YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Steele

lines on the record
82
first
2016-09-22
most recent
2016-09-22
sittings or episodes
1
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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. “Her son is the son is the former lieutenant governor of the state of Maryland. And I like to tell people all that on minimum wage. So when Republicans get all upset about minimum wage, I was like, no, I'm a minimum wage baby over here. It works, okay? It has a role and a place and a purpose. And so we need to respect that. But when I went to tell her in 76 that I said, well, mom, I decided I'm going to go and vote this year. I'm excited. She says, great. I said, I decided I'm registering as a Republican. And she looked at me and she goes, Lord, baby, why'd you go and do that? It's like, okay. All right, whatever”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And her response to me was, I didn't want the government to raise my child. And that wasn't a partisan point of view. That was a perspective of a mother who felt her obligation and responsibility to her children and that she wasn't going to go rely on the cheese or the check, that she would make it work. And she did on minimum wage put me through Catholic grade school. And then when she got married, she adopted my sister Monica, who is now a pediatrician. former wife of Mike Tyson.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “1976 convention When he ran against Ford and in his concession speech on the floor, when he talks about the party, he talks about the country. And I just looked at him like, damn, okay, that's different. And I really got to sort of then began to explore and learn and listen and watch and pay a little bit more attention and decided this guy sounds a lot like my mother in how he talks about things that she raised me to be, about being an independent thinker, about the role that I see myself playing. I remember when I was 16 or 17, my mom, there were several times where we had these moments where I wanted to know more about my story and I wanted to know more about her story. And I remember sitting down and asking her when My dad died why she never went on public assistance.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Saying I was young guy. It's like Bernie Sanders in 1976, right, for young people in some respects. But you know who did it for me? Ronald Reagan.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I was just with them yesterday installing some new carpet. So, no, they are Roosevelt Democrats. But my mother raised me to think for myself. And what she said to me when I got of age was, don't be a Democrat because I'm a Democrat. Be a Democrat because you want to be. Don't be a Republican because someone else is be a Republican. You go out and you discover the world and you find for yourself what works for you. And I was like, okay. So 1976 is the first election I can vote in. You had the incumbent president of the United States, Gerald Ford. God bless him. Brother had a hard job coming off of Watergate. Then you had the nut farmer from Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who actually was very much attracted to. I like Jimmy, what Jimmy Carter was saying.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Did it, and for me it was to learn the art craft and marrying along with guys like David Clark, who was the council president and Mayor Walter Washington, the first Mayor of Washington, Joe Yeldell, who was my core mentor, who again was appointed by President Johnson as one of the first members of the Washington DC City Council before Home Rule. These guys shaped me, and the partisanship,”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, I did. Okay, so I grew up in Washington, D.C. And as you can probably imagine, being a black Roman Catholic conservative Republican from Washington, D.C. doesn't get you far. There's not a lot of upside to that. But my friends in high school were, in many cases, the siblings or the kids of political figures in Washington. So I learned the art craft of this game from Marion Barry, the former mayor of Washington, who became friends. He and I became friends of the actually worked on his campaign for mayor in 1978 as a Republican. And it was because that was the game in town.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Put on my desk to this day, I have shut up and listen, Maybeld. As a consummate reminder of what leadership ultimately requires, is that you shut up and listen.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I actually did, and we'll dig into that because it's one of the things that led to my getting fired. But yeah, no, I'd be happy to deal with that. A lot of that for me, that whole idea of leadership and what it means comes from one person. And it's Maybell. It's my mother. I remember as a young boy maybe 13, 14 years old, I was doing something at school and my mother was with me and when we got home she said I looked at you and you know what I observed about you? I was like what? You talk too much. You walk in a room and you immediately start talking What you need to do is shut up and listen. So on my desk, to this day”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And you know, we're, yeah, I mean, and that's obvious. Look. I admire Barack Obama on a whole number of different levels for a lot of different reasons”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “You got the con. You do it. I'm behind you. Let's do this. This is good. Everybody on board. Let's do this. All right. That's when they're inspired by your leadership because now you're giving the responsibility and the ultimate control to someone else. And in that moment, they're no longer afraid to follow you. And they'll be willing to follow you in that critical moment when you need to be the leader.