YouSaid · the spoken record

Mitch Landrieu

lines on the record: 107
first: 2020-06-22
most recent: 2020-06-22
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

“Well, I think that's true. I mean, I think that's the basic one. I mean, jobs Cannot feed my family, cannot send my kids to school, can I give my kids a better chance at life than I had and that my parents gave me? I think that's pretty universal in this country and that's a central question that has to be answered.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that is. You have to be able to answer the question that people have. And if that's the question that they have, if you don't answer it, they're going to think you're not talking to me. So from campaign to campaign, those issues change from year to year. The same issues that economy is usually pretty.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“America. And that message I think resonates with a lot of different people. And whether it's a Democratic Party or the Republican Party would have gone forward, the public wants government to work. They don't identify themselves the way the politicians do. They don't see themselves necessarily that way. Now, when elections come around, everybody's got to put their jerseys on. But day to day, folks have gone to work. They come at home. They're taking their kids to the ballpark. They're trying to do the best they can to go to the doctor and get their homework done.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly right. People are not looking for a handout. I mean, people want the dignity of work. They want to work themselves and they want to work in a good job. They wanted a job that makes them feel good. And they want to work in a job that gives them some sense of purpose in life. I think that's absolutely true. And most people in this country, black, white, blue, green, Democrat, Republican, the mostly good people who have given the opportunity would reach out and help somebody else out. We can certainly be put into our corners, which is where we are right now, which is why I say it's going to have to be a choice for us to step out of that comfort zone and to realize it's not the Syrian refugee. It's not the illegal immigrant. You know, we have a lot of issues that we have to solve between and amongst ourselves. I have always believed that being open, being inviting, including other people, getting the benefit of the diversity that other folks that don't look like you, don't think like you, don't live with you, bring to you creates a better.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, you were asking before about politics and scaring people. If people are afraid, if they're hungry, if they're tired, they'll believe anything, especially if you give sell them a bill of goods about how you're going to be their savior. And they don't care that much about what the real reason is. They just know that somebody cares. And so when we get a little bit of distance from them, it will be true that it's not the issues that people think it's mostly technology that's forcing jobs to disappear. Having said that, we still have to come up with an answer of how you help people eat and put food on the table and send their kids to school because they are going to support the people they think that are looking out for them”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Detroit, you had other folks from that area, from Ohio, saying, you know, it's not registering. These folks are not hearing what it is that we're telling them. What's the message? And the party was never able to deliver it. On the issue of trade, as much as we think open trade is important, fair trade evidently was really important too. And one of the things that the country's terrible at generally, the government, and this is Republicans and Democrats, is actually transitioning people from one job to another workforce training, lining up jobs that have gone away because of technology or for other areas with the new jobs that exist. And we just don't have a good million jobs.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“White working class folks shut out. And I don't know that the message was clearly delivered to them. You had mayors like Mike Duggan, you know.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think she lost because we lost one of our core constituencies, was white working class Americans. Donald Trump did a better job of convincing them that he was going to fight for them. And I don't think that we delivered a message clearly enough to them that that wasn't true. You know, we've always been a party, Democratic Party, that believes in diversity, being a strength, but I think they felt shut out.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you need mayors and governors and other folks to help create an environment where Congress can get to yes, I think it would be very beneficial to the country to get a good solution to a very difficult problem. And then you move on to immigration reform, you do infrastructure, you do tax reform, then people are going to start feeling better about the future of the country.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Put out a special call to the senators and the congressmen to really rise above party on healthcare, particularly because if you do this, you can do infrastructure standard on your head and see if we can come up with a bipartisan approach that fixes the obvious flaws in the Affordable Care Act. Now, I'm for the Affordable Care Act. I think it was a piece of legislation that succeeded in giving health insurance to many, many, many people. There are some flaws in it. And I would just say correct the flaws and let's work through bending the cost curve and some of the other things that their obvious answers to.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said, you know, keep your hands off them. I think we seem to be confused at the moment. But again, this is where leadership, I think, really matters. And I would really.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly Well, I think that's true. It's just hard to see the future. I mean, it unfolds every day. But I think that most of the people in this country want to see something get done. I don't necessarily agree that it's an anti-government thing. It's anti-government in the sense of they think the government's not the one that's functioning, but if government worked well, and for those of us that believe in government, we have a special obligation to make sure that the mousetrap of government is designed well, functions well, and governs with integrity. You now see something interesting happen, I think, in the healthcare debate where some of the folks that voted for Trump, ostensibly to undo Obamacare, who are beginning to understand that, wow, that's going to hurt me too, of saying, well, I didn't really mean that. So it was like the original healthcare functions that they had when Kathleen Sibilius and all the president's people out there, they were coming back saying, man, something's churning out there because the guy was social security, Medicare.