YouSaid · the spoken record

Al Hunt

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88
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2018-12-13
most recent
2018-12-13
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  1. “During governor from Georgia. One term governor from Georgia, you know, a peanut farmer had been in the Navy. And he went to Iowa. David, this may sound familiar to you. He decided that he could retail Iowa better than anyone. Right. And he did.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I covered 72, but really almost on the periphery. I mean, a little bit more than that, but I wasn't a major reporter for the Wall Street Journal then, but in 76 I did cover it.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Lind Because he got a 34% favorability among Republicans about a year ago to poll. It's that simple, and he's up in 2020.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I mean, he's a real patriot and a real serious guy, and boy, they have gone in the efforts to discredit him, including by some people. I mean, you expect they're the Rush Lynbos. You know, I don't expect some of the cheap shots that a Lindsey Graham has taken. I don't expect some of the others...”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And so I said to the friend, I said, Well, what did he do? And he said, I don't know, he won't tell me. That office I've never seen an office that leaks last year.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, it does. And it also underscores, though, to the extent there's any chance for this ending successfully, however one defines that, it has to be a careful and deliberative process. It can't be people popping off On either side, I mean, some are going to, particularly on the Republican side, but Democrats have to be very, very careful about this. And, I mean, one of the things that just stuns me, I can't think of anyone who should command more respect to head a special counsel investigation than Robert Mueller. I mean, he was a Republican. He was appointed by Republicans. He served under Republicans. He served under Democrats. I don't know anyone who knows Bob Muller.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I mean, at one point he needed security. So it wasn't totally different, but clearly with social media and with a base that is so driven and so they believed the fake news stories. And I think a lot of Republicans look at what happened to Mark Sanford in South Carolina. One of the most conservative members of the House got beaten because he didn't cowtow to Trump style and Jeff Flake out in Arizona and they're scared. They're in to survive. And I can't imagine Barry Gordon being scared. He may have been some things, but scared he never was. I think it's quite different.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I think that's an interesting question and a bothersome one too. Now, it wasn't that they got off Scott Free back then. Bill Cohen, who was then a junior member of freshman actually on the House Judiciary Committee, later became Senator and Defense Secretary. He had death threats in Maine.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And there are some really fundamental differences. I think Nixon deserved his fate. I think the bill that was brought against him was totally persuasive and he deserved to be driven from offices. But the two profound differences. One is that Nixon had some smart people around him and did some good things and was smart and knew about policy. But the second thing that I think really relates to it, Nixon had some respect for institutions. He had some respect for the rule of law. Sometimes he said, you know, screw it, I'm going to disobey it. Trump has no respect for institutions. He has no respect for the rule of law. And when Nixon's, when Barry Golder went down to the White House and others told him it's time to go, he left. Trump won't go quietly into the night. And I think that if we come to that point, I think that's scary.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, it was. And I followed for about a year and a half a marvelous Republican congressman from upstate New York named Barbara Carnibal. Most people have never heard of him. One of the most admirable people I've ever known in politics. And he was a guy who was just, he would only take $50 contributions. He was the one of the most honest people I've ever known. And I could follow that sequence where he started off saying, look, they did some bad things, but I can't believe Dixon was involved in it. Oh my God, it was worse than I thought, but impeachment, that just goes too far. To worry about less his party and more the institution, the wider institutions, and then finally concluding that we had no alternative. I'm not sure there's a Barbara Connibal there today. I'm not sure there's a Barry Goldwater there today. You know, I look at people like Rob Portman and Lamar Alexander, and I'm not looking for them to say, you know, go get him right now, but they seem to be more interested in either hiding or protecting. So that worries me. Both those worry me. I think a lot about Nick.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I think that's very worrisome because I think it almost certainly will be on their plate. And whether they learn the lessons, whether Gerald and Adler can be a Peter Rodino, I mean, I blanched a little bit when Nadler went out the other day and said, surely he's committed impeachable offenses. Well, I mean, I might think that, and you might think that, or someone else, but the chairman of the Judiciary Committee ought to just... Hold everything until Bob Muller has finished. So that worries me. And the second thing that worries me is it was not just the Republicans you mentioned, it was Barry Goldwater. There were others. There were people.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Incredible process. And the night, that August, that July night, when they voted the first Bill of Impeachment, it was about 7.30, quarter of 8 at night, and I walked back to the Capitol. And you just think of what's happened. The first time since Andrew Johnson someone, a committee has voted impeachment, and they're in the capital, the American flag is flying. There's a bunch of tourists on the steps on a Saturday night. And it just, I mean, it sounds corny, but it made you really appreciate what a great country we have.