YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Gibbs

lines on the record: 106
first: 2016-08-22
most recent: 2016-08-22
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

“I can remember, I remember thinking. Wow, he has a really good speech. I mean, we had this great front row seat, as you'll remember, the Republican Party in Illinois was a bit of a mess at this point trying to pick somebody to run against us. And so we had two or three weeks to do it.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I remember on election night 2002 for Democrats was not a good year. You can imagine how good a year it was in Texas. Yeah. And I remember, and I told this story to Ron Kirk last week when we saw him at the White House. That night, I turned to somebody and I said You know, if Ron Kirk lived in Illinois, he'd be a U.S. Senator. And then a little less than two years later, I hook up with Barack Obama in Illinois to run for the U.S. Senate.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I remember interviewing with him and I thought how instantly easy it was to have a conversation with him. And how. Big and visionary, he thought, and what he wanted to do and how excited he was and about running for the U.S. Senate and all that sort of stuff. In many ways it was that same sort of intoxicating feeling of wow, this guy wants to do a lot of interesting big things. Let me take back, though, a couple years before that. In 2002, I worked at the Senate campaign, Democratic Senate campaign committee And I left my job as press secretary in the late spring, early summer to go to Texas to work for Ron Kirk.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I told you all this, and I thought to myself, you know, for three days we tried to keep him from doing anything crazy. And some guy who'd had...”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're right, he is a goddamn skunk. And Hollings just, you know, and he starts making all this noise. And I never forget we get in the car to drive him to the hotel. And I was sitting in the front seat and he was sitting behind me.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So for two or three days, you know, we're just watching him, like staring at him as we walk around South Carolina. And I'll never forget this is the end of that week, and we're in a restaurant on a Friday night in Columbia, South Carolina. It's homecoming at the University of South Carolina. So the restaurant's really busy and they're doing a great business and they're selling a lot of wine. At the very end of this dinner, it's Center Hollings. It's his wife Petey, Trip King, who worked for Biden and was Hollings State director and myself, and we finished dinner. And there's a boisterous fellow in the corner with his family. And he says Hey Senator yells out across this big restaurant. Hey Senator Hollings kind of turns around and I thought, oh Lord.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The campaign manager had left being the chief of staff for a while. And I remember telling him, I said, David, what am I going to do? I'm just going to have a great seat for the crown, but I can't prevent.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'm sitting in this room trying to convince him that he has to say he's sorry. Not something that Fritz Hollings does very well. And I never forget I'm sort of standing between he and a reporter when we come out of the room. And he kind of moves me out of the way with his elbow and puts his arm around the reporter. And I'm thinking to myself, now I have no idea what's going to happen And what happened was Hollings apologized if he offended anybody with the use of those words. Apologize for the language he used. Well, I think he probably would have. And so then my job for like the next three days was never to leave his side.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have some Well, yes. I guess so. But I remember the next morning I show up and I'm because he wouldn't apologize that night. And then the next morning I show up before his first event. And, you know, again, I'm 27. He's 77. And, you know, Fritz Hollings is a booming. He's his ramrod straight, citadel educated posture, cufflinks. He's a senator. He's that embodiment.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'm thinking myself, what in the world? I never even had an inkling that this had happened. And I never forget a reporter said to me, Robert, I can't imagine if he says this stuff in public, I can't imagine what he says when we're not there. And I said, Michelle, that's the whole problem. There's no difference. There's absolutely no difference about what he tells you and what he tells me and what he tells. I remember”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good guy. And so Congressman Inglis, at that point in his career, would not even sign a letter. Get the FAA for an FAA grant to expand the airport in Greenville. And, you know, Hollings has been on the Appropriations Committee for probably three decades. And you couldn't have two more different people. And so it's safe to say that Hollings just, I mean, he loathed his opponent. And I remember all of a sudden I had a pager at that point too and everything just starting to blow up.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the one thing about Fred Hollings in this race, he ran against a guy who became a very different member of Congress when he came back, Bob Inglis Was as opposite of Fritz Hollings as you formerly.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best one is where we go to the editorial board in Rock Hill, South Carolina, which is a 20 or so miles south of Charlotte And the editor comes out and says, I'm sorry, only one of you can come into the editorial board, and I jokingly said, well, you'll have to break it to the senator that he can't come in. So, I kind of laugh sort of like that, and I sit outside the editorial board and Hollings goes in. Comes out an hour later and I said, How did it go, sir? I think we're going to get their endorsement. That's great And about six hours later, I get a phone call from a reporter who says, I need to get your response to what Senator Hollings said in the editorial board at Rock Hill, and I thought instantly I thought. He said it went great. I don't, what are you talking about? He had called his opponent a goddamn skunk.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every day I was told when I got the job, do not tell him a joke you don't want him to tell in front of a thousand people at lunch. Which prevented me from ever telling him a joke But I remember, you know, I'm 27 and I've come of age in politics where we think of the scripted politician. Doing the event with the remarks and the sign on the podium and the that's all managed by the message. And that's how I started that race. And you quickly end up dispensing with that because that's just not.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some a little bit. I mean, it was, we were that was a very busy race. That was. I will say one of the things I also learned in that race was. You learn about authenticity.