YouSaid · the spoken record

Kasim Reed

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61
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2017-03-06
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2017-03-06
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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. “Absolutely. She was in Atlanta with former Attorney General Eric Holder. But an individual like that on the gubernatorial ballot in eighteen. She's a George in America.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I love to give and take of it all. And that's what I think we need to do. And I think if we get the right person running for president, they will understand, given the fact that Ohio has become more conservative, that Iowa is tougher, and the challenges we're having in Michigan and Wisconsin I think my state's going to look better and better to him. I am thrilled about Sally Yates' seeming embrace of becoming more and more involved in politics. I haven't had a personal conversation with her, but I think an individual of her kind and caliber right now.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, but they'd have to persuade my wife Sarah and my daughter who goes to a wonderful private school. And so if they want to take that argument on after eight years as mayor, welcome to it. But I don't think that that limits my role to be an advocate. And I'm not Coy. I don't play any games about not wanting to be in politics. I'm going to be in politics, but I'm going to do so on my own terms. And I think that I've been at this eight years. The fact that Secretary Clinton didn't win, I think gives me a moment to catch my breath running the city is tough, as you know. And so I'm not playing games. I have another campaign in me. So I'm not doing these, I hate politics. I'm walking away. I don't do any of that. I let folks know because I love it. I love all of it. I love the...”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Cavalry has never come in Georgia, and so what Georgia needs is a slow old time Boston Celtics offense that walks the ball down the court and sets up a play and just believes that this can happen. And I think that because of what's happening in states like Iowa and in Ohio that Georgia is going to get more attention because Iowa and Ohio and other states are less definite. And we just got to continue to make the case and not be crybabies. You got to get in the room and make your case that if you invest in North Carolina, But from day one and planned to win Georgia, that you can flat out win it. And so I think it depends on who's running for president. But if I were running for president, I had a billion dollars to spend. I would allocate $25, $30 million. It's going to be a state that you use as a dagger in the heart of the other team.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And the result bore it out. The fact of the matter is with almost no investment, Georgia has been the second highest performing state behind North Carolina, and my belief is that Georgia is becoming more democratic leaning than North Carolina is. I think North Carolina is actually experiencing retrenchment, and so when we have a candidate for president that wants to win Georgia and spends resources like they do in North Carolina and goes for it the way the President Obama did in two thousand eight, I think we'll win it. I think organically in the November eighth elections, Georgia was coming towards Secretary Clinton with no resources on its own. That race by eleven polls had tightened to a point and a half. But you know that there is a rhythm to campaigns where when people are busting their tails on their own. the cavalry has to come.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Purple state. I think it depends on the candidate for president. I mean, I've sat with David Pluff and folks and you and others back in the day and made my case. But tactical decisions had to be made. I remember having a conversation with President Obama and Valerie and David and laying out the case for Georgia. But in the universe of decisions to be made,”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “The steps that I took maintained all of the agreements. And that's what I think other mayors and other states are going to have to do. It's a trillion dollar problem and we're going to have to deal with it because folks aren't getting seven, eight, nine percent returns out here.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So, my opinion is we got to get a deal. I believe being pro-labor is a retired employee that gets 100 cents of the dollar that you promised and I believe anti labor is having a woman that's seventy years old get a phone call and be told that her pension benefits are going to be cut in half. She has Nowhere to go. And the fact of the matter is if you had the wrong person in a job like mine, they would have used insolvency as a tool to cut benefits. And in Georgia, if you don't meet your pension obligations, it's a very simple formula. First, they take your sales tax, and second they take your charter. So it's not. I mean, you don't have a wide range of options. And so, you know, when I've been beat up on or called anti-union, I call up one of the seniors that hugs me and is getting a hundred cents. I never tried to avoid the agreements.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Dallas. I mean, you had Mayor Rawlings as a wonderful mayor, but he was on the front page of the New York Times talking about a city that's as prosperous as Dallas having to declare bankruptcy.