PM Show Hr 2 | Mark Swidan on his Unjust Imprisonment in China

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time. Lock and load. The Michael Derry Show
is on the air.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Years ago before a lot of stuff was was being
sent to china to make two to three i had
a friend at the law firm where i was working
he was a partner at the firm i was an
associate and his wife had a great design sense and
she came up with a design for a purse and
i don't know purses my wife's not a fancy you

(01:02):
know clothing person but they came over to the house
one time we were having dinner as as couples and
They brought this purse, and they'd just gotten it back,
and it was a prototype that had made in China.
And I said, why is a purse made in China?
And he said, everything is made in China now. I said, well,
how hard can it be to make a purse in China?

(01:22):
And he said, well, it's not how hard it is.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
It's the cost. And so for a long time before.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Recently with what's going on with Trump, everybody I knew
that came up with a concept and began making something
went to China for it. People in construction would go
to China for different elements. That's changing now. But for
a very long time, that was the case. I know
a lot of people that are your average redneck bubba

(01:50):
who you would never guess has been to China, but
they've been to China multiple times on business meetings. So
this story is pretty scary stuff, but frankly, it's not
shocking once you think about what's going on in China.
Mark Sweden was arrested in November 2012 while on a

(02:14):
trip to Guangdong province in China to purchase building materials.
And this story is so crazy, it's hard to believe,
but it's true. And rather than me tell you, I'm
going to have Mark Sweden tell you. Mark, first of all,
was this your first visit to China?

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yes, sir, Michael, it was.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
And tell me about, you know, China is... And historically,
probably as unlike the United States, of course, you could
factor in some African nations, as anything you could imagine,
literally the other side of the world. Tell me about
the buildup, why you were there, and then let's go
through the horrible things that happened to you.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Okay. Well, I've been in Asia for years, back and forth,
basically around the world. Import, export. I started on a
whim from some money I received when my dad was
accidentally killed in a hospital mistake. And I went to
a wedding in Vietnam, a friend's wedding. And I went

(03:17):
to the dentist. And my dental school friends at Texas
A & M told me to ask around about the
drill bits and the little, I guess just basically a
little stainless steel and stuff and disposable because they were
paying on the lay. And so I did that and
turned it into a business, basically. It spiraled out from there.

(03:38):
The first time I went to China, though, that was
for ADM Helium of Houston, and I still have the contracts.
They said there was a helium shortage in the USA.
you know, I could pretty much write my own ticket
on it. So, not being anything man-made, you'd have to

(04:01):
source it from China. So I took these contracts, I
contacted a lot of different contacts, and they just go
to China. I was in Hong Kong and I was
in Macau. I took a ferry, and this has a
lot to do with it. And I went to China.
looking for helium. And I did have multiple properties, and

(04:21):
I did purchase... I did actually purchase in Hong Kong.
All kinds of different stuff for building houses, stuff like that.
I was there. That's why I purchased it. I wasn't
just on the way for that. I was actually on
the way just for the helium. So leading up to that,
I crossed into China... I'm in a hotel room, which

(04:45):
they want foreigners to put their passports down. And that's
a U.S. government property, and I've been around the world,
and I'm not going to do that. So I never did.
I just... I'll move to another hotel, or you can
take this $ 50 and not worry about it. So what
they do is they send, this is all our big
businessmen who do that, like you said, they send your
passport information goes directly to the police department and up

(05:07):
the chain of the communists. Like they have, really, on
one block, you might have one person for each block. 10,
20 houses that relates to another person, to another person,
and up to the police. Because you stayed at a
friend's house, you're supposed to report. Two days later, it's

(05:29):
maybe 9 or 10 o'clock at night, I hear a bang,
one bang on the door. Then there's about 20 bangs
on the door. They're using a battering ram to break
down this hotel room door. Granted, this is one of
the largest hotel complexes in China. We're talking, you know, 2,000,
3,000 rooms there. And they break the door down. I got,

(05:50):
let's see, about 15 or 20 police, not uniformed, not English-speaking,
no badges, running through the room, pointing guns at me,
screaming Chinese. We're screaming back and forth to each other
because I don't speak Chinese at that point. And, yeah,
it kind of spiraled out of control from there. And

