YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeff Zeleny

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2024-01-25

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2024-01-25

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1. “It's great to see you, David. Likewise, on all of that, it's good to watch this campaign together. So thanks very much for having me.”

   2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Historical reference, he's going to be in court so much. So I'm not sure that it matters in that respect because every day he's at the federal courthouse. If that case goes forward, if the Georgia case does, and he'll be able to just make his appearance there. But I think the independent voters that we talk to here in New Hampshire, you know, they will certainly have wise lessons and thoughts come six and seven months from now. And anyone who says how this election is going to go, who knows? Buckle”

   2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Sure, I think there's definitely something to be said for that argument by gaining strength in the primary, even if it's not that much of a contest going forward. I think it's still better, of course, for him to notch these wins. Like if this race does effectively become a rematch, this will be the earliest effective start to the general election in modern history. I mean, back in 04, it was early March. So look, I think it can play both ways for him. I'm not sure history is the best guide here because we have no.”

   2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Who knows? I mean, I think the campaign would have played out in a more competitive way. I think that people, many Republicans would have had more of an interest in moving on. But perhaps the die was cast actually much sooner than all this. Perhaps the die was cast at the end of January 2001 when Speaker McCarthy went back to Mar Lago and Donald Trump was no longer ostracized and he was still sure that he controlled the Republican Party. So I don't know. I mean, I think the indictments, or you could ask, what if there was one indictment? It was the Jack Smith one and not four of them. There was sort of an overkill sense among many Republicans and others that there was so many indictments. This is starting to look odd. We'll never know. But it's also difficult to beat an incumbent. I mean, for all the ink we've spilled on how bad the Dezantus campaign was, and you could write a book.”

   2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “President Biden's numbers, he became weaker, and Trump grew stronger. And those are very two connected things. So when it was no longer seen by many Republicans that Trump couldn't win in their eyes, and we'll see, we don't know the answer to that question. That made him stronger. So even people, I would check back within Iowa, even as recently as last week, many people didn't vote for him who we talked to, but nearly all of them say, oh, I'll support him in a general election. So that is kind of the Republicans and Democrats are going to their corners here. But I think the biggest way to explain what happened with Trump over the past year is just the he became, he weaponized his indictments as a victim. And at the same time that President Biden was having many challenges.”

   2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “I think that the Trump fatigue that was very real, and we're just talking Republicans here. Never mind the Democrats. They can sit and watch this for a second. But the Republicans, the Trump fatigue among Republicans was very, very real at the beginning of this presidential cycle and certainly in the halls of Congress, in Iowa, New Hampshire, other places, it changed. Something over the last year dramatically changed. And you can really market on your calendar when those first indictments happen with Alvin Bragg in Manhattan and then moving forward to Georgia and then the Jacksmith Federal case. And it had this rallying around Trump effect, largely because of where people get their news and information, largely because there was just so much people conflated all of this. At the same time, one of his biggest arguments was that, or excuse me, one of the biggest arguments against him was that he couldn't beat Biden, that began.”

   2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “For sure. Look, I've covered presidents, a friend of mine in the secret service always says we protect who you elect. And we cover who you send us. I covered President Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden. And we'll see after this. So I did not want to change how I do my job based on the person in office. We ask tough questions. We hold people to account. You must change, you know, obviously with the time and technology, but I so was I, you know, I was not the flashiest White House reporter in some respects in the Trump era, but I really, like my very good friend Caitlin Collins, when she came into the White House booth for the first time, so prepared and thinking of questions, we always just talk substance and had a running list of questions on the wall in our White House booth, like what we should ask the president. So you have to balance the vitriol and not being drawn into this. But I firmly believe that we are observers in this process. We are not.”

   2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “As we look going forward, I think it's also clear do not allow yourself to be to the extent that it's possible his opposition because that's not our role.”

