YouSaid · the spoken record

Adam Frankel

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2020-02-24

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2020-02-24

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1. “It's profoundly disturbing, and it fires me up to answer your question, yes. I very much hope that in some way or another I can contribute. I think everybody, this is a time when anyone who loves this country and believes in the promise at least of American democracy should try and find some way of stabilizing things and getting our country back on track.”

   2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “I do have that fire. Right now I am a senior advisor at Emerson Collective, the social change organization founded by Lorene Powell Jobs. And I'm also senior advisor at Fenway Strategies, the communications firm founded by our friends, John Favre and Tommy Vitor. But yes, look, this is a dangerous and crucial moment for our country. And like you, like so many of us, I'm deeply alarmed. And taking a step back, democracies don't have a great track record in history. And I think none of us should take our own democracy for granted and just assume that we'll get through this okay because we might not.”

   2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “My hope is that people can read the book and find a path forward in that respect too that by sort of situating our own experiences, our family's experiences in the sort of broader intergenerational landscape, it doesn't make the trauma go away, but I hope it helps us understand”

   2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Well, in a number of different ways. So there's an explosion of family disclosures with 23andMe and ancestry.com. People are finding these disclosures all over the place. And there are not a lot of resources for people who are finding these disclosures. And so people are going through these personal crises and emotions and psychological journeys and feeling very alone. And so part of what I hope is the book will show one path through some of this. I should also say, look, everybody has trauma in their life or their family's life somewhere. In my family, it's Holocaust trauma and mental health. In other families, it can be addiction, abuse, racism. In the book, I write about, I interview Professor at Harvard Medical School who writes about post-traumatic slavery syndrome. People have spoken about the soul wound in Native American communities, the legacy of the genocide, and the impact that it has had on a raft of social and economic challenges. And so...”

   2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Is for us and for myself, for my marriage, for staff, for our kids, and our family, because I'm doing my best to try and make sure that the trauma does not pass to another generation. I may not succeed totally, but a big part of this for me is stopping that trauma with me and making sure that the pain, that as I see it, has reverberated from my grandparents' experience in the Holocaust and my mother and a lot of her struggles to this crazy family situation that I've had to experience, that the wreckage of that we do as good a job as possible mitigating that from you.”

   2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “It with me. And as the wreckage spilled over in our family because my mother's family for many, many years did not understand anything about my relationship with my mother and thought I was being a bad son. I was callously mistreating her. Thought I told me I was a bad son. Even my Zeta said that I was not being a good enough son to my mother. Many of them didn't know this truth about our relationship and why things had frayed because I was trying to protect these relationships. We were trying to protect these relationships. But in any event, the family relationships were deeply strained. And Staff bore some of the brunt of that as well, but she has just been an extraordinary, she's one of the heroes of the book and one of the heroes of my life in this respect. And we have built an extraordinary family together. We have two little kids. And, you know, part of the reason I wrote the book, part of the reason I'm trying to...”

   2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Well, Steph and I met in early 2009, right when we won and met through Jen, thanks to Jen and some of the speechwriters. The beginning of our relationship was difficult because that was a period when I was trying not to deal with some of this stuff, but it was kind of creeping up. And we started dating. I broke up with her. I immediately regretted it and started not understanding why I'd broken up with her going through all these sort of emotions and pleaded with her to get back together with me. In the course of pleading with her to get back together with me, I shared some of what I'd been going through that I hadn't shared before about all this sort of family background. And she encouraged me to see a therapist and started actually dealing with it. And I did. And that was really when I started trying to face some of this stuff. And she has been just an extraordinary rock source of support throughout all of this. I mean, I should say I carried a lot of this. She carried a lot of...”

   2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Which I now think was an act of misdirection on the part of Jason and my mother. And so we started reconstructing some of these events. And it's extraordinary. I had this sort of shadow biography, which came to light 10 years plus ago, and I've now been pieced much of together. But ultimately the lesson that I've taken away from this whole thing is that families built on love, not biology. And I've just been carried by the love of the Frankl and Minnow family and many and some members of my mom's family.”

