YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex Castellanos

lines on the record: 84
first: 2016-12-12
most recent: 2016-12-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“came up here to Washington. I was recently married writing direct mail copy to earn a living, and this young intern who worked for Nickpack, the first conservative political action committee Terry Dolan came over and said, hey, I've got to make some TV ads. You know how to do that? And I said, absolutely. And that young intern was Mike Murphy. Right answer.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The storyteller. Yeah, there isn't anything I think you feel the same way. You're an old journalist, right? No, telling the story is the it's the most fun And that's how you lead people from here to there.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was with a friend, Bob Schrum, the other day, who said, I wonder what would have happened if Hillary had not served in the Obama administration. Could she have been change? And it's an interesting little thought experiment.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who's going to lift my eyes over the horizon and take me to a better place? Donald Trump had some of that in this campaign. It's interesting.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Bill Clinton and they all have something in common FDR twenty percent unemployment nine hundred bank failures and who's he New Deal right? We have nothing to fear JFK Soviet Sputnik Oh my god the future belongs to them no no New Frontier By the way we're gonna go to the moon in ten years because that's who we are we're Americans we have duct tape we can do these things Reagan Soviets again Ash heap of history no no that's for the Soviets we have a rendezvous with destiny even Clinton don't stop thinking about tomorrow you know bridge to the twenty first century go baby they're all the same guy when Americans think of their great presidents they think of that kind of transformational leadership somebody's gonna take them into the future”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of things could point to, but you can also look at the big things, and I think everybody who runs for president ought to have a campaign. Donald Trump did, whether you agree with it or embrace it or not, and I'm not sure she did a campaign that meant something to you. I once put this question on a survey. Who are the great modern American presidents? Modern within memory. And I learned something from what I got back. I got back FDR. I got back JFK. Right. Reagan, of course.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that was actually decisive. I can understand that if you're from Hillary Clinton's point of view, you'd say small things beat you. Because in truth, if a few small things, Wisconsin, et cetera, and you lose that closely, there are”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make America great again. And the Hillary Clinton t shirt said Hillary's for president twenty sixteen. Yeah, people want to be somebody to lift their eyes over the horizon.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“each overpriced, and one of them was the Trump for President T shirt, and the other one was the Hillary for President T-shirt. The Trump for T-shirts said”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that the reason I got into politics in seventy six was Ronald Reagan, you know, and I have the immigrants view of America that this is the land of endless promise and limitless frontiers, and my folks told me that's where they brought me, and then I see this guy running for President Ronald Reagan that makes you feel that, and I've always been attracted to that candidate. You know, that's what I like best about Mitt Romney. Right after 9-11, they were going to cancel the Olympics, and Mitt Romney said no, we can do this. And he did. And that kind of inspirational leadership, I think, is what the country is always hungry for. This election, it was Make America great again. I was actually in the, going by the Chotchki stand at the airport not too long ago, and they had two t shirts. For sale.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is awful How can you elect anyone president of America when you don't think there is an America when you think there are thousands of them? And yes there are thousands of them but you got to believe in one because that's your goal to lead folks well and”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The easiest way to lose a campaign is to deconstruct it. The hardest thing to do is to find one big unifying. Creating a great story. I remember Mark Penn wrote that book a few years ago about, you know, there are no Americans, there are hundreds of micro something. And I thought...”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the journey of our life, isn't it? That's how we that's how we live our lives and give our lives meaning in a story. That's what we look for in others, especially someone to lead us. It's only being a media consultant in politics is a vocation that is thousands and thousands of years old only the campfires are electronic now, right? We sit around them and tell our stories, but it's nothing new.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I worked for Arthur. Yeah. I followed him around the country, giving survey reports, writing surveys, no statistical background, but you learn. And then you find out okay, here's the story we need to tell. Here's the biggest and highest truth that we can find. And well here, let me help you with that speech. Well, here's the kind of TV spot we ought to do. How about the press release? And the next thing you know, you're making the TV spot, and that's how I got into the media end of things”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then our pollster in that race was a guy named Arthur Finkelstein. Yeah, sure, mad genius, mad genius. And I spent a couple of years as the sorcerer's apprentice doing survey work all around the country.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And no, just the scariest thing in the world today to me is still a blank piece of paper, a blank screen. It's a thing I love the most value the most find the hardest to do, but there's nothing better than a day when you've written something. It's always fun.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The bar must have been pretty low. I helped start each of the departments in what turned out to be after the Reagan campaign, the Helms campaign, Jesse Helms, U.S. Senate, start each of the departments and then move on. And finally ended up trying to help raise money and we started, we didn't know that Direct mail had already been invented, so we invented it ourselves again and just started writing Direct Mail Copy. And boy, Direct Mail will teach you how to sell, you know, deer turnips, send blood. And writing copy is good training for just about anything. And after that camp, were you writing?”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's how I got started in it. But the Reagan campaign turned out to be the Helms organization in North Carolina. That turned out to be the congressional club, kind of one of the first political conglomerates that kept the resources in a corporate and hub so that it could be transferred to other campaigns. We invented direct mail. In those days I started out the first company I ever started was Jefferson Marketing because you could send out paper and people would send back money. It was like water into wine.