YouSaid · the spoken record

Adam Nagourney

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2018-01-01
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2018-01-01
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  1. “By the time I got there, it didn't matter. By the time it was like almost an asset by the time I got there. But I have friends who were there back in the 70s and 80s, and that was really, really difficult thing. The world has changed in a really, really dramatic way on that front. It's just really something.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Yeah, I don't think there's any other social movement, civil rights movement, if you want to call it that, which I think we should, where there's been as much change as fast. Certainly not, that was the case in the African-American community. It's been startlingly fast. And even with some of the backlash that you're seeing today, it's just, it's kind of shocking. And you see in the New York Times newsroom. I remember when I was like, you know, 27 20-year-old kid thinking, how could there ever be gay people working in the New York Times? And in fact, one of the things I'll write about was that there was a lot of homophobia on the part of”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Have to do, and they think at times and the post does some really brilliant digital stuff. So I get it unlike the post, unlike the post, we can't afford both. I get the decision. Do I also get the price, the potential price of the decision? Yeah. Do I think it's possible there's going to be more mistakes and editing is a great thing. I can't believe I'm saying this. I'm sure you had the same where editors made you want to put a bullet in your head. But I think editing is a great thing. And I miss having that level of editing.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “So I understand the strategy behind the cuts. What they're basically doing is cutting layers of editing so they can hire more reporters, more investigated reporters, I'm going to use this word really advisedly, content producers. Because it also includes people who know how to package stuff digitally.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Two main things I'm doing is interviewing anyone I can find who's still alive, done extensive interviews with executive editors, other editors, people who were involved with the paper. But the other thing is archives. Archives are, you know, they end at a certain point, which I'll tell you about if you're interested. But archives are fantastic. Can you go back and you can read sort of the memos that people wrote and the notes to each other and the planning reports and personal letters?”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Right. And she ended up leaving in part because of that. So that'll clearly be part of the story. I mean, the thing is so great about the papers that they're brilliant people, reporters and editors, and they're also really flawed people who, for the most part, were trying to do some really good things, but sometimes didn't.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, exactly, right? And, you know, there's some people who said that Jason Blair did more damage to the paper than anyone else. And I think I really created a whole new chapter in journalism in the New York Times, much more fact-checking, much more concern about not getting stuff wrong, much more skepticism. That's a big part of this story, as is Judith Miller. She was a reporter who wrote about Iraq was some disputed stories about what she said.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm shorthanded here. That's okay. So, Jason Blair was a plagiarizer. He worked for the paper in 2001, and it turned out that he was just making up stuff. He wasn't even going out. He had wrote, The Times wrote a 7,000 word front page story where they went back and they re-reported everything he did and just laid out everything that he did wrong. It was a devastating moment for the paper. I mean, on one hand, it was really, really kind of...”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “So the span of this book starts in 1977, kind of random Gay's book edited 68, but 177 was the year that Abe Rosaldaw became executive editor. And it goes through the end of Jill Abramson's tenure, which is about 2012, 2014. And the idea is that after I'm done with the main narrative, I'll come back and write a long epilogue. So for the most part, not completely. For the most part, I'm writing about people who are gone or I don't have to deal with so much, which makes it easier. I don't want to be in a situation. I shouldn't be in a situation where I'm running about somebody who I'm dealing with. So that's made up more sort of handable. So I'm writing most of my reporting and energies have been about, you know, so far, Rosenthal and Frankl and Keller and Howl Reigns and at some point I'll move on to Dean McKay. But my hope is that by the time I begin focusing on that, Dean will have moved on.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “A century, right? It's just an unbelievable, you know, and then finally I kept thinking about it. I decided I talked to my agent about it and she said, let's do it. I thought about a lot of other books, David, but this was a real work of passion for me. It's like something I really, really, really wanted to do. And I just thought there was a need to do it. And I'll tell you something. After I just got the contract to do it, right? I went and I met with Gay Talise. And I don't think I ever met him before. Again, I was really nervous, not as nervous as I was when I met Adam Klymer. But I went to his house and I knocked on the door and he opened it up and he goes, I've been waiting for 15 years or so to write this book. Come on in. And he's been like, whatever I can do to help you. And he's been”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I grew up on that. I loved that book when I read it. I just loved it. I always loved reading about the Times. And I always just thought there was a really great, there's been a lot of books done about the Times since, but nothing in the spirit of gay to leafs. And it's something I just thought about for a long time and I kept putting it off. And basically I'm working at the paper, which makes it complicated. And it's hard when you edit newspaper to do a job like that. And also, you know, for anyone who's read Gay Talise, who wants to even try to be right?”