YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Schmidt

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73

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2018-10-29

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2018-10-29

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1. “Optimistic about our future, but But this has to be confronted. And in the institution in the country that's going to confront it, that's called to confront it, that's obligated and responsible to confront it is the Democratic Party. The oldest political party in the world. And one of the great ironies of it, and I really believe this. Is that the repudiation of Trumpism through the form of overwhelming democratic victories. One of the institutions That the Democratic Party may wind up saving. In its defeat of Trumpism, is the Republican Party itself?”

   2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Renew the promise, the idea and ideals of the country. Even if it were in the Democratic, I'm optimistic about our future.”

   2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “I don't know now. I guess a year ago, if you ask me, would you ever be involved in one of these again? My answer would have been is that I've been at the highest level of a winning one, the highest level of a losing one, and both outcomes are better than ever being involved in a third one. But the truth of the matter is, in this hour in American life, The only way to repudiate this is electorally. In America, we confront our problems and our challenges at the ballot box. And it's something that More open to than I would have been a year ago, six months ago. It's not something that I have a burning desire to go and do. It's not something that I envision myself running. But I could see myself and more likely as a volunteer than... A principal architect, but being involved and being involved in an effort.”

   2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Saying that I did the right thing is I see it Sometimes that cost is high. The cost of a relationship that was amongst the deepest And most intimate. I'll ever have in my life was a profoundly painful thing, but worth the cost.”

   2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “And the story of that campaign, the reality of it. Discussion of it in its aftermath is important is that how she came to be the VP nominee is something that can never, ever be allowed to happen again. There has to be a historical learning and record. And secondly Since the end of that campaign. Every occasion that I have had. To be able to talk about the danger of this rising nationalism, of the populism, of the no nothingness, to express it in its historical context, I have done so. Don't apologize for it. Don't regret it, and if the cost of warning the country Baba was coming and about Sarah Palin was the breach of my relationship with John McCain. As painful as it may have been. I would do it again and again and again and again. The cost sometimes Of doing the right thing as you see it. And I'm not saying that I did the right thing.”

   2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “And once she did that, I felt that to be silent was to stipulate to the hundreds of lies in the book. And I was unwilling to do that number one. Now, secondly, as you know, a book is written about the campaign that becomes a bestseller and ultimately a movie, and that book isn't just about the McCain campaign. It's about the 2008 campaign. And you talk to the authors of the book. In fact, they talk to 500 people. I'm just the only person who on the record has acknowledged the obvious, which is, of course, I talked to the authors. But the book and my centrality to it in the movie isn't on the basis that I talk to reporters. It's on the basis that I was central to events. And the authors, the reporters who wrote that book and interviewed hundreds of people reported out what happened in the campaign.”

   2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Did tell me that we did He would not have been comfortable with his deification. At his best And there were many times when he was at his best. He more exampled the virtues of courage and selflessness and sacrifice that you want to see in a political leader. And I'm not talking about his martial courage. More than any other person that I have met. He was my inspiration. To stand up Am the consequences of And fight for what you believe in and do what you think is the right thing to do. But I thought the right thing to do was. To talk honestly and openly about her manifest unfitness. I think what John McCain thought the right thing to do. For John McCain to survive the Tea Party wave of two thousand ten was to shut the hell up and not antagonize Sarah Palin. But in my case, Sarah Palin wrote a book in which I'm the chief villain.”

   2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Oh, deeply and humiliated. It was a celebration of greatness, but as often was the case around John McCain as reality, a celebration of greatness was an occasion for smallness. John McCain and I had no unfinished business between us. I'm someone who feuded with John McCain and like many people who feuded with John McCain, I reconciled with John McCain. And the last words John McCain ever said to me were thank you and I love you, boy. The irony for me in it is this. He'd have been the first to tell you he was a terrible Deeply imperfect guy.”

   2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “She wasn't purposely divisive because she was too ignorant to be so. She was just transactionally exploitive. She was drawn to the fame. She heard the cheers and didn't hear the epitets or didn't mind the epitet. She wanted to be a celebrity, the campaign made her famous. Trump was a celebrity who wanted power, and they're not on a straight line in the sense that Palin was a fool. reveling in her ignorance. Trump is far more calculating and far more opportunistic and profoundly more dangerous. But all of those elements in the country existed for a long time before Sarah Palin.”