(06:10):
they arrested me. Well, they don't really call it arrest.
They call it detainment. And they finally admitted they were
police after the guy shoved a gun in my face
a couple times. And I kind of pushed it out
of my face because their training was just so awful.
It just didn't seem like they were the police. I
would have happily opened the door for them without breaking

(06:31):
it down kind of thing. Without me even resisting more,
I found they were police. They pushed me out of bed.
A couple of them, they're little guys. I'm a big guy.
And they, you know, proceeded to put their knees in
my back, trying to, you know, I'm basically almost smothered
in that pillow. And they picked me up, took me downstairs,

(06:54):
and put me in this huge van that was camouflaged.
It was like double the size of a Mercedes Sprinter.
Camouflaged van with some strange-looking satellite gear on the top.
We went down to the parking garage. In the meantime,
there were several other foreigners somewhere in the complex. And
they were Chinese Canadians. And there was a couple of

(07:17):
Hispanics from Mexico. But they were not all together. What
they did was they took us to a basketball court
two hours away or so. And tied everybody to a pole,
each one to his own pole out there. sat on
the ground, wouldn't tell anybody anything. They did get, they

(07:38):
were bringing more and more guys in. They brought a
couple of foreigners from this place. They brought a couple
of Chinese, a couple of, what turned out to be
Canadian Chinese. I didn't know at the time. Wouldn't talk
to anybody. We sat maybe on the ground. I'd seen
two or three hours Then piled everyone back into this van.
There wasn't anybody to speak. And proceeded to drive about,

(08:01):
I don't know, four or five hours away to, of course,
to the Vietnam border, you know, to a police station.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Mark, I'm going to get you to hold right there.
It's a perfect stopping point. This story is getting a
lot of attention. We're going to hear all of it
coming up. I said arrest me or take me to
Texas because I'm ready to get out of this state.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
I think Michael Berry rocks.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
The Michael Berry Show. I like it. A lot of
Americans end up in China doing business.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
And sometimes they're reminded that that is a totalitarian regime.
Mark Sweetand was there, and all of a sudden they
scoop him up, won't tell him who they are, and
he's being hauled off. He doesn't know what the hell
is going on because of this story, and Americans need
to hear it. But we were at the point where
they have grabbed him and they're taking him in the van.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
And as I said to you earlier, I'm not going
to interrupt you. You tell the story.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
I would like to know how you're feeling at each
step of this because obviously nobody's excited about it. But
are you confused? Are you simply scared? Are you thinking
this is the end? Had you had eight drinks before that?
Because people don't think about the fact that you might
have been hammered at that point.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
You might have been exhausted. You might have been sick
to your stomach.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
But anyway. Go ahead. No drinks at all. I was
actually watching TV. I bought some bootleg DVDs downstairs. I
was watching The Walking Dead or something like that. I
was eating a piece of cheesecake. That's what it was.

(09:42):
There was nothing in the room. I had some business documents.
They tried to say I was trying to flee. later
on in the case, which all my bags weren't packed,
my toiletries were out in the bathroom, all this, just
very unprofessional even when I came in the room. No training.
So back to where we're at, we're in this van.

(10:06):
Everyone's kind of silent, and the police are yelling at
people in Chinese. They don't really have anybody who speaks
English on this thing, or it's very rudimentary. Basically, shut up,
we are police, kind of thing. I'm thinking, okay, this
is BS.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
I know the U.S.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Will get me right out of this thing. I know
I haven't done anything wrong. I wasn't thinking end of
the world. I wasn't thinking death, because I didn't have
anything to do with this. I knew what I was
there for. And So we drive. We end up at
a police station, their form of a police station, in
a small town, which, granted, I am the first American
who was ever in that small town, arrested-wise or detained-wise.

(10:48):
So they drove me to a place I'd never been.
They start to question everyone one by one. Well, somebody's
handcuffed to this, and they uncuff you, drag you to
a desk, cuff you to a desk, trying to be
somewhat personal. They brought in a a terrible translator, and
they asked me, do you know anything about ice drugs?

(11:09):
I said, what the hell is ice drugs? They kept
trying to say the name in Chinese. They kept trying
to say, they didn't even know what they were talking about.
I said, I don't know what you're talking about. Then
they brought a confession out, and it was written in
all Chinese until they assigned it. That's not going to happen.