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Right, and it had the opposite effect so far. Digital subscriptions to the New York Times are up. And they're clearly Trump up, right? They're up for that reason. Now, whether that will continue after the president, after we've moved on from this president to something else, I don't know.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Distract Valve I think it's time to struggling with this every day. I mean, I think we're doing really well, but I think we have to be, you know, we're getting pounded all the time by the president. We're being really assertive in our reporting, the whole dispute about whether or not to use the word lie describing what the president said. But I just, I mean, I'm going to sound like a booster, but I think the paper's done really well, acquitted himself really well during a really difficult time. And it's been great for business. Has it been? No, it's been great for subscription. I mean, I was talking to somebody at the paper and he was saying, you know, we do not and should not look at it this way, but the fact of the matter is...”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I'm not sure we were having this conversation ten years ago that I would know that we would have reached this part place today. So I'm afraid, I'm reluctant to say that we can't get back to where we were. But I'm not confident. I mean, I just think the...”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Right? It was, right? And that's what the president's been pushing. That's the whole thing about fake news. This is the old Moynihan. It's almost a cliche now. You're entitled to your own facts, but not your own opinions, but not your own facts. I think it's really, really, really, really bad for society that we don't have this basic assembly of facts to work off. We can disagree about stuff, but people should be able to agree on what is true, right? You can disagree about whether or not, I mean, Moore is probably not the best example to use, but whether or not he had improper relations. But let's just start from there and then figure out whether it's okay.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Well, I think it makes it a lot more difficult because in the old days you would write a story and you'd do everything you would do to make sure it was right, right? And now, and you assume that readers would read you and assume that you were right. And now you don't, right? Like, so for example, before I came in here, I saw the Washington Post had another, just posted another story about more and there's some more evidence of him having some kind of relationships with, I think, a 14-year-old girl. And I thought a lot of people are going to read that and think, well, I don't believe that because it's in the Washington Post. And that's a new thing. I don't think that's good for the Washington Post.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “That's a factor, but I do think you and I both, but there's been times when I've been out in Iowa or the field and seen something before a polling starts to pick it up. It just happens. No, I mean, I mean, I mean”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I think so and is a feedbacklet was the reporters are looking at these things and thinking that and they're talking to experts who are saying the same thing and it becomes a feedback loop but I think yeah I think if you get out maybe people I'm not criticizing anyone I mean if they did really well but it also has a”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “No, I didn't, but I'm going to make the one caveat, which you probably say before, which is, you know, I didn't see Trump winning, but I saw Hillary Clinton win, which she did. I know this sounds like a won the popular vote. I mean, I think the big problem with the way that campaign came out was that everyone was focusing so much on the popular vote. Everyone was focusing so much on the predictive models, the upshot in 538. Those are five I'm putting them down, but I get the statistical thing, but everyone looked at it and said, oh, Hillary Clinton has a 68% chance of winning. Hillary Clinton has a 98% chance of winning. So everyone who watched us and read us thought she was going to win, quite logically. And I think it also influenced the way reporters wrote about the race.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Prestigious job, right? And that's kind of, I'm not sure it's a bad thing that it's passed, but there's more. We have a bigger diversity of voices, which is probably fine. There's a lot more platforms, a lot more time. But it's not that, you know, Jonathan Martin is fantastic having a job there. He's fantastic. But there's other people writing as well.