YouSaid · the spoken record

David Gregory

lines on the record
75
first
2018-01-25
most recent
2018-01-25
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

  1. “Well, at that time, it was great because it was an ABC station. So everybody thought it was great. I then went to work right after college at a CBS station, and I still had it up there. I hadn't made the switch over to Dan Rather. And by the time I went to KCRA, which was an NBC station, which is one of the best NBC stations there is, and I had it up, somebody came back and said, you need to take that effing picture of Peter Jennings down. So that was it for that.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “It's true, yeah. I had an autograph picture of him on my desk, and I was very proud of that because I had met him in New York and he had encouraged me and it was great.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “You know, I think I had a sense that I wanted to be, you know, I was certainly interested in theater, but I was interested more substantively in the world and in history, and I did want to be on television. I never actually thought. So this was kind of a combination. It was, but I never thought about being a showman or being an actor. I thought, you know, yes, I like the idea of being on TV, but at that time, you know, this is the mid-80s and the three network acres are big figures. And I used to watch actually ABC News, and I loved Peter Jennings. I didn't tell Tom Brokaw that, you know, when I came to NBC. But I did love Peter Jennings, and I watched all the time. And I was really drawn to that. And I thought, yeah, that's for me.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Business did. So I did. My father and stepmom K had an apartment at Trump Tower in the mid-80s. And we went to live with them for a summer. And my father had ups and downs in show business, rough business, and he hit a really bad patch where he was really, really struggling financially and trying to get things together. And I went and worked in New York that summer. I worked for one of his general managers of one of his shows. And I remember seeing the effect that had on my dad and how just tough it was. And I said, oh no, this is not for me. I don't want to be in a business that is this cutthroat and is this unstable ironic. We'll deal with the irony of that later. Right.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Not in my presence. I was a little young, but I was at home in LA and it was on entertainment tonight. It was the lead story on entertainment tonight that my father and Richard Harris almost came to blows. This was during when HBO was shooting the production. And when HBO did stuff like that at that point, you know, so it was a very interesting career. My dad was always a big advisor for me.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Some of the stars said he worked with Richard Burton. I was too young. Yeah, Richard Burton I met and Rex Harrison and Richard Harris with whom my dad almost had a fist fight in New York.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I mean, he loved politics from afar, but he loved the headiness of world affairs in Washington, and nothing pleased him more. And he was a big advisor to me in my career. And nothing impressed him more than the idea that I had this front row seat to history that I knew presidents and kings, as he would say.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “He did Camelot and my fair lady in 1980, 81, those were the revivals of those shows. He did, it's funny, I sent you that picture because you guys had some similarities with your black mustache. In 1970, I want to say it was 74, he did Clarence Darrow with Henry Fonda, and they brought that to Washington. And I remember George McGovern was there, and I just discovered, because I'm good friends with Tim Shriver, his parents, Sergeant and Uni Shriver, in a picture of meeting my dad because I'm creating this photo book about my dad. And so they had this thing at Kennedy Center that was kind of a heady thing for my dad. My dad...”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And it kind of fell out with Bellafani over there were other things like money. But there were issues around civil rights and Bellafani's activities in the civil rights movement, which my dad didn't always understand. And so that was an interesting dynamic. But Rowan and Martin, you know, who did laugh in. And Frank Orshan and Red Buttons and Bobby Darren. So my dad had this really interesting career. He was in Vegas and met my mother actually introduced by the comedian Bob Newhart. My mother was a singer, aspiring dancer. So, you know, so they met each other and then they lived out in Vegas and my father became a theatrical producer. And I spent a lot of time on Broadway as a kid as the son of a...”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “The family had gotten here, I think, his father had been born in what is now Belarus. And he had come here and his dad was in the meat transportation business. His uncle, his mother's brothers were very successful businessmen. They owned a restaurant, a deli, and they did very well. But my grandmother on my father's side always kind of struggled and kind of had to live off her siblings and all of that created a real chip on my dad's shoulder. So he wanted to be an actor. He wanted to get in show business and everybody thought he was crazy. Don Ginsburg, he changed his name to Gregory. So he was a tough, tough guy growing up in the Bronx and not finishing college, going out to California to try to become an actor, ultimately became an agent, had a really interesting career, managed Harry Belafani.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, so my dad grew up in New York in the Bronx, off the Grand Concourse, and his father died when he was four, and his mother was someone with whom he was not. No, it wasn't.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “I understand that would certainly affect him this year and affect the party, but don't you think that once we get into an election cycle where it's Trump against someone else? You look at Hillary Clinton, there was a lot about her deficiencies, but there's still he seems to benefit a lot from this pushback that people feel when I speak in different parts of the country. I hear it all the time. People don't like the media. They don't like, even if they don't like him, they don't like the obsessiveness, the tonnage And a sense of hatred that they sense in the media for Trump. Yeah, yeah. These are not like hardcore Trump people”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “A Sunday show. I did that with Secretary Clinton her first hour long interview with Secretary of State. It was great. I had so much fun doing it. I think she was comfortable doing it. I think there was a lot of light and a lot of illumination in that interview that was good journalism. And we had the ability to carry that off. But again, just a lot of pressures. And look, I think the Sunday shows have been benefited tremendously, have benefited tremendously by Donald Trump and the irony of Trump, as much as he hates the media, as much as he talks like an authoritarian and crosses the line into fake news. He's so available. It's unbelievable.