I'm going to be honest, and I was annoyed, upset with your family recently when in Philadelphia. It's one thing to vote for a different candidate. It's another thing for the, what, 15 people in the Kennedy family to stand on a stage at a rally for Joe Biden when they know that- It was six. Six. It was only six. Okay. For a huge portion, big names, people that mean something in your life from day one, to stand on that stage publicly and endorse Joe Biden instead of you. And even if they were going to vote for Joe Biden, to go to those lengths to support him. You've said, Okay, I love my family. We all have different politics. We all have different opinions. I believe you. Was there not a part of you that thought, What the heck? Why? Why as my family members go to that level to say, No, I am against my brother, my cousin, et cetera, and with this man? That annoyed me as a human.

Yeah. I mean, it wasn't a pleasant experience for me. But here's how I look at it, which is, first of all, we were, when my family was raised in a milieu where we argue with each other. We differ on political issues. We were raised. We debated every night at the dinner table. My father orchestrated debates, and we were taught to disagree with each other with passion, with good information, but at the same time to love each other. I understand why people in my family are dismayed about me running. There's five members of my family that have jobs with the administration or rely on them for their work. President Biden is a long-term friend of me and my family. He has a statue of my uncle, of my father, behind him in the oval office. So I see why. My family is tied in with the D&C. I know. They don't like what I'm doing. But you asked a more personal question about how I internalize that. And what I believe is that Any hardship that I encounter, I have to look at as a gift. I need to process everything as not as something that's meant to happen and that I'm meant to learn from it and that I need to be grateful for it.

So did it not hurt? Everything is teaching me something, and it's there to teach me something. I don't spend any of my life in living in resentments. If you are resentful about somebody, it's like swallowing poison and hoping someone else will die. It's corrosive. I am very disappointed about never going there.

Isn't there a difference between resentment and hurt?

Yeah. But again, my way of processing the experience of life is to say, these things ultimately are gifts for me. Every person in my who I've admired historically, Charles Darwin to Alexander the Great to Lewis and Clark to Richard Speake, and any great, St. Francis E. St. Augustine. They all went through periods in their lives Where they were disparaged by friends, by family, rejected by their communities. Winston Churchill, another great example. If you want to do something worthwhile in your life that you have to expect that that's what you're going to go through. The reason that not more people are doing what I'm doing is because if it were easy, they'd do it. It's difficult, and that's part of the difficulty. But I'm very disciplined about not carrying that stuff around.

I think that's the right word, discipline.

Either as hurt or as anger. That's beautiful. If there's a microsecond in my head that says, Oh, that's hurtful, I have now developed the ability to immediately change it and say, That means it's good. Listen, God is talking to you through every Every encounter that you have, everybody that you meet is a messenger. Absolutely. If somebody throws you the finger on a highway, you have to think yourself, God, what does he want me to learn from this experience? What does he want me to do with this interaction? Does he want me to be kind? Does he want me to pray for that person?

Are you praying for your family? Yeah, of course. I don't mean that literally, but as they are doing something that might be hurtful for a split second and then okay. Absolutely. Have you had conversations with them since?

Yes, I have. One of the things is that several of them have said that when they They've sent me notes saying, We made sure not to criticize you. In her earlier iteration, some of them said a couple of things about me. At this time, they said... I had dinner with my cousin, Maria Straub, and one of my brothers who was there, Max, the other day, and I said, Look, I really don't mind you guys doing this with endorsing Biden, but I don't want you to be saying, and I don't think it makes you look good, to be saying, Bad things about me, and it's hurtful to my children, and I think the whole family. So I think they made an effort not to do that. And several of them said to me that they had used those moments with President Biden to ask him to provide me secret service protection. So I'm happy with that. I think that maybe he'll reconsider his decision.

The fact that it's even a decision.