When millionaire Instagram playboy Dan Bilzerian became famous back in 2013, one of the “talking points” about him was his military service record. He claimed he made it to the end of Navy SEAL training, but was kicked out two days before graduation he was thrown out for calling an officer a “pussy,” according to him claims. As he told the Daily Mail in 2013, “When he did my peer eval, (the officer) said I was only out for myself.” He actually talked about his honorable discharge at length on Howard Stern’s show back in 2014. And in a GQ UK Interview a few years ago:
The initial course for Seals – known as Basic Underwater Demolition/Seal training, or BUD/S – is held at the Naval Special Warfare Training Center in Coronado, California, and is supposed to take 24 weeks. Bilzerian says he was there for 510 days, including two so-called “hell weeks” – the first of which he completed with a broken leg. (He’d bet his medical officer $20 that he could do it.) Three quarters of Seal trainees don’t graduate, however, and Bilzerian was no different: after his second attempt, he dropped out permanently over a safety violation. Indeed, some Navy veterans have questioned just how close Bilzerian ever came to being a Seal. Even if he’d have completed BUD/S, they point out, he would have still had to undergo Seal qualification training, an even more intimidating 26-week course in tactical skills, including free-fall parachute jumps.
Bilzerian himself has admitted that one of the officers took a dislike to him. And although his dad had distinguished himself in Vietnam with a Bronze star, being the son of Paul Bilzerian was also a liability. Especially when news got out that his old man, while technically bankrupt was still living in his Xanadu-like mansion in Tampa. Eventually, after an FBI raid, the ex-corporate raider was thrown back in jail.
Today for Veterans Day, Dan left a tribute in the most Dan Bilzerian way we’d expect. But it also showed a touch of regret over his service record, which is something we don’t often see from the Instagram star:
I Wanna wish our veterans a happy #VeteransDay, respect to all of you for the sacrifices you’ve made, so others don’t have to. People ask a lot about my service, so for those that wanna know, I’m a 4 year Navy veteran. I spent a lot of that time going through BUD/S, I went through the entire program twice from start to finish and got admin dropped 2 days before graduation. That was a tough pill to swallow, I never really was good with authority, I pissed some people off, but at least in the end, they couldn’t make me quit. I made some good friends in the military, some I lost contact with, some are dead, but 2 of them are still my best friends 14 years later. I’ve fucked up many times in my life, but my regrets are not from the things that I failed at, but the things I didn’t try. People been telling me my whole life what to do, & I never really listened to any of them, think it turned out ok