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “But your other point was exploration in conversation, exploration in interviews is what I know is what I really care about. And when I had those opportunities, they were very satisfying.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “And I'm a real mimic, so I can mimic almost anyone and study what they do. And so I did a lot of that. And I thought I was able, I mean, not that I was ever going to be him, but I could sort of match that template. But in the process, I wasn't able and didn't feel comfortable enough to just say, let's do my own thing. And I sought a lot of counsel on this. And everybody from, you know, guys who became friends like Jamie Diamond and other really interesting thinkers who said, you have to get together and kind of imagine if I were going to start this thing over again, what would I do? Well, the problem is that's too risky. You can do that if you're starting a podcast, starting a new show. You couldn't take meet the press and say, what if we were just tearing it up and doing it again? Because there was enough of that audience that has a built-in expectation. And you have to, you need time is the real point. You need time to evolve into that.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “It is, and it was, and it doesn't mean that you don't give it a shot when you have the opportunity. I mean, I thought I would get the opportunity for a long time. I didn't expect it so soon. And, you know, I had thought about doing the today's show and I think I would have really liked that. And I think in many ways that I was sort of, you know, that was the most natural fit. But I think intellectually and having covered the White House. And I don't think I was a political junkie by any means. But I love history and I love the political process and I love questions about leadership. And I love being up close to history as I was covering the White House. I mean, I thought that it was a great job and that I'd be perfect for it. But the difficulty I faced was You know, I thought my immediate task was I had to measure up.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Have to get to. But the audience doesn't appreciate that. And in this political environment, and I experienced that firsthand, you would get hammered for being rude, for hammering too much, or for not following enough, letting so-and-so get away with something. And one of the things that I tried to learn from Tim Ruster is that it was important that your guest feel like he or she was heard. And even if you were tough with them, people knew that whole approach. And I'll be honest with you. I mean, I can be fairly confrontational and I struggle with my temper as I've written about. And so that part was real. But I honestly didn't love that. I mean, my observation.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Of truth to it. But, you know, that was an example too of something that we felt really good about on the show, not to just gratuitously make an administration's life difficult, but again, that is a moment of where you have it all the time in this program where you're in the middle of a conversation and something happens. And if you're listening, something happens and it's real. And it harkened back to, you know, that was big front page news on the New York Times. I'll be honest with you. I mean, the Sunday shows have fallen away from being able to break that kind of news. And I certainly struggled to do that. Yeah, I mean, one of those...”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Dan Pfeiffer, who this I heard this story and it was way too good to check. So if it's not true, I'm still insisting it is.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Where are we going here? And then he mentions, he said, you know, Will and Grace did more to change attitudes about homosexuality. And I'm thinking. Oh my gosh, home run, but I still was so in the moment it took me till afterward when I thought did we was that what I thought it was? And my producer says hell yes it was the White House you may be”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Which, by the way, was so interesting because we're pre taping that interview with Biden and terrific producers now at ABC Christ Donovan. And we would always prepare six ways from Sunday on the question of gay marriage, especially with the Democrats, because we knew this issue was going to break. And on that particular day we said we weren't going to get to it. But I had a little note up at the top and he starts going on Biden does about family values and the Republicans. And I just thought, you know, well, you might talk about family values. What about gay marriage? The president says he's evolved. Have you? And then he's going on and on. You can be very long-winded. And he starts saying, you know, I'm at a gay wedding last week. And this, that, and the other, and he's talking about the child and the love. And I'm just thinking.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “But the point was that in those conversations, I really thought we got to something real because it was an illuminating conversation in some cases about that. And I think whether it's politics or the discipline of going back and forth with, you know, the gatekeepers, sometimes the pushback was important. And sometimes there were moments, especially with Robert Gibbs, you know, the press secretary, who notably, I think, committed news without meaning to. And that's still not the most, I mean, it's satisfying when Joe Biden commits major news on gay marriage. Yes, you.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “She did. If she was the general counsel of Fanny Mae when the government moved in and then resigned once the government did that. Funny encounter with President Bush about all of that when I said to him, I said, by the way, my wife was a general counsel of Fannie Mae, so thanks for that. And he said, well, I know a lot of people over there thought they were doing the right thing. Here's a problem for your wife. My guy Hank Paulson didn't agree.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “And of course you're dealing with the financial collapse, and I took very seriously the challenge that my wife gave me, which is you need to really dig in on the financial system in this country and the banking system in this country. And I had a number of interviews of which I had.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “I mean, I do love your podcast and others because when I was doing my own, it is a free-flowing conversation. You know, on my end of interviewing you, there was a lot of pressure too because I had to think about time and I had to think about how to move you off of what I knew you wanted to say.”

    2018-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 211 - David Gregory · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source