   2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “I covered the White House for the first half of his first term, then I moved back to politics. But I was there every day, went to all around the world with him, generally very gracious and interested in having his words on television, but also very pointed and vindictive in other things when you're not reporting what he views as the positive news. But I think that now one constant in all of this is that I've made clear, at least I've tried, one of my goals is we're observers in this process. We're there to chronicle, tell stories, hold people to account. We are not actors in this process. He very much wanted to lure CNN and other reporters into being his opposition. I'm not his opposition. He called us the enemy. That was, I was trying, you know, some reporters took different approaches to that, but very much tried to make this not about us. And I think that that.”

   2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Yeah, it's true. And anyone who works at the New York Times certainly wouldn't be our good friend Maggie Haberman knows well that the former president is very attuned to what's on the front page and what's not. But look, I think that he has in many ways been very successful in discrediting local institutions, just core parts of our system, including the Fourth Estate, including the press. But he privately, he, you know,”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “On that day. And we did write a story in The Times. I got a furious phone call from Michael Cohen, who of course was then Donald Trump's fixer. And he said, Mr. Trump is furious that your story is not in the front page. I think it was on page like A24 or something, you know, like New York Entertainer comes to New Hampshire. Anyway, so that point, he said he's furious it's not on the front page. I was kind of amazed it was in the paper at all because he wasn't running for president, but we went up there to kind of see the phenomenon. So that was my first interaction with him. I remember something very clearly that really gets to your point about how of a consummate media consumer and manipulator and operator Donald Trump is of the media is in 2015, like I said when he was at the Iowa State Fair, it's the first time I had a chance to interview him when I was at CNN. And after it was over, and he was being very friendly to the media then. He loved it. And he said, I've always want to ask you, he's like, why the hell did you leave the New York Times? It's the best paper in the world. And I'm standing there holding a CNN microphone.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Well, my first interaction with Donald J. Trump was back when I was at the times when he was flirting with the idea, one of his many flirtations of running for president. And he flew up to New Hampshire during the Obama administration in 2011. The whole birth certificate thing was raging, et cetera. But it was on that too.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “I'm sure. But I do remember, I'm like, guys, there's something happening out here that the polls haven't picked up yet. There's just something happening. So it's different in this race, in this current present-day race, because there is a quasi-incumbent who is probably on the verge of running against a current incumbent. So it's different. But again, voters are one constant. And I think it's imperative that we listen to them.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “For sure. And that is so clear. You know, you can see things happening in real time. And then, you know, it hasn't happened yet in Congress or your editors haven't seen it yet, et cetera. Obama was a good example of that. For years, the people in the newsroom in New York and other places just assumed that Hillary Clinton would win. And they weren't. I'm like, guys, something's happening on the ground here. And that didn't mean that I was cheering for Obama, as you know. We quarreled many, many, many times and he thought I was too snarky and other things. So I was not his favorite. And I was just fine with that.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Angry on immigration. I think it's just such an interesting way to sort of get at least a bit of a sense of what's going on, just a focus group in real time”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “It's still what's so important is just to take a minute and get the context. But more than that, it's just to listen to people. One of the things I love most about my job, and I've been able to do it a lot this past year, is really listen to voters. And when you listen to voters, you really get a much better understanding of what's going on. That sounds obvious since voters are the ones who vote. But I see a lot of reporters just like rushing off to the next thing. There's not time. Always make time to listen to voters. And I have a great sidekick on the campaign trail, Bonnie Capp, who's my longtime friend and producer. And Bonnie. Yes, and yours. And Bonnie will watch people throughout a rally. And at the end, she'll be like, we want to talk to her and her. I'm like, how do you know? She's like, just how they were paying attention or if they weren't paying attention or if they were plotting. So really like studying the crowd and how they're reacting to the candidates, if they're clapping on Social Security, if they're looking.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “It is just a fast moving car versus just a bicycle. And that makes it sound a little quainter than it was. I mean, we've always moved fast, but there's far less time to think. And I think there's far less time to listen. I don't think we're any more informed because of this. I don't think our citizenry and the electorate is more informed, probably less informed, despite all the information at their fingertips. So I think as a reporter, I'm constantly in awe by all of the people on our CNN team and the other networks and newspapers, just the younger reporters. We call them embeds who have to file video constantly and write stories constantly. And how can you possibly have time to think? So it's great training for things, but it is really hard to sort of synthesize everything in a respect in real time. But I think what is...”