YouSaid · the spoken record

Peter Meijer

lines on the record
67
first
2023-03-02
most recent
2023-03-02
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “Kind of a home amongst the nihilists or amongst the in opposition to everything element. I struggle to put my finger on it, but it has no grounding. I mean, imagine telling a John Birch society member who would have been kind of on the extreme end of the Republican Party in the 60s or 70s that that party is now as adherents who are standing beside folks with hammer and sickle hats. and kind of almost reveling in this moment. I mean, nothing about it is ideologically coherent, right? I mean, there's more of an interesting. But there is because”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I mean, it's very different from saying objectively Putin was wrong to invade Ukraine, but our core national interests are not being served by us going there. Again, I disagree, but there is a good faith argument to be made that it's very different from, no, Putin was right because there were bioweapons labs and NATO provoked it and NATO started it. I mean, I think one of the telling signatures of the past, sort of decade in Republican politics is a lot of the kookier elements that used to find a home on the left have now decamped and found their home on the right. And a lot of like the Lyndon LaRouche type of folks that are at the ends of the horseshoe where both sides of the political spectrum come close to meeting that strain, there was a reactionary element to it for sure, but that strain has found”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I don't want us to overcorrect from some of the expansionism we saw in the post 9 11 moment. I think that is the challenge in so much of our politics is we don't go from if the place the pendulum should be stopping is closer to the center and it's pulled to one end, it just shoots right back. There are legitimate arguments to be made why we should be very wary of involving ourselves in Ukraine. I don't agree with those, but I think there are legitimate good faith arguments one can make the profusion of bad faith arguments or just kind of Putin fanboys kind of coming out of the woodwork.”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Putting themselves in harm's way. In Cold War terms, that is just an incredible, incredible return on a significant but in the grand sweep of things, pretty small investment. The challenge becomes understandable concerns about escalation. I don't necessarily agree because I think there's a greater threat of escalation in the face of our inaction versus our action. In other words,”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Without a doubt, I think the challenge is the moral message and the way that I tend to look at things is I don't expect someone to share my morals or share my values if we're making a cold-hearted, realist argument. We should be agreement on some of that data, right? We spent $24 trillion in, I think, 22 inflation adjusted dollars as of 2022 in the Cold War period for our defense. In $100 billion to thoroughly decimate Russia's military capacity without any American troops”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Some of this is going to reimburse our own stockpiles of weaponry or to purchase new weaponry. It's not as cut and dry to some of the detractors make it, but the administration hasn't been articulating to the point of trying to make that affirmative case. That has been my frustration.”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Picking apart and saying, okay, well, $16 billion is going to reimburse the Department of Defense for increased deployments of U.S. troops in NATO countries to solidify the alliance.”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “The case and the rationale to the American public on why we are supportive of Ukraine defending itself, why we're investing at this point probably over $100 billion and rising in that. I've been frustrated that the administration hasn't necessarily felt like they need to articulate that case. And being in a position where you're talking to constituents and folks say, you know, we think that this is a good thing to do. Help us understand where this is going help us flesh out that picture. We talking, we're going to be doing $40 billion every six months into perpetuity because those numbers start to add up very significantly. And also understanding and rebutting some of the bad faith critics who just think we're writing a $43 billion check and it's going into the ether.”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I certainly think it was appropriate and positive for him to go to Ukraine. I'd been very critical of the administration in the early months of the war as somebody who was talking with many Ukrainian members of parliament and other folks who were active in the overall context. And in the beginning, it'd be really nice to have some senior leadership from the US, not necessarily the president, but some senior leadership come. I think Boris Johnson was one of the first heads of state to go to Kiev. And, you know, after a couple of months, it went from, it'd be really nice if they came to basically everybody but the US has been there. And we eventually sent Secretary Blinken and Secretary Austin reopened the embassy. So, you know, I think we've done some of those right things. It's been not necessarily on the timeframe that I would have preferred, but I'm not going to criticize the president for going there. I think it was a positive show of solidarity and commitment when it comes to articulating”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And that was one of the chief ironies of my dad's biography that he started working on, I think before I was born. So he was working on this starting in the mid to late 1980s, you know, publishes it. 2018 or 2019. And I think didn't necessarily expect that it would be as relevant a topic, you know, the question of the U.S. and the global order, the US as member of NATO, what are our expectations with that alliance, questions around the US's role in the United Nations and the consequences of the Marshall Plan and rebuilding. Those became very salient in that timeframe.”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Our kind of proud, our Grand Rapids president, that he had been a longtime member of Congress and obviously our families were close and knew each other very well and to the extent where my father was very closely involved, the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, the Ford Museum. And so there was that kind of lens into federal politics. And my dad started off his career as a journalist. Oh, is it right? And just recently published a pretty authoritative biography on Senator Arthur Vandenberg and other. Son of Grand Rapids, who was formative in bringing the Republican Party from isolationism to internationalism in World War II. So, I think usually not necessarily getting deep into the muck of politics, but still being engaged on policy and history and those kind of longer arcs.”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “We hadn't partially because of the fact that grocery is pretty local to the extent that we're kind of dealing with a regulatory apparatus or interacting with the government, you know, most of it may be around siting and permitting for a store within a municipality or regulations that are coming at the state level. So because we're not a national business, I mean, we're regional, there really wasn't that much interaction federally. Now, that having been said, Gerald Ford, yeah. Most famous”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I don't know that I was conscious. I think many was changed when I was like four. Oh, I see. You know, I wasn't necessarily interested. Focus too much”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “And the funniest thing about the geographic balance, if you have not been to the Midwest, there is no reason for you to be familiar with our grocery stores at all. But when it comes to kind of growing up, I grew up in Grand Rapids. It's a pretty small town. And there were, and certainly having the stores as a large employer and where everybody shops. And I think my parents were concerned about our teachers treating us differently because of our last name. We have good or bad and wanting a little bit more privacy. So my name was legally changed to M-E-Y-E-R. And then I changed it back when I turned 18 and kind of left Michigan. Yeah, how do you?”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “That was the 1930s. Yeah. Yeah, so in the depression, he tried to get into the haircut business, built a barber shop in downtown Greenville, built the building a little bit bigger so that he could rent out the space next door, ended up not being able to find a tenant. So he took $338 worth of merchandise on credit from A&P and opened up a grocery store. 90 some years later, close to 90 years later, we have over 250 supercenters in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and one of the larger kind of family-owned businesses in the U.S.”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yes, my great grandfather came over from the Netherlands, kind of the turn of the century and was a farmer, had a dairy farm, was a barber. He had bounced around the country a little bit going out to Washington State and working in a foundry and some apple orchards. Eventually settled in Greenville, Michigan, where in addition to farming.”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Thank you very much for having me. I feel a little intimidating because you've got a bunch of papers in front of you, and I am clean desk.”

    2023-03-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 524 — Peter Meijer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source