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April 11, 2021 - Epoch Times
36:31
‘Isolation Kills Too’—Mary Daniel on Becoming a Dishwasher to See Her Husband; Advising Gov DeSantis
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Time Text
And the doctor actually said Alzheimer's.
That was our worst day.
But I told him on that day that I would be with him every step of the way.
But when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Mary Daniel would be one of the countless Americans who could not visit their loved ones because of lockdowns.
But the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months.
My fear was that I was not going to get back in time, that I was going to miss that window of opportunity where he knew me and knew our love and knew what our relationship was.
Mary Daniel eventually got in as a dishwasher at her husband's facility and her story gained nationwide attention.
Discovering thousands of Americans in similar situations, she founded the group Caregivers for Compromise because isolation kills two.
And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis brought her into his task force to reopen long-term care facilities.
It's real.
I mean, when we say isolation kills two, we mean it.
And it's a lonely, lonely death.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Mary Daniel, so great to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Thank you so much.
So Mary, you have quite an incredible story to tell, a story related to difficult illness within the family that's not coronavirus, but intertwined with coronavirus.
Tell me your story.
My husband, Steve, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's eight years ago at the age of 59, and so it's been a very difficult road.
Two years ago, I decided to place him in a long-term care facility.
He was incredibly social, was an orange juice salesman, and so sold Florida's natural orange juice for a living, and loved to travel and meet people, and that's why he was good at his job, is because he just always knew how to build relationships and make friends.
So I made the most difficult decision that I've ever had to make, and that was to place him in a memory care center.
The amazing thing is he thrived.
He loved it there.
He loved being free to roam instead of being locked up in the house.
And he made all kinds of friends, not only there, The residents there, but the family members there and the staff there.
And they gave him a seat at the front desk.
He greeted everybody from family members to providers to the UPS man who came in every day.
He hugged everybody and was doing very, very well.
I would go visit him in the evening after work and we would spend the evenings.
I would change him and get him ready for bed and we would just spend the evenings in bed watching TV. It was really a great way for us to end every single day together.
And I went to see him on March the 11th, and they called me on March 12th and said, you can't come back.
So I immediately called the executive director of the facility and said, you know, this isn't going to work for me, so what are we going to do?
What can we do?
Is there anything that we can do?
Can I get a job?
Can I volunteer?
Can I bring a dog that we're raising for Canines for Warriors and let that be a therapy dog?
Anything.
I was desperate to get to him.
And they said that we're going to wait.
Let's wait and see.
It's 15 days to slow the curve and we're just getting started and we all had no idea what we were getting ready to face.
And so I agreed.
But the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months and I realized that I had to do what I could to get back.
I knew that the isolation was going to hurt him.
With dementia patients, Alzheimer's patients specifically, the contact, the human contact, the hand holding, the back rubbing, me being with him was the most important part.
I couldn't talk to him on the phone.
I couldn't talk to him FaceTime.
His language, his verbal skills are very limited.
He talks, but I can't understand what he says.
So there was no conversation that we could have He would kiss the iPad because he didn't understand where was I and how that worked.
We tried two window visits and he cried the entire time.
Just truly didn't understand why are you not in here and why are you not with me.
He had no knowledge, no cognitive idea of the virus.
He didn't know what it was, didn't understand it, so didn't know what was going on.
And I knew I had to get to him.
When he was diagnosed, when the doctor actually said, Alzheimer's, you have Alzheimer's, that was our worst day.
We went to my sisters and her husband.
We cried.
They cried with us.
It was a bad day.
But I told him on that day that I would be with him every step of the way, that I would hold his hand every day and that I would be with him and that he would never take one step without me, that I would be along every step of the way.
And I wasn't doing that.
I wasn't fulfilling that promise that I made to him and that was incredibly difficult.
So I started reaching out to Governor DeSantis and I tagged him on Facebook and tagged him on Twitter and sent emails to him and anybody else I could think of.
I put posts out there looking for anybody that knew him.
Does anybody know his chief of staff?
Does anybody know anybody in his office that I could get to?
He needed to hear what I had to say.
I just really, really felt that he needed to hear from somebody to say, this is bad.
I said over and over again, there has to be a better way.
This isn't working.
You mean like complete isolation?
That's not the answer.
Correct.
There has to be a way.
I knew the staff was going in there.
I knew I could see his nurse practitioner went in there one day for a visit when I was at the window.