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “suppresses or whatever word you want to use, him or herself to that moment, just sort of push yourself down. It's not about you in that moment. So just to give you a basic example, if you're in a situation, you're the CEO, you're the governor, you're the president of the United States, you're the candidate, whatever the situation happens to be, and you're in a room like this and people are sort of talking, what you felt, what a lot of leaders fail to realize in that moment, that when David is suggesting that I think, Chairman, we should do this, and this is the plan, and I think I've worked it out and I looked at it, and I know this is a problem, but I figured out this angle we should go with that. How you respond in that moment, that's leadership. Because when they see you say to David,”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, it didn't bother me. It's one of those things that it kind of happens and you find yourself sitting there and all of a sudden you're like, okay, everybody's looking at me, so what do you do now? But leadership for me as I've come to define it is it's a very precious gift that's given. And I'll say this with all honesty. A lot of people pretend to leadership. But they don't really understand what it means and what it requires. So a lot of people throw the word around. A lot of people use it inappropriately about others. For me, leadership is very simply defined as always being ready to lead, but never being afraid to follow. Because the sine of a true leader is someone in that moment decides to follow the better idea, to follow the stronger leader, to follow the better opportunity, and subjects”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I became a corporate lawyer. There it is. So poverty drew me out. No, but it's calling. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it's your calling. It's where God leads you. And what God spoke to me in that moment, and I remember it very well, was, I need you for something else. And this was important. And it always has been very important. It prepared me for everything else that was to come.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Like the car too, as did everyone else in the community because it was now community property. So, you learn discipline. You learn that sense of appreciating authority, recognizing the limits of authority, but also understanding. should be about and that for me is a very powerful lesson and then there was poverty and what I discovered about poverty was basically it's a bitch I like tailored shirts I like custom suits and that's not the order of the day in a religious community you know”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “What you do when you give yourself over to God or you are born again or whatever your teaching in tradition may teach you or lead you, that's a part of that. So that's a discipline. You have to understand that and appreciate. I'm giving myself over to this order. One of the realizations though came home real quick. So the day I drive up to the Augustinian order at Villanova University, I drive up at my 1973 Ford Torino. I'm like psyched. This is a great car. I love this car. This is 1981. I'm driving up and I go in and I'm excited. All the brothers come out. Hey, welcome. Welcome. Good to see you. So the novice master comes over and goes, give me the keys. I'm like, give me the keys. I mean, give me the keys.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “You know, it's an interesting journey. A lot of people think when folks leave the seminary or they leave the monasterial or religious life, it's all about sex. Well, here let me break this down for you. For me, what I discovered was sexual relations and human relations at the end of the day is a state of mind. The largest, as you all know, the largest sexual organ is not between your legs, it's your brain. That controls a lot of that. And so for me, I came to understand that. So it wasn't about being a celibate and living a life of celibacy. Obedience, so that takes care of celibacy. Obedience was a matter of just recognizing that you have to give yourself over to a higher authority. Well, in the Christian tradition,”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Augustinians. I'd show you the picture of me in my habit. It's really kind of cool. All white habit with the hood, the capuche, the whole thing.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So, yeah, we need to be clear because I got to go home. But that had such a profound impact, David, on who I was. It formed and shaped my view of the world.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “That scripture's chapter three of the Old Testament. But no, he was a God of the world. He understood the world. He came from it. And so a lot of his philosophy and teaching was born out of the experience of having a child, having an unwed concubine. A woman he wasn't married to, feeling the disappointment of his mother, Monica, who looked at him and said, what? It's like, what is your problem and prayed for him? It's like, okay, Lord, you got to do something about this because I'm done. And the Lord did and converted his heart and his spirit and became one of the most profound doctors of the church. So I learned from that because I kind of rolled like that a little bit and I don't have the concubine though, so it's no kids out of wedlock, so let's be clear. And so your wife actually.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Was going two blocks to the rectory and working in the rectory for the summer or watching the house while the priest went on vacation. So I really kind of got into that and wanted to be a priest since third grade and got to high school, was influenced by the Augustinians. St. Augustine was a badass. I don't know if you know much about St. Augustine, but St. Augustine was that.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “There is no better preparation. Look, which institution of all institutions on the planet has the politics down? The Catholic Church has been doing it like 2,000 years. They got it worked out. But I went inside, again, the Augustinians taught at my high school, so I had a real closeness to them. But even before that, I had a real affinity for the priest in my parish. I was the kid who served six o'clock mass every day because my mom had to be to work at 6.30. So she would pack me up and get me ready for school for the day, drop me off at St. Gabriel's on her way to Sterling Laundry where she worked. So I would serve masks for the nuns at 6.30 a.m. and start my day. And so I spent a lot of time with the priests in my parish and got to know them. I've spent my summers. My summer of vacation.