YouSaid · the spoken record

Mick Mulvaney

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79

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2024-01-11

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2024-01-11

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1. “You know, David, I wish, and I haven't talked to her about it. What I wish you'd said is a legitimate answer, which is, hey, you know what? I've been doing this for 16 hours a day for the last five or six days, and I just blew it. Of course, the Civil War is about slavery. And I should have said that right away. Were there other things involved? Are there things that were attached to slavery? Yeah, but I absolutely should have said it right away and I didn't. And I'm sorry.”

   2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “You've asked two different questions. No, I do not think the Republican Party is out trying to teach kids that the Civil War was not about slavery.”

   2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “So I sat right next to her for two years on the state floor. We worked together. She was, I think she got elected in 2004. Like me, one of the sort of the next generation younger at the time, fiscally conservative sort of Republicans, as opposed to sort of the good old We were both pretty solid devotees of Mark Sanford. Mark actually was the governor who encouraged me to run when I first started thinking about running against that guy that I mentioned to you. So we were sort of that Mark Sanford ask sort of cadre of young fiscally conservative Republicans coming down to try and lower spending, lower taxes, et cetera.”

   2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “And he sat down. I'll never forget that. What struck me is that it is such a hard issue, but there are people who want to keep it alive on both sides because it has political value to both sides. Listen, there are folks in the pro-life movement who don't know how to handle themselves now that we won on Row. Because the political issue has gone away at the federal level. Mr. Democrats who want to keep this alive and want to use these exceptions, these very, very rare exceptions.”

   2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Because I did sit next to Nikki Haley for two years in the study legislature, when she was here for this debate when we were debating another abortion bill. It was a ban. I had a Democrat friend of mine get up and talk about the exceptions. What do you want to do about exceptions? What do you do about the Texas example that you just gave? And I stood up and I said, look, I'll make you a deal. I will back every single amendment you have on exceptions if you thereafter support the bill.”

   2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Look at it as to there's a child, there's a living person who's entitled to certain protections. Is Texas taken the steps that they deem necessary? Usually the political process that the democratic process still arrive at certain ways to protect that individual is that legitimate, I believe that it is. If it has these unintended consequences that you described, that happens all the time when you pass law. And again, different states handle it differently.”

   2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “And the doctors encouraged his wife to have an abortion 30 years ago, and the kids now find. So we've all got stories like that. I don't have a difficulty with what Ohio has done, what Nebraska did, put it on the referendum to guarantee those rights in the state constitution to abortions. I think that's the way the process is supposed to work. The American experiment is supposed to work like that. And if Texas wants to do one thing in Nebraska wants to do another, we've done that very successfully for 240 years. I have no difficulty with it. I don't have a problem with California having almost no limitations on abortion.”

   2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Yeah, I don't have a problem with banning it outright. I don't think it's right to do that at the federal level. And I've got too many stories about people who thought the baby was going to have severe disabilities or was, oh, I can't remember whether it was a buddy of mine in the state said it. I can't remember, is it ectotopic pregnancy or something like that?”

   2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Intellectually, for me, it's a problem that you've made 50 years arguing it's another federal government's business, and now you want it to be the federal government's business again. I don't like that at all.”

