YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark McKinnon

lines on the record: 96
first: 2016-07-21
most recent: 2016-07-21
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

“Hey, let me just say this I've known a lot of interesting characters and people in this business. David Axelott is one of the finest. And if I were running for office, you're the guy that I'd want on board not just as a consultant or professional, but as a friend.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sunday nights at 8 o'clock showtime. And if you don't have it in your cable package, you can get it on an app on your device.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, she is highly competent and a good manager. So if you want somebody in Washington who kind of knows where the levers are, this woman knows where the levers are.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, serious about stuff, but serious about stuff in a good way. Yeah. Yeah, no. I mean, the thing that got coming away from the interactions that I've had kind of on a staffing level too is that whatever you may think about Hillary Clinton's politics, this is one competent person.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know where she's got a sense of humor she's got a very warm side to her and very engaging and thoughtful and engages and listens so I mean”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had the opportunity to kind of intersect with her on some nonprofit work over the last few years. I've been really struck in the times that I've seen her too on the trail kind of when the cameras are off that she's just surprising.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I mean, you look at people's kids and you say, well, something's going on right there. Well, I think they don't raise great kids like that by accident.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was one of the most interesting conversations that I've had with anybody this whole election. He was just authentic, compelling, interesting, candid.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, for example, Donald Trump, he really has a family dynamic that's compelling. And you meet his kids, for example, Donald Trump Jr. is one of the most interesting people I've talked to during the whole show. I met him in Elko, Nevada in the middle of nowhere, and it was his first time that he'd gone out as a surrogate for his father.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They all surprised me in some way, and that's the great thing about doing documentary filmmaking in politics is that we see a much more contextualized version. If you just watch the news or watch the debates, you kind of get a very one-dimensional sense of these people. But if you can spend any time around them when they're off the stage and see how they interact with family, see how they treat staff, those are the kind of things that really give you, what have you seen of those?”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Friend. I don't think so. The initial idea for this, David, was I started thinking about it about 10 years ago and the rationale for the thinking was simply that we've been in a lot of campaigns. We find them to be interesting, fascinating ecosystems of players and characters and drama, 95% of which the public never sees. And I just thought, wouldn't it be fascinating if we could show the humanity behind these campaigns? There's just great, interesting, dramatic stuff that goes on. And so the idea was, and by the way, not just to show up, but to show it in real time. There are documentaries that are done after elections. And by the way, the MIT documentary was in part an inspiration because I saw that and a lot of people saw it and said, well, where was that guy in the election? I mean, it was a really compelling, interesting guy. And I said, let's do this, roll it up real time so people feel like they can see what it feels like to be in a campaign, but also as it's happening because that creates...”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, ironically, when we first thought of the name of the circus, initially we thought, oh, that's a little over the top. And now we're looking at this. I don't think so.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe it's also going to bring in others from the Rust Belt who have been hurt by trade. So, I mean, he's building a different kind of coalition and everything we thought about this election has been wrong. So, you know, who knows? It's going to be. We can't base it on historical precedent.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've also been saying for a long time that we need to blow up the Republican Party and start over, and that appears to be happening at the very least. So, I mean, my concern is that there's no clear coherent, compelling vision for the Republican Party going forward. And I mean, I don't know where the compassionate conservative is or somebody with a compelling message. And Donald Trump has, you know, it's unclear. Hopefully we'll see over the course of the week what that unifying vision, his vision is for the party, but it includes a lot of ideas that are pretty, I mean, for example, I mean, one of the things that drew me to the Republican Party in the first place was pretty radical free trade. You mentioned that earlier. Free trader. Well, Donald Trump is not a free trader. So that's going to”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the Republican establishment, I mean, you know, Donald Trump has run to some degree, well, to a large degree against the Republican establishment. So the Republican establishment is not here. If your notion is you're going to win this election by energizing the base, you better make sure all the bases included in the Republican establishment is a big part of the base.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, the one person who I thought was Jeff Bush isn't here. The perfect pick for him. And also Adeline, this weird postpartisan notion, I had a candidate who would have been the perfect vice presidential pick for both him and Hillary Clinton, which was Condy Rice.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's can't help you. I just remember how this process starts and how excited George Bush was. And as I know Trump was, and I'm sure Obama was at the beginning, you're like, God, I get to pick a vice president. You have this universe of people and great talents, you know, famous people. Then you get kind of down to the lick log, as we say in Texas, and suddenly you're left with very few candidates.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You think that it was a good pitch? I do. I think you think about what Donald Trump needs to do, and he needs to expand the coalition, expand his support, and of the sort of people he was looking at, I just thought people are saying, oh, yeah, he should, like Joe Scarborough, was saying, he should pick Newt, I think he was a big fan of Christy just saying that's his maverick outsider message and he should double down on that. Well, I think all those maverick double-down voters are already for Trump. It's the people who like, well, I'm kind of interested in Trump, but I'd like to know that there's an adult in the room with a pause button like Mike Pence. So I thought in that sense he was. Yeah.