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Yeah, right. So it was different in many, many respects. But one of the reasons he didn't win Iowa in 2016 is because he didn't sort of take the caucus organization process seriously. That was entirely different this time. He certainly did.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Without a doubt, and I think that that wasn't that long ago. But boy, the campaign trail has changed significantly. There was no social media in that campaign, no Twitter. Really, Facebook was still just used by college kids, no Instagram. So it made covering things totally different. But I absolutely think that Iowa and just that grassroots process, wherever it is, is so good for our country and democracy. And this isn't a partisan thing. I saw George W. Bush do similar things eight years before that. We saw a lot of candidates do it. It's one thing that Trump certainly bypassed this time. And when he was running the first time in 2015, 2016, he didn't do small events like that, but he did retail and he was very, very good at it. When he first arrived at the Iowa State Fair in 2015, he was the main event, the main attraction. So he did not have the same questions from people.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “And it was an amazing thing to watch. And frankly, at the beginning, he wasn't so good. By the end of the Iowa caucus campaign, he had gotten markedly, markedly better, at least in the voters' eyes. And it was because of that rigorous obstacle course he had to run through.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Candidates asking them questions, and it really was a front row seat to how we pick our presidents. And so I'm very biased on one thing, and that is the Iowa Caucuses, at least it was a very good opportunity for individual citizens to ask their potential leaders questions. Now it's changed a bit, things have become much more nationalized. You feel that these cafes and schoolhouses are more backdrops now of a larger campaign. But at the time today, you really could see the value of this. And then going on to a couple of cycles down the road in 2008, when you were obviously on the Obama campaign, but not for Iowa, Senator Obama would probably still be a senator or would have moved on to something else. He won the Iowa Caucuses because he won people over person by person, expanded the electorate.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “I was interning at the Chicago Tribune right after college and a job offer came open at the Des Moines Register and I jumped at the chance to do it. I was the courthouse reporter, but also it was about a year before the 1999 2000 caucus cycle started, which with George W. Bush and Steve Forbes, the Caster Republicans, Al Gore, Bill Bradley, a wide open race on both sides. So I was at the register for a little under four years, but I hit it during that caucus window. And boy, it was great. It was back when newspapers were still, you know, the dominant source of information and really made lifelong source relationships and friendships with many people who went on to serve in the Bush administration. It's when I first met Governor George W. Bush and a lot of his advisors and things. But the Iowa caucuses, I fell in love with them instantly because there were people in small towns and big towns coming out to see the”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “No, I left the band behind after two years as a trumpet player. I wanted to focus on my journalism. So those days were over, but did not revoke my football tickets. But it was definitely a good experience for it. And it was actually the first time I was ever on television too. I was interviewed by ESPN back when I was in college. And yeah, seems like a very, very long time ago, but certainly good training for the years to come. Like I said, the other battles that we currently wage.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “These were back during my heady Nebraskan days. And look, that's back when Nebraska was a winning football program, which is a little bit in the rearview mirror. But look, we did challenge authority then. Nebraska won three national championships when I was in college. So I was there at a great time. But with that, there were also a lot of players who were arrested for attempted murder charges, robbery charges, sexual assault charges. So we covered that very, very, very aggressively. And it did get me crossways with Tom Osborne, the legendary football coach, who went on to run for governor and then served as a congressman, a very, very decent man. But at the time, he essentially was the most powerful person in the state. And as student journalist, we relished the idea of sort of butting heads with him and the athletic department. It was great fun. And good practice as it turns out for things to come in the future.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “I just love the news. Politics was part of it. But even before I really liked politics, I just liked knowing things first. I liked the curiosity factor of finding things out and telling people stories. I think probably somewhere down the line, you know, we all have relatives who are good storytellers. I had this uncle Milo, who I remember well, such a good storyteller. And I just liked telling people stories, finding things out, causing a little bit of trouble, perhaps, you know, for what you did.