So she's in PPE. She's all dressed.
She's doing all of these precautions.
Why can't I do that?
I would do anything.
I gave them ideas.
Let's do a clean room where you can sterilize it after everybody's gone or whatever you want me to do, I'll do.
And that's what I meant by there.
There just has to be a better way than isolating them without any knowledge and knowing of when we were going to be able to get back.
And so I became very vocal.
I started copying all my emails to local reporters.
And I had a couple who started picking up the story and started telling the story of the isolation.
And that was helpful.
It got the attention of the corporate office out of North Carolina of my husband's facility.
And they called and said, completely out of the blue, called and said, we understand you want a job.
And the truth is, it kind of surprised me.
It had been a couple months since I had suggested it again because they ignored me and I hadn't brought it up again.
And I said, actually, yes, I would love a job.
And they said, we have a part-time job available for you if you'd like it.
And I said, I'll take it.
And then I asked, what is it?
And they said, it's a dishwasher.
I kind of think they didn't think I was going to take it.
I think it was a way for them to kind of keep me quiet about their facility, to be honest with you.
But I did.
I said, dishwashing it is.
I'll be a dishwasher.
So I had to go through quite a bit of training.
Who knew that dishwashers had to do 20 hours worth of video work on hazardous waste disposal and food sanitizing and PPE and all of these things.
I had to do a background check, Of course, a COVID test, a TB test, fingerprints.
It was quite the ordeal, but I did all of those requirements and started my first shift on July the 3rd.
My fear was that I was not going to get back in time, that I was going to miss that window of opportunity where he knew me and knew our love and knew what our relationship was.
So after 114 days and a five-hour shift, I went to his room and his back was to me when I walked in the door.
And when he heard the door open, he turned around and the first thing he said was, Mary.
So that was a huge relief.
And from there, the story went viral.
The news again picked up on the dishwasher story.
And it went crazy viral.
And that's how it got the attention of Governor DeSantis.
And I finally got a call from his chief of staff who said, I understand you want to talk to the governor and we're going to arrange that.
He's coming to Jacksonville and he'd like to meet with you.
So I met with him and the first lady who we were all very familiar here in Jacksonville as a former anchor on the local news here for many years.
And they both listened to everything that I said.
They were incredibly thoughtful, very concerned.
Of course, I came very prepared.
After we started the dishwashing and got national attention, I started to realize that there were tens of thousands of people in Florida, hundreds of thousands of people across the United States who were in the same boat that I was.
So you started getting emails or messages or phone calls from people all over the United States saying, we are watching what you're doing and we feel the same way.
And I knew we have the same struggle.
We don't know what to do.
How do we get back to them?
So I started the Facebook group, Caregivers for Compromise, and we have a national page that's now 14,000 members strong.
And we started a page for every single state.
So the pages have multiple purposes.
The first one is to provide support for people that are experiencing this so that they know that they're not alone, that they can see what's happening with other people, and we have great compassion and understanding for each other.
So it really serves a very important purpose there.
It also serves as a place to advocate, especially our state groups.
We are talking, each individual state has their own leadership.
They have folks that have stepped up and are leading the way for that state and doing really big things, passing new laws, getting new orders, emergency orders like we did here in Florida, really making changes in states.
And it has to be done on the state level.
Unfortunately, it's a bit chaotic out there and every state is doing something different.
I have been fortunate to be in the state of Florida because as the leader of this group and of this Facebook pages, Governor DeSantis has absolutely without question led the way in how to do this right and getting us back to our loved ones.
So after our conversation, we walked out to a press conference, and he announced the opening or the establishment of a long-term care task force for reopening facilities in Florida and named me, gave me a seat at that table
with a lot of the big people, the industry, the nursing home industry people, the Surgeon General of the state of Florida was there, the gentleman in charge of elder affairs for the state of Florida, the head of ACA was there.
So it really was pretty amazing that I'm sitting with these people getting to have a voice, and it worked.
But at this point, you weren't just a voice for yourself anymore.
Correct.
I was with Steve.
I was back with him.
But that wasn't good enough.
I knew that there were other people just like me.
I knew that they were trying to get to them, and they couldn't.
Even in our own facility, being able to see the other people Residents there alone was motivation for me to get back.
Why was I able to go in as a dishwasher and not as a wife?
It just didn't make any sense to me when we were willing to do anything that they told us to do.
That one night Right in the middle.