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember walking down after that officer was killed and you look up at the state capitol and the flags are at half mast. And I thought this man just gave his life in the American democracy and his home state. Has lowered the Confederate flag only halfway down the pole. And I thought what an ironic indignity. Given what had happened and where that officer”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can only serve a term at that point. But he would also probably tell you, and I don't believe, if I have this wrong, I apologize, but I think that this was an act of the legislature but didn't wasn't something that the governor had any purview over. It may or may not have. But it's when the... When the state decided to fly, the Confederate flag over the state capitol And I'll never forget when I was working for Hollings back in 1998, there was a shooting at the U.S. Capitol. And one of the police killed in that shooting was an African American from South Carolina. And if you are in Columbia Main Street dead ends at onvis street and then the state capitol. And so if you walk down Main Street, you can see the state capitol for 10 or 12 blocks at least.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very transcendent in terms, like I said, you know, when if you think back at how. How the University of Alabama was integrated and what happened there versus in a place like South Carolina. But Fritz would also tell you probably that, you know, the legacy”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you know, I had it described to me when I worked for them as there were people that will never forget what Fritz Hollings did on those tours and they'll never forgive him for what he did on those tours. So there were a lot of people that thought, why are you bringing this attention to poverty and hunger in South Carolina? So the WIC program, women, infant, and children program was created by Hollings after those hunger tours. In seeing the need for the assistance for people to get the basics of food every day. And so Fritz was a very, you know, again, he straddled a very, very interesting time in Southern history and was, you know, I think Did”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, he peacefully integrates Clemson in the last few days of his administration as governor. Right. And, you know, the guy he sat next to for the last couple years in the Senate, last few years in the Senate, was, or his last few years in the Senate was Bobby Kennedy. And so Bobby Kennedy's doing these poverty tours. And one of the things that Hollings did was. He did what he called at that point. This is the mid 60s, 66 hunger tours. And his thing was, I don't, you know, I'm going to go and look at hunger and poverty in South Carolina. I'm not going to join that tour when it comes into my state. I'm going to go see it and confront it now. And, you know, this is not just, it's African American and white. It's poverty on business.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Represent the transition. I mean, so at that point, when I got the job, I was 27 and Center Hollings was 77. Hollings went into politics when he was twenty seven. One of the big animating things in that race was I did not want to be in a room the last few moments of that race watching the end of a fifty year political career. And you know, in many ways, Hollings is...”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I was interviewing, I was just dying to go out on a race in 1998. 1997, I was up on Capitol Hill until the beginning of 1998, I started looking for a U.S. Senate race that I can go out and join. And there were two races that I ultimately had kind of serious interviews with. And one of them was Fritz Hollings. You know, I felt like I understood I'd never lived in South Carolina, but I understood South Carolina because it's not a ton different than Alabama.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great question. I knew that I had gotten the taste in 1996 of wanting to do a statewide election. And you also get that bitter feeling of not winning. And I didn't win, we didn't win the congressional race either. You don't want to go to an election cycle and lose both races. So I was.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And so, again, I think that sort of mix of explanation, the adrenaline of campaigns, I knew that at that point probably in 1996 after we lost that Senate primary, I spent the last five months of that election cycle running a congressional campaign in my hometown for a state senator who ultimately lost by only a few thousand votes. To a Republican who went on to become governor of Alabama, Bob”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, it's coming at you, and you're in your foxhole and you're taking incoming fire and trying to return it as well. Yeah, which is...”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was my first congressional press job. But between that, Glenn Browder decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 1996 in Alabama and lost in the Democratic primary to a pretty popular state senator. And that was my sort of my first campaign press experience, which is very, very different and very, very interesting, but a lot of fun. You know, you're trying to figure out every day, how do you take a simple, short Concise but powerful message and convey it each day so that people have a better sense of who they're voting for and why they would be voting for somebody for the, in this case, the U.S. Senate.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have. Right, exactly. But I realized that if you ask them to explain it on a, write it on a cocktail napkin so that it was understandable for people, they couldn't do it. And so I realized that the power of explaining that change was in some ways just as powerful as the change itself, because without that explanation, You would never have that first step on the journey toward that change. And so, um, I think that's sort of what started.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just say the containment capacity of skimming ships is. Something I can speak on One of the things that struck me in working on Capitol Hill is you go to these room full of meetings of people who could solve problems that I wasn't sure people knew they had. Yes. But ask them to”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's funny because when I was first up on Capitol Hill, I thought I wanted to be a policy expert of some sort. And I still deeply love issues and policy. Yeah.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the South. I mean, you know, I think race was obviously fairly formative for both of those politicians and particularly somebody like Clinton being in Arkansas and what Arkansas meant for race.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so just being on one of those buses, I remember I got on the bus. And I had driven to Durham for the rally, and the bus was going to Raleigh, and I had no way to get from Raleigh back to Durham, but I wasn't going to knock in on the bus. But yeah, it represented a new day in...”