YouSaid · the spoken record

Dean Baquet

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2018-08-19

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2018-08-19

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1. “We need to look over the long run. We need to make sure that our reporting, even if it's under attack in the short run, that it needs to be validated over the long run. And so I always keep in mind, how is this going to look a year from now, two years from now, things like that.”

   2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “I don't think the story would have turned out differently because there were underlying facts. There was also a Congress that was active and conducting its own investigation, an investigation that had integrity. That's really important. So it was a different, it's certainly a different time. I think it's important to remember that before a press credibility rose to those high levels that you just mentioned, it wasn't so high because the press was under attack by Richard Nixon. His entire administration, and he was describing the Watergate investigation as a, they didn't use the word hoax, but he certainly described it as a partisan effort by his enemies to bring down his presidency and argued, of course, the entire time that there was no truth to the allegations. And so I think it's important to remember that we need to”

   2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “I should say that this predated the current administration for sure. We were trying to come up with a motto that boiled down our mission to its essence. And our owner, Jeff Bezos, was interested in that, and he saw a special mission for us as well as the entire news media, which is to shine a light in dark corners, bring transparency to government and to other powerful individuals and institutions. And so we worked on that for a year, and we've had hundreds, if not a thousand different options. And that line actually dates back to the time of Watergate. There was a judge who said something very much equivalent to that, and it did sort of capture quite well what our mission is, which is to shine the light in dark corners.”

   2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “And another great thing about him is that he was sort of the emblem of the Enlightenment at the time, the notion of reason and facts and things like that. And so I think he's a person to be admired. It's often forgotten.”

   2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Virginia did, and it had something equivalent essentially to the First Amendment so that it guaranteed freedoms for the press. He was also concerned about slavery and that there was no prohibition on that, even though he was an owner. He was an owner of slavery.”

   2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Well, it didn't have a Bill of Rights, and he felt that it should have a Bill of Rights, or what would have been considered a Bill of Rights.”

   2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “It's true, and there can be more mistakes in the past too. And by the way, when you had a mistake in the past, if it was in print, it was there all day long, and you couldn't fix it as quickly. Now at least when we do make a mistake and we're flawed like everybody else because we're human, when we do make a mistake, we can correct it quickly.”

   2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Yes, it's infinitely more difficult these days. The reality is that, as you say, if there's no natural news cycle, news can happen at any moment. So if the president decides to tweet, for example, at 10.30 at night or 5.30 in the morning, we need to react to that to some degree. But other things can happen as well. And the public look is demanding that. The public is saying they want news instantly. They're all walking around with mobile phones. We have a tremendous amount of competition. As you said, lots of people can now be in this business and are in this business, and we're providing alerts instantaneously based on what happened. The pressure on us to get things right is far greater than it was before because there's less time in which to verify things. But we still have that obligation for our news organizations to verify the information that we're disseminating. And we will not”

   2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “I think look, I think we're going actually back to the time of the founders when people were pamphleters, ideological pamphleters. And so we're seeing that in an electronic age, in a digital age now. And so pretty much anybody can start up whatever they want. This is a more difficult time. I think the public has a greater challenge in front of it, which is to decide who's trustworthy and who's not, who's doing real reporting and who's not doing real reporting, who's aligned with certain political interests, and who's truly independent. And certainly our institutions maintain our independence, independence from party ideology, all of that. Our obligation in our newsroom, in our newsrooms, plural, is to get at the truth. But it is true that this is a time where pretty much anybody can get into the business of at least expressing an opinion, not”

