YouSaid · the spoken record

Peter Meijer

lines on the record: 67
first: 2023-03-02
most recent: 2023-03-02
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

“I'm certainly not removing anything from the equation. I think I care about policy. I care about having good policy outcomes. And I think one of my frustrations with our polarized system is there are a lot of areas where fundamentally there's not a significant difference in approach on either side of the aisle. I mean, slight gradations, but so much of the way that our government functionally operates, even when it wants to be able to do something and to accomplish something, it cannot get out of its own way. So you're considering.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there might be category differences in the dramatic impact, I think, of what it does to erode the long-term sustainability of rule of law in this country. They are both incredibly corrosive.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think some of its actions around acknowledging the illegality of actions, now granted, these were ones that maybe there was more public support around, but still pressing forward. I'm talking some of the actions around the OSHA vaccine mandate, some of the early one that's escaping me right now, but where it was, I mean, you.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who will be more destructive to the country in the long term between Biden and Trump? I don't know how I answer that. I think I am, there are tearing of the social fabric that Trump is exacerbating more so than Biden. There is an erosion, put more delicately, right, and to your point. Trump is sort of flagrant. I think a lot of the ways in which Biden has caused some serious undermining has been objectively radical policies that would have that FDR would have looked at as saying too much having objectively radical policies, but presenting it in such a way that it comes across as very normal and very palatable. Vice Trump had some super normally policies, not all of them, obviously, but had some very normal policies that just by his presentation came across as sort of, I don't know that, I don't know.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do not want to see that future. If we have, oh my God, if we have Trump versus Biden again, I mean, what that says about the future of this country that we cannot get octogenarian, I guess Trump would only be 77 at that point, but just the absolute lack of inspiration, the lack of a forward-looking, both parties just reverting to mean despite overwhelming disapproval and frustration with that status quo.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was going to say unimpeachable and have to ask for it. But But there's just sort of a nihilistic strain that essentially by virtue of winning or by virtue of having opposition of influence, you are disqualified. And so it's just going to eat its own.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was brutal. And so I think that is waking a lot of folks up who said, well, you know, this is not an existential threat to, and by the way, a lot Trump, I think some people like, oh, there's a Trump call. There's no Trump cult. To the extent that there may be sort of a cult-like kind of fanaticism, Trump is not the leader. He may be idolized, but he is not the leader. There is evidenced by the fact that the guy that Trump endorsed whose bona fide days... Among that crowd are impeccable.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Segmented between that and folks who view it as kind of like an emotional therapeutic social club. I mean, they don't, the actual exercise of governmental influence takes a back seat to whatever other kind of social benefits they derive. And the challenge is there's a certain alignment of effort amongst the others. One side of the aisle that wants to win supporting the elements of the other side of the aisle that don't care about winning and that are doing things counterproductive towards that in ways that I think will just kind of change how we operate politically in, and I don't say this in like a judgmental sense, but in terms of the folks who actually want to care and actually want to win, we lost the state house. We lost a state senate. The first time in 40 years you”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you can broadly segment our political process into individuals who care about electoral outcomes, namely victory, right? They want to win because if you want, the reason why you get involved into politics theoretically should be you want to win, you want to gain that power and position to be able to implement policies you think will move the country in the right direction.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I put it this way. I mean, I know you've talked about this on the podcast, the DCCC putting, you know, spending money to boost my primary challenger. And in my mind, it's okay. They spent a little under half a million dollars to support my primary challenger.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Apples and oranges using Disney's bucks at a Caesar's palace. It just didn't compute. I think the challenge I see this time around, I mean, Trump was really good for business. He was really good for media attention. Less so now. I mean, some of that has become sort of old hat, but.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it is. I don't know how much that's a paper tiger, though. And this has been really interesting parallel watching Trump go after DeSantis and the ways in which, I think DeSantis has played a very smart in his reactions to Donald Trump, not letting Trump dictate the terms of the game, right? I think that was the problem in 2016 as Trump was dictating the terms. Everyone else thought they were playing checkers and Trump was playing some drunken form of backgammon, right? I mean, it was a very, very different.