YouSaid · the spoken record

Eric Holder

lines on the record: 79
first: 2019-09-15
most recent: 2019-09-15
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

“Have not talked her about it. I don't know. My guess would be she probably would say, you know, do your own thing, don't necessarily involve me. That part, I might have changed. But the sentiment of being tough, being prepared for a fight, that's what Democrats do. Harry Truman, you know, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Barack Obama, we fight for our principles. We fight for what's right. We fight for the people. We fight for our democracy. This is not a time to compromise, not with the Republican Party as it's presently constituted.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It meant simply this Democrats need to be tough. You know, 2008 is about 100 years ago. And the notion that John, you're not going to be running against John McCain, who's going to stop that woman who said all kinds of negatives saying all negative things about President then candidate, Senator Obama. Democrats have got to be tough. We have to be prepared to fight for our democracy. with Donald Trump on a daily basis. We've got to be strategic in how we use that. But we have got to be prepared to fight, to be tough. And that's what I was trying to say in using that phrase.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think viewed Its entirety, I think, our candidate pool is expressing all the right ideas. And I think that we will end up with a good candidate. I just thought that, you know, as I looked at the field and looked at what I thought I could bring to the field, that I had some unique things that would have made me attractive as a candidate and I think good as a president.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I thought I could do the job, because I thought I had a worldview that would be good for this nation at this time. I thought I had the necessary experience. I thought I would make a good candidate and be a good president. And it was hard for me to pull back from those conclusions, but I thought the decision that I made was a right one given the familial concerns that were raised and the work that I was doing for gerrymandering.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I talked to him about it. I spoke also to my family about it. And let's just say I was outvoted in my family as to whether or not we should proceed along these lines. You know, my kids saw what Malia and Sasha had to deal with and what they continued to have to deal with as the kids of a president. And so I had to take into consideration their thoughts, my wife's concerns, and also balance that with the involvement that I had with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. I was really concerned that I would leave this kind of in midstream. So it was a combination of my obligations to the things I'm really committed to, this anti-gerrymandering, this pro-democracy effort plus those family concerns that maybe decide to kind of pull back. It doesn't mean that, you know, I'm comfortable even to this day with that decision, but that's the decision I made.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I could find Republican partners to join in this fight with me, I put my arms around them and be more than glad to make this a bipartisan effort. But that's not where the Republican Party is.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would support a Republican candidate who was for a fair process against a Democratic candidate who was for an unfair one. I'm not here to gerrymander for Democrats. When the New Jersey Democrats tried to use the power that they had to, in essence, gerrymander the state I stood up very publicly and said that was something that I was opposed to. I've done things with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor of California. Fighting this”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you know, I actually see a continuity here. I actually see a continuation of the work that I did as Deputy Attorney General, U.S. Attorney, and as Attorney General of the United States. I am supporting candidates who will stand up for our democracy, who will stand up and protect our democracy. And I think that right now that is, again, another defining issue between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Republicans are content with being a minority party that has majority power and they are putting in place measures from voter ID, laws, unnecessary voter ID laws to using gerrymandering. to keep them keep the power that they illegitimately got in 2011 to maintain that power. And it's the Democratic Party that is saying, here's the deal. All we want is a fair shake. Let's make this a fair fight. If it's a fair fight, Democrats and progressives will do just fine. So I'm not fighting for partisan events.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, in some ways that's asking Democrats, progressives to unilaterally disarm. And I want to have sufficient resources so that I can fight what I consider to be the good fight and then change those laws, change those rules. We're not going to get help from the courts, but that's not the only avenue that we have. We have advocacy measures that we can have advocacy efforts that we can use. There are laws that we can change that would in fact require that disclosure be made, that limits be put in place.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that transparency, even if you wanted to take off the limits that people could give organizations could give, I would disagree with that. But if you said that you had to be transparent about it, that if the ACME Tool and Die company is giving so much money to candidate X, that people had to see that. And if there were lobbying organizations giving money, you had to make sure that that was transparent. I think the court in some ways, when it comes to electoral things, is naive and doesn't quite understand the reality that people face on the ground. And they have put in place a series of measures that have allowed people who don't have democracy protection as a major concern, only partisan advantage have given them an unfair advantage.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is okay. That suite of cases, I think, unfortunately is going to define the Roberts court. And the Roberts Court will be seen as not standing up for our democracy on the basis of those three decisions.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. And all of these things would have been stopped by a justice department that had the section that was taken out of the Voting Rights Act. That is going to be seen as one of the worst decisions by a Supreme Court. And it's coupled with Citizens United that lets untold amounts of money into the system. We have the Shelby County case, which guts the Voting Rights Act. And then we have this other case that says that partisan gerrymandering.