YouSaid · the spoken record

Richard Stengel

lines on the record: 70
first: 2019-12-16
most recent: 2019-12-16
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

“One of the things that the hollowing out that's going on now is that Tillerson actually abrogated one of the 100 classes, which are the new foreign service officers that come in. So not only are people with decades of experience leaving, they're not bringing in new people who are getting trained. So I think it'll be a new kind of a blank slate to start from. And I would try to be as innovative as possible.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I actually talk about, and I'm critical a bit of the State Department bureaucracy in my book, but I think these foreign service officers, these career diplomats have been absolutely heroic. I mean, they're great patriots. They're coming forward at risk to their careers, at risk, to their reputation. It really heartened me to see what I saw when I was at the State Department, that these are people who believe in their oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, who believe that they're working for the American public, that they owe their allegiance to the public in the Constitution rather than whoever is president. Sometimes that's frustrating when you're in office. But I've been heartened by it. At the same time, I think if a Democrat is elected in 2020, we shouldn't just go back to the way it was and we should figure diplomacy come into the 21st century, public diplomacy come into the 21st century.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I say that we don't have a fake news problem. We have a media literacy problem, which people can't tell the difference between information that's kind of proven and verified versus information that's not. And I propose that that should be taught in schools.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one of the things I do propose is that different companies need to publish their algorithms for why some stories go to the top and some stories are demoted and why you get the information. And not every user will be able to understand that, but technology people will be able to understand it and say, well, you have this implicit bias in your algorithm that favors stories written by redheads over brunettes or tall people over short people. That will eventually filter out. And the other thing, too, about algorithms, as I say, is that these algorithms are editors, right? They're not human editors. They're making decisions about which stories to publish and which stories to give higher placement to, that actually proves that these content companies are publishers just because the editors are not human beings, but algorithms doesn't mean they're not publishers.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I saw in traveling around the world what an outlier the First Amendment is. When I was a journalist, I was a First Amendment absolutist. I love the Justice Holmes line that the First Amendment protects not just the ideas that we love, but the ideas that we hate. I respected that as a journalist, but I found that people around the world didn't really understand that. Even Europeans, certainly people in the Middle East, Africans, I mean, Nelson Mandela didn't get it. We're an exceptional, but I think we need to start thinking about hate speech statutes in the United States. They can be tested in the courts, and the court's going to decide, well, actually, this is a violation of the First Amendment. But all of these platform companies have their own constitutions. They're called terms of service agreements. They are not affected by the First Amendment the way government is. They can ban different kinds of speech if they want. And basically Facebook does outlaw what”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I admire Twitter for doing that, but I also understand the point of view is that political advertising is actually more protected speech than regular speech. And our whole democracy is based on voters trying to figure out who to vote for and consuming information and making their own decisions about things like political advertising. So I think they just have to be much more transparent about it. You have to tell users who's buying the ad, why you're targeted. It should be much more transparent. But I wouldn't take off political advertising just yet.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they're trying to figure out how to deal with it, and I think one of the things I talk about in the book was how actually successful and vigilant they were in the counter-ISIS space and the counter-Muslim extremism space. I think the Russian stuff kind of went under the radar. I mean, the whole rationale of Russian disinformation is we pretend to be somebody we're not. We pretend to be Republican women voters in Tennessee, or we pretend to be NRA nationalists in Florida. And so part of it was hidden in plain sight because people weren't expecting it. It's also harder to deal with because you don't necessarily know which person is a real person, which person is a Russian. And so they're trying to figure it out. I think they could have been more vigilant, and I think they've taken some stands that are probably counterproductive.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Companies, right? Right now, they're not considered publishers, and therefore they're not liable for the content that they publish. But in fact, they're the biggest publishers in the history of the world. And I think reforming the Communications Decency Act that regulates them to give them more liability for what they publish, even though it's non-professional content, would help clean up a lot of this ecosystem.