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “From time to time, do I miss? So here's the thing I always want to do politics, right? I love politics and I really love what I'm doing out here. It's great. But do I miss politics? Yeah, I love it as much as ever. On the other hand, the job isn't what it once was, right? Like if I was still, it's better to go out on your own than to get the LS shove, right? Oh, I know that could have happened a month later, right? So I miss it, but I also know that if I went back, it'd be different, right? There's a lot more people writing about it. Like when I was there, like I was sort of like the, I was probably the last of the ones who were like the single voice of politics in the New York Times.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Something else, they'll want to get out of my comfort zone. And I said, Yeah, I do. I want to do it. And that's what made me decide to do it.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “11th happened. And I remember walking around the streets of New York one night and thinking, you know, I love New York. It's in my blood. I know all the politicians. I know the story so well. And I'm thinking, does it make any sense, right? So Howell Reigns was the executive editor at the time. And I walked into his office and I said, listen, I'm honored to be the Los Angeles Bureau chief of the New York Times, but I'm wondering whether it makes sense for me to be coming to Los Angeles in the midst of this one of the hugest stories of the century, right? And he goes, I was thinking the same thing. And within a day, he had pulled it back. So I stuck around, and it was about a year later, the political job of a dub, so that was good, which is a long way so fast forward to 2010. Richard Lee Lynn Burke, Rick Burke, who you know was a natural writer at the time. And he said, I remember, you know, I remember that you almost went to Los Angeles back in 2001. Do you still want to do that? And I went through the same thought and I thought, you know what? Do I want to spend my whole life just doing politics and nothing else? Do I want to take advantage?”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So what happened is, without making the story too long and boring, but well, anyway, it's not that boring. So in 2000, when I was finishing up as New York political reporter, this job opened up. The Los Angeles Bureau chief often enough. I never even thought about that. And an editor from the desk, the National Desk, Jim Roberts was his name, came over and said, would you have any interest in being the Los Angeles Bureau chief? And I was like, you know, Johnny Apple always said to me, just don't do only politics. Take advantage of the breadth of the New York Times. He said, go to London or do something like that. So I said, let me think about it. And I flew out here. And I spent a couple days here. And Todd Perdam, who I think you know, was the LA Bureau chief at the time. And I said, yeah, I want to do this. I want to try something different. So I went back. I said, yeah. I came out here. I started looking for a house. Todd Perdam had an elaborate party for me at his house that the Times paid for that probably cost at least $5,000. And everything was going on. Then it came back.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “It's in my office. You'll see a copy of it in my office, and there's two copies in my house. You know, I mean, the original plate. But at the end of it, I remember really going home that night and thinking, well, how is it going to get better than this? It's like what campaign am I going to cover that's better? And I'm not making a judgment about the outcome. I want to be really clear, but I'm making a judgment about covering something. It was so historic, right? Like the first African-American, and I remember thinking weeks in advance about what the lead should be and talking to Jill Abramson, who was the executive better at the time, as we kind of hashed through every single word at the top of the story. You don't get that many opportunities in this business to write a story like that. Yeah.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “As chief political reporter, I covered two presidential campaigns in 2008. Right. So John Kerry versus Bush, which is fine, and then Obama versus McCain, right? And that was a great rate for all the obvious reasons that you know, it's a really historic race. And I remember writing this story the night that Barack Obama won and saw the, I mean, this will sound like an ego thing, so forgive me, but the big front page headlines saying Obama, my name is Yeah, listen, that's an old one.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I think the Times Deed Becky is trying the executive editor has tried to do that with some success, I think. They're really trying to, I don't use the word police because that's not a good word, but they're really trying to make sure that reporters do tweets that are sort of honest and helpful and they'll quite cross that line. This is a difficult period. We're all going through this sort of like learning period, and it's a difficult period.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “She's great. She's really got it down. Do I think people do it deliberately? No, but I think in this culture, as you said, people are trying to be fast. They're trying to be first. They're trying to get clicks. And sometimes they don't think about going.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I do invoke what I would now call the Ruth Messenger rule, which is I start thinking about, is this something that I want to be saying on Twitter? Is this something I say on Twitter? Does it cross the line between offering hopefully an interesting point of view and offering an opinion? And do I think I'm not going to name names, but do I think that reporters at various organizations sometimes go too far? Yeah, I do. I do. Do I think that that is hurtful? Sometimes it is because I think the public is having real questions about the veracity of newspaper media. I'm using newspapers as a shorthand. And the president is trying to feed in because I think it's in his interest to do that. So I think it's not helpful when reporters cross the line. Now, do I think they do that? It's not that often. Most reporters are totally fine. Like for Maggie Hammer's great, in my opinion.