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had never thought about politics, hadn't done anything political, and I expected, okay, politics, what's that? I'll go. And I expected to see George Washington and Geisen powdered wigs sitting around and instead it was, you know, Tom Ellis, Carter, Wren, a bunch of kind of the beginnings of the conservative movement in North Carolina. It's interesting. I showed up on a Wednesday ready to stuff some envelopes, and they said, hey, you've got a job in the youth campaign. We're going to pay you $500 a month. Show up to work on Monday. I have to think about that now. And they called me back Thursday, told me I'd been promoted, you know. I was now a field man in the regular campaign making seven fifty Jesus politics stuff is great You get promoted before you go to work”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, a little wandering away from the established route and some friends sent me over to the Reagan campaign in nineteen seventy six in North Carolina. And I said, you know, you're kind of a conservative guy. That's the way you think. Go talk to these people.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was at Chapel Hill in North Carolina at the university there where the sky is always Carolina blue and I was headed for medical school. I was going to be a doctor like my dad. And I thought a philosophy, an English major headed for medical school. So you can see some tension there already. Geez, after 30 years, I'll be a doctor, I'll have the wife, two kids stationed wagon golf on Wednesdays. What a boring life. I got to do something else. So I dropped out of school. I dropped out of Carolina with a semester to go.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Learn English here. Yeah, not Spanish. No, yeah. But we always spoke Spanish at home. And my folks always told me that it went the other way. I learned to speak Spanish with a southern accent because we grew up in North Carolina.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yeah, we spoke Spanish at home. I had to learn Spanish in school in first grade here, but you know, when you're a kid, you're a sponge, you can pick up anything.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But no, yeah, he got his license. He became a country doctor in North Carolina. Everything from minor surgeries to delivering babies to United States. But dad, when dad came over here he burned his bridges. He unlike a lot of people who stayed in Miami and said we'll be back one day. He said, Folks were Americans now. And I think that made a lot of sense.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He came over here and it took a year in Detroit, Michigan. They gave him a job there at Park Davis, a pharmaceutical firm translating directions on pharmaceutical products from German to English because he'd had a year of English in high school and bought a dictionary. America's a place where you can learn to do anything. It's the first place we ever saw snow in Detroit, Michigan, and we had to call dad at work and find out why people were throwing oatmeal off the roof of the building. I put snow in my pockets to bring home the show. It didn't work out too well. Yeah, I was 19 at the time, which is embarrassing. But no.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My first thought was I wish my mom and dad had been around to see that day. They gave up so much to get me here to enjoy the freedom that people are still denied in Cuba and how my life might have been so different if they hadn't been that courageous. And I wonder if I would be that courageous in their situation. Did I...”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, there was some discontent, certainly, and there should have been with Batista and the corruption and the brutality of the Batista regime. But it doesn't take much to ferment a revolution. You know, it doesn't take a lot of people discontent. It just takes a lot of people sitting on the sidelines. And really, I think that was more the case in Cuba. It was a romantic revolution at first. It was young against old change against the status quo.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They used to call Cuba the Isle of Cork because it was so corrupt, but it still floated that they And most people didn't pay any attention to Batista, you know he robbed and raped the island, but as long as you didn't mess with the corrupt government, they generally didn't mess with you, and so it was A tolerance that people had, and then they woke up one day to find out that ignoring that problem led to another one. You know, Cuba was one of those places where people thought it couldn't happen here. And it did, and I think precisely because people turned a blind eye to Batista.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The house was quite nice. Now the Hungarian embassy, now the Hungarian embassy. Maybe that's the way to sneak back one of these days. A lot of people are Hungarian or just hungry down there now. But Dad applied for his own visa to get out. And that wasn't working. So he had a friend send him a telegram. Doctor, come quick to Miami. We need help. Someone's sick. So dad got out that way, but my sister and I were on my mom's passport. So we got out with mom a few days later.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah. And at first, they were trying to using the teachers and all of that to indoctrinate the kids, even at that early age. And we did have that, and I remember that the teachers one day asked us, hey kids, let's all close our eyes and pray to God for ice cream. And of course we close our eyes, no ice cream. Kids, let's ask Fidel for ice cream. Yay, we got ice cream. And so stories like that, that's really the reason that mom and dad got us out. And we left, you know, the money in the bank account, the car in the garage. Now death seen the bank.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was a doctor. Dad had his own practice, but he also did some work for Park Davis, a pharmaceutical firm for DuPont, that kind of thing. And it came around to Dad and said, hey, Doc, you know, make sure you're with the revolution. And dad was not political at all, so he tried to explain that he was just a doctor, an MD, and that's not something he really paid a lot of attention to. And Jay explained to him, no, doctor, you're either with us or against us. So I'd been bringing home pictures of the brave Cuban soldier bayonetting the cowardly American soldier from school color in type things because at first I swear.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, they were looking for my father. Chevada was the kind of political correctness enforcer, and he was the one who went around to the intelligentsia and all of that and kind of got people on board, and he came around to Dad and said,”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cuba came here we came here in nineteen sixty one January of sixty one my mom and dad brought me and my little sister here and we had eleven bucks a suitcase and how”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are you kidding? Lot of fun, nothing more fun than rounding up the usual suspects just like they do at the end of Casablanca. Always good to see you.”
2016-12-12 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 104 - Alex Castellanos · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source