   2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “You can square it if you consider the embryo to be the individual, right? And if as a Catholic, if you believe life begins a conception, then your right to life begins at conception. So that's that I don't have a difficulty with. The challenge, I think, that my party faces on abortion is that the federal level, which we spent 50 years telling people that Roe was wrong because the federal government, the Supreme Court was wrong in Roe to create a federal right to an abortion. It was always something that had been handled by the states up until that point. And in fact, to this day, we've never passed a federal abortion law. I don't think that it all came out of Rowe. But now my party is starting to talk about, okay, now we need federal protection or federal, we need a federal law to make sure that it's okay for states to ban abortions after a certain period of time. And that's really tough for us.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Grew up as a Democrat, became more conservative. She got older. She said, you know, when she was younger, she was always taught that an embryo was a lifeless mass of cells. And then when we had our triplets in 2000, we'd got pictures of our children when they were eight cells. And so as technology changed, information had changed, the information available to women about what an abortion constitute had changed. And I thought it was at least intellectually and morally defensible to say, okay, you have the right to an abortion. I get that, but we want you to have as much information as you possibly can about it.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Sounds And that's urge is the right word. I was thinking about it, and maybe this was why ran as a Republican. I always considered myself a lot more libertarian than anything else. And I tried to approach abortion from a libertarian perspective respecting the rights of everybody involved, but also being Roman Catholic, respecting the fetus as an individual with rights and so forth. And so there were folks in my state who wanted to just ban it outright, of course, at that time you couldn't do that because of Go anyway. But I said, look, if it's going to be a choice.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Yeah, that's a good question. Could I have run as a Democrat? I then, David, maybe I was more conservative then and I had gone over. And by then the parties were starting to change a little bit. It was harder and harder to be pro-life as Democrat. There was still someone. But I guess I associated more by that time I was what? 40 by that time maybe. I was more associated with the Republican Party. Again, I hadn't been politically active for a long, long time. I worked for a Republican constitution when I was in college, but that was really the only political activity I had outside of my work I did for local associations and stuff.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Yeah, the only time I ever had anybody ask me for a bribe was when I was down in my county. I had moved down there. I was down there for two years and I knew all the county counts, but I had a big piece of property resoting and I had a guy walk up and say that he was going to have to have $50,000 to vote for me for this rezoning. And I told him that I already had the votes on the council to get the votings. And I'd be more than happy to go in and tell counsel in public what he just told me privately. And he quietly abstained from voting and didn't vote. About six months later, he called me and asked me for a contribution because he said he was going to run for the state legislature. And I said, well, you got to tell you, no, I was actually thinking about running the seat myself. And he goes, oh, oh, okay. Well, then he hugged up the phone. I told my wife I had to run for state legislature.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Every single elected official is a Democrat, but they were all conservative southern Democrats. This is back in, say, 98. Back when that party still existed. And it was a fact. I grew up as a Southern Democrat probably. And that's people say, Oh, you can't believe you were a Democrat. But a Southern Democrat was probably closer to today's Republicans than they were. If you grew up, you know, a devout Catholic Democrat, you were pro-life. I mean, that was just so that wing of that party doesn't exist.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Because I was a lawyer for the family selling the family business. But we kept some real estate holdings. We sold a home building business, but kept some real estate that we owned. And that turned into a separate business. And my dad had asked me to come work for him for years and years, and I told him no and told him no and told him no. Then I knew he was getting older and the business was smaller. So I started doing more real estate. And we owned a bunch of real estate in South Carolina, started going to the county council meetings in this little tiny county in South Carolina. population, the whole county back then was probably 40 or 50,000 people. But we had major investments. And I went every single Monday to county council meetings to see what they wanted to do with real estate development and so forth and water and sewer. And that's when I really started getting involved in politics for real. And I love the place, David. The place was all Southern Democrats. 100%. The city council was 100% Democrat.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Taxes mostly, and my family had been. I've been practicing, I was a real lawyer for about seven or eight years, and then I started my own practice and I had a couple of clients and my dad's business was one. And it got to be very, very large. And then we sold that company. We sold that company the same weekend. My triplets were born. That was a busy weekend.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Especially in, say, places like the Mideast. And I called up and talked to the programmer and said, look, she's a fabulously talented person. It's not going to be a problem at all that she's a woman. The problem is going to be that she's lean socialist. And they will put me in the queue to take my call and they ran out of time. Well, you said the magic word.