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, as was predicted, and certainly if you look at Justice Ginsburg's, I think, really prescient dissent, states have gone to town and put in place a whole range of voter suppression measures that would have been objected to and stopped by a Justice Department that had a fully formed voting rights act. These unnecessary voter ID laws, the way in which you move polling places around or close polling places in certain areas. All of these things, I think.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not. I'm not a particularly bragged person, but this is one where I'd say I was a thousand percent right and my opponents were about 1,000% wrong. I mean, I had the ability to look at the case that the military made when they said we should try this case in the military tribunals and what civilian”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we've reached a tipping point not only for the people, but for people who are seeking elected office. I mean, you see Democrats now saying that we support an assault weapons ban. We support enhanced background checks where before we wrote, I think Democrats were a little too hesitant, concerned about the gun lobby. This is a defining issue for Democrats as opposed to Republicans, and I think we're going to win on the basis of being on the right side on the gun issue.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This policy, and you have these positions where 90% of the American people are for enhanced background checks, and yet they're not acted upon. And there's no political consequence to people who in office who don't follow the wishes of their constituents. That's one of the really negative impacts of gerrymandering what people are in these safe seats. So I think ultimately we're going to see movement because my guess would be that what we have certainly seen in the last month or so in El Paso and in Dayton, coupled with all the other things that we have seen, I think people are finally at a point where...”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think ultimately we're going to get movement, but it will only be because the people of the United States demand that movement occur and that the people of the United States put people in office who will stand for that change. You know, I've been fighting this whole question of gerrymandering.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there was one case early on that I got a lot of grief about where I said, in essence, that bank was too big. And I actually was concerned at that point on the basis of what we were able to glean that if we did bring a criminal case against that financial institution, given how fragile the economy was, that it could have collateral impacts beyond just the criminal case itself. It was for that reason that I reached out to our partners in the UK, in Europe, in Asia, to make sure that we no longer had to face that dilemma. And with those partnerships that we put in place, had that case come before me with those partnerships in place, the result would have been different.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, kind of level set here. First off, we got record amounts of money from the banks who engaged in these inappropriate activities and then shape those settlements in such a way that the money went back to people who were actually harmed. So that was one thing. The other thing was if we could have brought these cases, we would have brought them. I mean, people have to understand these are career-making cases. If you could have been the prosecutor who bought the case of the United States versus the head of the largest bank in the United States, that's a career-making case. And to the extent that we could have brought those cases, we would have. But the decision-making was so diffuse within these financial institutions that we didn't think that we had a basis. I put the best U.S. attorneys that I had on those cases with a thought that we were going to charge individuals and whole individuals liable.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but I made clear if he decided for whatever reason not to share that information, he was not going to go to jail as I guess a reporter had before in connection with the scooter Libby prosecution. That was not what my Justice Department was going to do. I mean, these cases, and we have to also understand we're only talking about like five to six cases. It wasn't like we had oceans and oceans, waves and waves of these cases. But given the electronic world in which we live, we now have a capacity to understand, to figure out, well, you know, somebody leaks some information, you can look at their email trail and all of that stuff and figure out who actually the leaker was in a way that we couldn't before. Now, having said all that, I thought that we needed to change the rules that we use to the procedures that we had in place to make these leak case determinations, and we changed them.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I take a little issue with this notion of threatening Ryzen with prosecution. What I said was that no reporter who was doing his or her job was ever going to go to jail for doing his or her job. Our focus was on the person who actually did the leaking itself.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, you know, it doesn't matter. Whatever it is that we propose, he's gotten something so the Democratic candidate is going to be labeled a socialist. If it's Joe Biden, he'll be called a socialist. If it's Elizabeth Warren, she'll be called a socialist. And they'll try to portray whoever the Democratic candidate is as is out of touch with the American people. And we don't need to give him stuff that's going to help him in that regard. So I hope that we'll be just, as I said, realistic, but consistent again with our progressive principles.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think that we need to look for solutions to the problems that we confront that are consistent with who we are as a party, consistent with the democratic tradition, but also the kinds of things that we're going to be able to deliver to people. People don't believe in government because they're promised so much and then we frequently don't deliver for them. And it doesn't mean that we shouldn't push for like John Kennedy. going to go, we're going to go to the moon. How are we going to do that in 10 years? Well, we did it. And there are a whole range of things that I think we can do. But I think we have to be realistic about the things that we offer to people as we are seeking their way.