YouSaid · the spoken record

Kirsten Powers

lines on the record: 104
first: 2019-02-14
most recent: 2019-02-14
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

“Almost anything, you know, but who really are thoughtful people. And, you know, it's like you have this idea of who they are. And then you get to know them. And it's like, well, wait, it's actually. Not like that”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And so that's what was good for me having that experience, right? So I went to that church for a couple years. I still have relationships with people who go to that church or other evangelical churches. And we disagree on a lot of things theologically. We disagree on a lot of political issues. But they're not what my family thinks they are, right? Or what some of my friends think they are. It's more complicated. And, you know, and so I think that it is good to know different kinds of people. And that was actually a good thing about working at Fox, even though there was a lot that was hard about it, is getting to know a lot of conservatives who, you know, Steve Hayes or Charles Krothar or George Will or people who I disagree with on.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I would understand why people think it's legitimate. And I think actually evangelicals have not comported themselves very well in terms of Donald Trump and that there's a reason they have a bad reputation, right? And I think that it's fair for people to be bothered by that.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If people are disdainful of it, they don't show it to me. That's all I can say. I have to say, so I would say originally. So, this all was like 13 years ago or something. Yes, people were more disdainful. I do feel like something has kind of shifted, and it could be just my friends are getting older, right? And are starting to kind of have questions and are wondering about spirituality. And, you know, and so I find that people are more interested in it. I also think, look, I mean, I was going to an evangelical church, and nothing's going to make my Democratic friends more angry than that, right? So, and same thing with my family. My family flipped out. So it's, and understandably so, because to them, evangelical meant Republican and right-wing and hates gays and all these other things. And so I understand that. I think that where I am now, I don't ever get the sense that people are that uncomfortable with it because it's...”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so my family was Catholic. My mom's side of the family was Catholic. And so I ended up converting to Catholicism. And that actually felt more comfortable to me. But even that has... Everything in our world has become so political. You know, so it's like even within the Catholic Church, then it's like all the fighting between the conservatives and the liberals and the whatever. And it's just like, I just don't, this isn't what I want. And so I, you know, I ultimately discovered this man named Richard Rohr, who's a Franciscan priest and he's has just a very different perspective, I would say, than most people. And that's when I finally was like, okay, I can do this.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, that's a thing. But they're the minority. They're the 10 or 15% of evangelicals that didn't vote for Trump, right? So it's not the, but at any rate, even. Allowing for all that, I never really fit in. And I was never really comfortable and I was never, and I've even had people like they will identify me as an evangelical. I never identified as an evangelical. I think what happened was I didn't know anybody else who was talking about God. So like these were the only people I knew. None of my friends were talking about it. So I sort of was like, well, this is where I need to be. And so I kind of went on this journey that was actually fairly anxiety producing for me because I kept feeling like this doesn't feel right to me, but I don't know what how to do it.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It does now. It didn't in the beginning. And I can see now in hindsight why it didn't in the beginning. Because the church that I was going to was an evangelical church. And it was in New York, so it's not your sort of, there are actually a lot of Democrats there and it wasn't a super political place because it was New York City, right? But I never really.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had like a dream that felt sort of like where Jesus came to me and said, you know, here I am. And it felt very real. And I never was able to kind of shake it. Like I kept kind of trying to shake it and it just. I wasn't, you know, people will say, like, Oh, so brave of you, you know, because I was in such a secular environment and all my friends were. Mostly atheists are very like. Lukewarm kind of maybe sort of, you know, practicing something. And I was like, no, it wasn't brave because I really, I didn't want to do it. You know, I wasn't like, oh, this is great. Let's do this. I was like, I don't want to do this. This is not fit into my life. You know, my life is a life of a totally different life. And so I sort of felt like I couldn't shake it. So it's been a kind of wild journey, I would say, you know, that I have.