(11:31):
I've been all over the world, and Even the ambassadors
to the government, you name it, they've all said my
knowledge of international law and such and such was impressive.
That's from working around the globe. Even Vietnam is a

(11:52):
communist country. I had been there several times. Never had
a problem. So they asked me to sign this confession.
It's written in Chinese. I say, I want a lawyer present.
I want this translated properly by a certified translator. And
I'd like my consulate present. They said, this is China.

(12:16):
You don't get a lawyer. This is China. We're not
going to call your consulate to be here. And this
is China. It's the law that you sign a confession.
Have anybody ever studied any consular agreements? That's not the law.
but they're just fine. I refuse over and over again.

(12:36):
They put me to the side in a little room.
And they proceed to bring those other guys back and forth.
They then bring everybody to a room, and they put
all our personal belongings on the table and say, okay,
everybody get your personal belongings. Okay, no problem. I grab
my phones. I know I've never spoken to these people

(12:57):
in my life. Everyone's kind of looking at each other.
I can see these guys know each other. Everyone's kind
of looking at me as in, why am I here?
When they arrested me, I dressed... You know, pretty decent.
I'm not going to say I'm a... Anyway, I'm wearing

(13:18):
jeans and a dress shirt. And, you know, when they
took me down, I threw my blazer on. That's just
kind of my usual style. And so the rest of
these guys are in T-shirts and whatever. And we just
kind of don't match each other. You know, you get
it like that. So they tell everybody, grab their personal belongings.
I grabbed mine. It was like an iPad, a BlackBerry.

(13:41):
And one little, those Nokia phones back then, days, because
that's what you use in China, because BlackBerrys don't work
in China, because they can't hack those things. So, that
was the end of that, and then they started bringing
guys back into the rooms, back and forth, back and forth. Again,

(14:02):
asked me to sign a confession, refused. Push me back
in another room and try to tell me to kneel
on literally a bamboo stick, if you can believe this,
to put pressure on my knees. I'm not doing that, period.
I'm just like, no, that's just not going to happen.
So sit me back in a chair. You know, this is,

(14:24):
you're getting the low down, Michael, here. Sit me in
a chair and they're all up in my face. And
I'm 6'2, about 225 solid, if you see my old
pictures back then. The guy keeps asking me if I'm U.S. military.
I said, I sure as hell aren't Chinese military. And

(14:46):
he slaps me across the face as hard as he can,
which kind of just infuriated me. Granted, these guys handcuff
you in the front with about six inches of chain
in front of you. They're not like U.S.-made handcuffs. So...
I jumped on the guy right away, immediately. I can
only do so much with my hands cuffed, and I'm
getting kicked and stomped by the rest of them. But

(15:08):
I did leave a mark on this guy. I ended
up sinking my teeth into his cheek, because I was
so infuriated. And that wasn't about all I could do
to cover my head down. So they pulled me off
of him. They handcuffed me to a water pipe, which
the feeling is... Not quite eight feet tall, so at
me being six foot two, the water pipe's probably around

(15:30):
seven foot tall, so it wasn't like I was hanging
like one of the little guys who had been doing.
And I'm sitting there for 14 hours or so, 13,
14 hours, hanging like that while they're questioning everybody else.
They then, I guess they talked to one of the
other guys who could speak English, who was a co-defendant
in the end. They told him, to come in there

(15:52):
and tell me to sign a confession. He didn't know me.
He looked at me and said, hey, they want me
to tell you to sign a confession. And I asked him,
did you sign that confession? He said, yeah. Do you
read Chinese? No. I said, I think you just killed yourself.
And I said, I'm not signing. That was that. So,

(16:15):
after so many hours.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Hold right there, Mark Sweetin. Hold right there. He was
held in a Chinese prison. You're going to find out
in a second. It's the end of the world as
we know it. The Michael Perry Show.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
The end of the world? Come on. I feel fine.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Mark Sudan was arrested in November of 2012 while on
a trip to China to purchase building materials. The Chinese
authorities accused him of involvement in international drug trafficking, despite
evidence that he wasn't even in China at the time
of that.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Alleged offense.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
The Chinese judicial system, such as it is, sentenced Marcus
Sweden to death in 2019. In November of 2024, he
was released from his detention along with two other American
citizens as part of a prisoner swap with China. Sounds
to me like they grabbed these guys, accused them of

(17:11):
horrible things, threatened them with death, and then say, well,
We're going to kill him unless you give back some
people who spied on you, America, for us, which is
how they run this little game. So, Mark Sweetin, let's
go through how they sentence you to death and how
you're dealing. You still don't have an attorney. Have you

(17:34):
had any representation? Is anybody from the U.S. able to
help you at this point?