   2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “There are truths in this world. They're difficult to get at. It's a process, a process of striving, but that's what we all try to work toward.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “It does bother me, and I think it bothers pretty much everybody in the profession. There's a question as to whether there are actual basic facts, I think, that it's very difficult to have a democracy without agreement on underlying facts. We can disagree about how to solve our problems. We can disagree about the analysis of the situation. But there are underlying facts. And I think now there's a questioning as to whether the press should be an independent arbiter of the facts. People are calling that role into question, but not just the press, but they're questioning whether law enforcement can be an arbiter of the facts, whether courts can, whether science can be an arbiter of the facts, universities, what have you. And I think that's a dangerous situation because it's not just a matter of somebody's personal opinion. It's not a matter of who has the biggest megaphone. There are actual facts.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Look, nobody likes to get beat. It does fry us. I mean, our reporters, both the reporters who work at each of our organizations are highly competitive. And I think that's the way that it ought to be. And we encourage that competition. But we also share something and we share the mission. We really do. And I think that especially these days, people really feel that in our profession, certainly between our two organizations, but I think it's broader than that, as people have a sense that we have a shared mission these days and that we need to be supportive of each other. So I think that's, you know, obviously we have a great friendship, but what binds our institutions is the sense of shared mission.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Well, I think the major differences, as you pointed out, I'm not a natural movie star, but So we're quite different that way.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Owner of Amazon. Yeah, so look, I mean, I think the important thing to point out is that he doesn't regard us as a charity. And we have to be a sustainable business. We have to be able to operate independently. So when he acquired us years ago, he did make some initial investments. But now we're profitable and we are paying our way. And we're using those profits to reinvest. Now, he doesn't need the dividend, any dividends from the business, obviously. So we have the opportunity to reinvest in our business, to invest in innovation, to invest in expanded coverage and all of that. And that's exactly what we're doing. He's brought to our institution is not only the financial capital, but I think intellectual capital, a real understanding of the digital world that we live in today, and also a very sophisticated understanding of consumer behavior, which is we're in a consumer business. And so he's brought both of the...”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Yeah, after everybody talked about what they were working on, I asked what we were doing to follow up on this particular case. And I said, couldn't we get at the truth? One side was saying one thing and the other side was saying something else. And then somebody said, well, you know, the documents are under seal. And I said, I did know that because I had just read that in the column. But had we considered the possibility of going to court to try to unseal those documents? And that ended up launching this investigation that certainly took us to January of 2002 when we published our first story, but then we published many hundreds of stories after that, a thorough investigation. And it wasn't just a matter of how much abuse was taking place by the priests who abused. But the cover up and the systemic problems, which is what”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Well, you know, yes, I mean, look, the Catholic Church was the most powerful institution in New England at the time. And this is in 2001 that we launched the investigation about six weeks before 9-11. We didn't publish until early January of 2002. But when I arrived, there was a case that was underway. It was a priest by the name of John Gagan. He had been accused of abusing as many as 80 kids. The lawyer for the plaintiff said that the cardinal himself, cardinal law, was aware of this abuse and yet continually reassigned this particular priest. The church said at the time that this were baseless charges, these were irresponsible. And at the end of a column that was written by Boston Globe columnist the day before I started work, she said the truth may never be known because the documents that might reveal the truth”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “And they came to the same conclusion. They published their results after 9-11. And so it kind of got, some of that stuff got lost in all of 9-11. But yes, we concluded that George W. Bush would have won.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Yes, absolutely. That was when I became editor of the Miami Herald in 2000, and we had both the Elliot Gonzalez case and the 2000 presidential election. And when the U.S. Supreme Court had determined that there would be no recount, we decided to go ahead and conduct a recount ourselves, working with a major accounting firm. And we went to every single county, all of the 67 counties in Florida, and under the Florida, an expansive public records law in Florida, thankfully, it was available. We could look at examine every single ballot and we examined every single ballot. And we concluded that Bush won that election, and had there been a recount, he would have won that election. There was a subsequent, at the same time, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the networks and the Associated Press were doing their own recount. They were following us. We were ahead, I'm proud to say.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “I think reporting probably still is the best job in journalism. At least I think that some days when I'm dealing with the kinds of things that I might have to deal with from day to day, I was pulled into it well before I expected to be. I was working in New York as a business reporter for the LA Times. I was asked to come back during the summers to help with editing. People thought I was good at it and then ultimately they asked me to come back and be a deputy business editor and then I became business editor. And so I just ended up that way well before. It wasn't a conscious decision on my part, so I was sucked into it. It was something that I anticipated doing at a later date because I had been editor of my high school newspaper. I had been editor of my college newspaper. And I enjoyed that. I enjoyed having an impact on the entire product.