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This is on Daunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:50
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:52
Let's get into it.
0:53
All right, guys.
0:54
We're going to keep this botching out Afghanistan series going with our next guest, Eric Blem.
0:57
You should know that name because he was on Episode 186 of this podcast.
1:00
He is the author of my favorite book of all time.
1:02
Fearless.
1:03
That's the story of Adam Brown, a Navy SEAL that was killed overseas.
1:06
And here's the thing about his perspective on what's going on in Afghanistan.
1:10
He spent a ton of time with people that served over there, and he spent a ton of time with
1:15
gold star families and gold star widows that have lost their people, lost their favorite
1:20
people, their spouses, their loved ones over in Afghanistan.
1:23
So he's uniquely suited to talk about what a lot of people are feeling right now.
1:26
There's a lot of gold star families in America that are hurting that they feel like they've
1:29
been completely ran rough shot over that their feelings aren't being taken into account and
1:34
that all these old wounds are coming right back up.
1:36
So I really appreciated Eric's answers to a lot of these questions because he didn't
1:39
just kind of keep it just Afghanistan.
1:41
He did kind of traverse into some other different subject matters, and he really let loose in
1:44
a lot of areas, which I really appreciate it.
1:46
And again, guys, we're not doing any frills on this series, so let's go ahead and get into
1:49
it.
1:50
All right, Eric Blem.
1:51
Thank you so much for coming back on the show.
1:52
I know we don't have the normal fanfare that we have for a lot of our episodes.
1:55
But you know, obviously the current situation that we're in warrants that and I say that
1:59
we're in we're sitting here state side, you know, just basically watching all this unfold
2:03
on the news and on Twitter.
2:04
But from your perspective, obviously you've spent a lot of time with military members
2:08
that were active duty, a lot of military members that, you know, are retired with gold star
2:12
families with with other people that have been in the support system.
2:16
So you've had a lot of tendrils spread out into the areas that are directly affected
2:21
by what has happened in Afghanistan.
2:23
But obviously, you know, a lot of people that are hurting right now because of what's happened
2:27
just in the last 48 hours.
2:28
So I'm just going to back away from the mic and give you some space to just give me some
2:32
of your initial thoughts and we'll go from there.
2:35
That thank you, it's just, I'm just at a loss.
2:40
I just cannot believe what we're seeing unfold.
2:43
It's almost as bizarre as I don't know the morning of 9/11, you know, where you're just
2:47
watching and you're like, I can't believe what I'm seeing.
2:50
And definitely having, you know, written stories about, you know, people who have fallen during
2:56
that, you know, this last past 20 years and their family members is just, it's heartbreaking
3:01
at the end of the day.
3:02
And it's heartbreaking to think of all of the Afghans who supported us and in the beginning.
3:08
And then, you know, we chose the route to stay in country.
3:13
And so for 20 years, they've been, you know, interlinked with our system and we basically,
3:21
I will say Joe Biden's administration has abandoned them.
3:24
And it just did not have to happen.
3:27
So I think the first thing I'd love to say is just first of all, this is not a military
3:32
failure.
3:33
It is an administrative failure, a breakdown of just, I don't know what, intelligence.
3:40
I mean, these are things that were prophesied for told predictable 100%.
3:47
And the fact that they enacted this withdrawal as they have is just, it's entirely predictable.
3:57
You know, either Biden's administration ignored the warnings or chose not to take heed what
4:07
his advisors told him or worse was there's such a breakdown in communication within the
4:11
Biden administration that the information never got him.
4:14
And that to me shows the flaws in the Biden administration.
4:18
And it's for the whole public to see this, this exit plan should have never gotten the
4:23
green light as it was attempted to be executed.
4:27
But I mean, I don't know.
4:28
I've been, you know, I've been glued to the television and it's not surprising either.
4:32
As you learn, I mean, Robert Gates who was secretary of defense for, you know, Bush and then also
4:36
the Obama administration, he wrote, it's been quoted all over the place, probably being
4:41
redundant for your listeners, but he wrote that Biden was wrong on nearly every major
4:46
foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.
4:51
And when they asked him before, when he was running for president, they asked him, is he
4:55
going to be a good president?
4:56
He could not answer that.
4:57
He said, I said, I don't know.
5:00
And so, and so remember on top of that, what makes it more frustrating is remember, not
5:06
only this, as he orders this most disastrous exit of a military force in modern history,
5:15
the one clear victory that we can look back on was following through with the original
5:21
goal to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden, who was, you know, for some of the people
5:26
that that name comes up and they don't even realize that is the mastermind behind the 9/11
5:30
attacks.
