YouSaid · the spoken record

John Weaver

lines on the record
66
first
2016-11-07
most recent
2016-11-07
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

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

  1. “Probably half at least. I mean, you care about the party. You've invested your whole life in politics and the party. We need a viable two-party system that is honorable. I want to oppose Hillary Clinton's policies and the policies of the people that you've helped elect for the right reasons and not because... We read about on Twitter today and those things.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Well, look, I mean, he, in our view, at least, he grees the wheels for much of what happened with Trump. He was so concerned about Donald Trump running as an independent that he forced a pledge upon the rest of the field. not speak out against the tone and rhetoric and wrong headed policies of Donald Trump throughout the primary system, and he called the race over in the fourth quarter. I think the Bernie Sanders people may have complaints about Debbie Washerman Schultz, but I don't recall her doing something like that.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, maybe three weeks ago, and we had a pretty strong response back to him about that. I don't expect it to be at the organized national level, but look, as you know, if you stake out a position based on principle that runs against The thought within your party You're going to pay a price for it. Does Governor Kasich think that he's not going to pay a price for not attending the convention, for speaking out against both the tone and the policy differences that he has with Donald Trump? Sure he does. But he doesn't care about that.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Well, I could see it, but that's what I get paid to do. Of course. I mean, the people around him want him to run again. And, you know, our party, as you've seen, we're devoid of surrogates at the national level this cycle. Next to the speaker, he's been the guy most in demand to campaign around the country. He's cutting TV commercials today for 10 U.S. Senate candidates. So could I see him doing it again? Yes. Could he? I'm not sure he's there yet.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Well, as you know, David, you can't make a plan about running for president this far out, and it would be foolhardy to do so. And certainly the governor's not done so. Now, he has signaled, and I expect to see him put both feet into this fight about the heart and soul of the party, which will not be for the faint of heart. I do expect to see him do that. He is going to work his hell off to help the president pass TPP and the lame duck if we can get it up. And he has two more years as governor, and he intends to be as innovative and inclusive and hopefully as a successful in his last two years as he has been in his first six. Those are things that are on his agenda right now.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I could see that. It would not be good for the party because you look at what's behind him. It's not healthy. But I could certainly see that. There was a story today, and hopefully it's not true, that the Trump forces, the Troika around Trump might ask the House not to ratify the results of the election.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Well, he has the worst job in the world. There's no doubt about it, and it's going to Much tougher post election. One, I don't think Trump's going to go quietly into the night. Why would we believe that? And secondly, as you said, the base within the House, the caucus, the conference, was going to be very difficult for Paul. At the end of the day, Paul, my advice to Paul, if you ask me, would be to thine own self be true. And hopefully he does that because that's better for the party and better for himself. But I don't know how he's going to manage that idiom while staying as speaker.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “That's what we're dealing with. But instead of, you know, obviously Joe Stalin wouldn't be conducting himself the same way Vladimir Putin is. But that's where we are as a party. And the damage done demographically and to our long-term chances, not just on whether we can win national elections and be a governing party, but how we conduct ourselves as a party and how we can appeal to people and what we stand for as people. That's the crisis that we're in. If we can fix those, elections will come later.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Pragmatic, and I suspect, certainly don't know this, that she will put Republicans in a box because she'll move to the center and find some issues that you would think that they would work with her on. My guess is that most of them won't, and that it'll cause problem. Back to our party, we're in an existential crisis in our party. Imagine if Joe McCarthy was the nominee of our party in nineteen fifty two.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “That is, absolutely. So to your point, yes, it's going to be easy to do that. Now, Secretary Clinton, they had a view of her similar when she was elected to U.S. Senate, and she surprised people by her ability to work across the aisle, by her willingness to roll up her sleeves and get things done. And you and I were talking earlier what fits within her wheelhouse is not being the eloquent visionary, but being the... That gets things done”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, you have been devoid of ideas really since the Reagan administration as a party. That's a long time And we've been running on Reaganism since then. and not applying conservative principles to the issues and concerns that people care about, whether it's student debt or climate change or any number of issues.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Well, let me take the governance part first. Because while it's impossible to see how well it's going to go, it's the easier of the two questions. I believe she's going to win an electoral landslide and be the most unpopular president-elect in our nation's history, which is quite the paradox. And unfortunately, Instead of seeing this as an opportunity for the Republicans to do a little self introspection, a chance to look beyond ourselves and to play and to rise to the moment which would help us grow nationally The instinct will be to Not to govern and to cause problems above and beyond being just the normal loyal opposition ideologically.