Mike Durant

So I allowed myself to believe that.

naively, quite frankly.

That I could make a difference.

That it was a fair fight, which it's not.

I can't say it's never a fair fight, but it certainly wasn't a fair fight in my situation.

And my personal credibility was impacted, which probably bothers me more than anything else, because I've worked really hard

and I think been fairly successful in portraying a positive image for the unit, for the people we supported, for the military in general, for myself, for my family.

That matters to me.

I want people to think,

You know, people like him are squared away.

They're patriots.

They're, I'm not gonna say necessarily fearless, but super squared away, which I said earlier is something, you know, that I admire and I respect.

And what happened to me in the campaign, I think, tainted that to a certain extent.

But it's almost like as soon as you say you're going to run for office, people are suspicious of you because they're so conditioned to being lied to, to people don't turn out to do what they said they were going to do.

And I kind of understand how difficult it is to stay on that track and

As you learn more, I'm not trying to be sympathetic, but man, it's a freaking difficult thing to do.

Sorry.

I was very naive about how it would work.

I mean, you have to do an assessment, right?

Do you really think you can win?