5:31
And Joe Biden voted against screen lighting that mission, the one, the one victory in
5:38
all of this.
5:39
So anyways, it's just, it's frustrating.
5:42
It's not surprising, sadly, but I think today, I think a lot of us out there, you know, father's
5:50
mother's grandparents, we're watching our grandchildren, our children go to school today.
5:54
I sent off my daughter, fifth grader today, to school.
6:00
And as Holly mentioned on her podcast, who, you know, she's, she is a badass, you know,
6:05
fearlessly, standing up for human rights and women's rights, especially in Afghanistan,
6:11
she's there right now.
6:12
And she mentioned in there how for 20 years, an entire generation, there's, you know, families
6:19
have sent their daughters and sons off to school.
6:23
And there's dreams.
6:24
There's goals, there's aspirations for women, you know, going to college and becoming whatever
6:29
they might want to become in life.
6:32
And this morning, all of a sudden, after one weekend of a horrible decision, they're not
6:37
going to school.
6:38
Could you imagine that?
6:39
Imagine you have a 20-year-old who was born around 9/11 and is in college right now, or,
6:44
or, you know, even a five-year-old wanting to go off, and it's like, okay, well, your
6:48
brother can go to school this morning, but you can't.
6:51
And by the way, if you're going to leave the house, you're going to have to be covered or
6:54
accompanied by a male member of a house either your father or a brother.
6:58
If not, you're staying in the house.
6:59
It's basically COVID lockdown forever.
7:02
And I just think it's just, it's just horrible.
7:06
And it's, yeah, I'm just, I'm, I'm shocked.
7:09
Yeah, I'm shocked as well, but I mean, you brought up a lot of good things there, Eric.
7:13
But I mean, I forget what the actual name for this phrase is, but essentially it's don't
7:17
attribute to malice what you can attribute to ignorance, but this situation and how it
7:21
was handled by the Biden administration was so beyond the point of ignorant.
7:25
And the book has to stop somewhere because if you watched Joe Biden's comments yesterday
7:28
at his press conference, it was egregious.
7:30
It was absolutely egregious for a commander-in-chief to basically take no responsibility whatsoever.
7:37
Because here's the thing is you, if you want to pass blame around, you can talk about the
7:40
joint chiefs.
7:41
You can talk about the generals.
7:42
You can talk about all these different people.
7:43
But apparently all those people told him, don't do this.
7:46
Like whatever you do, don't do this.
7:48
And Dan Crenshaw may have said at best, he's like, all Biden had to do was nothing.
7:52
All he had to do was nothing in this situation was going to take care of itself.
7:56
And, but I do want to kind of key in on something that you said a second ago, I jotted down
8:00
a note here.
8:01
You mentioned just briefly the, the allies that we had there on the ground.
8:04
So this is going to be the interpreters, any of the informants, any of the people that
8:08
basically allowed us to help them.
8:10
Currently the Taliban reportedly is systematically going door to door looking for those people
8:14
and publicly executing them.
8:16
So what are your thoughts, Eric, about because I know as an author, you've taken a lot of
8:20
research and you kind of coalesce everything into a narrative form, but you do understand
8:24
history and how that is going to potentially have an impact on the future.
8:28
What does this mean for foreign policy for the United States government over the next
8:33
several decades, knowing that the Kurds shouldn't trust us.
8:37
The Afghans shouldn't trust us.
8:39
No one else in that area should trust us.
8:40
I mean, are we a generation removed away from being able to hit the reset button here or
8:45
am I being a little bit too crazy?
8:47
Well, you know, it's interesting because in the world, you know, they look at America
8:53
as it's one, it's almost like its own entity.
8:57
Here in America, we're looking at and blaming Joe Biden, you know, and the Biden administration.
9:02
We can see that this is a temporary thing.
9:05
And, you know, in four years, that could be very different, but you still have your track
9:08
record in the world as America as a whole.
9:11
And so, you know, there's going to be some crossover and all that.
9:15
And you know, those, it just depends around the world, depends where you get your news.
9:20
I mean, there's people, there's, I'm sure, just like here in America, depends where you
9:23
get your news.
9:24
And I think if anything, there's no doubt that it's not going to help us in any way.
9:30
It's going to definitely harm our reputation.
9:34
I mean, you look at it, I mean, the Afghan people did, they did fight for themselves.