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, that's as best as I can figure. I mean, there's very much a collective action, tension, you know, across those spectrums. And I think there's some times where there's the hope that if there's placation, we can minimize the damage. But then when that placation becomes validation that gives more aid and comfort to and resources and influence and rehabilitates rather than remediates. Yeah, I'll just put it this way. That was not a fun time.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was the case I mean, now I think there was a lot of hope that on the Republican side, there was a lot there were some pretty sincere threats by Donald Trump to go off and form a third party, Patriot Party, really tear everything down on his way out. And I think there were efforts to avoid Trump causing that sort of. And you think that's why McCarthy.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, ideally there would be leadership that agrees with me, leadership that is a live and let live toleration versus the iron fist conformity. I'm not going to sit here and complain because yes, I wish there would have been different responses personally around the certification vote for sure. At the same time, the impeachment vote was a vote of conscience. It was not whipped. It was very clearly communicated by leadership that there would be, it would not factor into what committee assignments somebody had. There would be no impact on whether or not there'd be re-election support, which would not have been the case on the other side of the aisle.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually, and my comparison is from what I saw of Speaker Pelosi. And it cracks me up because on the Republican side of the aisle, I cast votes that were being whipped. And that's where, you know, hey, we expect you to vote kind of with us type of thing. I mean, the harshest response I ever got from anyone in leadership was maybe Steve Scully sitting down next to me being like, hey, you sure you want to vote this way? I was like, yeah, I was like, okay. And then walking away. I mean, as opposed to if Speaker Pelosi was whipping a vote and you didn't get permission prior and we saw a little bit of this with Josh Gotheimer's group around the BIF BBB back and forth, you know, it was, oh, does your wife like her job at that kind of left-leaning foundation? Does she want to stay there? Because those type of threats were...”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I don't know that I characterize as going for guidance when you're coming in as a freshman member, you want to be, again, I will want to solicit input and advice. And there's a difference between having somebody give me political advice versus a substantive engagement on the merits or lack thereof of an issue. I think it was more apparent that once Josh Holly and sort of Ted Cruz were kind of in the competition for who's going to challenge and how and what, that gave a lot of steam to the objections on the house side, at which point it's like, okay, if this is going to happen, you'd rather be one of 180 rather than one of eight.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in the 2020 race, Trump won my district by three points. I won by six. I think he was down from the 2016 numbers in that district.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, to the extent that I had any questions afterwards, it was I'm seeing a lot of allegations being made. Can you substantiate the allegations that are being made? Because I don't want to be blithe if I don't want to ignore if there's something that I should be factoring in. But also I'm not going to take a twice screen grabbed Facebook post as the gold standard.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100% on Veterans issues, and those are important issues to deal with. They will not address the systemic. Challenges that make it harder for our government to address issues”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And where I saw that to be where there was an appetite for it and the potential for bipartisan movement, because that also was essential, was around the balance and war powers and emergency powers between the executive and legislative branches.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, especially around, I mean, when it comes to fiscal prudent fiscal management, nobody's bade themselves in glory in DC, right? I mean, and this gets back to some of those problems is, you know, there may be gradations of guilt, but no one is without sin. And I think one of my challenges coming into Congress, it was, okay, how do I, none of the problems that I saw from the outside in no way, shape, or form was I inaccurate. I mean, there were additional problems that I didn't see, but what I hadn't appreciated from the outside was how many problems when you say, okay, how do we solve this? You decompose it. Okay, that problem decomposes into five different constituent problems, each of which decomposes into more. And so it can be very challenging to know, you know, I've limited amount of staff time, a limited amount of political capital I can expend, a limited amount of kind of media attention I can try to draw. Where are the places that we can have the best return on investment for our focus?”