I had just worked a couple days and literally I was sitting up there at my desk for 2 o'clock in the morning getting these Facebook pages set up.
It was a bit overwhelming.
I describe it as I was a little weepy.
I was talking to a friend who was helping me on the phone and she said to me, Mary, God has placed you here for a reason.
And I'll never forget it.
I have worked my whole life.
I'm a patient advocate by trade.
I'm actually a board-certified patient advocate.
Believe it or not, there is something like that.
I specialize in medical billing in my company, and so we help people with their medical bills.
But after 30 years of managing medical practices, I know the system and I know how it works.
I know that you can push back and say, come on, you guys, that doesn't make any sense.
We can do better than that.
And I was just sort of the right person for the job at the time, whether that be the advocate to speak up for everybody and do caregivers for compromise or the dishwashing job.
But it really was amazing.
Once that first press conference happened was named to this task force and I got to really sit at the table with some of these big boys who were worried about liability.
They didn't want people back in.
Certainly my biggest My foe, I should say, would be the Surgeon General.
He didn't want us to have touching.
He didn't want us to be able to hug.
And that was a deal-breaker for me.
And I told them that.
At one point saying...
I'm not going to negotiate on that.
There's no way that I can't hug him when I hug him when I go in there to wash dishes.
At one point in one of the very first press conference, Secretary Perdon was the elder affairs guy.
And he starts telling the story, he's British, and he starts telling the story of the cats, the electronic cats that you can give people, and it provides them with a pet, and the beauty of iPads, that they furnished iPads to all these different facilities.
And then he brings out, God love him, he brings out this piece of paper that's a strip of paper, and And it's got two little paper hands on it.
So it looks like a yardstick with two little paper hands on it.
And he starts telling the story that his niece from England sent this to him as a virtual hug.
And he finishes talking, and then it goes to the Alzheimer's Association woman.
She talks, and it goes back to the governor.
And I say...
Governor, may I say something?
Because I know that all of my Facebook group is watching this press conference, and they just saw that stuff with the cat in the iPad.
And I said, may I say something?
And he said, absolutely, of course.
And I said, I just want to be sure that everybody understands that I'm not here for a virtual hug.
I'm here because we need a real hug.
And while those things have their place in dementia care, I don't want any misunderstanding of what my role is here, and that is to get me back permanently, all of us back, with our loved ones, and we want to hug them and touch them.
And that was huge in terms of our movement.
I kind of set the tone of why I was there, but for everybody who was watching on Facebook Live, it was also A reinforcement that I'm going to speak to them the truth.
I'm going to tell them the truth.
I don't want a cat.
I don't want a mechanical cat for him.
I want me for him.
He needs me.
And the governor listened to that.
So after that first meeting, we all met.
We had a number of different meetings.
And the last one was the Surgeon General saying he didn't like that idea.
But agreeing, saying I will put an asterisk on it and say we may need to revisit this, but let's see what happens.
So it went to the governor and he agreed with all of it, held another press conference.
Went back to the same place and got to meet with him again.
Again, incredibly honest and caring with what I had to say and wanting me to be a part of this group.
September 1st, our new order went into effect.
I was incredibly Pleased with the rollout, with the new order.
And I thought that was it.
I thought, okay, we're in.
Everything is great.
And within 24 hours, I called my own facility and said, okay, you're going to let everybody know, right?
We're opening the doors.
And I was told no, that they had just gotten off the phone with their association, the association that my facility is a member of, whose president was on the task force with me.
Who just the day before told me that if any facilities, if you hear of any facilities that are our facilities that are not opening up, you just call me and let me know.
Well, the president of my facility, the state facilities, calls me and says, well, I just talked to her and she told us we didn't have to follow these rules.
And I said, really?
Because that's not what she told me yesterday.
And as the person on the task force, you would think she would be telling her organization that they needed to follow the rules.
So we decided to get her on the phone, the three, with the three of us, and had a conversation with her.
And she backpedaled big time with me on the phone.
So we ran into conflicts where even somebody on the task force who agreed to this Is not telling their membership that they need to comply.
So it became incredibly difficult.
ACA, the head of the task force, was Mary Mayhew, the head of the secretary of ACA, which is the Agency for Healthcare Administration, who regulates all of these facilities in the state of Florida.
And I did have her backing, and she was very much a supporter of TOUCH. Honestly, and I don't know this for a fact, but I believe that came as a directive from the governor.