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “It's very easy to identify, in my mind, when he's having one of those moments. And I think that now that this is out there more in the public discussion, it's not that he doesn't know what to say. And you can just see him adjusting on the fly, you know, not starting sentences with a D word, a hard consonant, sort of changing up as he's going. I mean, we've seen plenty of his gaffes. I mean, there is a, you know, a long record of his gaffes, not recently going back for years, but you can tell when it's something like this. You can tell when it's just a blockage. And I think that that is just something that has become much more obvious. And it's not obviously not debilitating, but it certainly is ability or it's a moment that people mock and make fun of. So I definitely always have my eye on those. There are plenty of things to criticize any president for the record if they've lived up to their promises.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Was actually a few years after I joined CNN, I think, and it was on Labor Day now that I'm thinking about it, Labor Day at a Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh pulled me aside. We were doing an interview. And he said, gosh, I've seen you on TV. And he's like, that's a really big move that you made. And he's like, you know, I love watching you and talked about his stuttering issue. And I didn't, as I told John Hendrickson, I've kicked myself a million times thinking, God, I should have done that story. But again, I would have been A, not wise enough, or written it as well as John did. But I was afraid to talk about it. And I think that John's story and the Biden campaign almost didn't let that story happen. And I think it was one of the most defining stories of that campaign and certainly going forward.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “I have. I have talked to him about it. I knew President Biden when he was in the Senate. I knew him when he was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. And there was a young senator from Illinois named Barack Obama who was on that committee. And sometimes Chairman Biden would talk so long at hearings, the senators at the end of the dais would not get much time to speak. Knew Senator Biden, Vice President Biden. So, no, we have had conversations about it, and he pulled me aside once.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “For sure, like being on the set of Good Morning America in New York, and I kind of had a stammering moment. And, you know, this is network television. So they were not as forgiving. I was not on the set of Good Morning America for quite some time after that. So then you would practice. I would try and get my rest. And it comes at weird times. Like sometimes I can be as fluent as the day as long. And other times you just stumble. But I learned a lot from that. Certainly in terms of other challenges that people have, mine is pretty small. I mean, it's a first world problem stumbling a little bit. Yeah.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Career move I've ever made. I was there a couple years and I loved my time there. But I was not that great, to be honest.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “My longtime buddy, Carl Hals and I, also from Illinois, we thought that some people might drink the profit. So we decided not to do that. But the point is that the future of the print industry, even in 2013 when I went to ABC, it was uncertain. I mean, the Times was one of the best places I've ever worked. I loved working in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times. Just the mind meld and the things that you could just learn by not even saying a word, just listening was so great. But I thought, you know, a new challenge, I should diversify myself, kind of practice the old thing I saw my dad do in the 80s, diversify yourself, not just do one thing, crops or livestock, not just do print newspapers. I was definitely, I've always wanted to be a reporter, tell people stories. So I thought, why not jump at this opportunity? But I was scared to death that someone at ABC would find out that I had a speaking impediment and that I struggled to speak. And boy, it was the hardest, most humbling.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “It was exciting and terrifying, actually. It was the right after President Obama's second inaugural, I got a call from ABC News, and they wanted me to meet with the president of the news division, Ben Sherwood at the time. Wanted me to come work on Capitol Hill. And it's interesting now. The reason that there was an opening is because my friend and our colleague Jake Tapper had just left. For a couple summers prior to that, we had a couple weeks of unpaid furloughs. And we used to joke in the Washington Bureau of the Times that we should all open up a bar called furloughs. And when it was our time to have two weeks off, we would run it. Not a bad idea”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “So, I found other outlets, but speaking was not one of them. So to say that I would be basically making my career doing a combination of reporting and talking, I never would have imagined that. But it was just because of a lot of help. But my mom, Diane, is absolutely at the top of that list. So, oh, so much to her.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Yeah, so it definitely is quaint by today's standards because there's not social media bullying and other things. But no, look, I mean, it was isolating. I did not, you know, from not being able to speak up in class to not being able to, even if you know the answer to be afraid to talk, to be afraid to give book reports, it really carried with me. And even through high school and into college, I mean, it's just something that always was something hanging over to me. I was more afraid to have a public stuttering incident than being quiet. So I found outlets in other ways. I really enjoyed music and I played the trumpet in the corniscra marching band at the University of Nebraska. The only way I would get on the football field because I'm clearly not a football player.