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “You did a combination Yes, so there were employees who definitely wanted to keep their pension benefits in the past. They paid more for their pension benefits, but the city also paid more. And then we created accounts for new employees that were more for one K like. So we protected the folks that had the traditional pensions, but that wasn't the path forward going forward. And so I think our pension was half funded now. We're headed towards 80% today. And I think in the seven years I've been in office, we've gone from right above junk status in terms of our credit rating. We're now AA plus from Standard& Poor's Moody's and Fitch. And we have among the best credit of the top 10 major cities in the country.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “If I didn't do something on pensions, the city was headed towards insolvency because at that time, David, we had our pension system was on an open amortization, which meant we had a pension that was interest only loan. So we were in a deal where we was paying $100, $120 million, and we were not paying one penny towards the principal. At some time, you're going to have to close the amortization. And so when you did that, it was going to be a disaster. And so I worked at it, galvanized the corporate community, worked with my friends in the labor business who told me they were going to leave me and go get a new candidate. And at the end of the first year, we pass probably the most sweeping pension reform in the country. We did it 15.0.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “We were going through the same thing that the country went through. I mean, we were, when I walked in the door, I think we had 7.4 million in reserves, which means that we were probably under 50 million. Anytime you got 7.4 million in cash and receivables outstanding, you're underwater. And we were just in the worst of the worst of it, right along with President Obama and everybody else. And every year when my CFO was bringing in our property tax digest, we were dropping 15, 10, and 5 in year three, but always dropping. And then we had a pension that was absorbing 18% of all of the cash that was coming into the general fund, and we were certainly on a path to go bankrupt. And I had gotten elected. Which was a point in my race, and I had gotten elected with the support of labor.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “No question. I mean, it's. I mean, the amount of money that was in the music industry in the 90s and in the early 2000s was just, I mean, it was just incredible. And to look at the agreements that lawyers negotiate today. I can't imagine working on those deals.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, so now it's completely changed. You just don't have that kind of dollars. Music anymore, but you know, I think two years ago, if you look at when Puffy was getting his honorary degree from Howard, he's on the path to being a billionaire one day. I think one of the first names out of his mouth that day was mine.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “And then it was lucrative and when you're at a large law firm. If you can do a contract that's a million dollars and the fee is ten percent. It's a little bit about your billable rate. That's better than”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “At what I have and give me your ideas. And so what happened is I met a guy named Don Biederman who wrote the book on music publishing. And so he took an interest in me and started mentoring me and he had been the general counsel of Warner Chapel Music Publishing, and so he started teaching me music law. And in music, the big deal was to make sure that you never had cross-collateralization of your revenue stream. In other words, you had a lot of artists that would sign up their entertainment, their record rights away, but then they would sign their publishing rights away and they didn't know it until much later in their career when they started looking at their balance sheets. And so I really started focusing on music publishing. I had some artists that I had terrific success. And then the story kind of took off.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “It really wasn't an easy choice because if you look at my class, my classmates were dominating the music business, certainly the black music business at the time. So Sean Combs was in my class. Derek Angelietti was in my class. You just look out at the people who were coming out of Howard at that time. They were really dominant in the entertainment space. So the way it works is like this. You're a lawyer in a mainstream traditional firm and you have a friend of yours who becomes highly successful. And they just want somebody to read their material and they have fraternities. They're doing well, but they don't know and aren't comfortable if what they're being told is the truth. And I know that you've been invited in the same place. I just want you to come over and look.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I agree with you. I think technology and automation is bigger and I also think that Democrats need to get very comfortable making transition economic commitments. And just to say it in a simple way, it's me explaining to you what we can do financially to make sure that when we embrace an industry that ends your career, we're going to help you with real money and real training. And I believe that if we had talked about that for twelve months, that we could have flipped eighty to one hundred thousand votes.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “That's why when my staff completely went crazy when I supported the TPP, talked to me about how I was ending my career and all of the rest, well, there was a poet that came out last week that said millennials support global trade in excess of fifty points. It is the baby boomers that global trade only got 35% approval on. That's the baby boomer.