She knew that that's what the governor wanted, and she was absolutely by my side on pushing for that throughout the entire process.
So I continue to be very vocal, and not only with the governor, his office, with Shane Strom, his chief of staff, who was very receptive to me.
I had his cell phone number, I had his email address, but also Jared Dr.
Moskowitz, who is in charge of the emergency division here in the state of Florida.
It has been an overwhelming job for him.
I am really impressed with the work that he has done.
He has been very receptive to me.
I don't know that I've ever reached out to him that he did not respond to me.
So it's really been impressive, even as I've run into different things that I've not been overly happy with.
I'll tell you, we had a new order come out in November.
That said, we could bring our loved ones home.
And ACA, who had been very good at enforcing the first order in September, if we had a problem, we called them, they would call the facility, they would get involved.
They didn't do that on the second order.
And it was really disappointing.
So we had many people who wanted to bring their loved ones home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, had told them that they would be able to come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas because that's what the order said.
But every time we had places where all the facilities were telling us, ACA says we don't have to do that.
They say we can do whatever we want.
We can make all our own rules.
And they were.
And we all felt lost.
How do you go in and fight for something and show them this piece of paper when they laugh at you and they say, ACA says we can do whatever we want.
And they're telling me, we've got places telling them, you better quit complaining.
If you quit complaining, we'll kick them out.
So you have people that are afraid.
They're afraid of retribution against their loved one by these facilities.
And I've said, listen, my husband's not staying anywhere that I'm afraid for his care.
Ever.
That's not going to happen.
Now, that's cutting my nose off to spite my face because it's going to be a big problem having to find him somewhere else.
I've got to move him.
I've got to move all the furniture.
I've got to get him acclimated.
I mean, it would be a huge ordeal to do.
But there is no way I'm leaving him somewhere where I think someone is going to be ugly to him or mean to him or not treat him like he's supposed to because I'm trying so hard to get to him.
That's not the way this needs to work.
It happens every day in this industry.
Every day.
A lot of it is power.
They don't want us in telling them what to do and what not to do.
They kind of like it the way it is.
And these folks have not been cared for the way that they should.
And so when we come in, they've got to get their ducks in a row.
When I saw Steve after 114 days...
There were light bulbs out in his room.
His remote control was gone from his TV. When I took his shoes off to put him in bed, his toenails had not been cut in 114 days.
This is a man who was meticulous about his appearance.
We didn't dry his golf shirts.
We hung them.
And he has every shirt he's ever owned in that closet in there because he took care of his things and his appearance with such great care.
And I pulled his shoes off.
And I couldn't believe it.
Now, is that neglect?
No.
I mean, he doesn't know.
He doesn't realize it.
I know, and I see it.
What do you think that looks like after 300 days?
After a year when these people haven't been in there?
They need us in there to do these things that right now they're understaffed to do.
What I've tried to tell my people, my folks, Is that there's such uncertainty here that all we can do is fight for them.
That's all we can do is express our views and certainly as a group we've been able to do that very, very effectively.
Because when this is over, and it's going to be over for all of us, Steve is going to die, everybody in these facilities, they're going to die.
When it's over, did we do everything in our power to get back to them?
The answer for us is yes.
It's just an incredible gift that we give ourselves.
Never in my mind did I ever do this for me.
But wow, when this is over, every single one of us can look back and say, we did everything in our power to get to them, to care for them.
To boldly advocate for them.
And the truth is, our work is not done.
And we really believe that now that we are in, that the governor has lifted all orders.
They're all gone.
So we're really getting back to normal in most places.
Nursing homes, not so much.
They're federally regulated because they take federal dollars.
We had a meeting with all of our groups last night, a Zoom meeting, where we are looking for federal legislation.
Our fight is not over.
We need consistency throughout the United States.
We need an essential caregiver law that says if this happens again, that there is a designation that will be allowed to go in.
Because here's the thing, as great as the plan was and as much as we hoped that it would work, It didn't work.
Staff brought the virus into the facilities and the majority of people that died in the state of Florida died in these facilities.
It didn't work.
Would it have been worse?
I can't answer that question.
But what I want us to do, certainly as a state and then as a country, is to learn the lesson that there has to be a better way.
And that way is, Florida showed with an essential caregiver.
That was our first order, was an essential caregiver designation allowing one or two people to go in Who follow the rules, who've been trained on PPE, who understand the value of hand washing and following these guidelines.