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Might send the wrong signal, but it would certainly take a tool away from the Justice Department that it might want to use in an individual case and for some reason. I don't know there's some trafficking, human trafficking component there. There might be some other reason why you want to prosecute somebody. But it is up to, I think, the Justice Department to use its discretion in an appropriate way. And I don't think this administration's Justice Department is doing that.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that's right. I mean, the law that is on the books has been there for about 100 years now or so, and to the extent that people are concerned about the ways in which people are being prosecuted for crossing the border for economic reasons in a non-violent way, you ought to raise that with the Justice Department. Why is the Justice Department using its precious resources to make criminal cases there? I mean, we had the ability to do that during the Obama years, and we did not.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but you know, the emphasis there was on people who had criminal records, people who posed a danger, a public safety risk. Those are the people who we emphasize as deporting. I think we have to have, you know, Democrats have to understand that we do have to have borders do mean something.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, we kept families together but realized even keeping families together on a detained basis was not something that was good for, especially for the kids in those families. And so we moved to a different policy. So mistakes were made and corrections were put in place.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the way in which we were dealing with families who were coming across and trying to keep families together in these, I guess we called them family detention centers, something like that. Those were not working out quite well. But I think the thing that people have to remember is that we changed and we didn't keep those things in place and we moved people out of them.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it was interesting. It happened on the last night of the administration. I was going to be the acting attorney general the next day. We were dealing with the inauguration of President Bush and we were concerned about his safety along the route. The call came in and I didn't do what I should have done, which was to interact with the woman on my staff who handled all things, all pardon matters and say, you know, Deborah, what do you think about this? I just made a decision where I said, you know, I'm not sure. I'm kind of for it. I didn't really kind of weigh in in the way that I should have. It's something where, as I said, I made a mistake. I blew it. I learned from that mistake. I certainly questioned about it during my confirmation hearings. And I think, although it's not something I'm proud of, I think it made me a better attorney general than I otherwise might have been.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I'd like to think that if people look at the entirety of my career, they say, you know, he did a pretty good job. But that doesn't mean that I was perfect. And I made a mistake there. That's one that I blew.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No pressure. I was cognizant of the fact that Rostenkowski was a big part of that unsuccessful effort to reform healthcare. The First Lady was leading the Hillary Clinton was leading. But the evidence against him was compelling. And I didn't think that there was any reason not to investigate and ultimately charge him with the crimes that we had proven. The Attorney General, Janet Reno, was supportive. And we never got, I certainly never got as U.S. attorney here in Washington, D.C., any pressure from anybody not to bring the case. Now, I think I can safely say that the Clinton White House did not try to bring pressure on Janet Reno. I think she would have shared that with me at some point. And so we were free to do as justice departments should be free to do, bring cases on the basis of the facts and the law.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I wanted to go to the Justice Department because I thought that being on the inside, you could have an influence on the way in which justice policy was shaped. I didn't want to necessarily be a prosecutor who tried street crime cases because I just, it seemed to me that the system was just unfair in a whole bunch of ways there. But going after politicians who had been given all the benefits that a society can give had been given the public trust and then had gone against the trust that they were given. I thought those are the kinds of cases that I could bring. I expected to spend maybe two, three years in Washington and get back to the center of the universe, which was New York, and I just never made it back.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it evolved. I was raised in a West Indian family. West Indians are generally pretty conservative, not politically, but pretty conservative people. My mother was shocked, upset, mad that I was part of that takeover. So I didn't send you to school for that. But I saw, as part of a generation that was against what I thought was an unfair, unjust war. aware of my social conscience was raised as I went through high school, especially when I got to college. And it seemed to me that I wanted to be an activist. I wanted to be a part of the change.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was an interesting time. I mean, I grew up in 1951, so I grew up in kind of the placid 50s. And then, boy, the 60s just kind of take off, I think, with the assassination of President Kennedy in November of 1963, Malcolm 65, obviously what happened in 1968. I go to college in 1969 after the riots at Columbia. And it was just a turbulent time. It was a great time.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mine said to Ricky from Cassius Clay. It was on a piece of paper torn off a paper bag that I had from the candy store. I mean, I can see it in my mind. And my mother disposed of.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, you know, and he signed an autograph for me, which I kept for years, and then my mother in one of her periodic cleanings.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and that formally changed his name to Muhammad Ali. And he was there and he was signing autographs and just interacting with us. And it was kind of a bit of a smart ass kid. And if people remember during the weigh-in with Sonny Liston, his heartbeat was very high. People are nervous. And I said to him, I said, I was 12 years old, so I was a kid. I said, so were you scared of Sonny Liston? And he towered over me.