   2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “You had a light in the mood. But then we started talking openly about it, and he had his doubts over the years. He'd confided those doubts, his wife, my stepmother. He had at one point, during a legal dispute after my parents divorced, considered a paternity test, which he had not proceeded on. In that initial conversation with my dad where he'd brushed aside, where when he told me about the affair with Jason and brushed aside my doubts that I was his son, I'd asked him why, and he had said, well, I remember the night of conception, which I thought was sort of an odd response, but okay. But I learned many, you know, after we started talking about this openly, I understood what he meant. We talked about that because my parents no longer had a physical relationship at that time in their marriage, except once during the summer of 1980.”

   2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Yeah, I mean, even now get choked up thinking about it. And I went and gave him the biggest hug I've ever given anybody. And then he said, is that all? Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “I know. And I can't even believe it, you know? You know, you know. And he said, yes, Adam. He said, I've always known it was possible. But I decided a long time ago that it doesn't matter one way or another. You're my son and you always will be. And it was. I was bawling.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “When you spoke to your father I call them up and I said, I want to come talk to you. And he said, well, what is it? And I said, well, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to get into it on the phone. And so I took the train to see him. And he picked me up. We went back to his house. And already I was getting choked up and he was getting kind of nervous. And we sat down and I just kind of launched into it. I said, do you remember when my uncle and I had to take mom to the psychiatric IR all those years ago? He said, yes. I said, well, what I didn't tell you was the reason that we had to do that was because I basically stopped speaking to her. And the reason I'd stopped speaking to her, and I'm bawling at this point. I mean, I can barely get these words out. The reason I stopped speaking to her is because she told me that I'm Jason Black's biological son. And these are words that I was terrified for about a decade to tell him. And as I'm saying this through the tears, I hear him say, uh-huh, uh-huh, I know.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “That the tone of his voice would change just like that, and nobody would know this except the two of us, but that he would be able to sense that he somehow didn't see me as his son anymore and that just the thought of it just broke my heart. And so that's why, I mean, look, I talked to him when we were in Chicago, we talk frequently by phone. We'd come to visit. I went back for birthdays of his. And we spent all this time together and I just, every one of those conversations, every one of those visits, I felt like I'm just doing this dance trying to put on a performance and not let on that I'm holding on to this insane secret. You're right.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “He did not know this whole time he did not know. In that first conversation with my mom, I said, Who knows about this? Does dad know? And she said, God know, it would break his heart. I said, you know, Bubby and Zeta know? Did grandma, you know, anybody? No. I said in that conversation, does Jason know? She said yes, which would come back later. And I would understand more about that. But yeah, it would be about a decade before I would go and talk to my dad about it. Ten years. Ten years. And I was, you know, what I was terrified of. Was I not terrified that he would abandon me and walk away? I knew he loved me. That's not what I was afraid of. I was afraid that he would look at me just a little differently.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “I mean, even now, I don't know. I don't even know how to wrap my head around a statement like that, but. This is when we talk about writing about difficult family issues or past and how tough it can be writing about all this helped me, at least as much sense of it as I'm able to make because these pieces of information were so difficult for me to process that it was really only writing about it and trying to put some order in sequence that made it make any sense at all. And some of it still doesn't totally. I still can't totally wrap my head around. I had hoped when I began this whole process that by going in search of the truth, it would be liberating and ultimately it has been. But there were many moments where I felt like such as after that conversation with Jason where I felt that this quest for the truth had actually mired me in this ethical moral swamp.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “And I also, and then I sort of wanted to figure out what I thought of him in this new context He shared with me in one of these lunches that, you know, he said, you were wanted. I said, wanted. What do you mean wanted? He said, you were planned pregnancy. And bear in mind he was married at the time and had a family, had a couple kids. My mom was married to my dad. I go back to my mom. I say, Jason said I was wanted. Why did you want to have me? My mom says, well, I wouldn't say it was my idea. Okay, interesting piece of information. So I go back to Jason and I say, why? Why did you want to have me? And he said Well, the idea of having a secret baby appealed to my sense of mystery and the erotic.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “He said to me that my biological father said to me that he was attracted to my mother because he was attracted to broken women. And bear in mind their fair began a couple years after my mom was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. He was 15 years or so older, established in a profession that she was trying to enter, her professor, grossly inappropriate. He shared things with me over the course of these lunches where I initially reached out after many years. I hadn't wanted to reach out because the whole thing made it seem real to actually confront him about it, but I decided I wanted a paternity test number one to just figure out if I'm going through all this or not. And he took one. We took one and it came back 99.9% positive.