9:41
This is his whole thing was, oh, they didn't stand and fight for themselves.
9:44
Wrong.
9:45
I mean, I don't know if anybody watched out there the MSNBC when they were interviewing
9:48
the CIA analyst, because of Blue, who was he talking to?
9:54
Brian Williams, who basically, who keyed in on the one single line that could make Biden
9:59
look okay, saying, well, Biden owned it.
10:01
He said the buck stops here.
10:02
And the guy went, no, no, no, no, no, no, you know, but you basically put it off on everybody
10:06
else, including the Afghan army, who for the past, you know, since 2014, I think it's
10:11
the date, I could be wrong, maybe if the entire since no one, but I mean, 40 or 50,000 Afghans
10:17
have died.
10:18
50,000 Afghans have died since 2014.
10:21
Yes.
10:22
2014.
10:23
Okay.
10:24
So you have that.
10:25
And then you look at our situation in the last 18 months, we've lost, I think, zero
10:31
in Afghanistan.
10:32
And you know, I interviewed and even I followed up knowing I was going to be on this podcast
10:36
with Jason Amarine, who was the captain of ODA 574, one of the first special forces
10:41
teams in.
10:42
And he, he said this was just, just stupid.
10:48
The way this was taken on, and he's usually a pretty measured, you know, individual as
10:51
far as echoes in any policy, it was just, you know, just gloriously stupid, how it went
10:57
about this.
10:58
And in reality, 2,500 people to keep that footprint there, which was all it took to
11:06
not win, not to defeat the Taliban, but to keep them in as it's been told a stalemate,
11:12
you know, a tie basically that allowed the country to move forward and have this freedom
11:16
that they've had for the past 20 years.
11:19
So I think a lot of people agree, yeah, we can't be there fighting a war for 20 years.
11:23
But hey, we've had a giant base in Germany, we've had giant bases in Japan.
11:28
We have a 28,000 people in South Korea.
11:31
Those are presences that we've kept.
11:33
We didn't keep a trevents in Vietnam because we got run out.
11:36
We didn't get run out of Afghanistan.
11:38
We left willingly.
11:40
And that's where the travesty is because the way it was executed was just wrong.
11:45
And it is going back to your mention of all the people that supported us.
11:50
We abandoned so many people who helped us along the way and not anything helped us.
11:56
We helped them help themselves.
11:57
We gave them the courage without very much of a footprint.
12:01
I mean, the losses that we're going to incur because of this are going to far exceed what
12:06
might have happened maybe for decades for us to keep a small force there.
12:11
And it's just it's frustrating.
12:16
I mean, frustrated.
12:17
I'm frustrated.
12:18
I'm frustrated for the families who lost people there who had personal relationships
12:23
with the Afghans who we who they would say they would go on the line and they say, you
12:27
know, we promise we will not abandon you.
12:30
And you know, we wanted to get them set up.
12:31
But at the end of the day, that's what Joe Biden has done and he cannot put it off on
12:36
anybody.
12:37
He can't put it off on Trump.
12:38
He can't put it off on Obama.
12:41
He can't put it off on Bush.
12:42
Yeah.
12:43
He inherited this, but he is executing this.
12:46
But one thing that you talked about is I'm not sure if you talked about this off air
12:49
when you and I were talking before or if you were talking about it beforehand, but just
12:52
how angry you are at all this and in just 30 minutes before I hopped on the call with
12:56
you, I was talking to a friend of mine that said, you know, he's waking up in the middle
13:00
of the night just angry and we're we're both civilians and we're both finding it hard to
13:04
like concentrate today and hard to like figure out where our emotions are on this.
13:08
And I heard somebody he was actually on the Dan Crenshaw podcast earlier this week.
13:11
He's like, he's going back and forth between the feeling of wanting to grab his kit and
13:15
grab his buddies and go hop on a flight and go over there and try to do something about
13:18
it or curling up under his bed with a bottle of bourbon and there's kind of these warring
13:22
feelings.
13:23
But for you as a civilian that has spent so much time with military members and their
13:27
families, you know, explain kind of that emotion right now of kind of being back and forth
13:32
between anger and sadness.
13:35
I think I think it hits close to home because exactly because of that because you get it,
13:39
you know, emotionally involved with, you know, the losses of our men and women who have who
13:44
have fought and and given so much in order to help give the Afghan people more of what
13:50
we many of us take for granted here, you know, the freedoms, the basic freedoms, like literally
13:55
our kids going to school.