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Undermine the Facebook's business, but Google's and everybody else's. But then that law was passed by every other autocratic country from Turkey to Brazil to China where it's a closed off media space. So part of the reason for all this is Facebook, the premise of Facebook is it uses non-professional content. It uses content created by you, me, and everybody, that then they monetize through advertising and virality. When you had that protected media system, you know, the reporters for the New York Times or CBS News, I mean, yes, you could probably trust the content, but content that's delivered by your friends and particularly your 500th friend or your 1000th friend with loose ties, how can you trust that content? So it became this engine of a lot of disinformation. And one of the things I recommend in the book to change is how we legally treat the”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I mean, Assange has become a very bad actor, and Wikileaks was an accomplice to this rise in disinformation and to the Russian disinformation. And it's funny that the scene in the book where I have a scene with Mark and Secretary Kerry at the Facebook headquarters, the thing that Zuckerberg wanted to talk to Secretary Kerry about was Russia's data localization law, which is, it sounds a little esoteric, but it's this idea, and it's part of the reason for this global rise in disinformation that all these countries thought, well, why am I letting these big American multinational platform companies take information from my citizens? And the Russian data localization law that Putin passed was that all information harvested in Russia must first pass through a server physically located in Russia. So not only”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so that's we. Yeah, so that's confirmation bias. And I write about these cognitive biases. But now that's a human impulse. I mean, that has been around forever. It's just that the social media is the most effective delivery system, right? Once upon a time, media was pushed on. Now we pull it in and we pull in the stuff that we already agree with.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so just to that end, I mean, and my actual confirmation hearing speech, I quoted Pat Moynihan's great line. You're entitled to your own opinion, to not entitle to your own facts. But more and more people feel they're entitled to their own facts, that there's no kind of source or resource where people trust it as, you know, this is a fact and this is not.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So institutions. So we decided to, you know, the revelation, and probably everybody has this eventually, is that it shouldn't be us doing the messaging, but we can support people whose messaging is more powerful. So in the counter-ISIS space, we helped film women who lost their husbands or their sons in the counter-Russian space. We helped support Ukrainian grassroots organizations that were really being hit by this disinformation. And by the way, we're also telling stories about the deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine that Russian media was hiding.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, to be honest, very little, and the book is pretty astringent on how much government can do. I mean, you know, David, that, I mean, one of the things in government is that when you're against something, if you put the word counter in front of it, you feel like you're doing something about it. So counterterrorism or counter-Russian propaganda. And I actually think... Government being involved is mostly counterproductive in the sense that we are the enemy of most of these people. I mean, the Russians, ISIS are saying that the U.S. government is responsible for all these terrible things that are happening to you. So would a tweet from the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy have any purchase on any of the...”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And I mean, the Iranians have been involved in it before. The Chinese do it in a different way. But I mean, and now, of course, non-state actors do it. ISIS was a non-state actor that got involved in this.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. I'm saying, I mean, you can't for the price of tiny missile, they set up this Internet research agency in St. Petersburg with $400 or 500 people. It cost way less than an F-35. So it's asymmetric warfare. And part of what's dangerous about this global information warfare, like all kinds of asymmetric warfare, is that now all the people who can't afford to be in kinetic warfare can afford to be in information warfare because it's some folks with laptops.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I'm sorry. And I kind of took this out of the book because it seems esoteric now, but they supported this referendum in the Netherlands. They basically got a referendum in the Netherlands where they fooled people into devoting for it, and the referendum was about whether to support Ukraine being closer to the EU or not. And then they created this tsunami of disinformation in the Netherlands. And the Dutch people voted against it. This happened about six months before Brexit. And I argue that it was a kind of template for Brexit. They realized, whoa, we can do this in the Netherlands. Why can't we do it in Britain? And they have supported all of these independence movements around the world because they see them as undermining democracy, undermining the cohesion of democracy. So they'll support the separatists in Quebec and in Spain and all of these other places. That's their anti-democracy movement.