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “And so she was like, she went up to my mom, right? She's like, what the hell are you doing here? And he just looked at her and said, do as I say, child, not as I do. And she left the church that moment she left. So then she joined the Catholic Church and raised me Catholic and went to Archbishop Carroll High School, taught by the Augustinians, and then ultimately to Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown Law School.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “I did. I went to Catholic Elementary School, went to St. Gabriel's Elementary School, which is about a couple blocks from where I grew up and was profoundly impacted by that first generation Catholic. My mom, great story, my mom is a convert to Catholicism. And you know, one of the reasons she converted is hysterical. So remember that little shack out in the field, a little club, two o'clock in the morning, everybody's partying. So one Saturday night she's in there partying. Who does she see across the room but her pastor Would someone other than the wife?”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “But my mom remarried a great man, John, and he worked in the federal government. He was a Korean war veteran. And she knew his family, did not know him, but met him through one of his sisters because back in the day he used to go to clubbing and do that, right? And this was the club. So it was a tobacco field out in Prince George's County because blacks couldn't socialize in the city. So what they did was they find a run-down shack and they would go and they would get like the guitar and the drums and they'd hang out in a cornfield like at 2 o'clock in the morning and people would drive from all over Washington DC out into Prince George's County because they couldn't go to nightclubs in town.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yeah, four years old, died to 36 years old from cirrhosis of the liver from the alcoholism. And so was my mom and me for about five years. And that was really kind of the formation for me. This woman had such a powerful impact and lessons to teach me. And I would not appreciate them until I was a young teenager. We finally sat down, had such affection for her. When I found out I was adopted, it broke my heart because I was like, oh my God, and then like a little life bulb went off in my head. I said, no, this is your mother, dude. Come on, stop it.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “My, I will say my birth father, but my stepfather, adopted father rather, was a good man, but he had demons. He had problems. He was an alcoholic and suffered from alcoholism most of his adult life, was a womanizer, just all around, not a good guy, but it was funny. My mom always tell me, she said, when she needed him to behave, she would just hand me off to him. Because at that time she knew he wouldn't drink and he wouldn't go out with his girlfriends. So what he did, what he would do is he would take me out with him when I was a baby. And then we spent like a day out. God knows what I don't remember. But then we come back in and he was like, okay, here he is because he knew he had plans for the evening. But he died at 36.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “And I was doing interviews. I was doing interviews. Close. She said, I stood up and reached out to her. And she said in that moment she knew this is my child. Wow.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “She is my mom. And she tells me this story. And the things in your life that kind of let you know that there's something bigger and greater than you. And for those of us in a faith tradition, we see God's finger in some of these things. So she's going to St. Anne Infant Home because she had been determined by a doctors she could not have a child. And so she finally, my father, William and her, decided they would adopt. So they were going to the infant home and they walk into this vast room, like imagine this room full of cribs. And they walk in and the nuns are taking them in to show them the babies. And she says she was walking down this road. And she comes to my crib.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Well, my mom, Mabel, is a phenomenal woman. She's a sharecropper's daughter. She had a fifth grade education picking cotton and tobacco in South Carolina growing up. Moved to Washington. And back in those days, as you know how the sharecroper system went, worked, a family member would then go to the next farm or go to a new location to find work. And my grandmother moved to Washington to work at a laundry in Washington, D.C. Once she got settled, she then called back and her oldest daughter, my mother, then came up, followed by her sister, followed by her sister, and that's how we went. So that's how the family wound up settling in Washington. My mom is my heart.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Part of Catholic University. Yeah, Kathleen, being a student at Catholic University, I say no-no. But she had a different mindset. And on her way, she met a nun who had a conversation. And she kept putting me up for adoption. I'm glad she did.”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Birth parents were? No, no, I have no clue what I do know about them is that they were graduate students at Catholic University. And my mother became pregnant with me in, I think was like her junior year or one of her years at the school. The story, as I've been able to piece together, was that through happenstance she was on her way to confront her pregnancy. And as all of you know, that was a very challenging thing for women back in the 50s and for a long, long time until Roe v. Wade sort of changed the climate”

    2016-09-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 81 - Michael Steele (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source