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “But I think we blew transition economics. I think we meaning Democrats have done an awful job of talking to folks so that they don't fear changing jobs seven times they're excited about it. Nobody has a conversation about what it would feel like to be able to do something different. And I think that we've done an awful job as Democrats about being honest about the old industries and the fact that they're not coming back, but we don't talk with the kind of enthusiasm and passion that the other side does about wind and solar and its prospects. We talk about it like it's corny. It's not corny, it's dynamic, and something that you should have passionate. We're all done anyway. But we're not happy. These arguments in a dynamic passion show up at any block on any corner and let's talk all the way about it. We see it.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Because of a tweet, and he read something about something your business is doing. And in Atlanta, we've got businesses like Delta and Coca-Cola and UPS. And their lifeblood is global trade. And I was on a panel this morning with the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And the CEOs that I talk to, I mean, I took an awful beating about it, but I think the president was absolutely right on TPP. And I think that we have turned over 50% of global GDP growth over the next 40 years to the Chinese and giving them our playbook. And I think that this antitrade rhetoric that we're doing is absolutely wrong minded and the CEOs that I talk to regularly completely don't understand or don't recognize the Republican Party.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Corporate community in Atlanta is reeling from President Trump's approach to trade and the TPP. And there is a genuine fear around his level of unpredictability. Business.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “So, if you don't have to worry about keeping Republicans on board and you do a real trillion, And I know as a mayor that they've already been directly engaged in finding out what is, I don't want to bring back the term shovel ready, but shovel ready And because cities have been through this drill, there's a different level of preparation as a result of working with a very city friendly administration with President Obama. And so that's why I'm talking to you about it.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Why I'm sober. That's why I'm very sober about it, and that's why I'm talking to you about it. That's why I flew up here today. Because I don't think it's crazy. But if nobody knows it, if folks don't start developing this idea that he believes that he can blow a hole in the budget and do all of these things and just have an environment, if you look at where they moved the year for execution on infrastructure, they said we're not going to start on it until 2018. At the exact same time they're doing an analysis of why there was a lag in President Obama seven hundred eighty four billion. So I think that they don't have to worry about what President Obama had to worry about, which was the 30 to 40 percent in tax cuts that were designed to get Republicans on board. They don't have to worry about keeping Republicans on board.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “I think that, and I think that they're going to use the attempts that they're making around Obamacare to try to cut the corporate tax rate to 25 points. And so I think that that creates the environment to try to churn jobs because I believe in my gut that his gamble is, is that if everybody's working By the time reelection comes around, no matter what I have done that's inhumane, inappropriate, taking people's healthcare away to give tax cut, get the corporate tax rate down to twenty five percent. I think that he thinks that he'll do the same thing that he did on November 8th.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “And that's why I opened my comments with I believe that he thinks that as long as you win the jobs piece that he will be able to get away with everything else. So I believe that I think that they're going to have an initiative where they do a major tax amnesty. I think they believe that there's a trillion, a trillion and a half dollars worth of capital offshore. I think they think they can repatriate that. And I think out of that, they can fund the infrastructure.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “A legitimate infrastructure initiative that will result in real jobs is something that I would work on in the city of Atlanta.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “he thinks that the silver bullet to that is to push a trillion dollars in real programming the candle is going to be modeled after what President Obama did with the seven hundred eighty four billion but in a manner where you don't have the lag”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “And so I think that any infrastructure program has to be about jobs that you can verify. And so I think that President Trump is going to pursue the path that gets you to the job verification initiative because he believes that that will help him survive all of the other horrible decisions that he's making around immigration, the decision that he made his Justice Department made not to continue to take part in the Supreme Court's case involving the state of Texas, the decision that they have made to roll back protection. All of these things that are so inflammatory and so base driven the selection of his Supreme Court justice.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “You just get P3s that where the project was so Positive that it would have funded the transaction anyway. What I'm in favor of really is an infrastructure initiative that is aligned with the kind that President Obama developed, but they just don't want President Obama's name on it Meanwhile, when I have taught in the very brief conversations I've had, the 784 billion dollars that President Obama is. More than 30% of that went to tax cuts. But if you go back and pull the data, the 10% that was invested in transportation and infrastructure yielded thirty-four percent of the jobs that you could verify.