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember being on, going from a rally at North Carolina Central, which is a school over in Durham and then to a rally in Raleigh and being on, at this point the bus tours became about 20 buses.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Race in the nation were the ones in many ways voting against and holding back progress on civil rights and so To Have these two progressive New South nominees for president and vice president was just really, really heady times. I remember once maybe these were famous before they started, but remember that right after the Gore becomes the vice presidential pick, they go on this bus tour. And these bus tours kind of became legendary.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The New South. Right. I mean, everything that was different about the South, everything that was the history of Democrats in the South, particularly during segregation in the civil rights era, is not a proud one. The senators, the Dick Russells of the world who Did great things for their state, but when it came to”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I guess I did well in the tryout. And so I was fortunate enough to be able to come back. I got hooked on campaigns probably because My last semester in college was the 1992 campaign, and I did some organizing on college campuses in the Raleigh, North Carolina area for the Clinton Gore style.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Presumably so. And again, that's one of the valuable things if you're, you know, for an internship is that people get a chance to see Oh, is this somebody who has the curiosity, the level that we would want to need and you get essentially becomes in some ways a tryout?”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For years it was the swimming class. Yes. And I was a graduate assistant soccer coach for a semester, did some bouncing around. And was lucky enough a few months after I graduated to get a job working for Congressman Glen Browder again. In the office. And this would have been.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this was essentially a political science class every day inside the US Capitol and the U.S. House of Representatives. And so at that point, I knew I was hooked on wanting to go to Washington and do something in Washington.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did you? I did, and we had research projects, we had a report that we had to write, and you literally got The first draft of your report back with edits in Red Marker.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And who you have who interacts with you during that internship is what makes it. And so I can remember. And again, I remember when I first started, somebody said, oh, well, who do your parents know? How'd you get this internship? I guess I'm sort of naive. Wrote a letter and applied. And I'll never forget the first day I met the congressman. He called me in his office. And, you know, of course, I'm like, Pretty intimidating here. I am in a congressman's office. He said, if you have a question over the next month Just stick your head in and ask me. And if I don't know the answer, I'll find it out.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A congressman named Glenn Browder, who is my local congressman, and a fabulous experience because he was a political science professor. And so he thought of these internships as a learning experience. And look, don't get me wrong. I open mail. I did capital. Yeah, but I'll tell you what.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Um, I thought it was an amazing way of... Looking at the problems that the country and people faced and helping to find solutions to some of those problems, not for people who are listening, not every problem is going to get solved by something in government, but what could government do to help people What could public policy do? What solutions could you”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely. And Harvey Gant is the. Something that also intersects ultimately with my biography is the Harvey Gantt Integrated Clemson.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, soccer, and I majored in political science and I became, you know, I mentioned this aversion to reading when I was younger. I learned to love to read because I learned to love to read history and politics. Reading Kennedy biographies, reading about Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, reading books like that. I remember when I'm in North Carolina at that time in 1990 was the... Harvey Gant, Jesse Helms, U.S. Senate race, which was the sort of African American.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father's here would also tell me I went to, I basically went to Auburn University in North Carolina, a land grant institution. I loved the school and had a desire to want to play soccer and I walked on and was fortunate enough to make a very, very good soccer team.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, my father, like I said, my father grew up in a really small town in eastern North Carolina called Bath, North Carolina. If he was here, he would say the first incorporated town in North Carolina in 1705. I went to NC State. So you left Alabama.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Decides to file a civil case against the clan. And sue them for all of their assets. I won't ruin the end of the book, but it became an epic landmark legal thing because here you have the mother of the Of Michael Donald, who was killed, suing to become Owner of all the clan's assets”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is unrecognizable and put a rope around a neck, his neck and hang him in a tree. And again, this isn't grainy, black, and white. This is 1981. I was 10 years old. And it's, so you realize, again, you're not that far away from, you're never that far away from race in the south. And the book I'm just beginning to read, it's the fascinating tale because what ends up not to ruin the book, but the courtroom battle is not just what happens in convicting the two men who killed Michael Donald, but Morris D. is the sort of epic and legendary civil rights attorney.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's about the courtroom battle of. Of a 19 year old who was killed. What's considered the last recorded lynching in the United States, 1981. Alabama. An African American had been acquitted of killing a white in Alabama, white person and the clan decided, well, if they can get away with that, we can murder a black kid. And so they picked this 19-year-old kid up, beat him.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is hard At any moment. In life in the South, not to be aware of it. I remember Remember the first time I saw. Someone dressed in the robes of the KKK at a four way stop in our town passing out passing out literature. And I remember at first you're like, Mom, what's that? And then you realize what it is. There's a book that just came out. I'm going to plug a book on your podcast.”
2016-08-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 74 - Robert Gibbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source