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, absolutely. So they were very involved in Brexit. I mean, I have some stuff in my book about Nigel Farage being a columnist for Russia Today. And they were.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Started by Hillary Clinton to combat Al Qaeda on social media, and they saw the coming of ISIS. And then when I was so outraged by the Russian disinformation around the invasion of Crimea and Ukraine, we started a little counter-Russian group at the State Department, I think we called it the Ukraine Task Force. And so those became my kind of two planets that I revolved around the whole time I was at the State Department.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, yes, about a few weeks after I started the job as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, which is in some ways a kind of a communications job. It talks about, you're supposed to talk about America's story abroad. And public diplomacy is about people-to-people diplomacy. But within a few weeks of being in the job, two things happened. The first ISIS beheading of the American journalist and Putin's annexation of Crimea, which is part of Ukraine. And suddenly in both cases, I saw all of this social media propaganda, disinformation, misinformation that I just had never witnessed before, even though I'd spent my whole life in media and journalism. And it kind of changed my whole view of this. And one of the entities underneath me was something called the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, which was a little group.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're not easy questions, and I'm sure David, you saw it in government. Government helped change it for me. I'm all for the promotion of democracy, but if countries don't have the civic institution, they don't have the history of it, they don't have an understanding of it, we can push them too fast and too far to embrace a kind of Jeffersonian democracy when it isn't necessarily going to work. And actually, one of the things we see on the world stage now is that the China model where the Chinese are saying, well, Yeah, these guys may actually even believe what they say about democracy, but democracy doesn't function as.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They just don't know how to actually govern. And by the way, the ANC had that problem too. I think it was unfortunate. I mean, they were democratically elected government, and it was an example of the positive side, I think, of the Arab Spring.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood actually won that election fair and square. And I have to say that going there and spending some time there, I became very impressed with the Muslim Brotherhood. I know that's not a very popular thing to say. In fact, they seemed most similar to me to the ANC in South Africa, the African National Congress. People who had a goal, who spent a lot of time in prison and prisoned kind of honed them on these issues. And I think Morsi was just the kind of the wrong horse for the Brotherhood. He wasn't their first choice to be in the election. They lost their first couple of choices. He was kind of a technocrat and a scientist. He'd studied at, I think, at UCLA. And I think he didn't know how to govern. And that's part of the problem sometimes with revolutionary movements. When they come into power, they know how to get into power.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Crisis wasn't a crisis. It wasn't even on their radar anymore. What a great time to make a deal, right? When you don't have any pressure from the Arab world or the Sunnis to do it, the Palestinians really needed a deal. Have this two country solution, which would secure Israel for another hundred years. He never was willing to do that. He always, I think, looked at the polls and thought.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he's a very persuasive person, BB Netanyahu. He's charming and super, super smart. And I sort of put myself in the category of people that were fooled by him. I don't think he's ever really, he's opportunistic. He's a pragmatist. I don't think he ever really thought about making peace with the Palestinians. And I would argue, I mean, the line that people used to use about the Palestinians, they never missed an opportunity. Yeah, that was Abi Eben. I would use it about Bibi Netanyahu. He had many opportunities to make a deal with the Palestinians that I think would have secured Israel's future. In fact, when I first, the State Department started traveling around the Middle East talking to all of our Sunni allies and every people all over the Arab world, they never brought up the Palestinian and Israel.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was an interesting glimpse into his mind and persona. And I think also part of that grievance is what got him involved in the 2016 campaign, his animosity and hatred for Hillary Clinton, who he thought was the instigator of the demonstrations in Moscow and around Russia in the 2011 elections. And I came across a quote where he said at the time, you know, I'll have my response in my own time and place. And that was in 2016.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Huge grievance. And in fact, part of what I write about in the book is that all of these guys weaponized grievance. Trump, ISIS, and”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And to confirm what your boss said, by the way, who I made Person of the Year twice, as you remember, David, is that Putin is not this kind of super hyper-controlled disciplined person. He loses his temper. I mean, even in this person of the year interview we did, where he kept us waiting for six hours, he lost his temper a number of times. Dude, we're making you a person of the year. Let's have a conversation. And he has a chip. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's funny. I actually went to see Henry Kissinger before I interviewed Putin because he spent so much time with him. And Kissinger said to me, you'll be surprised at what little effort he makes to charm you. And even though I had that prepared, I mean, and I don't know if you've met him, but he emanates a kind of chill air. It's like standing in front of the frostiest air conditioner you've ever seen. I mean, and he has no kind of human interaction. When you look at his eyes, like I'm looking in yours, you don't feel anything. You don't feel any kind of attempt for kind of rapport ingratiation that all human beings do. It was completely.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I mean, the idea of paper still being the delivery of information, I mean, that will eventually go away, although there'll still be glossy magazines, I hope.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, of course. Short lived experiment. Yeah. Although one of the things we're seeing now, one of the trends is papers becoming nonprofits. And I was just actually did a book fair in Austin, Texas, and looked at the Texas Tribune, which is a completely digital publication. take any advertising. I think there are new models and also having Jeff Bezos buy a paper. It's always good.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they were getting it for free, which again in the early days, I used to joke. I said the line was information wants to be free. And I would say, well, no, people want free information. And we gave it to them. And that did undermine the economic basis of journalism. But journalism had always hidden the cost of what it really cost through advertising, right? So when you were a Chicago newspaper man and someone paid 25 cents for a copy of the paper that only subsidized half the cost of all the journalists and reporters, the other half was advertising, but people didn't think that they were.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, the economic basis shifted. And actually, I had been the editor of Time.com even before I became the editor of Time. And so I kind of started to figure out what the Internet was going to do to journalism and media. And I was an idealist about the Internet, and I still am, actually. I mean, it's the greatest information delivery system in history by exponential margin. I think the good that it does and creates still overwhelms the bad. But part of what happened was that people, you know, paper was this distribution system once upon a time. That's how people got their news. And as soon as people started getting the news either on their laptops or their iPads or their phones waiting for a paper product every week.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but I think that was, yeah, so I think partially the Nixon example is relevant here because people only started turning against Nixon, even the public once the hearings began, because the hearings were educational. They were like, wow, he did this. And that's what that means. I think if the Democrats handle it in that way, so let's show what the evidence is. Let's see why this is a violation of the Constitution. I think people will learn from it. And by the way, let people decide, right? I mean, ultimately, it's...”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, every impeachment in our history has begun as a partisan inquiry, right? I mean, even the vote was a party line against Andrew Johnson in the 19th century. But what I meant about the”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they're worried also about behavior and tone and the high in high crimes and misdemeanors isn't an adjective modifying crimes and misdemeanors. It's meant it's committed by someone high in the government. And those crimes and misdemeanors, which is a British phrase, I mean, can be anything, including lapses in judgment and bad behavior. I mean, bad behavior was even a term that Madison used. So to me, Trump is like the poster child. Here's”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, they were, as you know, incredibly wary about foreign influence. It was a young, nascent country. They were afraid of people coming and trying to upset the system. That's why there's the naturalization clause. But the other thing, and I've now gone back to read some more in the federalist papers about impeachment, I mean, they also just saw it as a betrayal of the public trust. Yes. That's what the, I mean,”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a different. Well, but I think they're sort of working. And part of the idea that the founders came up with is when one branch is sort of overweening, the other branches compensate. Well, I mean, what's”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Look, I wish there was more context for things. I mean, the flow of news is just so great, in part because of the disinformationist and chief who's creating a lot of it. But one of the things that I think an impeachment hearing investigation will do is it will be an instruction in the Constitution. I mean, people will suddenly hear people talking about separations of powers and violation of the oath of office and what high crimes and misdemeanors are. And I think it will have an educational function that will be beneficial to the republic. The people will think, oh, I guess this is what our system is about. We had a guy who was elected president who didn't know there were three branches of government. Well, I remember we did a poll when we were opening the National Constitution Center and more people had heard of the three stooges than the three branches of government. I mean, that's a problem.