on my own family. Four bloodlines, and every one of them carries slavery, servitude, or oppression. No exceptions.
The race war this country keeps fighting is built on a category that doesn't hold up under a microscope. Lincoln put the final bullet in slavery. This doctrine is meant to finish the lie that justified it. The full case is in Chapter 29 of Thrown.
No. The genealogical record search is open, and I'll speak to it when I know. Both sides of my family ran through Kansas and Oklahoma, and the commercial DNA tools are known to be poor at detecting Indigenous ancestry. But I won't claim something I can't prove. When the records answer the question, one way or the other, I'll say so.
My son was born Deaf. I became fluent in American Sign Language before he was born, because I wasn't going to be a father who couldn't speak his own child's language. Before we moved, I ran the federal data analysis myself, and it showed state schools for the Deaf produce the best outcomes. So I moved my whole family to St. Augustine for FSDB, the largest school for the Deaf in America.
I'm the only candidate who speaks ASL at a native level. Disability is not a deficit. It's a difference to be met on its own terms.
It shapes everything. I have seven kids, and I show up for every one of them. Everything I've built (the platform, the ministry, the campaign) is for them first. Single fatherhood is service made real: showing up every day for people who didn't choose their circumstances any more than I chose mine. My family policy starts there, from support that assumes parents are trying, not failing.
My kids come first, and everything I'm doing in court is for them. Family court grinds down whichever parent has the least money and time to outlast it. I know that from the inside, and so do millions of parents. That's exactly why it's one of my highest priorities: I'm not studying this system from a distance. I'm in it, showing up for my children every step of the way.
I believe in marriage. I failed at it once, and I own that without excuses. It broke my heart. The accountability is in the book, unfiltered: what addiction cost my family, what commitment actually requires, and what I got wrong before I understood either. That failure informs my position on every family policy. Someone who has lived through what breaks a family has more to offer than someone who has only theorized about it.
Faith is a posture, not a performance. I came up in AA and The Rock Church in San Diego, and today I'm at Reverb Church in St. Augustine. I run AA meetings inside a jail every week, not as a program and not for photos. Every tradition humanity has built, from Göbekli Tepe to the Bodhi tree, maps back to the same root: one tree. I'm not running to establish anyone's faith. I'm running to protect everyone's right to hold theirs.
It's how I campaign. I'm taking this race across the country in an RV, parking it, pulling up chairs, and letting people come talk. I lived in one once, as Resident Manager at Genesis Recovery right after Stanford. Now it's how I show up. Come meet the kids. Sit down. Have coffee. That's the campaign.
Absolutely. Put my positions next to anyone's on a stage and let people judge for themselves. Every position I hold, I've lived, so I can defend it from experience, not a briefing book. I'll also do every interview and podcast that's serious and genuine. Read the book, and bring your hardest questions.
It's my network. Every person who joins is a full hexagon cell, equal in value to every other, connected to the others through shared facets: truth-seeking, tenacity, humility, service, honesty, and resilience. There's no application, only resonance. I provide the vision. The people do the work, and the work is what grows the hive. That's how this spreads: not through advertising, but person to person.
It's my record label, and the platform this site runs on. I built it myself, and it pays 100% to the artist. There's no streaming and no distributors taking a cut, and artists own their masters. It's built the way I want the country built: ownership, not extraction. If you work, you build, and if you build, you own.
Through the Become a Donor page. Contributions are Bitcoin only: no banks, no card processors, no middlemen. Federal law requires your name, address, occupation, and employer before I can accept any contribution, so the form asks for those first.
However you want to. Join my network and add your hexagon, volunteer on the Get Involved page, or book a call with me directly. Read the book and tell someone about it. Or come find the RV, pull up a chair, and talk with me. Every way in counts.