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “My parents were letting me do whatever I wanted to do as long as I would get out of the house and earn my own way. They didn't really care. They were happy to have me just move on and start my career, whatever it might be. No, my thinking was I knew two things. One is that I knew that journalism was becoming more specialized at the time, and I thought that it would be good for me to have a specialty, and I was interested in business and economics. So I studied it. The other is I couldn't be sure that things would work out in journalism and that I probably should have a fallback. So getting an MBA seemed to make sense to me. So those were the two reasons for me.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Right, exactly. There were three networks at the time, and that was it. And so they received Time magazine every week in the House. And so that was part of the environment in which I grew up as sort of an interest in public affairs and a news habit. And I think that's what got me interested in it.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Know it's hard to trace these sorts of things, I think, as we were talking earlier, as my parents were immigrants to the country. They were keenly interested in what was happening in this country and what was happening around the world. They had a daily news habit. We got the daily newspaper, which was, I grew up in Tampa, Florida. They got the local newspaper. They watched the local news on television every night. They watched the national news, the Huntley Brinkley report back in the day.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “agencies were shocked at that and it became known that this made clear that this intelligence came from Israel. And so that would not have been disclosed were it not for the Washington Post.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Well, there is a Trump exhaustion factor, and yeah, from time to time we sit back and think, are we doing too much on him? But he is, he does hold a position that represents the most, it's probably the most powerful position on this earth. So this is not someone we can ignore, his actions like them or not have worldwide impact as we see every single day. And so I think that we have a real obligation to cover him thoroughly and cover him in depth, to hold him accountable as we try to do all of the time. I mean, just with reference to your previous question, I mean, we disclosed that the president himself had turned over intelligence to the Russians when he was visited by the foreign minister and the Russian ambassador in the White House. And that wasn't the intelligence.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “I would make another point, by the way, is that someone like Edward Snowden has another option. He can go to WikiLeaks or some other outlet like that and have the entire thing published without any filter whatsoever, without us exercising any sort of editorial judgment about what should and shouldn't be published, without any conversations with the agencies about the risks to individual agents or to sources and methods and what have you. So that's available. Obviously, that's been used on any number of occasions. And just because we might choose not to publish doesn't mean it won't be published. In fact, probably more will be published without any editorial judgment whatsoever.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Right, but in this instance, there's no example where any intelligence agents was threatened or at risk because of something that we published. We always went to the intelligence agencies and told them about every detail that would be in that story, and they had every opportunity to argue against publication. And while we never withheld a story or the thrust of a story, we did withhold certain details that the intelligence agencies objected to.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Well, you know, it can be subjective, obviously, but we don't disclose, for example, individual the names of individual intelligence agents overseas. That's not something that we're going to do, even if we had access to it and we do have access to that sort of information.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Oh, sure. I mean, it's not like we publish this cavalierly without having those kinds of discussions. We felt in that instance that there was a You're looking at the balance between individual privacy and national security. And decisions had been made in the government that represented a greater intrusion and a very significant intrusion into individual privacy in the interests of national security, without any public debate having taken place. President Obama himself said after our publication that this is a debate, important debate and that it needed to be had. And that's how we felt at the time. This is a debate that did never occur. The decisions were made within government itself. And so we felt that it was important to publish some of that information. We didn't publish all of that information. We always went to the intelligence agencies to tell them what it is we intended to publish. They always had the opportunity.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “I think everybody thought that it was going to be a pretty close election. They may have assumed that Hillary Clinton might pull it out, but I don't think that people assume that it was going to be a runaway victory. And in fact, there was a close election. I mean, she won the popular vote by about 3 million votes. Really, what made the difference was about less than 80,000 votes in three states. So we're a very divided country. It was a close election. I think that on election night, none of us Presupposed who was going to win that election.