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Now, the governor of Maryland and Southern Democrats like Flowers of Alabama, Maine and Man of South Carolina. And they just did it. I mean, they really took it seriously. And as did the Nixon defenders, there was a fellow named Charles Wiggins from California, and he made those impeachment advocates prove their case. And he challenged them day after day. It was really a...”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Of that comedia from New Jersey, and he handled it with such distinct, he was considered sort of a political hack. He just rose to the occasion and there were Republicans like Bill Cohen. And Larry Hogan's father, who were there, and they were Hogan.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “It was, and I didn't cover Watergate, as the story per se, the investigative story, but I covered it from the hill And I'm going to go to the Extraordinary nights in my life. I mean, to go and watch that committee, which really did an incredibly careful job. I mean, they deserve enormous credit. I hope that this issue.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Well, I was on it from 72 through almost the end of 83, but every presidential year, 76 and 80 at least, I would take off from the hill and just cover the presidential.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “President, so much bigger than anything. I mean, bigger waging price controls in a way than we had during the war. Everything was under. And I got a chance to cover that for six months. That was really fun because that was about politics. That really was about power politics. And actually the people who ran the cost of living council were someone named Don Rumsfeld with an assistant named Dick Cheney. Rumsfeld, you look at his resumes or whenever he went to defense, he just omitted that. No one knew that he ran wage and price control. That was fun. And after that, I went to cover the hill in early 72, January 72, and that was politics.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “In his life And he did. And about 14 years later, I was giving a speech at the Brookings Annual Dinner, and Volcker was the Fed chairman. And I thought I'd a light line to start with. And I told the story, and I said, I learned from the best. And Paul came up afterwards and said, I've read your stuff. Please don't tell that story again.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Who said to me, you know, you screwed up this refunding, come up to my office every couple weeks and I'll try to tutor you on this stuff. It can't be hard.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, I did, but it was. I would not want to be writing about the Treasury a lot now, but it was a great experience because I learned things I never would have learned. One of the people who chastised me for one of my early mistakes was the Under Secretary of the Treasury, a man named Paul Volcker.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “It really was. A judge had ordered South Boston to have some students bust in there and some students bust out of a huge contract. But it's a fascinating town. I loved it. It made a lot of good friends up there and got to do stories. I was supposed to cover business and I did a little bit of that, not very well. But to be able to cover stories about politics, the educational institutions were there. It was just great fun. But I told the journal from the day I started, I want to go to Washington. That's really what I want to do. And they called me in 1969 and said, there's an opening. I said, great, great. What is it? And they said, as a Treasury reporter. I mean, I sort of blanched because I didn't know very much about the treasury. I came down to Washington from Boston with Paul Samuelson's basic text on my lap, supply, demand, what does it mean to cover the Treasury for the Wall Street Journal?”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “And I thought it was one of my college buddies playing a prank on me and basically said, Louie, I don't have time for this. I got the phone. About two minutes later, someone from ABC called back and said, you know, Mr. Haggerty called. I was just mortified. He was a really nice man. I loved having lunch with him. And I really wasn't very well equipped to cover quite an interesting beat. And after about, not quite two years, I was transferred to Boston, which became a wonderful two-year experience.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “It was 1965, went to New York, and they gave me a beat of broadcasting in pulp and paper. I have no idea why it was broadcasting in pulp and paper. I wasn't terribly interested in pulp and paper, but the broadcasting was fun, and I would go interview, you know, the Bill Paleys and the Frank Stantons of the world. I wasn't very good because I didn't know very much. David, my third day there. I mean, this is a story I almost cringe when I tell a fellow named Jim Haggerty, who had been Eisenhower's press secretary, was the vice president of ABC. And I'm sure somebody said to him, they got a young kid at the Wall Street Journal covering broadcasting, and he's a real fish. I mean, this is you. And I picked up the phone and he said, Al, this is Jim Haggerty.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “But I applied to the Wall Street Journal. Someone advised me, you know, just try it. I have no interest at all on business news. And they flew me up to New York. And to my, I thought I had a fairly decent interview. I still stay in touch with the man who interviewed me, Warren Phillips, later became the CEO. And at the end of the interview, he said to me, have you ever taken an economics course? And I said, well, I've taken one. And then he said, what did you get? And David, I had that moment of truth. What do you do? And I finally, it seems to me it took an hour. It took about two seconds. I said, I got to see. And he said, well, thank you. And I thought, well, that's the end of the Wall Street Journal. And so my shock, they like to see students.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “And I had a friend who was a good friend, who was a classmate named Brian Piccolo. He had been drafted by the, he hadn't been drafted, he had been signed by the Bears. We talked about coming out to Chicago together. But then I applied.