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Yeah. Well, to quote my wife as I do in the book after one of our lunches with him, we walked out. I said, what do you think? And she just said, sociopath. I mean, I”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Yes, and a lot of this was very difficult just on that point. I mean, I would sometimes have to take breaks right from writing for hours or days at a time because writing about this, some of the stuff was so upsetting. Some of the stuff about my mother's mental health issues, some of the aspects of our relationship and some of the details that emerged because as I started to try and understand what happened, I ultimately reached out to my biological father. And some of what he shared with me was hard for me to wrap my head around.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “It's good. Thanks for asking. I mean, it's good now. She is, you know, her reactions have been have run a spectrum from I'm proud of you for writing it, which I thought was very gracious of her to say to a very long conversation where she detailed some of the things she wasn't crazy about in the book. But her mental health has been stable. And I should also say She has supported me in writing it. So as painful as the book is and as much as it reveals about her, she never asked me not to write it. She knew it was, and I think now even more so having read it knows how important it is to my kind of being able to move forward.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, exactly. And so she sort of pleaded with me to go see a therapist with her. And so I did, even though I didn't really want to, but I knew it was important for her safety”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Yeah, and that's absolutely true. And that's part of why I felt complicit. I felt like I created I'd cause this. So I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt, along with an overwhelming sense of anger about what she told me and all of these things. And so I still wasn't really”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Who lived outside Philly, and he said, Don't leave her side, don't leave her side. And he immediately drove down, drove up to New York. And we took her to a psychiatric emergency room. And she slowly started to kind of stabilize and come back. You know, it was months later she was pleading with me to go see a therapist with her to repair our relationship because we still weren't speaking.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “To a psychological episode with her where she called me up and kind of asked me to come over and I could tell something was wrong. I was still angry. We were barely talking, but I could tell something was going on with her. And so I went over to the house. And I found her in a state that, I mean, even now it's very upsetting to think about. But she was basically unresponsive. I mean, rocking in a chair. I was talking to her. She was not even engaging with me. Her eyes kind of flitting about. And I was terrified because I knew about her suicide attempt before I was born, but I'd never seen anything like this. I mean, I'd seen her in her room, you know, shutting herself away. I'd seen her in various moods, but I'd never seen anything like this. And I called her brother.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Yeah, and your parents are your parents. I mean, I drew a lot of, as we've talked about, I drew a lot of my identity from my dad's side about wanting to be a speechwriter from that side, very close to my dad and his parents and that whole side of the family. And I remember looking down at my legs, my hands, and feeling like I was inhabiting a stranger's body. I mean, there would be many hours over the years to come that I'd look in the mirror and feel like I didn't even recognize myself. Because I am a spinning image of my biological father, which again, in retrospect, how do you not put these pieces together? But denial is a powerful thing, it turns out. But in that moment, when my mother told me, I just, it took me some time to take it in. I was furious, though, with her, and I stopped speaking to her. I moved out of the apartment. I moved in with my girlfriend. And it contributed.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “And suddenly I found myself in this, you know, going down the sinkhole of my parents' past. And I could see how uncomfortable the question made my mom. And she said, so I started saying, mom, who's my dad? And she said, you know, why do you need to know that? What do you mean? Why do I need to know who is my father? Well, Stevens, your father. He's the man who raised you. Why do you need anything more than that And I just sort of having enough of this. And I just was relentless and demanded to know who it was. She said, I don't know. I said, okay, who do you think it is? And she said, Jason. Know look, it's a long that's happened in 2006, which is a long time ago, but it's also recent enough that I can still remember very well.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “With my mom, and I also just sort of expected her to dismiss it. I was curious. I was just asking family history questions about why my parents split up things I didn't know the answers to.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “I did occasionally throughout adolescence. I would have these doubts and they would pass through my head, go up to the mirror, kind of look at myself. And then I'd push it off to the side and not focus on it. And there were other things. Weird things that would come back later at dinner table conversations with my mother where I might ask about my parents' relationship. And I remember my mother at one point saying, oh, no, no, no, I can't tell you about that. You're too young. You're too young. And I just moved on. And again, it just moved on years past and I didn't think about it. And then, so I took this information about this affair back to my mother. And I said, well, when did the affair begin after I was born? And my mom said, no, before, okay, before I was born. Okay. And then I just started asking this question. I asked her the question I asked my dad. And I didn't, look, I didn't go into this thinking I'm having some momentous conversation.