Cliff Sims

And in reality, in retrospect, a lot of times I was trying to do the right thing for me and maintain my position, you know?

Yeah.

Okay.

Definitely.

Yeah.

I think everybody, that's right.

Very rarely does anybody in life say, you know what, I'm a bad person and I'm going to do a bad thing right now.

Most people rationalize even the bad decisions that they make.

Well, one of the main things that happens when people... I think there's a lot of good about people from outside of D.C.

coming to D.C., people in the private sector, fresh blood in the government.

The flip side of that is...

you don't know how your character is gonna respond to these things.

And so you leave your support system, wherever you're from, for me, my church small group, people that couldn't care less that I worked for the president of the United States, the people that my son goes and plays with their kids and they know all the things about me, good, bad, and otherwise.

And suddenly I'm in DC and I don't have that anymore.

And so I think part of it was losing those people that were around me who would say, hey, what are you doing?

Or like, hey, I think you are looking at this wrong, or I think you've lost yourself a little bit in this thing.

Like, who's gonna be that person?

Certainly in a city like Washington, DC, to say something like that.

You and I were talking off camera a little bit.

There are cities around the country that represent certain kind of mortal sins, if you will.