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's a big impact, though. I mean, as you said, this is a four-day window of opportunity, and they just erased one of them. They just took one day and threw it out the window in terms of controlling their message and its spiral completely out of control. And they're going to spend most of the day trying to put out that fire. So I think it's going to, it's probably a two-day fire.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An organization planning. Yeah, exactly. I think we can both appreciate those notions that we're rolling out potential First Lady Melania Trump and those initial stories about how much they'd worked on it. And oh, and yes, and she's writing it herself. That story is changing a lot, isn't it? Well, actually, there were other people involved.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Important hour when everyone. And what you're saying is there should have been a narrative architecture to that power. And instead they were flipping people and there was superstar Joni Ernst. But one of the interesting things about those reflection.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Between Rudy. Yeah, she could have told more of the immigrant story and kind of raised some of that. But I just think the whole thing.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the feature of the Trump campaign that they have consistently been telling everybody as an asset, which is they are a small, nimble unit that doesn't require layers of bureaucracy and thousands of staffers, they're getting payback for that because when you do a national speech on television, the one absolute obligation and responsibility the campaign has is to vet that speech and standard speech vetting 101 means you run it through speech software.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think that was in some ways a missed opportunity. I mean, this goes back to the notion of authenticity and vulnerability. She's somebody who could testify beyond the things that we already know about Donald Trump, right? I mean, we could talk about a Sunday afternoon with the papers or small acts of kindness or generosity. And it was in some way. I mean, I thought it was a perfectly acceptable speech, and I think she kind of cleared the bar of expectations, but I think that there were some missed opportunities there as well.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pretty important. With the exception of the debates, I think it's the most opportunistic moment to grow your support and for people to show who you are and what you are. I mean, it's really four days that you own. You get to control. And unless you invite Clint Eastwood or plagiarize a speech, you should be able to.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. And so that is in some ways a huge opportunity to have a much more expansive message. And the convention's a time to take advantage of that and use that opportunity. So he's got three days left. I hope he does it.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I just say this. Part of Trump's success is that he's kind of post political in a way that he's not sort of a typical Republican.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I'm so far everything seems to be aimed at the base. I mean, last night was very much base messaging. What would you?”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it would mean necessarily having to bring in a ton of voters, of white voters who haven't voted before. and registering and signing up.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well It's hard to see it on paper. It's really hard to see it. I mean, and even if you do, boy, for the sake of the Republican Party and the sake of our country, I hope we don't have a president that is simply elected with one demographic constituency.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We got to get 42 next time, and we got 43 So George Bush and the campaign understood that we had to have a coalition and a big tent. Now, you go from that to...”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right. A plurality enough to win. So in 2004, in 2000 when we ran. Matthew, dad, we kind of sat down and said, What do we need to do? How do we need to perform with Hispanics? And he said, Well, we need 40% of the Hispanic vote in order to win. We got 41. But after we won in 2000, Dowd came in like a month later and he said, you know, before everybody gets all excited about this, we better recognize that if we get 41 next time, we lose.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In 20 Yeah. Well, interestingly, and at the end of the day, it is about math. I mean, you got to add up to 50.1 somehow, somewhere.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, you see. Yeah, I mean, it is a much more subdued, much less emotional, but very committed sort of audiences that believe in her, believe in her competency, believe that she's ready, prepared to be president, but not a lot of emotion. And the Trump rallies are just the opposite. I mean, it's pure emotion. Yeah.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Aristocracy, kind of royal candidate. And then we have on the other end of the extreme, a real estate billionaire who's never held office. And so we just have this interesting situation where Usually, it's somewhere in the middle, and this time it's like just starkly. And how are people?”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they were of a nature that made a candidacy-like prose possible. But you look at those same kind of metrics flash forward to three years ago or something. It's like times 10. So the notion that somebody like Trump could run, I mean, it was an opening a mile wide, but the fact that it was Trump was what was surprising and that he would do it by literally doing a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, which is what was so surprising and that he could mow down a field. But the interesting thing about the election is that, you know, we're used to kind of seeing somewhere, I just say in the middle of the kind of scales of insider versus outsider candidates or somewhere in there, although you had sort of classic outsider in a way. But here we have sort of the most extreme possibilities of the ultimate insider.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they're viewing it in such a different way, David. And the thing that got my attention more than anything in this election was the first Trump rally that I went to. And, you know, I'd kind of heard things and I went and I've been in politics about the same time as you have, which is a long time. I've never seen anything remotely close to what I saw at that first Trump rally. I mean, the people, the energy, the Trump himself was all just blew my mind completely. I have thought for a while that the opening for a conceptual candidate like that, a businessman outside, I went back and looked, because I've kind of looked at third-party possibilities and that sort of thing. So I went back and looked at the Ross Perot candidacy and looked at the research from that election, like the right track, wrong track, all of those sort of fundamentals that we look at.