   2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “You were being briefed by it. The rage, the anger, all of it that begins to surface, right McCain was repelled by it. I was repelled by it, right? When You heard Barack Obama's name and then you heard the N-word being shouted in a crowd. And I remember being with John McCain saying, we can't say his name anymore. Because when we say his name, it elicits this nastiness and it was at the very end we said when I had this conversation with him. And she's going to be the president Have to unify the country. We have to end this with dignity. This is appalling. Halon, right, saw that crowd and she fed on the energy of the crowd and its adoration of her as an egotist, which is similar to Trump. She exploited that energy.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “After the economic collapse, when the economy goes down, stock market collapses, race is over. I know the race is over September 15th. You know the ratios over September 15 Barack Obama is going to be the president. The right track number six percent. And so we go forward. An incredibly Frought time economically. None of us had any idea what was going to happen. You didn't know if there was going to be $20 you could get out of an ATM machine a week from now. It was terrifying. I'm sure you were terrified by it as you work.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Blue can be red and red can be blue. Trump's an opportunist who seizes on this moment, but Palin isn't. Isn't the cause? No, no, I'm not saying she's the cause. I'm just saying that.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “And if you were watching this, and this was someone you cared about, you'd want there, and I'm serious of the heart attack when I say this, some level of psychological interdiction. This is a person in distress. This is a person who needs help. I remember saying that, well, now she's utterly disqualified herself from any consideration to be part of American public life, to be discussed as a possible presidential candidate. And I remember watching the day of a resignation, the Fox panel say, no, no, no. What a potent, powerful force she will be. She represents the moment in time where belief is suspended, where up can be down and down can be up and right can be left.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Halon is the first professional victim An era where victimization becomes the lifeblood of the Republican Party, where it becomes virtuous. Trump's not a victim. He's an avenger of the victims, right? But Palin makes victimization virtuous. And she goes on. She gets a million dollar contract from Fox News and not one time ever is a single question ever asked of her to determine whether in fact she's the victim of a conspiracy. Incompetent campaign advisors, of the media, somebody who was manifestly wronged or is she just manifestly incompetent? And so then you go forward to the moment she resigns as governor of Alaska in this spasm of incoherence.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Is responsible for nothing in the campaign The conspiracy that Katie Coric was out to get her, for example. I remember in the aftermath thinking, what was the question that Katie Koric asked her that was out of line? It was illegitimate.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Opened his palm and he said, fuck it, let's do it. And three days later. I found out what I found out. And was appalled by it, was enraged by it. Angered by it, depressed by it, is sickened by it. A psychological level, at a character level, the constant lying. All of it, she was unfit. Nicole Wallace and I were the first two people in America to see this fully. The end of the campaign, everybody in America saw it. I think you are wrong on drawing a straight line from Palen to Trump because Palin is just one demagogue in a long line that goes back to Father Cauflin, to George Wallace, and to a hundred others. Here's what Sarah Palin represents. She represents a moment in time when Where the suspension of belief is that the suspension of belief about what is in front of your nose, what's Plainly evident in front of your eyes. Not true”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Cindy, it was Mark Salter and myself. And McCain goes, Steve, you argue the case for Palin, and Mark, you argue the case for plenty. And I said, I'm not going to do that. She's high risk high reward. I said, if we pick plenty or we pick Romney for certain, we will not come out of the convention ahead and we will not have a chance to win. You just took her measure. Is she ready? Do you think that she can do it? And what he said was, she's not ready yet, but she can be. And we talked about it for a minute. Mark Salter, as is quoted in the movie, said there were some things worse than losing, including your reputation, and he was fiercely against it. Cindy said to McCain It's a crapshoot and John McCain said you shouldn't have said that and he pretended he had a pair of dice in his hands that he was rolling them and he”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “And I said to him, It's completely inappropriate for us to be in this meeting. You must meet with her alone You have to take her measure, you have to make a decision if she is prepared, she's ready, she's qualified to take the oath of office should you become incapacitated or dead or cannot fulfill your constitutional responsibilities. Is she ready to be the commander in chief? They went off for an hour. He came out. No person Alive, except for sour palin. Knows what was said, what was talked about in that meeting I wish I did If I had sat in a meeting Where she substantively talked about any issue, I would have chained myself to the bumper of the car to prevent her from leaving that compound as the vice presidential nomine But we went for a walk. Not told this story before. Went for a walk down by the river.