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I was in my mid 40s, I guess, and I had never been ambitious to be a manager in any way. I mean, I was a writer. Like you were, I was a reporter. I was interested in writing. And someone took a chance on me. I got headhunted to run this new institution that dedicated the constitution in Philadelphia, a beautiful, beautiful building on the mall in Philadelphia. And someone was willing to call me president and CEO. And I thought, well, I'm going to try that. And I actually loved it. I loved running a nonprofit. I loved thinking and talking and doing stuff around the Constitution every day. And ironically, it was because I left that they lured me back to be editor. At time, yeah. And so great, you know, my boss at time was the person who also found me and lured me back John Huey.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it wasn't all that long And again, Kramer writes about the Biden campaign in that book and some of the mistakes that he made, which you know about and I know about”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's funny, I remember I wrote a story during that election cycle on ALS, and I think it was called The Dark Prince of Negative Advertising in Time. And I wrote it without ever meeting him. And then I actually met him at the Republican convention, and he sort of chest bumped me. I mean, he's not here to rebut it anymore, but he was extremely aggressive person. And I do think, I have to say now that you talk about it, and covering later campaigns, I think it became even more obvious that the southern strategy that Nixon kind of invented, I guess I feel like I was pretty naive about it at the time and didn't really travel in the South and didn't get it. And I think one of the things that, you know, hearkening”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And people took that incredibly seriously. But I just love being on a campaign, loved the rhythm of it, loved going to a new town every day.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was my first campaign, and I don't even remember who took a chance at me in time to let me go out on the road, but I just thought it was the most fun thing that I had ever experienced. I mean, I love being on the plane. I love being at the rallies. I mean, I think back now, I mean, think about, there's a book about, my book is about modern information where I remember that feeling back in 88, and I did Bush 41 for a while, Lloyd Benson campaign, and that porters were in these rope things near the speech, and you were given a text of the speech 15 minutes before, and all the people in the crowd would go, well, where did you get that? How could I get that? I mean, information, it was a scarcity of information in that era, right? I mean, position papers that the campaigns had. So you were in this kind of special class of people who are helping to translate the candidate's vision for the readers and for audience, not everybody who could be at a speech.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And of course, I was thinking about it the other day the Richard Ben Kramer book about that race, what it says. What it takes, which may be the greatest.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. He was the world's number one terrorist. And he always blamed, if that's the word, the CIA partially for his capture. I mean, he evinced it would have been captured. I think it was captured in 64, but I should do a Freedom of Information request about that and find out the answer. Yeah.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the incredible self discipline which came from prison, he had this one overarching idea that he was inflexible about bringing freedom to his people. But then he was almost infinitely flexible about how to get there, you know, to renounce violence or to retain violence, to reject capitalism, embrace capitalism. I mean, for somebody who had one goal and one purpose and achieved it, he was infinitely flexible. I mean, he used to say that thing about, I mean, I would love to say it to American politicians, you know, about changing your mind. He said, when circumstances change, I change my mind. What do you do? And Nelson Mandela changed his mind about a lot of big things. I mean, the ANC charter was a socialist charter, and he realized that it's not social.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually used to joke now that we've said this, I've set it up. I said I'm the only person in human history who's been yelled at by Nelson Mandela and Pete Carrill.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was a photographer. I met her while I was working on the book, and he always said, Richard, you must marry her. And I never disagreed with him.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I spent a lot of time with them. In fact, the Mandela Center for Memory in Johannesburg has, and this is just the tip of the iceberg, 72 hours of tapes between him and me talking for the book. But it was for me a life-changing experience. And I just had, look, Mediba, which was what everybody called him, can I just hang around with you? And he didn't care. So we did the interviews and I traveled with him. I went to his house in the trans sky. I stayed with him in Johannesburg. It was just the most wonderful, wonderful experience. And then working on the book, thinking like, how does Nelson Mandela think? What's it like to be Nelson Mandela? Is a brain expanding thing? And it is, I mean, it's his book, and it's a wonderful book. And it'll be around as long as we all are. But it did change my life. I met my wife.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source