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think people were frustrated and angry, and I think they wanted to see Washington get something done. And he, for whatever people's criticisms of him are, and there are many reasons to be critical of him, he has, as you know, a raw political instinct that not every politician that you've worked for has. He connects with people in a way that a lot of other folks don't understand, but he evidently connects. And he connects in such a strong way that it doesn't matter what he does. Now, you were a political consultant at one time, and you would have gone to whoever you were the working for and said, man, if you do that, you're dead. You'll never come back to that. No, I mean, he's defied those rules. He's defied grabbing.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cause our minds to not think about solving the problems of the day. And my guess is that it'll be a very contested election. I'm not sure just as a political junkie that President Trump is going to get beat. I don't think, notwithstanding as hopeful as some Democratic activists are, that this is just a fate accomplis. I mean, he did get elected president in a very, very tough rate. Why did he get elected president?”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you never rule out and running anything. You never say never about anything, but I'm not running. And this kind of thing goes on all the time. I would say this to the country about this issue. President Trump has only been in office for six months. It's in everybody's best interest for him to succeed and for him to do well. Starting a presidential race for anybody at this time under any circumstances is ill-advised, but the political jockey always seems to kind of...”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the answer to the question is, I'm not running for president. I have heard my name, and it's really nice. I would say this.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Congress, I think you can do it in about three months That's what the goal was. If the goal was, I want to make sure that I retain my Republican majority or I want to make sure the Democrats control, then that's a whole different process, which is why Washington is so disconnected and why mayors and governors think differently about this. But I feel fairly certain that if you put a bunch of governors and mayors, bipartisan guys in a room and said, you got to come out with an answer to these four problems.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even see what they necessarily are, but they're creating forces. And I do think that politicians in this country have a special obligation to step up and to choose because I think reconciliation and finding common ground is a choice. It's not something that you can get forced into. And some guys think they win by separating. I think we win when we're together. And so just, for example, if you take infrastructure, if you take healthcare, if you take tax reform, and the idea was forgetting about the process of what particular caucus you might be in in Congress, if you said, could I put some reasonable thoughtful people in a room? Maybe there are 11 governors and 11 mayors and 11 congressmen and 11 senators. Lock them in the room and ask them to come out with a package of public policies on immigration, infrastructure, health care, whatever. That's 60% of the people in America would agree with poll tested before you even went to”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well I think there are people who think driving differences helps them. Those generally are people that believe in 50% plus one might as right view of the world. And I think President Trump is one of those people. He basically told you peace through strength. If that means that I'm stronger than you and can whip you butt, we're going to have peace because you're afraid to fight me. That's kind of what that means. There is no mutual respect in that offer and receipt. Reconciliation is a different thing. And if you can think about the country through the long arc of history, President Obama talked a lot about that. Other presidents thought about it. I know in the moment now, so everybody feels every tweet. Everybody feels every communication that you see on Fox or CNN. Eventually, we will move beyond President Trump. I don't know whether it's going to be in four years or eight years, but historically, it's a blip. There are things happening in the country now as a result of how he and his team will govern. I don't think we can.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a, look, I don't want to sound like. Too naive, but after Katrina, you were asking me about that. I saw in our darkest hours people rise up and reconcile. During people's moment of terror and fear, they didn't see color. They didn't see race. They didn't see creed. They didn't see religion. They didn't see anything. They helped each other up. In our darkest hour, I just kind of saw this incredible positive force come forward. And I absolutely believe that that's possible in our country. I'm a little bit disappointed because I really thought years ago that the first two decades of the 21st century were going to be owned by America, lock stock and barrel because we had the capacity to do it. And we seem to have shot ourselves in the foot. But that doesn't blind me at all or make me not think that we can't get our mojo back. I think that we will. I think it takes some time to do it, but we will be able to overcome differences and reconciliation is just a part of our”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“America was a place where nearly 4,000 of our fellow American citizens were lynched. 