13:58
And that is and it just it makes you angry when you know that it could have been done
14:03
in a way that allowed that to continue.
14:06
And I think for that small, I mean, we could go back and discuss the debate of whether
14:11
we should have stayed there all these years.
14:14
That's kind of a moot point because the point is we did stay there all these years.
14:18
We did move forward with with the policy, whether you call it nation building or whatever
14:22
you want to call it, that kept us there all these years.
14:25
But at the end of the at the end of the day, I believe that that was it's because of Americans.
14:31
I mean, we're we are decent people despite our flaws and are are, you know, the fact
14:37
of what's going on that in fighting that the pandemic has started and I will say that the
14:41
media fuels between all of us at the end of the day, we want other people to enjoy the
14:49
same freedoms that we enjoy and that is, you know, important.
14:55
And so when you see that taken away, something that we basically have helped instill over
15:00
there all these years and that what we fought for and what we've lost, it's not like, Hey,
15:05
we're going to fight forever.
15:06
I think, yeah, is it right to get out to stop fighting the so called war?
15:11
But the reality is, and from what I understand, you know, it was a pretty small commitment
15:18
comparatively for the gain that it helped gave us allowed us that foothold there.
15:23
What's what's going to happen now?
15:25
Al Qaeda, other terrorist network groups, ISIS, who knows what, we'll move in.
15:31
The Chinese will come in and mine their their minerals and their precious metals and everything
15:35
that they can, their oil for their own good.
15:39
And there's all these things that are it's just the ripple effect of, Hey, what would
15:43
have it really taken to maintain a presence there that allowed and gave the Afghan army
15:50
the ability to keep this stalemate going where it might be forever.
15:54
But I just feel I feel and people have told me that it really does seem like especially
16:00
now the we're going to lose a lot more for by going back in there now when we could have
16:08
either done nothing and or just slowly gotten people out, which was what was it wasn't like
16:15
there was no plan.
16:16
There was a plan.
16:17
There are lots of people are coming out now, you know, that are saying no, we've I spent
16:22
years putting together, you know, exit plans and how to get people out.
16:25
And they decided to do it.
16:26
That's sometimes wonder if it's because it was so close to the September 11th at 20
16:33
year anniversary where Biden, you know, delusionally thought, Oh, we're going to be able to say
16:38
on September 11 that we are gone and it has been a success and mission accomplished.
16:43
If you thought that he got bad information or made a bad decision because that same anniversary
16:48
is what probably gave, I mean, that is a victory date in the eyes of jihadist and terrorist
16:57
groups.
16:58
And you know, some of the more fanatical Afghans, that is like a battle cry.
17:02
So the timing of this couldn't have been worse either.
17:05
So I'm kind of all over the map.
17:08
No, this is all great because the last point that you brought up there is who was trying
17:13
to get our troops out by the 20th anniversary of 9/11 appealing to stateside who exactly
17:18
was at that appealing to which I think this played into this is the latest iteration of
17:23
the horrible marketing problem.
17:25
I don't mean that to be dismissive of what was going on over there.
17:28
But you know, I don't think Bush, Obama or Trump did a great job of communicating exactly
17:33
what we were doing when we were doing it.
17:35
And the same goes to the generals and the rest of the joint chiefs.
17:39
But with with with Trump and then on into Biden, all they had to say is guys, this is
17:46
not war in the way that you're thinking about war.
17:48
This is not World War one, we're all going to line up on either side and charge each other
17:52
or that we're just going to carpet bomb the area.
17:54
That's not what we're dealing with because why did it take this situation in Afghanistan
17:58
for the general public in the United States to know that we haven't lost a soldier in
18:02
Afghanistan for a year and a half.
18:04
And that doesn't make that person's sacrifice in the person's life that was lost a year
18:08
and a half ago.
18:09
Any less important.
18:10
It's like, why did we continuously hear people like even a guy that's in my foxhole, one
18:14
of my personal buddies called me, he's like, well, you know, at least he's endless wars
18:18
are stopping.
18:19
And he didn't realize that we still had troops in Germany and in Korea and in Japan and that
18:24
we hadn't taken any of these casualties.
18:26
So was, is it a marketing problem?
18:29
That kind of goddess in this position?
18:30
Is it just overzealous politicians?
18:32
Like, you know, everything's going bad for Biden right now, seemingly the country seems
18:36
to be in disarray, was this some feather in his cap?
18:38
Like, can you figure out maybe where the problem maybe started?