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “In every respect I was, I was teased, I was self conscious about it. I don't know if I was bullied in the sense of today's bullying because, you know, everyone, I was the youngest of three brothers. So, you know, of course.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “That was in our kitchen, and I couldn't get the words out. I literally could not say hello. I said, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, hello. And my brother Mike, who's the closest person to me in my life, he's about a year and a half older than me. He grabbed the phone out of my hand and he took care of the call. But after that, I was probably five or so. I realized that I just had a very hard time speaking fluently. So my mom really, you know, she could have left me and she could have just kind of ignored it, but really did research and spent a lot of time for years driving me an hour to Lincoln, Nebraska, to a speech clinic at the University of Nebraska. And I just spent a lot of time, it's called the Barclay Center. And those student speech pathologists and others were real heroes of mine to this day for, I don't remember their names, unfortunately, but they were graduate students and others, and they really helped me work through my stuttering.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “She was, and I'm just the biggest fan of John Hendrickson and his book. And through that, I was actually always afraid to talk about this. In one respect, I didn't want my bosses now in television necessarily to know that I stuttered. You can see it when I'm tired on TV or some other times. I still stammer and I have blockages. I mean, think back when I was a kid. The idea that I would have been a television correspondent, it would have been unthinkable. I could barely speak in fluent sentences. But because of John's great research and just like very searing stories, I actually decided that, you know, why have I been afraid to talk about, he was so courageous. And I not even a fraction of that. But what happened just briefly, I remember being a kid going to answer the telephone.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “Which wouldn't happen today probably just because of the changes. So look, I think the party, the Democratic Party absolutely, you can see it has not sort of atrophied in the rural areas because they've gained ground in the suburbs. But Tom Vilsack, now the ag secretary, and of course he was that in the Obama administration as well. I've covered him for a very long time since he was a state senator in Iowa and then ran for governor in Iowa. And I was at the Des Moines Register. And wise observations about how the Democratic Party has sort of ignored rural America. And I think that that is a lot of truth to what he says.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Without a doubt, and just like look at the map of the country, it wasn't that long ago, in fact, when President Obama was elected, North Dakota had two Democratic senators, South Dakota, one Democratic senator. Nebraska, obviously Ben Nelson, not that long before Bob Carey was govern”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “I think that he would have thought he would have been very skeptical of the lack of belief in institutions. He would have been very skeptical of the entertainer from New York who was trying to tell Red America that he understood them. I got a little bit of a window into that for my uncle, my father's older brother. He actually lived for a couple decades longer, and he died of COVID right before the 2020 election. And he was in his upper 80s living in a nursing home and he described former President Trump as a snake oil salesman. He was just an old time Democrat, but the rest of the family in the new generations are Trump voters. So just in those two generations, you sort of see the change in politics and other things. So I'm not exactly sure what my father would have thought. I'm not sure he'd be thrilled with today's Democratic Party either, but it certainly is a different time.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “He taught me so many things, but what I wonder now is what he would have thought of the state of our world and politics. He served on the school board for 12 or 14 years, was just a pillar of the community, and was a very, very decent, smart, educated in the world sense, did not have a college degree. But boy was he wise. And I really wonder what he would have thought of this moment today.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Taking a large bale of hay out to the pasture and the bale of hay, one of those big, big round ones you see in the fields if you drive through. It wasn't tied properly. And it came apart and it flipped the tractor. And it killed him pretty much instantly, just a mile and a half from our house. And they were just on the verge of retirement. And they were about to sort of, you know, set off into some travels and things. So it really was devastating for my mom, of course, for all of us. But it was definitely like life defining in terms of, you know, when anyone loses a parent, I think it just makes you feel like you're finally the adult or whatever.