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “I stayed in my lane. Because I had taken all of Davis's responsibilities when he was relieved of them, then it was in the interest of the campaign for there to be some functionality in the relationship. The best way to achieve that functionality was to let him maintain his dignity having been stripped of all responsibilities except for these two, and I was hands off. Now the lesson learned is this If you're put in charge of something? Either all the way in charge of it You're not in charge at There's no such thing as being in charge but for these two things The second thing that I'll regret to the end of my days is when Palin rolls in to the ranch in Sedona. And McCain says to Mark Salter and I, as longtime chief of staff, he says, come on, boys. Let's go talk to her.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Did and what a mistake it was. I'll tell you the thing that I'll regret if I live to be 110 years old. I'll regret it to the end of my days First thing, and I was 37 years old. And now looking back from 48 to 37, I didn't think I had too much more to learn. But at 48, I realized I was foolish at 37 for thinking.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “And it was well done. And I sit here ten years later and I say, holy shit. How could the VET have been complete and well done if three days after we pick her I find out she doesn't know where Iraq in Afghanistan are on a map. She doesn't know that Iraq didn't attack us on 911. In fact, it was bin Laden and Al Qaeda who had Hidden by the talisman. And it was just extremely”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “The most popular governor by polling in a state is Palin in Alaska, who's 85%. She's taken on the oil companies up there, taken on the corruption. She's in a feud with all these guys like Ted Stevens and Don Young that McCain hates and thinks are totally corrupt. We ought to take a look at her. I also said in that moment in time to Rick Davis She has to be fully and completely vetted to this day. The people in charge of vetting her insist the vet was full, it was complete.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “With any cash, he truly honest to God had no idea. But the answer to the question is how many that McCain and Romney had together was 15. And one of them didn't know we owned seven. And so there was no way in the middle of a mortgage crisis that was unfolding that that could be. And Tim Pelleni, then and now, and you look at his performance in the 2012 race, right? He was just. Great guy, but as a flavor was diet vanilla briar's ice cream. Tasteless. And what I said was I don't know much about her.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “I said knowing that we had a choice between Romney and Poleni. And most people forget this, though you will not, is that John McCain was asked a question about how many houses he owned. Now, the question was unfair The sense that There was no expectation to anyone who knew John McCainy would know the answer of how many houses Sindiant, who was just not conscious of this stuff, and he was not a person who came from any money, didn't have any money, never saw McCain. Hard to relate to that.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “But if I jammed it through and I said, here's the choice Obama or this, and all of you can start fighting about who the true conservative nominee will be four years from now. This is the best deal you're getting. I think we could have gotten it through. What we could not prevail on is a long-term fight about this. And so the secrecy was breached by Lindsay Graham, who went out and floated this to a group of evangelical pastors in a meeting in South Carolina. And within a couple of hours, Sean Hannity, the president, Carl Rove, everybody was on the phone saying this cannot be done. And in fact, it could not because the rules of the convention meant that any two states could put the road nominee into play. Here's where I disagree with you about Sarah Palin.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Why didn't it happen? And I'll tell you, I'll tell you in a second. And what he would have said was. I promised to serve for only four years. We will fix these problems. What he would have added was this Barack Obama is a good man, and I think I know he'll be present in the United States someday. He surely will, but he's not ready not quite yet. And I thought we would have a fighting chance with that. It required was absolute and utter secrecy because we had to jam it through. Nobody would have been happy in the conservative wing of the Republican Party that someone who was pro-choice, that a Democrat was picked. They didn't like McCain to begin with.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Great patriot, a great Democrat, a great American, Al Gore's running mate, my friend Joe Lieberman, to serve with me We will unite the country around solving this country. And that's what he said he wanted to do.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Terry Nelson and some others. But Rick had the ball on the VP search. We were behind and we knew that we had to do something disruptive, that we had to come out to have any chance in the election against Barack Obama, who I viewed as the heavyweight champ as we went into the debates. We were never going to get the decision. We had to knock him out. Our best chance to knock Obama out in a debate was obviously going to be on a national security front, not a domestic policy front where we were deficient against Senator Obama's skills. My idea was that John McCain was going to go out and say, I put the uniform of my country on when I was seventeen years old, and I've spent every hour of my adult life and service to it. The American people so honor me with it. I have one last mission, and I've asked to”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Linear line that you draw from Pale into Trump, and I'll get to it in a second. But I do want to say this, is