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the narrative belief about that is distorted. I mean, I think that George Bush was always in charge, but I think he picked a strong number too, knowing that he could exert that kind of authority. But the notion that sort of Dick Cheney was ever kind of a puppet master, I think distorts the real picture. But I remember early on, you know, I was a McCain man. I thought McCain would have been a great number too for the president. Dick Cheney and I were kind of like Venus and Mars. We first introduced us like, I don't get you, you don't get me, let's just leave it like that.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, there was such traumatic, dramatic. Tragic time in our history. But those decisions were so far beyond my pay grade. And I can only trust that the guy that I knew and had worked for and had been loyal to was making the decisions on the best evidence that he had at the time. We all know how it turned out. And it wasn't good evidence. We all have paid a price for that. But I never had a notion. I mean, my counsel, I mean, there were times when I didn't agree with the direction, but I offered my counsel and was not always in the majority, but my counsel was always welcome, not always taken, but it's always private. It's not anything that I've ever done.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doesn't think belongs there I think I remember we had the classic experience where President Bush is debating, and it's awful. I mean, it is as bad as it could be. But he walks off the stage and it's Good, right? Yeah.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the funny thing that happens with an incumbent president is they've been a president for four years. They're used to a lot of people saying yes or sir.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, because it's just so the dynamics of debates are, by the way, I think this first debate of this fall may be the most watched television. I agree with you history. So first of all, we can both testify. It's like the highest wire act in politics, right? I mean, because your guy goes out there without a net.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said, I could yell at you. He says. The adversity test is where you really see leadership. I had another thing I was going to just a parallel story that I thought was funny because I think I remember calling you when it happened, which is... The first debate of an incumbent president.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Peggy Noonan, by the way, wrote a piece about his speech that night and said, if you turned off the sound, you would have thought that was a victory speech.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, not only did we not, I mean, I remember I was with Stuart Stevens, who just did the Romney campaign, and we were in our apartment, we were at lunch with a journalist with Karl Rove, with Stuart and I, and we got the news. And Stuart immediately said, let's go pack because we're fired. He said, I've been in this movie before. We're gone. We went and we got a call to come over to visit with Governor Bush and the sort of senior staff went over there. And we walked in just, you know, prepared to get our asses kicked. And it was so powerful and so completely contradictory to what we expected because we walked in and he said, I got a message for you guys. This is on me. You guys did a great job. I let you down. I'm sorry. He said, but when we walk out of here, heads held high. I want to walk out of here looking like we just won the best victory we've ever won. And that's when we all said, man, sign me up for life. Yeah. Well, you know”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People today, they're suspicious of perfection. They actually like a little bit of vulnerability, some human element to say that this is actually a real person. And that's why I think somehow reflecting some moments of vulnerability can actually help a campaign.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which you've done many. And so we're shooting it and we're interviewing then Governor Bush and Laura Bush. And he's talking about being in the delivery room when their twins were born. And he's talking about it. And he completely mangles what he was trying to say, just garbles it completely. And he and Laura laugh about it. And we say, okay, that was funny. Okay, back up. Let's do it again. We do like two or three takes until he gets it just right. Well, I get to the edit room to edit the film, and that moment comes up and we start to cut it and get the good one patched in. And I said, wait a minute, let's watch that again. And we all cracked up. I said, let's leave it. And you can imagine the campaign. They went, bat shit. It's like, you were going to leave a mistake in the film? And I said, I said, yeah. I said, listen, it's authentic. It's human. It's funny. People can relate. And by the way, let's not raise the bar of expectations on this. You know, I mean, he's not going to be the best orator or speech giver in presidential history. Which is pretty open.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the word I was looking for in antibiotics. Yeah, people have developed. So I did things with Bush that were, I almost never did anything that was scripted. It was always something just pulled from an interview or off of the trail. But here's an example. So we're shooting the classic biofilm for the convention. Your candidate gets introduced. A lot of people are going to see him. So there's the classic thing where you produce a biofilm, a 10-minute film. Yeah, sure.”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is minimally effective because people just don't believe it. They just say it's a, you know, you got the First Amendment, you can say whatever you want, and all politicians alive. Why should so much of it too?”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Especially now. You know, David, when I first got the job to do Bush's media, I was honored but petrified because I'd never done anything on that scale and it scared the hell out of me. It was a huge responsibility. So the first thing I did was I went back and did a bunch of due diligence and studied political advertising, presidential political advertising from the very beginning and studied it to see what worked, what didn't. And it was fascinating to have this whole, I used to have a long presentation just about that because you see it change and evolve over time because as voters get used to something, it's like a virus or something, you inoculate it and then you try something new. So you see high concept stuff for a while works and it kind of moves along those axes. But what I really saw happen recently, I say recently the last 10 years and with George W. Bush, is that power of authenticity. Because as you know, political advertising these days...”
2016-07-21 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 68 - Mark McKinnon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source