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “While the Hispanic population and the Asian population, along with the normal demographic changes that we're seeing with younger voters, etc, catching up in Texas now, Romney won by sixteen, McCain by twelve, so you would think well this is out of reach. public polling the last two weeks have had her, I think on average, behind by three points. The Clintons have a long fascination with Texas because they both work for George McGovern in Texas in seventy two. And having been governor of Arkansas, they have a lot of ties there from their days in Little Rock. I don't believe it, but it wouldn't shock me if he lost because I don't think he's finished trying to boil our base down. He has another two weeks to see if he can't quite get the scientific project to its full completion.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “In the world that we live in today? Yes, I think so. I think she'll win Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin. Arizona, Colorado. I don't know about Utah, but I think Trump could finish third in Utah.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Well, it certainly appears from everything that I'm reading and hearing and seeing that she has a significant national. You and I care more about electoral votes, and I think she's going to be.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “He's getting the vote he's getting on top of that are lawyer Republicans, people who just can't make themselves be for Secretary Clinton or can't see another route, quite frankly. But it's about 25% of our party, and it's a significant part.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “and technology. You know, it fits into what we already know about the growing gaps between the haves and the have-nots, people that don't have access to education, they don't have the same access to their government. It follows along with Becoming more cynical about all the things that they used to believe in, whether it was their church or their bank or their government, or what have you. They've been disappointed every step of the way, and then you have a party who's misled them for the last twenty years about the things that they're going to change in Washington with no intention of changing them, and knowing that they can't change them. And so it all boiled up into kind of a cynical stew, I'd say that represents about 25% of our party.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And you know, we've seen this throughout American history when there's economic anxiety. George Wallace drew crowds like this. It wasn't just economic anxiety. People feel lost. With themselves and where they fit into the world. And then when you have good demagogues who play under that, it's easy for them to be motivated. We know who they are. And unfortunately, they've been taken advantage of, most of our white high school educated men. our party that feel as if the country's moved in a direction they're not comfortable There are unhappy or uneasy about their place in the world, as globalization has taken effect.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And we thought, quite frankly, that we had him in a situation because he refused to start debating with us near the end of the primary when it narrowed down to three people, that if we could get crews out of the race, which crews agreed to the deal about Indiana, The campaign in Indiana exchange that we would take Oregon and Washington, et cetera. That we could get Donald Trump one-on-one. Now, the odds are that we might not win, but we could have forced a contested convention.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “It was probably November, December. We went after him first. 2015. We went after him first. We also understood and planned that we could get to a contested convention. We could beat him there. And we were on track to do that. There was a lot of people criticizing why are you still in the race, but the thought was, you know, the race is extended until there's a nominee, not just because the primary season or the caucus season, until you have actual delegates voting for the nominee. And it was also clear that as long as the field was You know, twelve people, eight people, six people, that he was going to get his thirty to forty percent of the vote in every caucus or primary. He had his floor, so we had to narrow the field.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “He was. It's really breathtaking. Now, we went on TV early for Kasich. Went on TV in July and August in New Hampshire. As I told him, we do that. We're going to be in the teens by Labor Day, and you'll be treated differently. And we ran in the clear. Nobody else went on the air. We got in the teens, and he was treated differently. And I'm glad we did because television does move, as you know better than anybody. Ken move numbers when you're not fighting the clutter of post-Labor Day earned media. I mean, Trump got tremendous coverage Is it a fair, unfair? It was the way it was.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “For hours this didn't happen, they wouldn't do it. And it wasn't because Trump was in the lead at the time when he got in. He was at twelve. Then they started covering. I mean, what we live in now can't do anything about it is some of the decision makers in the media make more money when the ratings go up. Maybe there's nothing wrong with that. That's not the way it used to be. That's the way it is today. I'm not whining about it. It doesn't mean it's rigged. It is what it is. But he also, you know, Trump went out and won the primary. Nobody's saying he didn't win it”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Could have done Well, it's not the other campaigns did the same thing, and they wouldn't take people on the air. Now there's some revisionism going on among some of our friends in the media about how tough they were on Donald Trump in the primary. People that I have a lot of respect for, and that's just not quite true. They wouldn't allow anybody else to call in on their Sunday shows or their morning shows, and they certainly didn't carry other candidates, rallies live.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Well, again, it gets back to who's making the definitions. I know he would say, and I would say he is a conservative because he takes problems and he solves them as opposed to putting your head in the sand and having ideological tests that doesn't move the ball forward. Our path was pretty straightforward. We had to do well in New Hampshire. We had to do well in South Carolina and Michigan. We did well in New Hampshire. Now what we didn't bargain for, and no one bargained for this was that Donald Trump would actually run. that he would have this bargain with the cable networks. Have $2 billion in free coverage. A strong second place finish coming from 13th place would get no coverage. That's not what's happened historically in a state like New York.