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Well, I totally agree with that, and that's what I was talking about before, is the obligation of our obligation to get out into the country and talk to ordinary Americans about their ordinary concerns. And I mean, Washington is a bubble. I mean, I've only been there for five and a half years, so I'm not a creature of Washington by any means. And when I look, I worked in Florida, I worked in California, I worked in Massachusetts, I worked in New York. I was always skeptical of Washington, always felt that Washington didn't really understand the rest of the country. And I think one of our jobs as journalists is not only to convey what's happening in Washington to the rest of the country, but actually more importantly, to tell Washington what's happening in the country. And I think that's our special obligation.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Journalists were writing about the forgotten men and women of America, writing about abuses people who had suffered because of a larger and more powerful system, people who were abused by powerful individuals and institutions for one reason or another. And we have to, and finally we have to do more of that work. We have to dedicate ourselves to doing that work, which means getting out in the country, talking to people, writing about stories that have nothing to do with the politics of the moment in Washington, but have a lot to do with the lives of ordinary Americans. And those are the steps that I believe that we need to take to reassure the American public that we are doing our jobs properly.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “And they don't fit this stereotype. We have to talk more about the work we do and be more transparent about that work and explain it, how we came to publish what it is we published. We have to talk more about the work that actually helped people because long before this president started talking about the forgotten men and women of America.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “They are. I mean, actually, if you look at different surveys and look at different things, things will overall actually in the last year or so, overall trust in the media has actually gone up, oddly enough. Now, it's highly polarized among Republicans. There's a very low level of trust in mainstream media outlets among Democrats. The level of trust has actually gone up, and among independents it's gone up somewhat. So when you look at overall, there's been somewhat of an increase in trust in the media. And the overall levels of trust for the New York Times and the Washington Post are maybe not what we would want them to be, but they're not bad, actually. So, I mean, I think that it is concerning, and I think that there are things that we need to do about that. Number one is we need to talk more about who we are, because the stereotypes that have been drawn of people who work in our profession are grossly inaccurate. We have people who came from all walks of life.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Certainly, I'm not saying the president's responsible for that because there's nothing to connect the president to that. On the other hand, I think that the president should not be creating an environment that describes the press as an enemy, as disgusting, as scum, as the lowest form of humanity, and then the lowest form of life as traitors to the country. I mean, that's the most extreme rhetoric that you can imagine. And the signal that it sends to all it requires is just one individual to do something. That's really concerning. And he really ought to stop it. Now, the more we say stop it, the more that he seems to do it and enjoy it. But I think that that's a... That's really dangerous”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Oh, sure, yeah. I too can't get into details, but certainly during the campaign there were an extraordinary number of threats, great concern about the security of our people who were covering the campaign. And now, even during the administration, there are similar concerns. Look, I just spoke a few weeks ago at an event to memorialize the five individuals at the Capitol Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland who were killed. I think four out of five were journalists. And there was a person with a grievance against journalists who just walked into their office and started shooting and didn't really care who he shot just as long as he was shooting people.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “But the general rule is that they should behave in social media and on cable television the way that they would behave anywhere else. And I'm talking about the news side because we also have people from the opinion side who are on cable television and neither Dean nor I are in charge of our opinion departments. We don't oversee the editorials. We don't oversee the op-ed page, the letters that run the opinion. So you probably hear about them. Well, we do because people assume that you're in charge of that.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Limits, and the basic rule is that they should behave on cable television and in their social media accounts the way that they would behave anywhere else. And we expect professional behavior. Now, it's not to say that there haven't been breaches of that policy. Clearly there have, and we talk to people about that. The tricky part these days is that, and certainly in social media, the public wants to identify with an individual. They don't necessarily identify with the institution of the Washington Post. They like this person or they like that person. And they want to follow those people. And so in social media, you're trying to convey a bit of your personality and not just sort of the institutional face. And sometimes people go over the line in trying to do that. I think most people handle it appropriately. And they too are learning as we go because this is new territory for them.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “The polls when they were favorable, and then when the polls are unfavorable, he says that they're fake. So he does not want there to be an independent arbiter of fact. He certainly doesn't want the press to be that arbiter. He doesn't want scientists to be that arbiter. He doesn't want the courts to be that arbiter. He doesn't want the intelligence agencies to be the arbiter. He wants himself and his White House to be the arbiter of fact. And that is exactly what he's trying to achieve. And I think he was incredibly honest in that answer to Leslie Stall.