And we've been safe.
It's worked from our perspective.
The governor's orders helped us get to them with zero uptick.
We had no uptick in any residents getting the virus from family.
It has continued to be simply the staff.
Fascinating.
And, you know, so this is actually a really important point to bring up, you know, so there is, of course, the older you get, you have comorbidities and so forth, the risk actually becomes significant, you know, when you're younger, especially very young, very, very low risk to have any issues with the virus.
Now, at the same time though, and this is, you know, presumably what you're advocating for, there's a risk in isolation.
What are the considerations that you had to look at to figure out that this is the right thing to do?
If you've been with an Alzheimer's patient or a dementia patient, you know what touch does.
I know how holding his hand calms him.
I know when I go in to help him get a shower, how I can approach him to get him to do the things that he needs to do.
Those are things that his wife That the staff doesn't know how to do.
Those are things that I have the patience to do that an overworked and underpaid staff does not have the patience to do.
So we knew that the isolation was painful for them, was hurtful to them.
And what we're seeing now is an actual diagnosis of failure to thrive.
That is what you're seeing on death certificates now.
It's the same diagnosis that they use for children who are abandoned or who have no family structure.
You see it, my brother-in-law is a pediatrician and I ran his practice for 10 years.
It's a diagnosis that you see in pediatrics, but it's also now becoming, and in fact I follow news about the growing numbers of failure to thrive deaths.
In the elderly that are withering away.
If they don't have someone to interact with them, and even more troublesome, obviously, are dementia patients who have to have the mind engaged.
Without the mind engaged, the mind dies.
It's true for all of us.
But especially for someone who has a dying brain anyway.
You have to keep that stimulated and you have to keep him engaged or else he just withers away.
And that's exactly what we're seeing happen.
We have people that were in beds that have not been moved.
And literally can no longer move their limbs because they've been laying in bed in a fetal position for so long.
The number of bed sores and the number of...
They're just overworked.
The staff is underworked.
The turnover in this industry is unbelievable.
And one of the things that has happened is it has really lifted the lid on what's happening in these facilities and what do we need to do to change it.
Fairly uneducated workforce, underpaid, overworked.
Most places are understaffed, especially right now.
Everywhere is understaffed.
So we need to look at this industry and we need to look at what's happening behind these closed doors.
And families need to be in there.
Again, in most states, we're just starting to get Florida has been so far ahead of everybody.
Again, with the governor leading the way in showing us how it can be done safely, it has been remarkable.
There is absolutely no question, and I am on every single, all 50 Facebook pages for our group.
There's no question that Florida is way above, months above, six months above any other state in terms of what we've been allowed to do.
And it's worked.
It's been safe.
Fascinating.
And so, you know, you were saying the right person at the right time, right?
It's amazing how my actions, which could not be possible without the governor, has enabled literally hundreds of thousands of people to get in and be with their loved ones.
I mean, literally, not only in Florida, but I The people that have watched me, and I tell them all the time, I'm not special.
I'm you.
I'm just like you.
You're just like me.
I'm no different than you, and you're no different than me.
This is boldly advocating for our loved one so that we can look back with no regrets.
That's what this is, and you can do it too.
And they have.
All these people all over the United States have done that.
In this conference call, our leader in New York had a press conference today with her representative who is introducing, I think it's H.R. 2114 today, that's an essential caregiver bill for the federal government to look at.
Our New York person did that.
And she did that because we are so reinforcing and so excited for each other and so motivating for each other that this is what I did in my state.
What are you going to do in your state?
And they're doing it.
So it really has been unbelievable to see how other states have jockeyed off us and seen the work that I've done for them to be able to have the confidence to go and do the work themself.
Texas is exactly the same way.
North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Connecticut, Rhode Island.
I mean, all over the United States.
We have a big group in California.
I mean, these people are working really, really hard.
And I was able to give them a place to do that and to stay focused with it and get direction from the rest of us.
I mean that came from us showing the world how to do it and other people are following suit.
So I noticed that you had a traveling memorial of sorts.
Can you tell me a little bit about this?
We did.
Florida had one as well as many other states.
It started in Texas last year and as we were getting close to the one-year anniversary, we as a national organization really put together quite a few activities from letter writing campaigns to email, social media campaigns to get the attention of a lot of our elected officials and remind them that we are still out here and still isolated.