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, and you live through Simpson Bowles and some of the challenges around trying to. Do the really unsexy things that, if we do not deal with them, will only get worse. And looking at the current debate and dialogue around the State of the Union with Social Security has been inordinately frustrating because if we are not, if this is the level of discourse, what hope do we have that within a decade we'll be able to solve the fact that there'll be automatic 10% cuts across the board to at least to Social Security payments when the trust fund is expanded, right? But that's a problem to worry about a decade from now. That's one of the challenges internally.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can put into perspective, which are things an important thing to do in politics. I mean, put into perspective the trials and tribulations of the moment, 80% of which will have been yesterday's news and completely forgotten in the newspaper talking about it is used in the puppies training cage a week later. Things are going to pass this too shall pass and being able to gauge perspective while ideally also trying to keep in mind the longer term challenges, the longer-term threats. And maybe more importantly when it comes to our defense, like approach things with a not a reactionary skepticism, but not deferring to... Generals not deferring to members of the intelligence community. Taking their guidance and advice, but also recognizing the prerogatives of the role that that member serves.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I certainly hope so. I mean, I think there's a very impressive crop of Americans who've served overseas, who are coming back and getting involved in civic and political life. I mean, a tremendous number of people that I'm so proud to call friends during Sandy had a friend call him like, so when are you done? Like, done? Like, I mean, we're done when we're done. Like, I'm not like, gonna check out now, like the mission is there. And I think there's a number of those of my colleagues who kind of bring that same ethos into Congress on either side of the aisle and can.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More folks on both sides of the aisle who have a shared background and can at least use that as a point to build rather than and have demonstrated their willingness to put the country first.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that sums up a lot of these places where, like, There's nothing here is clear cut, and you can argue it six ways, and you might be right, you might be wrong. If you keep in the back of your mind the fact that you might be right or wrong and continually reevaluate the underlying assumptions you have used in order to project forward because you also cannot be hamstrung and sitting there in paralysis, right? But you also can't drive forward and forget the assumptions that you made to chart that course.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that is a very good way of summing it up, or just do not go in thinking that any one individual, especially yourself, has all the answers. And let me put it this way. One of my favorite moments in the Simpsons is when Ned Flanders is asking Reverend Lovejoy, you know, a biblical question. And Reverend Lovejoy says, well, short answer, yes with a but long answer, no with an if.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that the challenge of temptation to think this time is different or we're different or that meme from arrested development, you know, well, didn't work for them, but it might just work for us, you know, that sense of, you know, I certainly believe in American exceptionalism, but there's only so much we can do to deny that certain geostrategic gravity does exist and traps that others have fallen into or susceptible to falling into as well.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In which that dispute is meted out, if we don't understand the underlying politics, we're not going to be able to be functionally competent and effective militarily. And I'm actually, I am in.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very complicated feelings in Afghanistan. I think after my experience in Iraq, I thought that might have been a one-off. And so going to Afghanistan and I was a conflict analyst there for the aid community. So my job was both helping mitigate risk for humanitarian organizations on the ground while at the same time analyzing the conflict, trying to understand where things were going so that groups could plan accordingly and try to avoid getting caught in the crossfire in that conflict. And I think the through line between Iraq and Afghanistan is certainly, and in my impact was a very significant hesitation, if Klaus Evit says that war is politics by other means, if we are, we can fight a military war very well. But where it's essentially a political dispute that has taken on, where violence has become the way”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Especially if we're only looking at it in the short term and with a lot of domestic concerns front of mind, I mean, we're going to get rolled and played by the people who've been there before we were there, who are going to be there after we're gone and know the right song and dance to milk us for all we've got while we're there. And then we end up serving the interests of many, many groups, but oftentimes at the expense of our core national security.