540 In Louisiana alone, where our courts enshrine separate but equal, where freedom riders were beaten To a bloody And it immediately begs the question. Why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks, nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives of pain, of sacrifice, of shame, all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the community. And this speech was really designed just for the people of New Orleans, why we did what we did and why it was in the best interest of the city to do so. It was a huge surprise to me. I can't even begin to describe the word surprise because that's just an understatement that the speech went viral.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is kind of history. A lot of people that didn't want them, they don't know how power challenged us legally for two years that were legal challenges. We went through, I think, seven different court hearings, 13 separate judges. But democratically, we had committee hearings, we had council hearings, we had executive action, we have legislative hearings, we had judicial hearings. So federal, state, local, Legislative executive, we did what any democratically elected group of people would decide to do. And then when I took them down, I thought it was appropriate to outline”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I wasn't, I just wasn't thinking about it. I didn't know. Nobody had really talked to me about it. But the more I started thinking about it and processing it and a racial reconciliation conference, I simply said, this is to answer your next question. Why did it become such a big deal? I simply uttered the words. I think we should start thinking about taking those monuments down. When I said that, all hell broke loose. And all of a sudden, it became pretty evident that this was a big emotional issue for a lot of people. And this was a deep, raw wound. Now, I was pretty clear from the beginning that the right thing to do would be to take those statutes and put them in a place of remembrance and not in a place of reverence. They're very different things because that's what museums are for. But these are in prominent places that actually require people to revere them. And I didn't think that that was the appropriate thing for the city to do. And so I propose that we took them down. Now, what happened after that?”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It never occurred to me as racially sensitive as my family is. No person has ever said to me those statutes offend me and cripple me and went and said to me there are people like Lewis Armstrong that left this city because of those statutes. Well, what he was talking about was not just the physical statutes, but the attitude. Of the statutes, and it turns out that those statutes were on property that the city of New Orleans owned. They were in prominent spaces, that they were put up by a mayor who had himself been a Confederate soldier, to send a singular message to Washington DC that we're not comin', the South is not comin', that yea you might have won the war, but the cause of the Confederacy was a just and right cause. Now, I'm in a city that 67% African American. You cannot be a person of conscience and walk by”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And while we were rebuilding the city, as I told you, you know, we started to look just from an aesthetic point of view. How does the city look? What do we have that adorns our city? We look at the great cities of the world, like Venice and Rome and Paris and all these other cities. And I started looking at our public spaces and it became pretty evident that in three of our most prominent spaces in the city, I mean, think about whatever city you're in in America right now, your most prominent space is. We had these Confederate generals that were in places of prominence and reverence. And so as I began to think about our 300th anniversary and I asked Wenton Marcellus, my friend, to help me curate it, which is next year, he said, I'll do it, but you got to take the Confederate monuments down. And I said, you lost your damn mind. He says, no, no. Have you ever thought about them? Why are they there? Like, who put them on?”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, there's a bigger backstory to it. As I told you just a minute ago, when we started rebuilding the city back in 2010, I asked the city to give us permission to not build the city back the way it was, that Katrina and Rita hadn't caused all of our problems, that when we had a chance to rebuild the city, the schools, that we ought to build the city we always wanted to be. And if that was the city we always wanted to be, we had to kind of take a deep dive and ask, well, where did we go wrong and when did we take a wrong turn? In 1960, the city of New Orleans was bigger than Atlanta and bigger than Houston. And subsequently, they just grew up and dwarfed us. And why was that so? What were the bad decisions that we made politically, spiritually, economically that caused us to become a descending city?”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Strongly that the federal government has really walked away in many ways from this problem. Post-September 11th, when we got focused on terrorism and we should be focused on it and Homeland Security got created and we refocused the FBI basically on that, we've basically cut the massive amount of funding that we used to give to local governments for fighting crime. I do think there's an answer to the problem, but it requires more manpower. It certainly requires more investment on the front end in mental health, substance abuse, early childhood education, and it requires more federal, state, and local law enforcement because the other thing that has occurred since September 11th is that neighborhoods and cities have become the tip of the spear for the fight against terrorism, homeland security, and public safety. So police officers are asked to do more with less, and it's been a real strain for them.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's a hard thing for the nation to focus its attention on. And I wanted to focus attention on it. So I put the spotlight on this. And I wanted to make sure that people could see it really clearly and it couldn't be hidden anymore. So we really push it to the front pages of the paper, which has said positive and negative consequences, positive because people now are really paying attention that every murder matters, whether it's a person of color or not. New Orleans has historically had a crime rate that's eight to ten times higher than the national average since as long as we can count. And it has been really tough to get to the root. Because when you're dealing with a crime, you've got to get on the front end of it and you got to get on the back end of it and you need resources. And we're under consent decree, which is really another complicating factor because our police community relations were not really good when I got here. So all of those things make it very difficult to solve that particular problem. And I happen to feel very...”