18:42
I can only speculate, but I will say, and I think everybody agrees that the democratic
18:48
side of our of the Democratic Party is much more effective at there getting the word out
18:54
and firing up people for, you know, with whether it's their message or propaganda or whatever
19:02
over the conservatives.
19:03
If you consider that, someone might have been looking at this as, hey, we can do this is
19:07
going to be an amazing thing that we can do.
19:09
And they just not knowing the situation, all just the idea that, yeah, like the magazine
19:13
covers Blurb, we're out 20 years later and we're out or mission accomplished.
19:18
I mean, whatever they might have been thinking, I just, it's obviously totally misinformed
19:24
and ignorant if you really look at what the situation is there.
19:30
And history, we just look at history.
19:32
We already know that, we already knew that, you know, it's the graveyard of empires.
19:36
We know this.
19:37
We weren't trying to turn it into a, into our empire.
19:43
And we weren't trying to do anything more than I think maintain the semblance of freedom
19:49
for the average Afghan person.
19:52
And at the end of the day, they totally blew it.
19:55
They completely blew it.
19:57
They had such an opportunity, they could have gotten out all these people.
20:00
I mean, I think that they've said there's like, there's a growing list.
20:03
The CIA analyst said he knew of 14,000 people and then Trump says, I mean, I'm sorry.
20:08
And then Biden says, well, we've accepted 2,000.
20:12
It's like, that's nothing.
20:13
I mean, that, that could have supported, you know, maybe the Kandahar region for, if that.
20:20
And it's just, it's unbelievable, it's unbelievable.
20:24
And I think that what's different about this situation right now is that the mainstream
20:30
media can't ignore it.
20:31
It's really hard for them to spin it in a way that will, it's, it's like that he's
20:36
going to have to come to the reckoning of, of what he did.
20:40
And that was, you know, my concern with, with this administration as a journalist, because
20:44
freedom of speech and the, and the media as a watchdog is the most important aspect, I
20:51
think, of what keeps a government in check and in the freedom of speech, you know, censorship,
20:57
whatever.
20:58
And you could just watch it, it didn't matter what side you were on, but in the election
21:02
process and the, you know, running up to the election, the media was very much in the mass
21:08
media was very much spinning everything positive and hiding things that were negative about
21:13
Biden.
21:14
And that didn't happen on the other side.
21:16
You still heard about everything.
21:18
And I guess that's what, you know, was interesting with, with COVID, you know, as a journalist,
21:24
it gave me an opportunity to watch all the media, to watch CNN, to watch MSNBC, to watch
21:29
Fox, and then the various online outlets.
21:33
And you could look at them every day.
21:34
And I did.
21:35
I watched them every day.
21:36
I watched the entire Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention and
21:40
it could not have been more different in how it was reported and their messaging and of,
21:45
of what was reality for someone less to myself who did take the time to watch both
21:49
sides and someone who strives for balance as a journalist.
21:53
And that's been lost, but in this case, it's so big that it can't be hidden.
21:58
It can't be spun.
22:00
And I think that it shows some people that there is a series, there are deep flaws within
22:06
the Biden administration, either for their decision making, their, the communication.
22:12
I mean, look at the chaos that they would say before that there's chaos in the Trump
22:17
administration.
22:18
Well, the Biden administration just created chaos.
22:21
They've created chaos on the southern border.
22:23
So, you know, it's coming up to this, the wide open borders, I have friends and contacts
22:29
in the border patrol industry.
22:32
They're letting anybody they want that comes to the border across without COVID testing,
22:37
without any real screening.
22:40
And then once they're here, then they're looking into it.
22:44
And I mean, that is just, it's wrong.
22:47
Countries, all countries, even countries, Western America that say, Hey, come, come bring
22:52
all and, you know, make your American dream, find your American dream.
22:56
Yeah.
22:57
But you know what?
22:58
They all do it legally.
22:59
There is a process and to show the fact to show how right now all these people who actually
23:04
helped America basically proved it, you know, in what they often do for a, for an immigrant
23:09
is they say, Hey, if you serve in the military, you can get your citizenship.
23:13
Well, there's a boatload of Afghans that have served them America and want to come to America.
23:18
And they've paid their dues and they've taken their risks and they've put their families
23:22
and themselves in jeopardy for all these years.
23:25
And they can't even get on a plane to get here yet.
23:27
If they somehow could have gotten to Mexico and then the Baja Peninsula or into Texas,
23:33
they could have walked across the border illegally.