Speaker 3 (17:39):
At this point, no. The way their system works is
they arrest you first. They throw you in this detention camp.
The first Americans in there. It's a horrible, horrible place.
You don't have running water. You don't have light. You
have 24-hour lights. It's Houston-type weather, hot and cold, humid
and everything. If you look at the map, they're pretty
much lined up. It's a course of measure is what

(18:02):
it is. You have two tiny windows that are like
25 feet up, so there's no airflow, and then you
have the ceilings that are kind of open where it's
raining through. We don't have running water. We don't have
hot water. We don't have AC or heat. There's no beds.
You sleep on concrete. They call it a bed, but
it's just a raised concrete platform. You are sleeping on

(18:24):
the concrete. You don't have a toilet. You have a
hole in the floor. You have 32 guys in basically about...
I'd say about 30 feet or less by about 10 feet.
You've got communist propaganda playing all day. And you've got
forced slave labor for American companies, even putting on the

(18:47):
American price tags. Big business. I can name the products.
I actually got some of the products out. to my mom,
and an attorney tried to contact them. Of course, it
was no comment, but I can prove what I said.
I'd take a lie detector on national TV any day
to do it. So you've got this big force slave
labor in there. What they do is they question you

(19:09):
every day for 37 days and decide to arrest you
or not. You've got like a 99% arrest rate there,
99.9 conviction rates. So they question you, they pull you
out at 8 in the morning, they keep you there
until 5, 6 p.m., and they just want, basically what
they want is they want a confession. The U.S. consulate

(19:32):
came about two days after, or two or three days,
maybe four, I don't remember, and the time kind of
just blurred at that point. The first gentleman who came,
I don't know if we want to name names or not,
he told me, his name was Chris Romans, and I'm
working on getting my Freedom of Information Act, and I'd

(19:54):
love to share it with you, Michael, and the world.
He told me, oh, this is a serious crime. You've
been accused of They said, you are carrying 62 kilos
of methamphetamine. There was nothing on me. There was nothing
in my room. In fact, in the end, we found
out there was nothing on any of those guys. There

(20:16):
was only on two Chinese guys that were eight hours away.
which I had no contact with anybody, never had anybody's
phone numbers. My passport, what it comes down to is,
this guy tells me, oh, this is punishable by death.
They don't kill Americans here. He said, oh, yes, they do.
And he was very unhelpful. I tried to give my

(20:37):
mom my email logins and this and that so she
could get help. He wouldn't do it. As soon as
he started to write something down about 10 Chinese police crimes,
the guy just didn't have the balls to stand up
to him. A few days later, the consulate chief, Steve F. Bolt,

(20:59):
horrible person, comes in and tells me, why don't you
just confess? You know you did it. I asked him
if he was a communist. if he was red or red, white,
and blue. And he was getting real pissy. I said,
why don't you do your damn job, go get my

(21:20):
passport from them, it's U.S. government property, and prove to
them all of this is impossible. I was never in
this country. He says, I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to do that. That was the end
of our conversation there. So, if you're asking about, there's
no legal help. He could have solved this problem because

(21:41):
it's before the arrest, which takes place 37 days later.
He doesn't do anything. They come once a month after that. So,
during this time, the Chinese police are trying to pull
me out for confession literally every day for 90, 80,
90 days. And they tell me, oh, you're not going

(22:02):
to confess until We'll see after seven days of, okay,
no food for you, which, by the way, you'd be
happy with no food there for seven days. I said, okay.
I said, okay, let's begin your play. And they shouted
at me, we don't serve hamburgers. I said, that food's
unedible to me. I said, I wouldn't give that to

(22:24):
my dog. And they said, we don't serve McDonald's and
KFC like American prisons do. And I'm like, okay. And
I said, well.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
I didn't know they served that in American prison. That
would be an upgrade from what I understand. Mark, I
don't want to run out of time. Let me ask you,
you get a death sentence.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Right.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
And then they say they're going to suspend that pending review,
which I understand is kind of common.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Well, the death sentence took six and a half years
to give me. Right.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
And how did they deliver the news that you had
a death sentence?