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And sure enough, here comes this person. And so he basically sort of put it to me like, you know, a couple months into the relationship, I feel pretty serious about you. I feel like we could maybe have a future, but it's really important to me that, you know, I'm with somebody who shares my religious beliefs. And I was like, yeah, that's not going to happen. And so he said, well, could you keep an open mind? And so I thought I could, but I don't know why this doesn't make any sense to me. And so he said, just can keep an open mind. Just come to church with me, whatever. So I started going to church with him. And I really liked the pastor. You know, he was really, I'd never really heard that things that he was saying. So he would talk a lot about philosophy and art and just all these different things kind of weaving them together. And so I ended up, it's a very long story, but I ended up ultimately having.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It wasn't anything really that strong. And then in college, I kind of lost whatever little bit that I had and became, I sort of went back and forth between atheist and agnostic. Like that was sort of my spectrum. And then I started dating somebody who went to church is one of these things. A few weeks before I met this person, a friend of mine said to me, like, I want to set you up with somebody. Like, do you have any deal breakers? And I said, I have one deal breaker. No religious people.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Yeah. So I grew up Episcopalian and I had a kind of Faith ish. You know what I mean? Like, I believe a series. Faith ish. I believed in God. And I went to a Catholic high school. Yeah, yeah. But it was, I didn't have any really...”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, yeah. Yeah. And I think that I probably, when I was younger, really did feel like, well, you know, my image is like, I have it together and I'm, you know, on top of things and I'm strong and whatever instead, you know, and then you just realize like that. That's not helping anybody.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People in the journalism world who you would never think, you know, reaching out and saying, I'm depressed. I'm really struggling.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so that's why I wrote it. I didn't want to because honestly I haven't written a lot about my personal life and I think after writing that it became clear to me because of the feedback I got that I have to talk about this stuff because so many people including”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I wrote the column because my fianc ⁇ e's brother is actually one of the leading suicide prevention experts in the country. And so when I talked to him, I said, I'm going to write about this. What should I do? What should I say? What hasn't been said that needs to be said? And he said, look, we always focus on the people who actually commit suicide. We don't focus on the people who consider committing suicide and don't go through with it, which is a much larger number of people and people need to hear that because when they see a famous person who they're like, oh, he had everything. And he couldn't even hold on. They need to hear from people to say, no, you can't, actually. And you actually can get through it and you actually can end up having a really great life, which is what happened to me. Like I'm very happy today.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hosting job, and I just was like, I just was like, I can't, I don't even have, you know what I mean? Like, I'm so struggling so much physically, like, I can't even. And then I ended up getting married and was in a very traumatic marriage. I mean, it really was like almost 10 years of just constant trauma. And so I just didn't really feel equipped to do anything different.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there was, so I was extremely traumatized. And I ended up getting sick with like sort of mystery kind of stuff, you know, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, just really, you know, nobody could figure out what was wrong with me. I now know it was trauma, right? But at the time, I just couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. And so I do think I stayed up Fox longer than I would have because I just didn't have the energy actually to change jobs. I mean, at one point, you know, High. Phil Griffin called me. Yeah, from SMEC and offered me a job.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Put the oven on and like, yeah, and then kind of, you know, realize, oh my gosh, I can't do this to my family, my brother, you know, who just lost his father. So I was, so that was very traumatic. But then the following year, my grandmother died, who I was probably the closest to of anybody in my family. And then during that time, my stepfather got liver cancer and was very sick. And then he died. I mean, this always just like one another.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. It was actually right as I was starting to do TV. And it sent me into such a spiral. And what I wrote about was, you know, one night really feeling suicide. I mean, the suicidal feeling is probably went on for about a month or so. But feeling really suicidal to the point that I actually...”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, it sort of started, my dad died suddenly of a heart attack when I was, I think, 35. That sort of started a very kind of hard. You wrote a column about...”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's like, this is what, but he's like, This is why I hired you to do. Yeah, people are mad at you and whatever. But like, this is what you're supposed to do. So it wasn't, I wasn't. You left.