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “You just get pounded all the time, you know, by readers, by politicians. And I remember one of the candidates, I can't remember, I'm sorry for not whether it was your race or not, Ruth Messenger was running for mayor. Sure.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “What I learned covering your politics there's few things as brutal to cover as New York politics. Jerusalem is probably one. I'm not talking about wars. Yeah, but the politics.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “I think so because you were working for Can I say this on the show? You can say Fernando Ferrer. You're harder on him than I am.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “I guess McCain's kind of like that too, right? I mean, like, he could be as caustic and partisan and even cynical, but he does have that sort of level of, I look at politics and service that I believe in it. And do I think that is kind of absent now? Yeah, I do. Yeah, it's a shame.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “The World War II experience, and those World War II, we were really trying to save the country. It saved the country from Nazis. You don't have that same kind of unity or even understanding about the Iraq and Afghanistan.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Yeah, I do politics by the Metro Bureau, Michael Raskies, and the Washington Bureau, which Andy Rosesal and Johnny. So in my first year, I covered national politics with the understanding that we go back to New York to become the metro political reporter. In my first year, I spent covering Bob Dole, which, you know, I know people who don't cover politics might think, oh, wow, that's really boring. No, it was great. I mean, he did lose and he was going to lose, but he was such a wonderful, great American character. And it was just great to cover.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Okay, just say one thing, though. It just goes back to Johnny Apple thing. So everything ties together here. So when Jeff Schmaltz died, right, I was one of the people giving a eulogy for him. And Johnny Apple comes up to me afterwards, was at Chantorale of Mancy Restaurant in New York. It was just Times people. And Times had friends. And he comes up to me and he goes, we have an opening for a position in the Washington Bureau, the New York Times, and you should be on the list of people like applying for it. I'm like, sure. So I went down to Washington next week or wherever I was. I was in Washington. And he took me to London. These are the old days, right? He took me to lunch at some fancy Italian place called Galileo, I believe. And like, I think we had a bottle of wine and after dinner drinks. And then he went back to the bureau in his car. Someone driving him from place to place. But that was what eventually led to me getting a job.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “I've been writing letters. I mean, I've been writing letters. There's someplace in my box of letter from some editor saying, well, thank you for this, but there will never be a job here for you with the New York Times. And that was a real. Really? Yeah, I don't actually remember who wrote it. I have some theories. I don't remember. And it was really so depressing.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Exactly right. People really responded to it. And then the other thing he did that was kind of crafty was people forget this. He came in second, you won't forget this, he came in second place in New Hampshire to Paul Saugh. And claimed to win. He claimed to win, to come back in. So everyone thinks he won New Hampshire. Well, he did, but by all he did.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Commander saying, Thank you for saving me. You know, that's where other people had gone in the people who passed the race had gone in, he might have won, you know, he might not have, someone else might have pulled out ahead of him. Yeah.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “And we roll into town, these small towns in Illinois, Illinois, Mississippi, and they'd be packed, just the streets would be lined with people waiting to see him in Al Gorick. They were traveling together. And he would just keep talking, as he would say, until the last dog died. And it was just, you know, back in those days, there weren't quite as many people covering as there are now. And the other really big difference was staff traveled with the candidates because your cell coverage wasn't so good. So you just felt like you had this front page, you know, this front row view of history going on that became more and more exciting as you realized, because I think it became clearer relatively early on, at least it did today, that Clinton was going to win. And it was just like the coolest, most exciting thing ever.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “I always thought he was a terrific politician. I thought, you know, he could really get in there and sort of frame an argument and capture a room and incredible energy. He'd run everyone else down. He'd start, he wouldn't start too early in the morning, as you know, but he would go till 11 o'clock at night and he just really enjoyed it and made a point of showing how much he really enjoyed it. And I think that you can tell when a politician knows that he's on a roll, and you can tell when he knows when he's got an audience. And he just did. And I remember covering him on those bus trips, you know, the bus trips he did after the convention. Yeah.