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No question Well, that's a good question. I don't think it can be, this question can be avoided. I have since the day that I got in office been concerned not only about general crime, but specifically young boys killing young boys, the murder rate in America in poor African American communities, in my opinion, is a national catastrophe.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A while, but I've never done this deal before. What do I do? Mike Bloomberg told me, hire a good scheduler Right, and make sure that you do the hard things first. Richie Daly said, make sure you hire really smart, good people who are smarter than you and faster than you, and then just get after it and make the right decisions and do the right things for the right reasons. And so if you follow those guys, that's what we did. We were able to basically rebuild this city and take it from a descending city to an ascending city. So eight years ago, we were bankrupt. Now we've had balance our budget eight years in a row. We've had the highest credit rating in the history of the city. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates. We still have challenges at every major urban city. One of them is crime.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are two schools for people that went there and they remember the alma mater and they were the captain of the football team. We've completely reconstructed our entire school system. We're 100% charter in the city of New Orleans right now. We've rebuilt 33 brand new state-of-the-art schools. We've built 55 primary healthcare clinics and three new hospitals. We've built a new airport. We've rebuilt the riverfront. We've completely reconstructed the infrastructure of the city and changed the institutions that actually were responsible for making government work. So before you had a government that was based on who you know, not what you know. It wasn't a competent government. Now this is a government that is redesigned. It's based on a deputy mayor system, which I got from the best mayors in the country at the time. Richie Daly was one of the first people I called. He was a mayor at the time. And I said, what am I going to do? And I talked to Mike Bloomberg. I talked to Mayor Menino in Boston. I talked to Antonio Villarigosa in Los Angeles. And I said, look, I'm a new mayor. I've been around.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was no organizational structure in the city. Every different organization was gone in 50 million directions, the philanthropic community had left. My police department was under indictment and under threat of consent decree from the civil rights department. The schools weren't working. And we began to with the permission of the city. And this is what's most miraculous about what's happened in the last eight years. It's the people of the city that gave us permission to do hard stuff. Now, you know, having been in government how hard change is. So you saw in Chicago the difficulty that ROM had when he was talking about schools, just like closing one school.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then later on. What happens to cities when they really get down? I mean, our city was as close to bankruptcy as a city can get. I could have taken the city into bankruptcy. I had reason to do it. But there are also a lot of good reasons not to do it. But that's how bad it was. And I had to close a $100 million hole, which was 22% of our budget. I cut 22% out of my budget in six months. Now, you know, people who deal in this know that that's a stratospherically high number, that Congress generally is fighting about whether they should cut the growth, not just real cuts. And the legislature is doing the same thing. We cut 22% out of our budget.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I can tell you. The last seven years. You've seen with Detroit and you live through Chicago. which was on its back in 1968 or”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This city, and I'm not sure it's happened anywhere because it's mostly coalition politics where you put together 80% of white votes and 20% of black or vice versa.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About 60, 66% African Americ I said, but if the people of the city are ready, if they're really ready to make dramatic change, I'm kind of a transformational, institutional change agent. And that's what the city needed. I said, if they were ready because I cannot govern without the consent of the governed. So the people have to be ready. If everybody's ready to do dramatic stuff, and I felt that and I felt like I could make a difference, then I would do it. And I got myself into a place where I felt like, you know, that could happen. I run in the race and it turns out that I win, I guess 66% of the vote. But what was so special about the vote to me is that I got an equal number of African American votes and an equal number of white votes that has never, ever happened in the history.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is one of He and his wife Mary moved back here and raised their two daughters here and he and a lot of other people just came and started talking to me and I really didn't want to hear it to be honest with you. I didn't believe it. I was thinking about other stuff. But it occurred to me after doing extensive polling and listening to a lot of people in the city. The question that I had four years before, I remember John King asking me this, you think you're going to win or lose the race? And I said, well, if the race turns out to be about race as opposed to the city moving forward, I will lose.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can win and the city needs you and you can do the job. And I'm like, I don't really want to. And it was very, very late in the election process. It was about six weeks before qualifying when a lot of people just came to me and said, it's just really imperative. And, you know, I just had to admit to myself that ambition and a desire to really turn the city around was still there. Now, when I got here, let me just.