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Oh, they, they, they march you all in the court.
And this all stems down to, uh, Canada arresting that
CEO for the USA. Yeah. And holding, cause I do
have a dual nationality from, I was just born in
the blizzard, literally across the board from Detroit. Um, so I,
I kept the Canadian long time ago. I mean, no,

(23:23):
no big deal to be dual. And, um, So they
march everybody in the court. We're talking six and a
half years later. What they do is give you a
three-month extension. Every three months, they say you're supposed to
have your sentence. They extended it 21 times. So it
ends up being an extra six years, six and a
half years. Right.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
Mark Sweetan is our guest. Mark, I have one more segment,
but I have a note and I completely forgot. You
have a GoFundMe or some sort of a community way
that people can.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Support you through all of this. Can you tell us
where that is?

Speaker 3 (23:59):
It is help.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
And that is S-W-I-D-A-N, help.marksweetan.org. We will continue our conversation
with Mark Sweetan about this horrible situation that he was
caught up in. I hope people will hear this and

(24:23):
think twice about whether or not they want to be
long-term engaged in business with a country where this can
happen to you. I really think it's in America's national
interest to bring as much business back to the United States.
and avoid empowering the Chinese government with our dollars and

(24:46):
our trade.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Mark Sweetan is our guest tonight. Kirk Cameron of the
famous Growing Pains. Man, if it weren't for Growing Pains,
I wouldn't be on The Michael Berry Show. You have arose.
The Michael Berry Show.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
I'll arose. We are talking to Mark Sweetan, who's been
on a national conversation. He was arrested in November of
2012 on a trip to China to buy.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Building materials. They gave him the death penalty.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
They suspended that and kept him in prison where he
was until November of 2024 when he was released. Talk
me through that timeline of how you find out that
you're finally going to be released.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Oh, well, there's so much in between. I don't know
if you want to know about even how the public
court works. You know what?

Speaker 1 (25:34):
I've got eight minutes. You tell me. I want to
get as much out of you before the show's over.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
Yeah, we might have to do a couple more in
that 12 years. But, you know, in the first court,
when we go to court, they basically ask you, do
you want to confess? If not, your sentence is going
to be basically 10 times worse. No, I'm not confessing.
You don't have evidence. They say, okay, we read the evidence.
You have more evidence. You're screwed, basically. So I told them,

(25:59):
go ahead and read it. I'm not going to say anything.
They had no evidence on me. I basically made a
jackass out of them in the court. So the next,
it's a five-day court trial. They kicked my consulate out
of the court, which is illegal, even by their law.
They won't let them back in. So we can't take notes.
We went to court again to bring more evidence. There's

(26:20):
no evidence against me. They take my counsel out again.
I get sentenced to death. They march you into the court.
They sentence you to death. They bring you back to
your cell. You immediately will file an appeal. They never
gave my appeal in to the court. The appeal comes back,
this is when the arrest of the Meng Wanzhou or
whatever her name was, CFO, happened. And they arrested a

(26:44):
lot of Canadians around the country because of it and
gave them all kinds of crazy sentences. Secretary of State
Blinken actually had a phone call me within a consulate
meeting and asked if I needed to be traded with
those two Canadians. I said, yes, I'm going to be
here another five years or I'm going to be dead.
I tell you one thing, never once did I actually

(27:05):
think I'd be dead. I mean, I've got broken bones.
I've got this, that. It's a long story. Numerous crazy
things happened there. And needless to say, they don't trade me.
They trade two Canadians, and I'm a dual citizen. They
get home. They get paid millions of dollars. They stayed
six months in those places, maybe a year, and house arrest.

(27:30):
I'm in the worst deployable conditions ever. I'm the first
American ever sentenced to death in China. I was actually
sentenced to death twice, Michael, and then sentenced to a
life sentence. After this, even the U.N. ruled it unlawfully detained,
and the U.S. finally did in 2019. I ended up
staying until 2024. I was not transferred to a prison

(27:54):
until 2023. I'm the longest guy in a detention camp
besides Bin Laden's bodyguard. This is because over a thousand
times of trying to get confessions and evidence, I mean,
they never got anything. That American flag shirt, you see
me wearing those pictures? That went through court, every court.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
That was the one I walked off the plane on.
That was me wearing that. And I still got it here.
They've tried and tried to get me to change out
of it, to drag me out of it, because I
would not do it. I was defiant the whole time,
and it paid off. There's so many men who have
come out of China in the last 50 years that

(28:35):
are on record. Anything else that's not on record, even
past that, I'm one of them. We've got about 200
other guys over there. Slave labor, all that is big business.
Anybody thinking to do business over there, think again. We
created this monster in China, and it's turned against us.