that when I took over the campaign, I was put in charge of everything except for two things, the vice presidential vetting and the vice presidential search, which remained the province of Rick Davis, who was Paul Manafort's longtime partner. Rick Davis. Was a responsible party to the collapse of the campaign in 2007 when it became bankrupt and it went under. Rick Davis introduced Paul Manafort to Oleg Deraposka. And so within the McCain campaign, there was a pro-Russian faction and Rick Davis who worked with Manafort on the Yanukovych campaigns and an anti-Russian faction. Any rushing fast because Palin”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “I've talked some about it. I just did a podcast with Katie Korick and I talked more expansively about it that I have in the past. You know, part of the rupture of my relationship with John McCain was that in the aftermath of the campaign, I thought it was vital, urgent, necessary to warn the country about the danger that she presented, that the nationalism, the populism, the know-nothingness that she represented, that I saw begin and manifest on the campaign. And John, of course, had a re-election in 2010. And John was a great man, but not above politics. You remember the 2010 campaign, John McCain didn't mean a word of it, but he said build the darn wall. And if that's what it took to get re-elected, he wasn't above doing that. I disagree with you a bit on the”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “And he had the polling to prove it. And it was Dick Cheney. I was in the limo with him in San Francisco. The streets lined with people giving him the middle finger, and I looked out the window, I looked back at him, and I said, sir, I don't think you should listen to the polls. Look at all those people saying you're number one.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Of course. But Dick Cheney Absolutely 100% believes and believed everything he did. Was in the national security interest of the United States, and it was the right thing to do. He was an honest man who did what he thought was right. And in all of my career, when politicians say, I don't care about the Poles, there's truly only one person I've ever met who profoundly didn't give a shit about what the polling number said.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Our liberties in the name of security, and that the healthiness of the democracy over time deals with that. We come to the conclusion that the internment of the Japanese were wrong, that the torture regime was wrong, that we don't want to do that again, that the security under which those actions were taken is not worth the compromise to our ideals.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “For some period of time on September eleventh, Dick Cheney believed that he gave an order that resulted in the shooting down of a American passenger airliner, killing hundreds of Americans to save a target in Washington, D.C., whether it was the White House or whether it was the Capitol. I think Dick Cheney went to bed that night, and he said this will never, ever happen again, not on our watch. You can agree with Dick Cheney's decisions. You can disagree with Dick Cheney's decisions. You can even look back on them and say, well, in wartime, whether it was FDR's decision to intern Japanese Americans, that in wartime there are always abuses of our values. There are always abuses”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Communications guy, nobody knew that. Counselor to the vice president, and he. When I was double hated, I had a White House title, I had a presidential title, vice presidential title. Never true that Dick Cheney was running the White House. George W. Bush ran the White House. He was the president of the United States. It wasn't a partnership. It wasn't a junior partnership. But he played an important role in the administration. Now, there are many, many issues with which I disagree with Dick Cheney on. And when I have occasion to see him, you can sit and talk about your disagreement with no rank or no malice, but I'll tell you this for sure.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “I think that Dick Cheney is someone who's very similar to Hillary Clinton in this regard They're real people who exist in the American consciousness as caricatures, almost as cartoon figures. What's true is this. It's exceedingly difficult to find anybody over a very long public career who's worked intimately with Hillary Clinton. With Dick Cheney, who will ever say anything bad about them as a person? He was among the kindest, most considerate. People have ever had an opportunity to work for. He was utterly normal. Fiercely convicted, he's someone I've stayed in touch with.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “We're certainly not in 1968, but in order to understand the grievances, the resentments, the sense of victimization, all of these things that Trump is stoking into, you have to understand, I think, the legacy of the Civil War, the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, the legacy of aggrievement on the part of the South. Now, we're lucky as a country that we're not the Balkans. We're not a sectarian society of revenge and retribution. There is no American Pashtun tradition. And we don't want to start one It's also true that there are deeply seeded resentments and cultural grievances that have always existed in fault lines in the country that manifest themselves to this hour in American politics.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “You are occupied, you were humiliated, and you were agrieved And it's profoundly important to understand the history of the country. We had a discussion earlier today where the conversation begins as it's the most divisive time era, which is a question predicated on an astounding ignorance of American history. There was a civil war in this country. 