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It certainly took a lot of shine off the apple. I mean, I had been a fierce advocate for the war in Iraq as a high school student. I was the founder of our teenage Republicans. I thought that American intervention could change the course of history in some of these areas and that all we need to do is try. Create a better world And I came into a very, I'd read all the books that you're supposed to read. I tried to understand the scenario as best as I could from the outside and went in and it's like, I know nothing. I know more than most and I know nowhere near what I need to know to understand these dynamics. It led me certainly a sense of appreciation for the complexities of the world, for the limitations of our ability to”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of those sectarians and ethnic schisms that have been predominated many of the atrocities over the decades prior. So I didn't have argued that we should have stayed. I'll be very clear about that. But I also think that there are things between surge and complete withdrawal, especially in the renegotiation of the status of forces agreement, the sofa between the US and Iraq that there was pressure on the Iraqi side to have it be a full withdrawal. And I think there was very little incentive during the Obama administration to try to push for something different. So the blame doesn't result on kind of either side. But I think there was just. It was hard for us to articulate what would a post withdrawal training mission, what type of limited support.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not necessarily I haven't had to discuss the Iraqi withdrawal for a long time And honestly, where Iraq is today is, I think, a lot better than many of us would have thought a decade ago. There are some green shoots there. There's a revived sense of Iraqi nationalism that doesn't want to be subjugated by Iran that looks at what happened in Lebanon and Syria and wants to chart its own path rather than being a proxy or client state. I mean, I was very frustrated by the ways in which I think a lot of our Sunni allies were being abandoned. I was frustrated that there wasn't a long-term objective, and I think it made sense. It was not productive for us to stay. That having been said, we did serve a little bit of a peacekeeping role because between the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds, and this is depending on the part of Iraq, but there was a sense that the US was the only neutral mediator and everyone else was trying to encroach on each other and get back.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are essentially our bodyguards are sympathetic to the people who are trying to attack us, and we have very little mechanisms to go and push back against them. It was an incredibly frustrating scenario while at the same time there was a risk aversion to us projecting ourselves outwards in ways that could have pushed back on some of the threats that were coming closer and closer to our bases. I came away deeply frustrated both by just the strategic uncertainty of what we were doing, this sense of running out the clock. And this also the sense of we don't want you to take any risks, but by not taking some of those risks, we were allowing The”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is 2010 to 2011. We're drawing down. We're reducing the forces. We had, I mean, something on the order of 50,000 troops in country when I landed in August of 2010 and we were down to 15,000 or so when I left in June of 2011. And so we were closing down bases trying to plan for that staying residual mission and really trying to workforce protection. I mean, trying to keep our folks safe. A lot of the SUNY elements had stopped attacking the U.S. It was mostly Iranian-backed Shia militants, you know, the Sunni groups were waiting for the US to leave so they could potentially now form ISIS and kind of rise up. That was in the background. It was a very frustrating scenario where we were relying on the predominantly Shia Iraqi military for art protection and on joint basis with them. But the groups that were attacking us were Shia and back Shia militants. So the people”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Barely. So my role was as a human intelligence collector. So that had two main buckets. One was interrogations and the other was source operations, so recruiting and running sources. By the time we got there, and actually, I mean pretty shortly after Abu Ghraib and some of the earlier scandals around detention facilities and abuse and torture, a lot of that had shifted to pretty severe accountability, plus the fact that there were none of the facilities I was located did we have any detention facilities run by the US. It was all Iraqi detention facilities. So on the interrogation side, you'd sit there and ask some questions with an interpreter or with an Iraqi army officer or non-commissioned officer standing behind us. That guy's not going to say anything to me that he hasn't already told to the Iraqi because as soon as we leave bad things could happen to him if he was changing up his story and the reality of it was we couldn't, there was nothing I could do to make that.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not a thing people do. Like, my recruiter was like, I don't know what to do with this, like, this, right? So you left West Point. You don't want to be an officer. It's going backwards in a lot of ways, but I was very passionate about intelligence and military intelligence. And that was something that I wanted to be able to have more of a specific role in rather than a more generalist capacity, which at least in the earlier junior officer stages oftentimes tends to be more administrative or generalist within the intelligence realm.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I definitely wanted to bookend things a little bit Get that bracket. But also, this wasn't part of the service commitment, but my goal was to transfer to a civilian college and LBIOS in the back of my mind. I also thought that the wars would end before I had a chance to have that experience and to be able to serve in a conflict zone. So I transferred to Columbia and then moved to enlist in the Army Reserves, which”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Duty service commitment. And my time at West Point, I wasn't sure that I wanted to be active duty for the career. And I also wasn't sure that I wanted to be in the officer corps relative to having more of a technical competency as a non-commissioned officer. And I was cognizant that the more time I was spending there, that was a seat that could have gone to somebody who would want to commit their career. There.