(28:56):
Without the big business going there for profit, this wouldn't happen.
They'd probably still be in the Stone Age over there.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Oh, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
And they were until very recently. In fact, if they
weren't allowed into the World Trade Organization, that's the moment
it all changes for the rest of the world. That's
when they become empowered and financed. to, in many cases,
take over, and in many cases sow discord, do evil things,

(29:27):
increase their totalitarian regime.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
At that time, which was beginning.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
It's awful to see, although the story of China for
the 20th century is not a pretty picture for any
of it. Mark, are there people in America who deserve
credit for helping spring you and get you back home
that you have not mentioned?

Speaker 3 (29:47):
You know, Mel Gibson was a very strong advocate of me.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
That does not surprise me.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
Yeah, and I've never got a chance to thank him,
so if he's listening, thank you, Mel. That was a surprise.
Senator Ted Cruz, Congressman Plow, they were on it. There's
Roger Carson, Ambassador Roger Carson. They call him Captain America
for a reason. He was the head of the Special
Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. And we have my mom,

(30:17):
who is my hero on this. She's the one who
never gave up. When everybody told her to give up,
when everybody told her to shut up, she wouldn't shut up. And,
you know, being resilient in there is the way to go.
And even the special forces and the presidential envoy, when
I was on the plane, they said, how did you

(30:38):
know to do what you did, to just resist everything,
to starve yourself, to cause trouble, to do whatever you
had to do in there? Because that's what we're trained for.
It just came instinctual.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
All right, let me ask you, I have two minutes left.
Let's talk about your return into the free world. I
get the sense that has not been easy.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
This is very disruptive. This is very traumatic. Talk to
me about how that has been.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
It's been really rough. My goal is, I mean, I
want to get back on my feet. I don't feel
as traumatized as people would think, but people think the
government cuts you a check. I have POW status, just
like a military POW, but I don't have POW benefits.
I went from living in Memorial, Houston and having properties

(31:30):
and saving all my money, all my life to coming
home to zero, everything liquidated to no credit, to no
driver's license, to no identity at all. And trying to
start over at 51 when you were doing really good
at 37. It's not possible on your own. I need help.
And it's not provided. There's some little assistance here and

(31:52):
there from some hostage organizations that are good. And there's
a lot of money that goes to a lot of places,
but it doesn't go to us. We're far and few
between the guys who actually return, and it doesn't get
to us. If it were me and I wanted to
do my own organization, which I've thought of it and
I've talked to many people, I know I could do better.

(32:14):
There's too many people. Everybody needs a tax write-off. They
could donate the right way instead of donate to a
lot of these places. You come back, especially gone as
long as I have, and since the death twice and
life once, the only person in history around the world
this has happened to. After 12 years, everything is gone.
My mom is still here. She believed in me all

(32:36):
the time. My ex-girlfriend, who is now still back with me,
stayed with me and stuck through it the whole time
and always believed in me. But even her and I,
we have problems right now because it's very hard for
me to get on my feet. I want to be
married to her. I want to have a house again.
I want to build a business again. Maybe I want

(32:57):
to do a foundation. I definitely need to take care
of my mom who is handicapped now since I came home.
She's on $ 20 a month food stamps. The whole time
I've been gone. No disability, no SSI, no anything like that. So,
I mean, we're really struggling. And when we come back
to this economy, I'm sticker shock on a brisket alone

(33:17):
in the grocery store. We'll just, you know.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
I can tell you, Mark, that's been relatively recent. I
am up against a break. I appreciate you sharing your story.
People need to understand there is a cost to trade
with China. on their terms for so long that a
lot of people see up close, and it ain't pretty.

(33:39):
It is not pretty. There will be a long-term cost
to pay for cheaper consumer goods, and I don't think
very many Americans quite realize that just yet.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
Thank you, and good night.