25 million people in the north, 9 million in the south, 5 million white, 4 million slave, three million men under arms, six hundred sixty thousand killed, so the bloodiest wars in history.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “So over my career, right, you see this migration, the Republican Party, the migration begins in 64. It's certainly completed by 88. But it's really manifested culturally in the 90s and the Gangrich Revolution. And there was this debate that was proximate to the end of the Vietnam War When people would say the United States has never lost a war, and thus the pain of the Vietnam War was a war we lost, but people would argue when they say, well, we were never defeated on the battlefields. The military didn't lose the war. The American military didn't, the politicians did. We were on the edge of victory if we kept winning. But that's not true. That the country's never lost a war. It's dependent on what part of the country you live in. If you live in the south, you absolutely lost a war. You were conquered.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “What's true, and we talked about this today at the Schwarzenegger event, we talk about the dysfunction in American politics. But one of the things that's changed in the era that I grew up in, there were no shortage of legitimate conservatives in the Democratic Party. There was no shortage of legitimate liberals in the Republican Party. Neither party was ideologically homogenous. Neither party was regionally homogenous. So in the northeast of the country, the tradition of the Republican Party wasn't that it was an ideologically conservative party. It was in many ways just as liberal from a policy perspective of the Democratic Party, but it was the good government party. It was the... Any corruption party was the anti-tammony party. When I was 10 years old”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “You know, over time, and on these issues, and we talk about the Republican Party, I grew up in the Republican Party of the North and the West. In the Republican Party, which was founded in 1854 by 1858 is the majority party in the North and the West, on the day that LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act, there's three elected Republicans south of the Mason Dixon line.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Now, my sister had been married, divorced, Then came out. You look back at the time and the culture Catholic culture, northern New Jersey, where very much, you know, let's say you're at a family friend's place, you know, that's Uncle Tony and Tony's friend Fred. It was not. Something that was ever spoken aloud of and not something that You thought much about. If I was 22 years old and you had hooked me up to a polygraph and said, have you ever met a gay person? Honest to God I would have answered no, which is of course looking back on it not true. It's absurd, right?”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “That experience for me was most meaningful is that you go through life and you have these random encounters and you meet people a long life's journey. And for me in California, that's one of the most important relationships of my life. You know, a person who would go on to occupy a space in my life really like a sister. You know, someone just, you know, for the next 20 years, you know, at every thing I've done subsequently has been present there from where we are today at MSNBC to the Bush White House to the John McCain campaign, you know, to the aftermath of the debacle and the feud with Sarah Palin and all of it. It was a relationship that's as close as any I have in my life. And I'm always grateful that my life intersected with hers in California in that year.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Daryl Isa had spent $14 $15 million in the race, which is an astounding amount of money and personal money at the time to our two and a half million. And we took them out. And Matt Fong, and at the top of the ticket was Dan Lundgren. Matt lost the race by Nicole is working. That was who Nicole was working for.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Who was Son of a legendary democratic politician, Marge Fong Yu in the state of California, Matt was an Air Force Academy graduate, but it was a race that was a big race for me in my career. And I think got me my first level of attention because we defeated Darryl Isa, who was running for the U.S. Senate in”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “And it was jarring when you first saw the reality of all of it. And it was a masterclass because anything that pertains to anything of importance flows through that House Commerce Committee. But in California, I worked for the highest elected Asian American in the country at the time, Matt Fong.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “And I had been the communications director at the House Commerce Committee, which for me was like going to graduate school. This is the place where I learned how Washington worked, how Special interest intersected with the public interest. I remember being in meetings at the conference.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “No, I was in Washington when I ultimately... Wind up working on the Bush campaign, but I had been to communications director at that house campaign committee.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Who The commissioner of baseball who integrated baseball. And Happy Chandler had one of the great debate lines of all time. He refused to debate his opponent. And the reason why he said, you can tell that dumb son of a bitch to go get his own publicity.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Say good morning and on your way or to Silacauga, Alabama, or points north and south. I really got to see the country. Cross the country many times in a car in which all of my possessions existed.”

    2018-10-29 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 281 — Steve Schmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source