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “And then she was a big influence, but I was on the cutting edge of it. He just started out in the mid 80s and he was on the station back home. And my dad said, you know, you should listen to this. And I'm like, what am I going to do? Am I going to listen to radio all the time? And then I got a job. My job in college, I was a security guard at Georgetown University. And so, you know, back in those days, you didn't have the internet, you had a take player maybe if you want to listen to music, but you had the radio. And that's what you took to work was a radio. And I listened to him a couple of times and enjoyed it. And in fact, later in life, I had a chance to discuss that with him, which was fascinating. I actually called in the show when I was a young lawyer. And Madeleine Albright had just been nominated for Secretary of State. And the debate that day was whether or not having a woman as a secretary of state would be a disadvantage to the United States because of how women are perceived.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Was a wonderful class. And even though she and I did not see eye to eye politically later in life, had a great deal of respect for it. I would bump into her every now and then at the Aspen Institute, I'd say hello, professor. And she goes, hello, Mickey. And that was the end of the second.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “She really was. It was looking back on it. It was one of my favorite classes. And I wish now that I could take the class again. Of course, she's gone and you don't get a chance to do that. But it's a classic example of youth being wasted on the young. The thesis was that America was a unique accident. In all the positive sort of ways that by virtue of when it happened, where it happened, and who it happened with, it was its own thing. And you couldn't recreate it. You could not start from scratch again like we did. And if you did start a country from scratch today, what would it look like? Because it wouldn't look like this. So we studied a bunch of new countries. Of course, a lot with Czechoslovakia, where she was from.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Yeah, you know, Jordan was a great place to be in the 1980s. Really was. I'm sure it still is. My daughter graduated there a couple years back. School has changed a good bit, but it's still a fun place to go to school. And Washington is just a great town. It was a lot of fun. I used to take the bus to the subway a couple times a day down to work for my congressman back in the days when I wasn't really sure which was a Democrat, which was a Republican. All I was doing is writing letters to constituents and sending them flags. So it was fun. It was a great place to go to school. My teachers included Madeleine Albright was my government.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “The causative connection between interest rates and what you get for Christmas gets very personal very, very quickly. So you understand what inflation does and you understand what high interest rates do when you're trying to sell houses for a living. So we were aware of politics, but we didn't discuss it much. We mostly focused on selling houses, I guess is what it came down to. We lived in a, and what I used to describe as the Cosby household. My parents were happily married. They fought every now and then, but not much. You know, they got married. They stay married. My mom stayed home and raised the kids. My dad worked. And we had a really, really good time. I'm close with my siblings. Is it a perfect family? No, no family is.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Until late in life, I have no idea what political persuasion my parents are or were. My dad late in his life became more and more conservative as he got older and was to the point where the Fox News logo was burnt into his television screen because he just left it on all of the time when he moved to Florida. But we talked a little bit about policy, but not much about politics. We were homebuilders. Both my parents were school teachers. And the reason when we moved to Charlotte, my dad found a job in the real estate business for a company that was building houses. And that's how he got into the industry. We're in that industry for a long time after that. My grandfather had actually been a home builder as well in Minneapolis. So we knew about policy because when you're 10 years old and it's Christmas and your dad builds houses for a living and interest rates are 18%, the correlation”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “I do very much believe that God makes everybody different and some people are just, it's in their DNA to be more conservative and some it's more to be more liberal. I have Triplets. I had 24 year old triplets, and it's been a fascinating experiment in nature versus nurture, because here are three children who are raised. Exactly the same way at exactly the same time. They are three very, very different personalities. I have a hardcore liberal, a hardcore conservative, and one right down the middle.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Yeah, actually, the dirt little secrets are more Polish than anything else. So my mom is 100% Polish. So my dad's folks came over about five or six generations ago. We're not really sure where from in Ireland. It was a famine town and the records were not that good. But my mom's family came over. We don't know for sure if my grandmother was born in Poland or born in Chicago, but it was really close. And then she was orphaned at about two. Her mother was hit by a train in downtown Chicago, believe it or not. And she ended up growing up in Orchard. She don't know that much about the family.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “And my mom turned to my dad and said, You can go back to Minneapolis if you want, but I'm staying here And so back in those days, people just up and moved and moved to new towns and found jobs, and that's how we ended up down there.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Yeah, it was worse than that, David. Actually, I'm Roman Catholic. And there was a Presbyterian church across the street from my house. And they go to Sunday school every Wednesday. I know that's a misnomer, but they go to Sunday school every Wednesday. And when I very, very first ran for office for state legislature in 2006, the classes taught at the church across the street from my house in October of 2006 where non-Christian faiths, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Catholicism. That was the lecture series before my very first election. So, no, the rumor about the family is that my parents lived in the Twin Cities, and for some reason they were driving to Florida for one of my dad's conferences when my mom was pregnant with me and they got out of the car around Charlotte, North Carolina in February and it was 75.”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Yeah, I'm not sure it's particularly interesting. Your family is from the Twin Cities, actually, which is why I don't have an accent, but my mom was”

    2024-01-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 563 — Mick Mulvaney · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source