Many of our loved ones are still isolated.
So we took the part of our membership We took a part of our page name that says Isolation Kills 2 and we put them on these traveling signs.
In Florida, for example, we had 300 signs.
I hand wrote the names of 300 people on those signs that were submitted through our Facebook group.
And these were people that had either passed away in isolation or who were still in facilities.
At that point, not able to leave the facility.
We were able to go in, but we took them.
They were here, for example, for the state of Florida.
They were here in Jacksonville.
I actually contacted Shane Strum at the governor's office and asked him if he would help me find a place to put them in Tallahassee.
And he connected me with the people to put them on the lawn of the Florida Capitol, which was really cool.
So we went over there.
They were out there for three days in front of the Capitol building so everybody can see.
And they were really just a reminder, a grim reminder of what our message has been, that we know that COVID kills.
We certainly know that.
And we know our family members are part of that vulnerable population.
But we want the world to know that isolation kills too.
And just frankly, offer some perspective because the focus on the, you know, COVID deaths is very, very, very, let's say, pronounced for a very long time.
So it was, you know, very interesting.
It's real.
I mean, when we say isolation kills two, we mean it.
And it's a lonely, lonely death for people who have died alone.
There are facilities who are still not letting people come in when they know a patient is dying.
There's no excuse for that.
There's no way that that makes any sense.
When you know a patient is literally within their last hours and you will not allow family members to come in and be with them, there's something really wrong with this system.
And we call that complicated grief because it's very difficult for someone to come to terms with that as a loved one.
If I had to stand outside a window and watch my husband die in a bed alone where I'm not able to get to him, It's hard to work through that.
So isolation doesn't only affect folks with Alzheimer's.
There's a whole bunch of different scenarios where isolation probably plays a pretty significant role in people's general health and wellness.
My father-in-law just passed away on February the 5th, and there's no question, he was 89 years old, and there's no question that him being confined to his home, he was a man who went to church every Wednesday and every Sunday for as long as I've known him, and I've known him since I was 12 years old.
But he was also an older man who didn't have internet access.
He never had a computer, didn't want a computer, and so he was truly isolated in his home.
He lost church.
He lost his church family.
He couldn't even watch it on Facebook Live or anything like that because he didn't have it and refused to get the technology so he could take a part of it.
And there's no question in my mind that that played a role in his decline, being by himself, being a man who didn't want to take help from other people, but all of a sudden who was completely isolated from the rest of the world.
millions of people just like that all across the United States, especially who don't have family.
I was able to be there with him, although he was very skeptical at first of just the fear of not knowing and wanting to be very careful.
But for people who are truly isolated, may not be around a lot of family members.
There are so many different scenarios, whether it is the elderly or even the kids just at school who who are not being able to socialize.
We are human beings that crave touch and interaction with each other.
And this has been, I think, incredibly difficult.
And who knows what What the consequences are going to be as we get through this.
One of my hopes is through all of this, and again, I go back to the governor, because seeing how he and Jared Moskowitz have worked together from both the Republican and the Democratic side, as a citizen, I'm concerned that we can't get to the truth, that we don't know what the truth is.
Let's look at what's happened to our different populations, to my husband and the populations inside these facilities, to our school children, to the elderly that have been isolated at home.
Are we going to be able to truly look at these and see and learn?
So that we don't make the mistakes that we made before.
And I'm afraid in the climate that we have, the political climate that we have, that we're not going to be able to do that, which is incredibly sad.
And for somebody like me, you have this doom and gloom feeling of if we're not going to be able to work together and to come to some agreement on the pros and cons of this and what's right and what's wrong and what should we do next time and what should we not do next time, because all they want to do is argue with each other Then we are in trouble as a nation.
And I look to Governor DeSantis and I look to Jared Moskowitz as leaders to show how two different people who come from two different backgrounds politically can come together and be very successful and support each other in what they're doing, knowing that it absolutely is the best thing to do.
I would love to see that relationship, their relationship, be a model for other people.
We need the truth.
And we need to know.
And I'm worried that we're not going to be able to get there.
Certainly, as someone who's 58 years old, I worry about my stepchildren and my nieces and nephews and my families of what is life going to be like with them when the truth doesn't matter.
And we need hope.
I would certainly like to have hope for the future.
I don't think you're going to be backing down anytime soon, though.
No, we got a lot of work to do.
Mary Daniel, such a pleasure to have you on.
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