Two freshman Republican lawmakers who went to war after the 9/11 terror attacks say Americans must vigilantly watch for threats from enemies who still scheme “all day and all night” on how to attack the United States.
Reps. Matt Van Epps (R-TN) and Gabe Evans (R-CO) both remember where they were when the September 11 attacks were carried out. The two lawmakers. fellow Army helicopter pilots. recounted that fateful day during a conversation recorded for the Republican Study Committee’s “Right to the Point” podcast, first previewed by The Daily Wire.
“It’s been 25 years since the September 11th terrorist attack and we have to make sure we’re not slipping into complacency,” Evans said. “We have to understand that there are people who sit around all day and all night scheming, plotting and planning how to inflict harm on Americans and how to attack the American homeland.”
Both lawmakers served as Army helicopter pilots, seeing action in Iraq and Afghanistan after watching the attacks unfold.
Van Epps and Evans via RSC.
Van Epps, elected to the House in a special election in December 2025, was in a computer science class at West Point when the attack occurred.
“The instructor rolled in the TV after the first plane hit, and we watched the second plane hit, and we just knew from that moment we were going to war,” he said. “We knew that the next four years were going to shape how we were going to serve as army officers, and that we were preparing for the global war on terror.”
Van Epps went on to fly an Apache helicopter in Iraq during the 2007-2008 troop surge.
Still in high school, Evans said he was 15 years old when the attack happened and watched the attack in the living room with his family.
“I remember it, same as you, sitting in the living room just glued to the TV, watching that second plane hit,” he told Van Epps.
While in college a few years later, Evans was recruited by the military, and he went on to serve in the Army and the Colorado Army National Guard as a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter pilot. During his time in the Army, he had a combat deployment to the Middle East.
Today, Evans said America still faces numerous threats from enemies who want to target the United States. He said that the threat of radical Islam remains, but also warned about the danger of Mexican drug cartels.
“Every 15 days, the cartels and the drug dealers have killed more Americans than Al Qaeda have ever could [have] dreamed of,” he said during the podcast. “You’ve got religiously fueled terrorists, Islamic extremists, and radicals that also want to do bad things. But you got new and emerging cartels and other folks that hate Americans, want to kill Americans.”
The podcast will be released Friday afternoon.
.png)
.png)