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “They treated us as we're family friends. We're very close family friends. When my father told me this, I went back to my mother. I said, you know, dad said that you had an affair with Jason. And I should note in that initial conversation with my dad, I said immediately when he said this to me, I said, how do you know I'm your son? Which in retrospect might suggest that I had some doubts that were latent, but he dismissed them outright and very quickly brushed it off. He said, oh, no, no, no, you're my son.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Not his real name. And so I was stunned. I mean, I've known Jason all my life as a family friend. We vacation together at the Democratic National Convention in the year 2000 in LA. I stayed with my half-sister without either. But you didn't know. I'm getting ahead. I stayed with Jason's daughter. I stayed with Jason's daughter. I stayed with his mother on another trip to LA when I was young. So we'd vacation, we'd known each other.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “So shortly before joining the Obama campaign in 2007, I learned that my dad is not my biological father and nobody came out and told me. I just started asking some questions fairly innocuously of my mother when I was living at home after the Carrie campaign asking, why did you and dad split up and quickly realizing that the answers didn't add up, that she was giving me different answers and my dad was giving me, you know, she'd say, well, you know, I never really wanted to marry your dad. And then I went to my dad. I said, why did you guys split up? And my dad said, oh, well, your mom had an affair with Jason. Jason Black, as I call him in the book.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Yeah, well, first, thanks for saying that. I mean, I certainly would have spared myself a lot of heartache if I had opened up about it to you and others on the campaign in the White House. It turns out if you want to not deal with intense personal issues, joining a presidential campaign or working in the White House is a very convenient way. Yes, that's absolutely true.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Yeah, and structural changes. I mean, that's the thing because he was and is such a great writer, he would just fix it himself often unless it required so much work he decided we needed to take another cut to get it to try and get it in the ballpark. But yes, that's right. He would sometimes he'd read through it. And if he thought it required significant amount of work, just write it out longhand, sometimes incorporating some material from that initial draft, revising it, reworking it, getting it back to us, and then we'd go back and forth until it was there.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Yeah, we just want to get in the ballpark for him. The worst thing would be to get back the draft with no edits that says, let's discuss, you know? Yes. We wanted to get it to a place where he could make his line edits. And invariably, he'd improve it. I'd look forward to his edits because there would always be turns of phrase, ways of saying things that I thought were just so original. I never would have thought of putting it. So it was a great, just as a writer, it was a great experience. And by the way, unique almost for modern American political speechwriters because we've talked a lot of other presidential speechwriters who did not have that experience with their presidents. They may have loved their presidents and wanted to do everything they could to support them, but they weren't getting, in many cases, didn't have close relationships or collaborations with those presidents. Peggy Noonan has written about barely seeing Reagan. And so we really benefited from the fact that President Obama was such an extraordinary writer himself.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Frankl. You know, I think we all did our, as you say, we all did our share of policy speeches. We did, you know, our share of political stuff. But no, that's absolutely right. I gravitated toward ones, I think, that required some sort of moral language, some sort of sense of history. And I think part of that is to my family background on the Frankl side, steeped in history and public service. And on my mom's side, the war experience, which and the Holocaust experience, which one of the things I think it instilled in me was this sense of right and wrong, and we need to fight for what's right. And if something's wrong, we need to stand up and say so. There is sort of a moral language there that I gravitated toward, and those were the certainly speeches I enjoyed working on the most.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Look, it was everything you want a presidential campaign to be. I've heard Obama describe people he admires as so-and-so's as you want them to be. That campaign was what you want. It was hopeful. It was idealistic. It was inspirational. We didn't want to let the candidate down. I mean, I remember the last thing I wanted to do was disappoint Barack Obama. I was trying my best to do the best job I could for Barack Obama because I believed in him so much. And I wanted to write speeches that could inspire people to believe in him as much as I did. And he gave us so much to work with. I mean, that was amazing thing. I mean, the speeches he'd written, but dreams for my father. I mean, who has written a book so far long before and then runs for president can actually stand by a lot of that. But we borrowed a lot of what he'd written there for speeches.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Run, won't he run? Yes. I let Favs know I will do anything I can to help him in one way or another. And he called me up in 2007 and said, Gibbs gave me a little money to hire a deputy. You want to move to Chicago? And I said, absolutely.