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “He has he has, but you know, he's got a very simple strategy. I believe that President Trump thinks Trump thinks that if he launches a trillion dollar initiative and pushes the trillion dollars in infrastructure out? That he's going to drop the jobs number so low unemployment so low? And I think the bet that he's making is that if he is the king of jobs, then nothing else he does matters. What I think”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Yeah, but I mean, I don't believe that that's accidental. I think that I think we're at a really dangerous time and I think a lot of this instability is intentional and I think that it's up to good people to stand up and live your truth and not be fake right now. And if my way is not the way I'm not going to change. I believe in institutions. I've been on the board of Howard University for more than a decade because of what it gave to me. And I think we extend our own lives by giving part of it to something that's going to outlast us. And so, you know, all of the stuff that's going on right now, I think that there has to be A voice that It maintains your own truth and you live it how you got there and a lot of folks have real different views right now but I always believe that you ought to put up your record”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Skeptical about whether you could pull it off. He was. A lot of folks are skeptical, and they said that, you know, young people want to understand that. And I said, I think that they'll get it. As long as we set up part of it so that it provides emergency grants and loans for young people, everybody knows we have hard times sometimes. It'd be nice to be able to go and get a grant or a loan. And so they have that part, but it's all within the endowment of the university because I'm a big believer in institutions. That's why I'm so glad that you have this institute at the University of Chicago.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Yeah, I think it's $14 million today. So there was a federal program I interned for Congressman Joe Kennedy. And so while I was intern and they had this HBC Historically Black College Initiative that provided a one-for-one match because they were trying to get HBCUs to grow their endowments. And so I learned about the program. We had a president named Frank Jennifer whom I loved. And I wanted to, I said, you know, we can really help students with loans who were having a tough time. And so I got persuaded the student body to do $15 a month, which was matched dollar for dollar by the federal government. It's like 60 bucks a year. We used that fund to help a thousand kids go to school, get debit cards with cash on. that program has contributed more than 12 million to the endowment.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “My wife last week was appointed at a board of regents for the state of Georgia by the governor. So I called again. I said, Dad.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Clearly, by the conference, I'm walking around here. But that's how it happened. And so my dad was very angry with me. But because I had had a very small jury business, a lawn care business, I went to the airport alone and caught a flight to Washington, DC. And Howard University. And we didn't speak for a year. Because he said that, you know, I want you to be mayor one day. I want you to be governor, and you need to go to the University of Georgia. So that's how it happened. And then one of the great moments in my life was I got invited to give the commencement speech at the University of Georgia's law school. And so I called him, I said, Dad, I hope that.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “So when I was 13, I met him. He put his hand on my head. He messed up my hot top fade. And then... I started reading about him because my mother was really impressed. And so what I did was I mirrored the behavior of people I admired. M. Drew Young had gone to Howard, Doug Wilder had gone to Howard, Vernon Jordan had gone to Howard, so I was going to Howard. Edward Brook, the first black US senator since Reconstruction. Howard, man. So every time I would look at, I mean, I wanted to be mayor like people want to go to the NFL. So the same way people had baseball cards, basketball cards, I had pictures of politicians on my taped up on my wall the way that people would have posters. When you had your friends over there,”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Because Ambassador Young had gone to Howard, and when I met Ambassador Young and decided that I wanted to be mayor, I read everything about him.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Even before that My dad used to write me letters. I mean, it was like he write me letters about what he. I decided to go to Howard”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “15, 16. I got a job as an unloader at UPS on Fulton Industrial Boulevard, and so I got made eight dollars an hour working in a UPS. And so I would go to work at UPS at 4 a.m. I could work four to eight and still go to school. But I was making $32 a day. So I was taking that money and buying gold jewelry with it and then selling it to folks. And so that's how, that's why when my dad and I fell out because he wanted me to go to the University of Georgia. My father has wanted me to be in politics my whole life. And he said that he wanted me to.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “I had probably ten or twelve yards, but I mean, I was eleven, twelve, thirteen years old. It was all the money in the world to me. I took the money from my lawn care. Then I learned about the Americas mark, the Atlanta Paramart in downtown. All the kids in Atlanta used to work at six flags in the summer. I belonged to Ben Hill United Methodist Church. A lot of women were jewelry, and back in those days gold jewelry was the big thing. I went to the apparel mart, I bought in a lump sum of gold jewelry, I went to the church and I started selling that. And back then you could sell gold jewelry at a two, three, four hundred percent markup. And then I did pretty well. And how old were you?”