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Yeah, and I think that that was an honest answer on his part, is that he wants to disqualify the press as an independent arbiter of fact. And that's what he's trying to do. You remember at some point he said, if you see any negative polls on me? They're fake. I mean, so he”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “and drawing sweeping generalizations of who people are because we know both as individuals and as journalists that when you actually dive into it when you start talking to people they don't fit the generalizations they're all individuals with their own individual circumstances and I think that it's important for us as journalists and probably important for policy makers to understand people as the human beings, as the individuals they are.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “Well, you know, look, I mean, I think that we are professionals and we treat this as journalists. And we, in so many instances, sort of set aside whatever our personal feelings are about things. Look, the American public has the right to debate policy, has the right to debate policy about immigration and all of that. And I believe in the democratic process, that there should be an honest debate about these sorts of things. What always concerns me, and it's not just relevant with regard to the immigration debate, If you start demonizing people and”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Just suited him, I guess. So he became a businessman, and that's what he was about. And I think I as a kid traveled a lot with my parents. My father was doing the export business, so we traveled overseas, and so I got around the world, and you get exposed to lots of different kinds of people. And so, you know, certainly for myself, I feel accepting of lots of different kinds of people and recognize that this country is made of a lot of people who came from a lot of different countries and a lot of different backgrounds. And I hope that and I expect and I believe that people are making the kinds of contributions that my parents made to this country.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “Well, look, I mean, my father was born in Germany. He went to what was then Palestine and my mother was born in what was then Palestine, became Israel, and they left that country, they were in Paris for a couple of years and then came to the United States. Why did they come here? My father believed in the American dream. That's what he wanted. He loved the opportunity of the United States. He was a true believer in all of that and wanted to be, that's where he was.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Look, I mean, I do think that the president has used this to some degree as a performance. And, you know, Neil Postman wrote his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death a couple of decades, some decades ago, about how we're moving toward the show quality of politics and that the show has become the thing. And I think the president actually understands that and uses that to his advantage. And so we have to understand that and understand that well. Some of the tweets are designed as distractions and some of the tweets are actually a window into his mind. And I think it's important that we understand what his thinking is. And a lot of those tweets are a precursor to actual policy. And it's important that we pay attention to them.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Well, I think we're learning as we go along. I think this is a new situation for all of us. We were learning throughout the campaign and we're learning still during this administration. There is no guidebook for this kind of a presidency. And so we make mistakes. I think we're learning from those mistakes.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Use the word falsehood. And I agree with Dean that it's important for us to focus on the actual substance of what's false rather than the language that's used and whether we use lie in everything.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “You know, this gets into the use of the word lies. He has to know that what he's saying is false, and it's hard sometimes to get into his head. So we use the word lie, for example, when it became clear that the president had in fact dictated the statement for Don Jr. in trying to explain this meeting at Trump Tower with Russians who were offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. They denied that they had dictated it. The president had denied it. His spokespeople have denied it. And then they had acknowledged to the Special Counsel that in fact he had dictated it. So that was a clear line. So those are the kinds of things where we try to apply, where we will apply the word lie. And in other instances, Lord knows what he thinks is true at times.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “And so it's their job to do it. I certainly pay attention to their work, and I think their work is extraordinarily rigorous, and I think it's public service that they are doing that and that database is available to everybody today to see, I mean, look, truthfulness and government, I think, is extraordinarily important. And I think it's important for us to call out when people are being misleading or actually lying. And so, and that's what we endeavor to do there.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Yeah, I think that's true, and I think that one reason is because there are so many different factions in the White House itself, the way that that so-called team was put together was kind of haphazard and the president himself didn't have it political team, and people didn't have relationships, and they were only, they were dealing with each other for the first time. And so there were different factions within the White House. And then within government itself, there are any number of people who were concerned about things like the rule of law. And they want to make sure that the facts get out. So I think that's...”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “And I think we also have to be more transparent about our work, and we are trying to be more transparent about our work is show more of that work. How did we obtain that information? What are the statements on our stories based upon? I think that's a necessity these days, is that we almost need to make an argument for the work that we're doing.”

    2018-08-19 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 264 — Dean Baquet & Marty Baron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source