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, apart from just nebulous ideas of wanting to serve, I had a lot of, I knew a lot of folks and a lot of mentors who had not a single one of whom had served in the military regretted it. A number who had not served regretted not serving. And I didn't want to have those regrets. And also at the same time, I mean, we were still fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan wanting, and it just didn't feel right to have folks fighting on my behalf if I am not there alongside them. That rubbed me the wrong way. I loved West Point. And going there was the best decision I made, the question of whether or not to stay because I was cognizant of the fact that if I'm, I didn't want to just what they call take five and dive, you know, the goal and the mission to West Point is to train cadets for careers as active duty army officers. It's a minimum five-year activity.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I went to West Point because I knew I wanted to serve in the military. I think one of the challenges, if you've never been in the military trying to figure out what are the roles that you're really going to latch onto, what are the things that are going to drive you and make you passionate?”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His benef Right. I mean, to be viewed as, and this is also in a more cynical sense, Trump only benefits from critical media attention. Trump only benefits from, you know, actions by if he were indicted.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's gradations. Yeah, I mean, the challenge is it's I think you can good faith make the distinctions, but it's not a zero or one. It's not a binary. It's like, well, but it's less worse here. And that's the challenge, right? You can have a good faith discussion with somebody, but to rebut the notion that one side is perfectly clean and the other side is wholly dirty, I think Donald Trump was certainly in the wrong to especially be kind of at least as far as we understand to be more deceptive, to be kind of stonewalling, to not be operating in good faith. But then the standard comes around the reaction rather than the underlying action. And that just, it complicates things.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Than the others, or throwing bigger or more stones than others. But there's just an endemic, there are some things that are endemic to our politics that we should not tolerate. But the more we set new and additional precedents in terms of reaction, the harder will be to control where that ball stops.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm deeply unsettled by the prospect of prosecuting former presidents. I mean, on the one hand, you don't want to say that anybody's above the law for sure. On the other hand, weighing the getting into that, going down that path, I think is very, very dangerous. And I felt the same way about subpoenas of members of Congress and other areas where you may be able to justify it today, but depending on the precedent that's being set, the potential for that to be abused in the future is exponential. So I'm deeply, deeply unsettled by that. And I hope that's not a bridge that we have to cross. One of the challenges in our political cycle in the short term and the classified documents has been scandals across the aisle has been almost the perfect encapsulation. There may be people living in houses with more glass than...”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The accountability having been met out versus a lack of accountability, a lack of any recognition, a lack of any semblance of acknowledgement on behalf of the former president that what transpired after the election and specifically what transpired on the Capitol on January 6th was unacceptable, that there was responsibility that he bore and that his kind of reckless actions led to a deeply shameful and embarrassing turn of events that we should not tolerate. Now if we do tolerate shame on us going forward.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's very, I don't want to say inargu, but I mean, that seems like the consensus was that was one of the things that really made him a one-term president. And very controversial at the time in the broader sweep of history, looking back now, many of the folks who were deeply critical of that move, I think have by and large come around to saying that that was the right thing to do, that that was important for the country to move past. And I had in my deliberations on whether or not to vote to impeach early mid-January 2021, there was that question of would impeachment be more divisive or more destructive than not acting and in the back of my head too. And this came up in conversation, well, you know, Ford, you know, pardoned Nixon. So there's a sort of precedent in trying to move past. My point was, pardon Nixon after Nixon resigned and took responsibility and kind of came clean. So there's a difference between.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, and you can look at it in one of two ways. I mean, one, you know, the act of doing what he thought was the right thing for the country despite the personal impact and kind of sacrifice from a political may well have cost him.”
2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source