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “I did. I did. My senior year, I couldn't quite decide. I knew I wanted to go into journalism and I applied to a whole bunch of newspapers and even thought about the Winston-Salam Journal, which was a great farm club then for the New York Times, Tom Wicker, Marjorie, Hunter, and Bosley Credit had been there. And at one point, I'd been offered a job by the Chicago Daily News, and I had a good friend who was a great picture.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I know you did. She loved it. Yeah, yeah, a few months ago. My son, even, I mean, I think she was elevated in the eyes of my son's files.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Legendary. His deputy. And I spent three days following James Reston for the UPIs, making some money, I hoped. And at the end of that, the last time he was there, he said to me, all right, young man, what are you going to do with your life? You've asked me a lot of questions. And I said, well, Mr. Eston, I'm really undecided between journalism and law. And he said, well, that's an easy choice. He said, I was having lunch last week with Dean Acheson. Fortunately, David, I didn't say the Dean Acheson. Yes. And he said, Acheson said that law is lucrative, but you spend most of your first 10 years with dusty law books and boring briefs. And he looked at me and he said, but one thing, if you go on journalism, almost everyone you meet is interesting. Some good, some bad, but almost by definition, if you make news, you're interesting. So if you want to have an interesting life, go on a journalist.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I got a job as a UPI stringer in addition to writing for the Congress newspaper. And that November, James Reston came to Winston-Salem and Wake Forest.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “You know, when I got after about three months as a copy boy because of Keene diligence and being really smart and being a friend of the city editors, I got promoted to nightside reporter. And you come in at six o'clock and we're supposed to get off at two, but there was a problem. I couldn't type. I'd never typed before. So there I am, and I'm mainly doing obituaries and traffic accidents. And I would usually stay with six or seven in the morning just to get through the typing. But by the end of the summer, before I was going back to Wake Forest, they gave me a couple assignments. And one of them was this black family moving into a white neighborhood, and there was a lot of violence. It was a working class neighborhood. And I just was, I found the story so fascinating, and I found the reaction. I had a story in the paper that I thought had a little bit of an effect. And I just fell in love with it. I thought, this is really what I want to do for a living, I think. And then I went back to Wake Forest. And if I can just continue the story a little bit.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Oh boy, do we ever see that today? But that was important. But the other lesson was, David, when I left, I didn't know what I was going to do. My best friend's dad was the city editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin. And he said, why don't you come to work for the bulletin as a copy boy? I had no interest in journalism before that. And in a matter of weeks, I fell in love with journalism and went back to school six months later. So it really did change my life.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “I thought it was. My father didn't quite accept that explanation. But two things that happened. One was that I learned later when I was covering part of Watergate that when you tell one lie, you can't correct it then. Every lie builds on it because every lie.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “It was my northern sabbatical, and it was. We actually had a hotel party, a motel party, because we were playing North Carolina basketball. So we rented three rooms out and wanted to celebrate. We had quite a nice celebration, and someone did something else. The college found out about it. And even though it was not illegal what we did or against college rules rather, this is going to be a shock. But the women's students were not allowed to go back. This is circa 1963 to unchaper own parties. So when they had this investigation of what happened, we lied to protect the women's students. And there were several things that was.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “I think that understates the case, David. I really do. We're polite here at these. I appreciate your politeness, but it greatly understates the case. But I did have a good time.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “When my dad decided that he wanted to send us to Haverford, it was a good school, it was an all boys school, and so the three boys went to Haverford. And I guess he thought we'd get a better education there. I'm not sure that's right, although we had an awfully good time and we got a good education. And I had some wonderful classmates. I was talking earlier, some of your associates about the great Steve Sable, who was of NFL films fame, who was a classmate. And I've stayed in touch with a number of them. So it was a really good experience.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “My mom mainly worked in this, she was mainly a housewife. She did a little bit of stuff at a volunteering at a dress shop, but she raised four kids.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “He was a pediatrician, David, but interestingly, pediatricians were of more value than you would think because when soldiers and sailors got wounded the psychological effects were often like children when they were hurt. And so he played a major role as kind of a psychiatric consultant in the South Pacific.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Where I was born. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was born there because my mom was doing World War II and my dad was in the South Pacific and my mom lived in a little town called Orange.”

    2018-12-13 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 294 — Al Hunt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source