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It wasn't gone well. Nothing was getting rebuilt. Nothing was focused. Nothing was organized. And so, you know, some people came to me and said, you should think about running for mayor again. And I said, I'm not interested in opening up that wound because I really have always wanted to do this. I love this job intensely. But it was too painful for me. I had lost twice. You know what that's like? That's like you got to be kidding me. Maybe I can't see myself clearly. Maybe I think I'll look good and I don't look so good. And maybe somebody's telling you something. But James Carville actually, who moved here with Mary, came and said, you know,”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he looked at me and he said, Man, you know, when you become the mayor right after a major storm, it's hard. If you run, you're probably going to win, but the city is going to take some time. Well, I ran and I lost. Then I kind of put it out of my mind. I was never going to do it again. I was on track to run for governor of the state of Louisiana. Didn't know if that was ever going to happen, but that's kind of, you know, I had left the city. But the recovery really stalled under Man Nagan's last couple years. All the philanthropic organizations. He wound up subsequently in prison. But even before that happened, the recovery had really just kind of hit the skids.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I said I'm 45. I said, you know, you give me a lot of advice and never listen. I said, now I really need you to tell me what to do. And he said, it will explain it to me. And I explained it. And he said, well, what are people saying? And he goes, you're the only one that can save the city. He goes, well, that's not true. He said there are other people that can do it. And he says, I said, Well, what should I do? He goes, I don't have no idea. He goes, but I wish you well, and I hope you make the right decision. Then I went to President Clinton, and I flew myself up to New York.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I won't take you back to the previous election when Mayor Nagan was having difficulty, lots of people will come and say, you got to run, you got to run. You're the only one that can save the city. You have to run. I was a lieutenant governor at the time. And I was really struggling with it. So I went and saw two people. I went and saw my dad. And I said, you know, I'm...”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most incredible things that gave you hope that this country was unbelievable, which is that people who you never thought would come to other people's aid just really rallied and did the most incredible things under the most difficult circumstances. Aside from just the immediacy of the pain, I got a lot of hope in the recovery of Katrina about the future of the country because you could just see when the chips were really, really down and they were really down. I mean, there was nothing left here. The people really did what they needed to do to stand back up and helped each other out.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was. And that was really, really hard. You know, it's hard to really even talk about it because it was such a horrific event. There were people that were in what were jails that became makeshift hospitals that did not have access to evacuation. And we had to pick them up, literally, put them in the back of pickup trucks, drive them to places, load them on a helicopters, let the helicopters lift them about five miles onto Interstate 10, which had been closed and put them in ambulances and hoped to get them to hospitals before they expired. And there were a number of people that passed while we were trying to do that when we were rescuing people, they had people with broken legs. I mean, it was really... It's almost impossible to conceptualize this in America. Civil government for a period of time stopped functioning the way that it was supposed to. And the evacuations was so intense and people were in such harms the way that it was really awful. However, I will hasten to say this at the darkest time you also saw.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he said, yeah, he said, you were helping evacuate people off of airport tarmac, patients that had been left behind in nursing homes and hospitals, trache patients. And we were loading them on the C one hundred thirty's, and the National Guard were trying to separate me and my mama from my grandmother, and you wouldn't let them do that. You made them put us on the same plane because you knew that we wouldn't end up in the same place. And I wanted to thank you for that because my grandmother passed away two weeks later and I was able to. That event and those kinds of events played themselves over and over and over again on the ground.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said, what are you talking about? He goes, I said, first of all, that was a long time ago. So you must have been five and now you're 20 and you're huge.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I went to visit my son, who is a counselor at he's a public school teacher, and during the summer he helps run a camp for kids from New Orleans. And this big kid walked up to me. He stands about two inches. I'm about 5'10, so he was about six feet, and he's big. And he says, you don't remember me, do you? I said, no. He goes, you helped rescue me. During Hurricane Rita, which was a hurricane that was two weeks after Katrina, it was really kind of the same seminal event.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of what had happened, but that opinion only had to be because there was something wrong with us. Well, I think we've subsequently come to learn with all the massive infrastructure catastrophes we've had, the other storms that we've had, that the whole nation is at risk. And basically, we were the canary in the coal mine as a message to the rest of the country that we need to get our heads right about homeland security and massive environmental threats as well as homeland security as well as terrorism threats.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no question. I understand that. I don't mean to be too harsh about his current circumstances, but he was the Speaker of the House at the time. Yeah, right. And in that position, which is really significant, the Speaker of the House opined, not let's get down there and help, but there's something wrong with those people and they don't live the right way, so they must have gotten hurt or let's just move someplace else, which was not an enlightened view.”
2020-06-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of The Axe Files: Mitch Landrieu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source