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “I was grown, but at the time I felt like a pretty young boy when I got that call from my brother Mike and said, our dad's just been killed in a farming accident. I remember it very clearly. I was in the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau October 26, 2002, the day after Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash. And I was working on a story for the Sunday Chicago Tribune about how this was going to dramatically potentially change the midterm election race. My longtime friend and colleague John McCormick, who's based in Chicago, was on a plane going up to Minnesota. We were co-writing this story and I get a call from my brother Mike saying, Dad died in a farm accident. And it was, you know, just unbelievable. But what happened was he was a Saturday in Nebraska right before he was supposed to have lunch with my mom. They were going to watch the Nebraska football game that day. And he was.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “I was way too embarrassed to say that when I was sitting in Manhattan interviewing for my job at the times. But now I fully embrace, I love the fact that my first daily newspaper job was at the York, Nebraska News Times. It teaches you accountability because you have to look people in the eye the next day when you write stories and things. But look, I think that we can't go back social media has been eye-opening for a variety of reasons, but you're absolutely right. It has put us in our silos”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Yeah, and I'm not sure. The voters I talk to don't necessarily, I don't know if they're looking for retribution, but they definitely, my perspective growing up having Trump voters in my family, seeing them at the holiday tables, other things, and having Democrats in my family as well, I think it does give a good perspective. I always joked when I was at the New York Times I was part of a different kind of diversity program because I went to a state school and I'm from Nebraska and was surrounded by a lot of Ivy League kids. But I think it was a big. I was too embarrassed to say this at the time when I was applying for my job at the New York Times in 2006, but my first daily newspaper job was at the York News Times, the York, Nebraska News Times. So it kind of looked like the New York Times if you looked at the masthead.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Mean without question, you know, with every presidential campaign, and this is the seventh presidential campaign I've covered, one of the great things is we learned so much about the country, about the different moment in time of the country. In the Trump era, have absolutely found myself explaining some of the grievances. And I'm not talking about Trump's grievances. I'm talking about voters. Voters feel left behind. So he actually very successfully tapped into that and poured gasoline on it or whatever other accelerant you want to think about.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “To get your news, I think has really explains a lot of our polarization right now. I mean, it was unheard of for anyone when I grew up to have cable television. Maybe the richest kid in our class, his parents had a satellite dish near the end, but that was just not the case. So there was local radio, local newspapers. That is all different now. Everyone virtually who has a television is watching national news and there's just been a death of local news and newspapers and stations. And I think that has led to a lot of our challenges with democracy and other things. But just in terms of how red and blue America view each other, it's a huge problem.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “It definitely has grown wider. I mean, just in the couple decades that I've been a professional reporter, and obviously I've lived in Washington since I moved to Washington a month before 9-11. So I've been there quite some time now. But the divide has absolutely gotten much more pronounced. And I think it's really led to a misunderstanding and a lack of appreciation on both sides from the urban America side and the rural America side. I think the biggest thing is how people get their information now is just so, so dramatically different. My first job as a newspaper reporter was at our weekly paper, the Fillmore County News. I wrote stories for them. I was probably 15. We had a weekly newspaper that doesn't exist anymore. I worked at a small daily paper. But the idea of telling stories and not just relying on the national”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Was we would keep track of the farm markets that day, what the hog price was, and we would write it down in a tablet. Whenever it was said on the new news, if it was the summertime or the evening news at night, he would have us keep track of what the price of corn was or hogs were. And that was really a sense of, you know, our first sense of this something is bigger than us and this is a global commodity. So I always relish the fact of keeping the market prices in that old notebook.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Exactly. I lived about eight miles from a small town of Exeter. I had pretty idyllic life growing up on a farm. We worked a lot on the farm. It was not my strong suit, to say the least. So I knew that I would probably always want to do something else. But look, we raised corn and soybeans and hogs and cattle. And my dad was one of the hardest working people I've ever met. Did not go to college, but read two newspapers a day and would get Newsweek and US News and World Report and Time magazine and farming magazines. So there's no doubt that my interest in current affairs and public affairs and current events came from the newspapers. And also interestingly, he was a farmer. So he weathered the farm crisis of the 80s by diversifying. And it was really my first sense really as a young kid. Every day he would have us, my two brothers and I, whoever's ever turned up.”

    2024-01-25 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 565 — Jeff Zeleny · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source