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And I have to say, you know, while it is a lot of Democrats will say, oh, he only hired people who Republicans could walk all over. That wasn't my experience. Like when I got into it with people and I did regularly get into it with them. And there was one sort of another epic thing I had with Megan Kelly, which got really out of control. He said to me after it happened, he's like, this is why I hired you.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he was brilliant to what he did. There's no question. There's a question of whether you think that what he did was good or not. But he definitely was very, very, a special talent for what he did. And he had a special gift for picking talent to be cast, basically, right, and to create a story.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Well, and he, it was a very dysfunctional place. And it was dysfunctional because he made it dysfunctional. And so there was a lot of infighting and warring and chaos. And it's just”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talk about. You know what I mean? Like, we weren't there to talk about my career. It was just this weird, you know, all these weird, just weird conversations.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. He said he would say really crazy things to me about the Clintons. And I would just be like, why are you even saying this to me? I don't understand. You know what I mean? Like, I, it was. Or I would often have meetings with him, and I would just think, what was the point of that? I don't even understand. Like, we didn't really”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very complicated person. I would never say that I knew him well. It was basically Limited to a handful of meetings, you know, with him. And in hindsight, some of the things that women sued him for, he did to me. I just honestly was so used to being sexually harassed, I almost didn't. I don't even think I noticed it. And so just things that were clearly inappropriate, but I just sort of was like, yeah, this is just what men do all the time. My actually bothered me more about him was his conspiracy theories and the crazy things he was doing.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it became this viral thing. And she went nuts. And the funny thing is, that's why Roger Ailes hired me. Because the next night Roger came down to the set. I'd never met him before and he left and Sean said, he's never been on this set before. And it's because of what happened last night. I thought I was going to get fired. You know, and it was quite the opposite. He actually liked it. So he then basically said, I think you're really good at this. Do you want to do this?”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So, what's interesting is I was the second time I second night I was hosting, I'd never hosted a show in my life and they had Ann Coulteron and I got into kind of an epic confrontation with her where she lost her.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I wasn't really thinking of it as a career. I was thinking of it more as just a thing that I was doing. And after doing it for I don't know a year or two, maybe. I can't remember exactly. They had me guest hosting Hannity and Combs. Remember that show one? And I had this”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and then about, I don't know, six, seven months after that, MSNBC and Fox both had me come talk to them and Fox made the first offer. And Fox wasn't quite what it is today back then. You know what I mean? Like it was sort of understood that it was like. Conservative, but most of my friends were like, Oh, that's great. Like, you should go on there. They have a lot of viewers, and it will be good to have like another voice. It wasn't, hadn't quite become the behemoth, you know, that it ultimately became. So became a contributor, but I was still doing work like, you know, in, I think I was still doing stuff for the New York Democratic Committee and I was doing other consulting for like I just”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, CBS and what I think there was a vacuum. I don't know. I don't quite understand it. And so it just became like every day I was getting called to do this. And then Roger.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, a pretty shy person. And I was like, I just don't want to be in front of people. And I just don't see. I just doesn't, I don't think I would be good at it. And I just don't want to do it. And so she said, well, I'm giving your name to bookers. And so I started getting calls. And then I finally, I do have one thing in my life where if something scares me, I make myself do it. And so I thought this really scares me. So I'm just going to do it just to do it, like to push through the fear. And so I did it. I did, I went on, I think the first time I went on actually was Fox. And it was like a Sunday, you know, like nobody's watching kind of thing. And then I just started getting all these calls from, you know, I didn't have an agent or anything. And I just started getting calls from like CNN.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of a sudden, I'm like doing this. And during that time, I had a friend who worked in New York politics, and she said, I really feel like you should be on TV because there aren't a lot of like younger Democratic women on TV, you know, but there's all these like on the right, they have all these women. And I was like, no, that's not for me. Like, I don't want to do that.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I ended up working on that campaign. Actually, it was press secretary, I guess. There was a communications director. So I ended up working on that campaign. And then from that, it just kind of started, you know, I started doing work for the New York Democratic Party. I ended up working on a mayoral race. I worked on a race, or not a referendum with Howard Wolfson was running. Bloomberg was trying to abolish party primaries, so I worked on that. So it was kind of just, again, this.