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “There is a large independent, but there's also the voters up there take it very seriously, and John Kasich is a guy who, if you get to know him very well, wears well. But David, I'm at a place in my life, and maybe you are too, that you want to work for people that you believe in and that can win a general election, but can also govern. I've stopped now working for people because I need the money or any of those other kind of reasons. I have that luxury now. So I'm working for people that I could vote for. So I look in John Kasich. He's a guy, and now I've gotten to know him extremely well. He's a guy who not only could win a general election, he could unite disparate parts of the country, and he could govern in a way that would make people proud”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “I looked at the field and I thought, Here was a guy who in the time of economic anxiety because of his background could connect with people. He was the perfect candidate to win in New Hampshire, do well in New Hampshire. He could govern.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “No, no, look, I think Romney pretty much occupied a lot of that same space in the primary, quite frankly. because the Romney of two thousand eight where he had run hard to the right against McCain in the primary, he had moved more center-right preparing for the 2012 battle. Now, he gave away some things that he didn't need to do, particularly on immigration. But he occupied that space. For someone like John Huntsman, I think it takes more ramp space than he had, quite frankly, to do this. It wasn't a particularly strong field in twelve, as I recall, but Romney pretty much occupied that space.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “That crash, and then you had Governor Palin as a running mate. But I think you could have made it more competitive, and I think everyone associated with the campaign would have felt better about themselves if you run a big campaign. The way to beat Barack Obama is to be bigger than him, not to be smaller.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Well, it is, and it was hard to watch because look. There are two John McCains, like there are two David Oxrods, there's two John Weavers. There's a big one we want to live up here. Sometimes we live here, sometimes we live in the basement. We don't want to live in the basement, do we? But sometimes that happens. Look, I think that John McCain of 2000, the big John McCain, the John McCain who might not have selected Sarah Palin, might have given Barack Obama a better run for his money.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “And I just want to look, it was a difficult. He asked me to stay on. We had a totally different view of where to take the campaign. Terry Nelson and I wanted to break from the White House and start talking about the economy in a way that was different than what the White House was talking about. Others wanted to go in a way that was more in tune with President Bush. It was a basic disagreement. And once he made that decision, that's it. It's his campaign.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “It was It was a 13 year marriage that was time to come to an end. You know, we had people on the campaign team. The center would come to me and go, why are these three people always calling me, criticizing what's going on? Does that represent a split in the campaign? And I would say if you have 97 people here and three people here, why are you representing that as a split? Many of the people who ultimately ended up in and around Donald Trump were involved in that. I will say that the senator, the senator. Just felt like he needed to make a change”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Okay, so that was hurting us with independent voters. And he was the lead author of McCain Kennedy Immigration Reformers. Twice, one time we passed it out of the Senate, second time we failed, which was a scourge with base voters and the radio talk show hosts. So we were getting killed on both sides. We were losing independent support, and then we were being hurt with our base. And for the nominal frontrunner, that was a very difficult place to be. So in his mind, I don't know that he saw that he was taking the accommodating route because fighting. For the surge against Rumsfeld at the time, And then fighting for immigration reform against the base of our party. He thought he was taking on a lot of water, and he was.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Right. So I called Mark and said, it's crazy to have John McCain on the sidelines when he can help you. And he arranged for Mark and Carl Roven, myself to have some coffee outside the White House where we cleared this up. And got John on the road for the president. And I think it made a big difference for him, ultimately. He did come around on the tax cuts, even though he had been critical of him before. But then going into 07, you have to remember that he was for the surge when it was not very popular.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “I think to some degree it's fair. I mean, we started that in 2004. Looked at the landscape and the president was having a very difficult time, as you may remember, and there was talk about dumping Cheney from the ticket. And Senator McCain's numbers were still high. I called Mark McKennon and said, it's crazy that.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “And it keeps people away. You know, I've gotten death threats. I don't take them seriously. The family takes him seriously, because these are cowards who live in a basement or something, but it's not a good place now.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “It's even worse now, though, because at the time, while we were in tough races like South Carolina. took it personally and people would say bad things about you. Nothing like what's being said now on social media. That damage to families in politics is very corrosive.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Well, it's a touchy subject because I look back now and speak for myself. You put things as a priority at the moment of your life that with history and reflection would not be the most important. Have a fantastic daughter who's twenty two. Syracuse graduate in Los Angeles making her own way And I didn't give her the time that she needed. Now we're closer today, but I didn't give her that time. And my first wife passed away with multiple sclerosis. So it was tough. And in hindsight, and I tell this to young people who get involved in politics now, don't make gods of the people you work for. Don't put people on pedestals. Give it your all, but make sure you prioritize what's important.