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “It did. Yeah, no favs. I still remember showing up for my interview on that campaign, which true to form, you know, I was in my very early 20s, came in a double-breasted wool suit. What do I know about presidential campaigns? Favs, meanwhile, I'm going there. Fabs' feet are up on the desk. He's wearing jeans and polar. That was the vibe. Yeah, that was the vibe. I was like, I think I need to informalize this a little bit. But we became very good friends, both part of that small speech writing team. Actually, another member of that team would be Sarah Hurwitz, who would later join the Obama world. And after Carrie lost, Favs went on to work for Obama in the Senate. And I came back to New York to help Ted on his memoir. But we stayed in touch. And around the time that Obama was, there was all that news about Willie.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “That's exactly right. And it's not like Ted and JFK sat around before the Kennedy inaugural saying, What would be a great sound bite for this inaugural? Ask not. They were focused on writing an argument and making his case about ideals that he believed in, what he was going to do for the country.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “And so they would outline things. They'd think in terms of what's the first point? What's the second point? You know, this is something people don't.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “It is important Absolutely. And they're modeling that. Absolutely. And so I think that I absorbed from Ted, who believed that with all every fiber in his being. But I tried to absorb as much as I could about writing. I mean, I think in a way he had a similar approach to speech writing as I think President Obama did. And I don't think that's a surprise because they're both lawyers. And so they both thought and wrote in a sort of legally trained way. What I mean by that is structure is very important.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Yeah, he really is the master. I mean, I'd say a couple things. One thing I learned wholly apart from writing is, as you know well, the whole ethic ethos of the new frontier was public service is a noble calling, a noble profession, an idea that is not in currency. No, I know, but it's”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “I did when I was a junior in college. We linked up thanks to my Minnow family who introduced us. And he needed a research assistant on his memoirs. He had just had a stroke. The historian who was going to help him had left him on the project, and he was feeling discouraged. He met me college junior who was in total awe of him and thought, I can put this guy to work. And he was right. And he did. And so for six years, I work very, very closely with him on his memoirs as helping him initially with research and the outline. And then ultimately helping him construct it. Because he had very difficult time seeing what he would do is he would dictate notes, which he could see under the right conditions of light and angling the notes. And we'd get the transcripts and I'd clean them up. And then we'd kind of go back and forth until they resemble chapters.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “That's true. I mean, Of shoeless Joe Jackson that describes. That's right. Scandals. But That's probably right. That's probably right.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “I mean, really? Yeah, I'm telling you, man, this is what I mean. And the only guy I know who grew up wanting to be a speech writer, I was just kind of in the air with the Frankel family. In fact,”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Absolutely, an accomplished professional, brilliant woman, and wide-ranging interests and passions and worldly, and she taught me a lot and she exposed me to a lot. And she also had demons that she wrestled with.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Yeah, I think maybe partly because I'm an only child and just by temperament or personality or whatever, I definitely felt that I was the emotional anchor, that I was a source of her emotional and psychological equilibrium and part of my job was to help maintain it. That was my sense. That was a sense I think that was reinforced by the family that my job was to just make sure she's okay. If she's upset about something or wants me to do something, always do it. Just make sure she's a...”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “Yeah, and you know, it's strange how we look back on our histories and our own past because some memories were buried and came to me only as I started reconstructing my past over the course of working on this book and over the and reflecting on my life in recent years. But yeah, my mother struggled with depression for most of her life before I was born. She was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. When I was young She would lock herself out and lock herself, go into her room and shut the door. And I mean, I have memories from when I was very young going up to the keyhole and kind of peering in and wondering what's she doing in there. I'm kind of, you know, I'm an only child out here. I'm just sort of, what's going on? But it became the pattern. It became the routine. And so, and that was, those memories now fill me with sadness for her.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Yeah Yeah, and I think this book and the process of writing it and reflecting on the journey that I write about has helped me kind of grapple with that. I mean, I think that I'm profoundly grateful for a lot that I get from my Parismen and family, but there's also a mix. It's a complicated legacy that the Holocaust has left with our family.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “That's what we did. That's what we did. The two of us would just go to DC, we'd go to some hearings, we'd have our faces buried and tomes about American history. And we loved every minute of it.”

    2020-02-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 371 — Adam Frankel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source