23:35
It just does not make sense.
23:37
Yeah.
23:38
There's a lot of things there that we unfortunately don't have the time to get into, but you did
23:41
mention something with the mainstream media, Eric, that's something that I'm paying very,
23:44
very close attention to because in the first really 48 hours or so since Sunday, since we've
23:49
kind of been sitting in this, this milieu of craziness, I am seeing even left wing sources
23:56
being not, not terribly apologetic or I mean, they're challenging the Biden administration
24:02
and they're challenging Joe Biden.
24:03
They're asking, where is Joe?
24:05
So Joe came and popped down from vacation for 20 minutes, read off a teleprompter, a statement
24:10
that someone else wrote and then hop back on a helicopter, go to Camp David.
24:13
I'm going to be watching very close attention to that, but I know you got to go here in
24:16
just a second.
24:17
I'm going to wrap up with this question here again, you've spent a lot of times, a lot
24:21
of time with gold star families, right?
24:24
You spent a lot of time in a gold star family, which led to the greatest book, my favorite
24:28
book that I've ever read, Fearless, and you spent time with these families and you spent
24:31
time, you know, shedding tears with them and on your own, reflecting on them.
24:36
So if you're a gold star family right now and you lost your spouse or your dad or your
24:40
brother or someone overseas to Afghanistan and now you're seeing what you're seeing.
24:46
Now in the country, what is your message to those people?
24:50
Because I'm a very pessimistic guy.
24:52
I'm not super like rah, rah.
24:53
It's okay.
24:54
Let's make it better.
24:55
Especially right now.
24:56
I'm finding it very, very hard to find the positive.
24:58
So what would you say to those families?
25:02
Well, off the cuff like this with a quick fired off question, I just have to look at it and
25:08
say, hey, at a personal level, the American soldier, humanitarian worker, nurses and doctors
25:19
who have gone there to help deliver babies, everything, they have connected with the Afghan
25:25
people at a personal level, Adam Brown sharing, you know, he could have brought anything,
25:31
not anything, but he asked his parents to send, they asked him when he wanted for Christmas
25:34
one year.
25:35
He said, send me shoes, little kids' shoes and socks.
25:38
Because a lot of these kids don't have shoes and it's cold.
25:40
And he took the time, while Adam Patrol defined kids that were wearing sandals or whatever
25:44
in cold weather and put them on.
25:47
So for people like Adam, Jefferson, Donald Davis and Dan Petitori, the first special
25:54
forces who were killed in Afghanistan, in southern Afghanistan, right after 9/11, you
26:00
know, they connected with the kids and the youth and they saw what Real America is all
26:05
about and that love is conveyed.
26:09
And I think that, you know, to give your life for another is the greatest deed, right?
26:13
You say that for your brother, your sister's in arms.
26:18
But also at the end of the day, it's what more of a humble kind and compassionate and
26:29
brave thing to do than to look past yourself and go fight for someone else's freedom.
26:35
Maybe someone who is, you know, not from your country, that's the ultimate.
26:38
And so I would say for everybody out there who is looking at disillusioned at this, their
26:44
sons and daughters did make a difference and have made a difference in the world.
26:48
And the freedoms that they've helped to instill in the Afghans now might help give them,
26:54
if there is a resistance at some point, they gave a whole generation of people a taste
26:58
of freedom that they might not have had before.
27:00
And I feel like that is something that can't be lost that will need help.
27:06
And again, we could have continued that into another generation or two, which could have
27:11
helped even more, but sadly it was cut short, that process.
27:16
But at the end of the day, that's the family, I haven't even contacted the families because
27:19
I know they've got to be hurting and I know they're going to reach out by so many people.
27:23
I'm giving them a few days before I reach out to just say, I'm so sorry what's been going
27:28
on.
27:29
I know that most of them, all of them are proud of what they did and they're scratching their
27:36
heads like the rest of us about how this all went about and how this has all gone down.
27:41
It's a very unfortunate situation, but I'm glad you spent a little bit of time with us
27:44
giving a little bit of perspective on this.
27:47
So even now, I'm getting tongue tied because I'm frustrated just like you are, I'm just
27:52
like you are.
27:53
And I can't imagine what those families are going through.
27:54
And I feel like I haven't even given enough consideration to that.
27:57
So we'll certainly be doing that as much as possible, but Eric, thanks so much for coming
28:00
back on.
28:01
Yeah.
28:02
At a personal level, they made a difference.