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “And then by the time you get to the 2004 Convention, it looked like John could run again. So I resumed activity running that effort.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Well, that was later he did work with Senator Kendi on a whole host of issues, though. He came back at the time he was the most popular political figure in the country, and up until nine hundred eleven there was talk about whether or not he could run against the president or primary, because, you know, september tenth, President Bush's approval rating was low thirties. 9 11 changed all that as it should have. It was a pretty tough time, though. The Bush White House leaned on my clients, called my clients, told them they couldn't use me. So I briefly switched parties. Because we had worked with Dick Eppard and others, and I became close with Dick, but at the same time I came down with leukemia. And so I was in and out of treatment for the next three years, basically.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Work my business He decided to go back in the Senate though, and he wanted to pass the legislation that he cared about. So I stayed on with his pack and led the effort on McCain Gold, which we... Which we passed. We had to get a discharge petition in the House, and you know how hard that is. had to get signatures to get something to the floor. But we got that passed and with enough public support we had town hall meetings around the country forced the president to sign it, which he did in the middle of the night. And he worked on Patients' Bill of Rights, which was passed through the Senate, etc.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Probably, yeah, because of a resource allocation. That night, I gathered our team and said we're going to go kick their ass in Michigan. And Michigan was a pretty tough race, but we won that 55-45. But at that point, John had decided he was going to live within McCain Fine Gold rules, even though the other side was not. And so there was just no way that we could live off of hard dollars while the Bush campaign was living off anything that they could get. So it dragged on until middle of April, but it was done for.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “It is. It is. It was. It was a political position. And I remember the day Bob Schieffer interviewed him on Face the Nation, I believe. And John got up and made his statement. He looked like he was back in Hanoi. So he kind of gave it away as it was anyway. We lost South Carolina, we won Michigan. But, you know, to beat Bush, we had to knock him out in three rounds, not win two of the first three.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “He did. He did. He took a political position, which we recommended that he did, quite frankly. It was the wrong thing to do. He went back and apologized. We felt like we had too much going on with everything else to take that on as well.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “I'll just say that the phone calls were made and leaflets passed out that he had a daughter. with a hooker from the Philippines and yet they have a daughter with dark skin that they had adopted from Bangladesh, who was with us on the campaign trail, and so they would use that as evidence of the daughter that he had from that. Lia And you had the battle with the Confederate flag going on at the same time. It was a really toxic stew.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Yes, great guy. So we get to South Carolina and you grew up in Texas, you're in a tough campaign. You learn to give and to take and you have to grow thick skin. But what we endured and what he and his family endured is something that really seared me, quite frankly. The scale of the nastiness, the personality.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Campaign Finance Reform. And so we had every special interest entity spending money against us, tobacco. Religious leaders like Jerry Falwell and Rubber Robertson, whatever, spending money against us, I think in South Carolina we were outspent 36 to 36 million to 6 million. On the night of the New Hampshire, on the afternoon of the New Hampshire primary, Tim Russell gave us the exit polls, and so we went up to tell John the outcome, and he said, great, what's going to happen next? And we said, both Salter and I, and Unison said, the piano is going to fall off.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “He was very quotable. He was very quick. He's a very smart man. And so we turned that into a fourteen hour roving press conference, basically. Look, we were being outspent six to ten to one. So it was our way to compete. And the bush campaign decided to put George in a bubble. Which is the worst thing they could do. I don't know that they didn't have confidence in them or they did something just totally opposite of what we were doing. But, you know, we were able to take New Hampshire and win by nineteen points. And at one point, we traveled 66 to 3. So, you know, you had to feel good about something like that”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “which we dreamed up over a glass of bottle of Merlot one night about how to what do we name this bus. You know, it happened by accident. I like to say that was planned out, but we decided to do a bus tour in New Hampshire. We need to get some traction there, and we invited the press on. Because McCain, while he had low name ID nationally, 3%, because of who his father was, having been a prisoner of war, Him coming back. He knew some of the Bigfeet reporters. Johnny Apple. He had got great press relationships. Beyond what we had, and they wanted to ride with him. They wanted to be with him. Today, people would be pretty cynical about”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “We had a, you know, we're not. frenemies i guess is a way to put that Kind way to put it. I didn't think that George ultimately would run. Was wrong about that, but Governor Bush did call me. In 1999 and asked me while I was working for John Caine. I told him I thought that Senator McCain would make a great president had nothing to do with. But that was a tough race, good race.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “We had heard rumours of that, and quite frankly, having known this. Having known George a long time, I couldn't imagine that, to be honest with you. But, you know, he had his team, Carl Rove was his strategy.”

    2016-11-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 94 - John Weaver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source