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a great story. Malcolm X lived on 97th Street. I lived on 101st Street, so four blocks away in East Elmhurst, New York. Zip code 11369. And I was in a candy store right up the street from Malcolm X's house, and my brother came flying in and said, hey, cash is clay. Is that Malcolm X's house? I'm like, get out of it. He said, no, he is. So I ran out. And there was, in fact, Cash Clay. He just won the title against Sonny Liston and had not”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think that's right. And I actually think if I was giving her some political advice, I'd say to own that, don't try to quibble about it. Yeah, I was a prosecutor. I was therefore the protection of the people of San Francisco and California. And I did so in a way that was consistent with this notion of progressivism and fairness.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think those things can be raised. It's then for him to explain and to, as I've just said, say, well, I might have been wrong then, but this is where I am now. And you judge me on the entirety of my career. And that's true of everybody. You know, I think Kamala Harris has been unfairly maligned as being a prosecutor, you know, as if that is something somehow that is disqualifying. Sure.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's right. And I think people evolve. And we're talking about some of the things that he said or did 30, 40, 40 years ago or so ago. I don't think that there's any basis for people to believe that a President Biden would be less committed to civil rights enforcement than President Obama was. Now, I'm not endorsing him, but I'm just saying that people...”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, all the things that you can say about Barack Obama, I think you can say about Eric Holder in terms of political opposition. A lot of it was about the change that we presented. For me, it was probably I was a lot more outspoken, I think, than maybe the president was. But I wonder also about this notion of, again, this implicit thing that was in the minds of some people.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While the president was speaking. I really wonder if that had been a white president, would he have thought that that was appropriate? Now, again, I don't think that he's thinking I'm standing up here because there's a black guy there, but at some level of his consciousness, I'm wondering if he thought to himself.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, we are familiar with this notion of implicit bias, and I think there could be implicit political opposition that is race-based. And again, these are not things that are front of mind for people who might think they're just acting in a political way. But the vehemence with which he was opposed, the things that were said about him, you know, I guess Congress's name was Joe Wilson.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an interesting question, and I've wrestled with that. It was certainly a political dimension to it, but I wonder how much of that that comes off as political in the back of the minds of people who were not overtly racist, how much of that was in fact racially motivated. They looked at this guy and said, you know, he's different.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it was one of the reasons why I left the bench as a judge. I only served for five years. I was a judge here in Washington, D.C. during the crack wars when Washington, D.C. was the murder capital of the country on a per capita basis. And I had coming before me every day, just these waves and waves of young black guys who I had to send to jail, many of whom, as I read their backgrounds, were similar to me, grew up in similar kinds of conditions now, just uncomfortable doing that. It's why I decided to become U.S. attorney to be on the side of making determinations about who I was going to prosecute and prosecute them for what, ask for what kinds of sentences. I mean, we need to hold people individually accountable for the things that they do. But we also have to take into account as we use the power of the justice department, of our justice system, these systemic factors that tend to breed crime and that put people at disadvantages and push”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's one of the things that I would hope the next Democratic president will talk about to make people understand that white workers have more in common with their black and brown counterparts than they do with the fat cats, you know, the special interests who this administration represents. I understand how this president has been successful in dividing us. I think the next president is going to have to hopefully be equally successful in making people understand that there are things that unite us regardless of race and on the basis of economic condition, economic deprivation that should bring people of all races together.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that we need to be sending out checks to people, but I think we need to take into account, first of all, there's the bill in Congress. Let's study what the impact of slavery and segregation has been on African Americans, on the nation. What's the impact now in 2019? So I think we should have that study. And on the basis of that study make determinations about measures that ought to be put in place to deal with the present day impacts of these historical wrongs.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People here enslaving them 250 years of slavery, 100 years of legal segregation in essence, an American apartheid system. We still are feeling the impacts of that in 2019. I think people need to acknowledge that. I see Mitch McConnell saying, well, you know, I wasn't alive when the slavery was going on. So what does this talk of reparations all about? Well, hey, guess what, Mitch? You were alive during the era of legal segregation when people got advantages and people looked like me were held back simply because of the color of their skin. So there's a reckoning, I think, that this nation has to make about racial matters.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting. I actually think that with the anniversary, the 1619 anniversary, the first Africans brought to this country as slaves, we're beginning to have the kind of deep conversation about race that I think that we for too long have avoided. What I said in that speech is that we become expert at avoiding these difficult, painful questions around race. And I understand how difficult it is and how painful it is. But if we ever want to get to the place where we need to be around things racial, we're going to have to have these conversations and on the basis of those conversations, take concrete actions.”
2019-09-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 347 – Eric Holder (TV) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source