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For governor of New York in 2002. Yeah, and so I went there with the intention of volunteering like a couple days a week. And the day that I arrived, again, everything is just still happenstance. The day that I arrived, the campaign manager was like, Andrew just fired the communications director. So you're the communications director. And I was like, I don't want to do that. Like I'm not interested in that. And he was like, well, we're in the middle of like a total shit show. And like there was something happening and like you like you're just going to have to do it basically.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I had moved to New York, you know. AOL had bought Time Warner. And so I moved up to New York after that. And then I ended up leaving about a year later. But I was still pretty new to New York, and I thought, well, I need to meet people in a good way to meet people is to kind of get plugged in. I was already kind of plugged into the, you know, because half the Clinton administration moved to New York. Right. And so I thought I'm just going to go volunteer on Andrew Cuomo's campaign.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A writer. Well, so right after that, actually, I kind of fell into doing New York City politics and New York state politics. And again.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I just went back to sleep and never went to the doctor because I knew it was exhaustion. It was that kind of stuff, but I just kind of kept doing it. And then I finally just had a full-on like. Breakdown and just realize like I can't do this anymore. And so I went to my boss and said, I have to leave. I can't do this anymore. And so they said, well, we'll move you over to the foundation. And so they moved me over to the foundation and I did that for about a year and I still was like, this just isn't. It was much easier, but I was like, this just isn't my heart's not.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it was, and I just crashed and burned I really did. And I was just too young to understand. I mean, I took that job when I was just turned 30. And so, and today we talk about self care. Nobody talked about stuff like that back then, you know, and I just didn't know how to draw the boundaries. I didn't know how to say no. I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing until I finally just, I mean, it was really kind of crazy. I mean, I remember one day I gotten back from a trip and I woke up and I couldn't see. Literally, I couldn't see anything.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I was really enjoying that. But then I burn out in a really spectacular way. I was just, it was one of those seven days a week, 24 hours a day kind of jobs. You know, I lived in a house with no furniture. I mean, it was all the cliches. I never saw my friends. I never, I missed weddings. I missed birthdays. I missed. I've seen movies”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Except for the money. And well, and I had fun maybe the first couple years I launched five international businesses for them. So I got to like go spend, you know, a month in Sydney, a month in Hong Kong, you know, and I loved the travel and I was really young and I was”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I actually was never super happy there, to be totally honest. I think I was probably originally correct on working in the private sector thing. I wasn't passionate about it.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Zero credit. Like, I was dragged out there, you know, and confused. I thought it was your communications skills at work there.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And actually seriously was weighing these two options. And so my friends still say, remember when you were actually thinking of maybe going to the international trade? So, yeah, so I took the job and almost like immediately became like the hottest company in the world. It was just cover of every magazine, you know, and it was, yeah, again. So you don't claim.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Clueless sleep in a lot of money. But I also, the funny thing is that I was telling you this yesterday I also had been offered a job running communications at the International Trade Administration, which is in the Commerce Department.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, big job, and I a lot of money, which again, had never been anything I really, you know, I never thought I was going to make a lot of money. It was never a goal of mine. And so I ended up.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was a real thing Yeah. And so they offered me a job running their international communications. And I, you know.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And so I went out and I was blown away, what they were doing and the company. And I was pretty, you know, taken with it. And they offered me a job running their international communication.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talk to them, and then she heard I was doing other interviews. And so she said, as a courtesy, you have to come out here and talk to us. And so I said, fine, fine, I'll come out. You know, so then I went out and I was like, wow.”
2019-02-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 308 — Kirsten Powers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source