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Legendary New York Times political reporter. Because back in those days, right, there wasn't a web. And the only newspapers you could read when you were in Iowa or New Hampshire was USA Today because it was everywhere. And the Wall Street Journal. You couldn't even get the time. So that was his advice. And he said, I'll let you write longer, not as long as I would like. None of those semi-diaged zoning stories. So I decided to do that. That was where I covered Clinton.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Right. So USA Today hired me. There's an editor that I knew from back in my job at the Gadett Papers. He's going out to run USA today. Tom McNarrow was his name. And he called me up and he said, do you want to be the political reporter here? He goes, I know you want to work at the New York Times. You told me that back in 1977. It's really true. And then he goes, if you come to USA Today, Johnny Apple will read your stories. Johnny Apple, the greatest.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “I never, you know, it was very talented, kind of logistical guy. And I never was quite as impressed with him as I was with his father. I mean, without taking anything away from him, he's sure he's a fine governor, but I remember having one pretty intense exchange with him, and he also would call up to yell about stories. And I said to him, Andrew, you know what? You have all the bad qualities of your father and none of the good ones, which was a little mean and overstated, but... But I mean, do you think it's as good a governor or as good a speaker as his father was? No.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “She never let you, and you couldn't get jobs at White Shrew law firms because they weren't hiring Italian Americans. Right. So his attitude was like, it was justified, right? He had had to deal with a lot of bad stuff. Yeah.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “I do. It was like, I'm not worthy of this. I'm not good enough to do. You know, people would speculate he doesn't want to be away from home or there was speculation, which I think was ridiculous that he had some kind of crime, mob stuff, which I just think was slander. But I just think at the end of the day, just thought he wasn't good enough. And he was sort of gnawed by this sort of insecurity feeling.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Fantastic reporter. He's not with us anymore. And so I shouldn't have told him this. We were also friends, but I told the story. He looked at me and he goes, well, did you write down what he said? You're obviously going to report it. And the lesson that I learned is everything's on the record, less a politician says it's not. And ever since then, I kept a notebook by my bed and I realized this isn't about me. It's about the politician. And the next time something like that happened, I reported what he said. And what he did that with Jeff, I reported what he said. And that was a lesson that I learned. So I remember once Bill Clinton got really upset with me. I actually don't remember what it was. And started yelling at me at some event and started really yelling. And I was just like, I just didn't get phased by it because I was so used to it.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “What? he said, cut off your testicle testicle about testicles. That's really bad. Oh my God. But then that night I had dinner with, I don't know if you ever knew him, the New York Times Bureau chief at the time. His name was Jeff Schmaltz.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “With no inappropriate storage. Okay, so I just been, so Marshall Kramer had been the Bureau chief of the Daily News. They had set her down to be the Bureau chief down in New York City. The editor at the time, Arthur Brown, said to me, you know, we really don't know whether you're ready to be Bureau chief. You got to prove yourself. So that's the way you get a report. So I wrote some story about something. Who knows what, right? Something in the American was very sensitive about he might have commuted a sentence or something like that. And the bone rings at 7 in the morning and I pick it up. I'm sure I've been up till 2 in the morning the night before. And it's like I pick up my hello and he, oh, I hear on the other phone is, you cut off my testicle. I'm like, what? And he starts yelling at me. How unfair this story was and how I went out to destroy him. I tried to help you, but I'm not going to help you now. And bam, hangs up the phone. So I call up.”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Like he never, you know, he never really felt like, he always got the feeling with him that he was never really sure he was good enough for what he was doing and he'd have these long conversations with you. But the two things, one is he was just a great speaker and he had an ability to walk into a room and frame an argument and grab an audience. And Bill Clinton had that ability. Barack Obama didn't even have that as well as Mario Cole did. And he was just a smart, substantial guy who I think really cared about stuff. But the negative I was going to say is he also taught me. No one taught me more than him how to be tough because he would like, he was notorious for if he didn't like coverage, calling up. Yeah, so I remember calling him one morning. I don't know this story as inappropriate or not. I had just been”

    2018-01-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 204 - Adam Nagourney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source