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Well we had I lived in a neighborhood with large yards and I was small but I could talk to folks and so what would happen is we had big yards in the neighborhood and there were you know I had two or three older friends there were a bunch of lawnmowers and so I would go and knock on people's doors and I would ask them could we cut their their yards 14 for the front 21 for the front and the back I would go get friends of mine who were bigger and stronger and I would sweep the driveway and I had my dad made me a card that said Cim Reed's lawn care and the slogan on the lawn care was help the kid. That was my slogan. And so.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “I think that this issue about losing and having the person who beat you act like the person that you beat. I just, you wouldn't do that.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “But if Mr. Ellison had won, I would have worked my heart out for him because I believe that this situation where if your side doesn't prevail, that there is an active battle going on that lasts forever will ensure that Democrats don't make progress at all. And I think that that comes from respecting the Who can be you? I ran for office. You don't like the way that I run it beat me. I don't believe you can So I live my truth, and then I do what we do. Put it up. You go get your people. I'm going to get my people. And then we're going to tee it up and there's going to be an election day. But while I have it, I'm going to, I got re-elected with 84% support. I'm doing something right.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “So you have elections, somebody wins, we should respect that process and not keep an eternal fight going on. If your guy wins, run it. Run it how you want, but this deal that we're in right now where you lose. And I have to act like you won. Doesn't work for me, and I'm not going to be fake. I believe that you have elections for a reason, including among Democrats. And just the other day, if Mr Ellison would have won, I would have worked your supporter of Tom.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “How do you sort that out? I sort it out because I believe that the future of politics is performance. You got to folks elect you to win and deliver for them. People that don't have a city to govern have a different responsibility than I do. And so I can be absolutely forceful and have one of the most aggressive, welcoming initiatives in America, which Atlanta happens to have, acknowledged by President Obama's administration. But when we had people, the two were detained in our airport, I was there personally getting them cleared. So there is a difference between being the person who is actually governed and those who are agitating for reform. And at the end of the day, the Democrat has to be a big party with big views. But we've also got to respect election results.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “We have to work through this awful time and we have to stop being petty and rejecting one another and turn our attention to President Trump. And, you know, the hard part of this is it's going to require work. There are Democrats who know how to gather information, create list, run campaigns, and there are people with new energy who know how to get folks out and get folks mobilized. And there has to be some agreement to merge this so that you don't have sixty thousand people attend a rally and get no data from it. No names, no email, no capability to structure it. And that's something that we're just going to have to work out. And it's going to be really hard.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “I think there are a number of things that we have to do. One, we have to stop these petty fights because we now know that there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans. And this horrible mush that was occurring during the campaign cycle that we really never were able to pull up out of where there were these false comparing Democrats and Republicans we now just know that this is a radically different situation and so this new energy has to be connected”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “You got a shot to be with him because I believe that we are at as much risk right now today as we have been in the last sixty years in the life of America. So if you would have been with doctor King, if you would have supported Roosevelt, If you would have tried to help Barack Obama get elected president in 08, but you were too young and didn't have a chance. Goodness, you got a chance right now. Everybody has some aspect of what is going on with America right now to step up. and to engage.”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “I do. I think that our president has unleashed an energy that is not healthy for the fabric of the country. And I think the big thing is for us to just stop being surprised. This person is who we think he is. He's not going to change, and good people have an obligation to do everything in our power to respond and to make sure that we provide protection for folks who are vulnerable. And I see that energy occurring right now in the United States, and so we just have to be a part of it. The big thing is let's just not sulk right now. I feel like we should wear this moment as awful as it is with great pride. I mean, this is one of those moments where if you ever read a book about a terrific leaders in our past, And would like to believe that if you were there? You would have been with”

    2017-03-06 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 127 - Kasim Reed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source