YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Schmidt

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73

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2018-10-29

most recent

2018-10-29

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1

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1. “From heaven high to hell deep from the edge of the holler to the big oak tree, this land is seeded for two eggs, a chicken, and a Shovel with X marks the spot, and they still had all of these promissory notes and all of the same families lived in the same place over the whole course from pioneer days to forward. I found the culture fascinating, found the stories fascinating, I found the differences in the diversity in the culture of the country because as someone who grew up in North Jersey, that's a unique culture in and of itself. And to have an opportunity over my 20s as an itinerant campaign worker before I get to California to have grown up in New Jersey but be in Pikeville, Kentucky, living in the Daniel Boone motor in literally between two hookers who work the road with the coal trucks coming through. And as I'd be going to work and they'd be coming home and you'd...”

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

2. “That was the thing for me. And I was so interested in it in the sense that This was where Loretta Lynn grew up, right? This was coal miners' daughter country. I wanted to go into a coal mine and see what it was like. This was the home county of the Hatfields in McCoy's. There were bootleggers and moonshiners. And there was a proud Republican tradition in that this was the part of the state along with West Virginia that was fiercely union, fiercely anti-slavery. Scots Irish. I was fascinated by the stories that ranged back in this county to Daniel Boone. Wilty Scott's family, and it was fascinating. You take these papers out where as they accumulated land and his family back in pioneer days had been the concessionaire. They had the store. And he showed me the deeds where”

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

3. “But that Boy Scout troop is you were accountable. You were out on your own on the weekends. You were in charge of stuff. You failed the inspection after breakfast on the cook the grill and you're the patrol leader. Well, you're doing push-ups. And, you know, it was just a real formative experience about.”

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

4. “Absolutely. They had their fire, their food. And if you kids couldn't cook. You starved, right? You couldn't figure out what to do. You slept soaking wet. And I remember at 12 years old, the first backpack trip on the Appalachian Trail and I mean, God knows when you think about the equipment you have today, the boots and everything. I'm probably wearing some $11 pair of rawhide nylon who knows what boots or feet are bleeding blisters. We're three miles into this 15 mile backpack. We're all crying, sitting down. The packs are too heavy. And I remember saying, I just want to die. And Larry and Larry Meyer saying, okay, and he took his backpack off and he took out a spade. And he said, make sure you dig the hole deep enough. And this makes me.”

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

5. “And for me, you're going to these places was you listen. There's, I think, an emotional intelligence required to be successful in the business, an ability to problem solve, a common sense. As a kid, one of the people in my life who most influenced me was a guy named Larry Meyer. Larry was a scout master, and I was an Eagle Scout. But Boy Scouts were a bit different back then. So all the dads, and these guys became lifelong friends, but we'd go camping once a week or on a backpack trip. And the dads, my dad included, they were away from the wives for the weekend. They were loaded up with more beer, more booze out into the woods. Adults had their fire there.”

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

6. “You list And you develop those skills. I think that almost everybody, I think, who's worked at the top level of American politics, I think all of us come from a pretty similar place socioeconomically. There's not a lot of Harvard kids, not a lot of Ivy Leaguers, not a lot of real wealthy privileged kids. We all sort of come from the same place.”

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

7. “In the cooler in front of us, and he would stop the TV and remind it over and over again to show, can you believe that Waltrip's passing this one? Can you see the draft? He turned the Daytona five hundred into the Daytona two thousand, but it was a Yeah, but a great guy, good hearted. And lubricated it with”

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

8. “Will T. Scott. Will T. Scott, a Vietnam veteran who will ultimately become the associate Chief Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court from eastern Kentucky Fishermen and Hunter, Green Beret in service in the Vietnam War. Remember got to Kentucky and I had arranged a deal that I was going to have my own place. And while I get picked up, I fly in and he says, nah, don't worry about it. He goes, you're going to stay with me right away. So what have I gotten myself into? And if you... If you are from North Plainfield, New Jersey to be in Pikeville, Kentucky is to say at a minimum a bit of a culture shock. And remember the first day his wife at the time was in Florida with her parents. And that first night we bonded by watching last year's Daytona 500 with two cases of Budweiser.”

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

9. “There was no cribbing, but. But I was prepared. I was filled with dread upon the occasion of starting it because I knew it was not going to be an easy thing to do. And it took an enormous amount of time. We had a place we'd go skiing out of in California with a great ski resorts in North America to a low-key place, sugar ball. And they would open the bar for me early before the lifts were. And I'd bring my computer up there and I would Skype all ready to hit first tracks in the morning. With a bloody Mary, with my math professor on the other line, and we slog through it from the belt room bar at Sugar Ball. And ultimately made my way to the back. If you got a slog two-year-old, right?”

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

10. “And I did it the next semester, but we both finished. We both got A's in the class, and we both had the privilege of being able to graduate. And at the same time, give the convocation speech to our graduating class.”

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

11. “And he said I've handpicked the best math professor in the university. He goes, we'll accommodate you online. You have to take the class. You got to do it the right way. He goes, I'm telling you, he goes, it's good for you. It's good for your kids. It's good for the universe. Your three credits were because you got to finish. And so David took the class first. And I would check in with David and I said, well, how's the class going? Because I knew I was taking it the next semester. And he said, it's really hard. He said it's terrible. I'm spending all his time studying math. There's a lot going on. I'm writing this book.”

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

12. “The vice president would have his papers, but at the end of the day, the president of university has us in his office and gives us a drink, and David and I are there and he goes, guys, he goes, can I say something to the both of you? And we said, well, of course anything. And he goes, we're really proud of both of you, the university. He goes, it's incredible. He goes, but I got to say something. He goes, because you got to finish your degrees. You're fucking killing us soon.”

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

13. “And we were up there for the day. And we became the founding fellows of a new center for political communication that ultimately transitioned into becoming the Biden Center.”

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

14. “A couple years older than May, very similar background socioeconomically growing up in Wilmington, Delaware interested in politics. A guy named David Pluff, who you know very well and who I'm proud to have become friends with over the years, but David too was three credits short of his degree at the University of Delaware. Same math class. And after the election in 2008, I think the first public event that either of us did was at our alma mater. And a couple thousand people came out. We taught a class together. University had really marketed itself, came up with the slogan University of Delaware, the place for politics. They had both leaders of the campaign on it.”

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

15. “I had started working on my first campaign as a senior Gary Scott was running for governor of Delaware as a real estate mogul in nineteen ninety two moderate Republican running against Tom Carper. And I always had great difficulty with math. And later on in college, hey, why can't I do this was diagnosed with a learning disability called Dyscalculia, which is the cousin to dyslexia. It was an experience I reflect back on. It was the first occasion of my life where I really, I tried to do something to my maximum effort and just absolutely could not do it, could not pass this class. And so I said, I can stay here in an endless groundhog day or go to work on a political campaign. Like anyone in the business, the next one, the next one, the next one. Now, there was another kid.”

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

16. “There was a picture in my grandmother's house of JFK on the wall. And my mother had saved all of these life magazines Which I still have, and I collected through those years, but the year in pictures, the man of the year, the Time magazines, and going back, looking at things that had been, drawn to the stories of the World War II vets. When I was born in 1970, 20-year-olds who jumped into D-Day was what? I mean, they were 43, 44 years old. I'm 48 now. It's just astounding to me. The proximity to those events, to that time. And I was just deeply fascinated by it.”

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

17. “I fell in love with the story of the country. It was the thing that I was interested in. You know, it's so far back. It's like a TV screen with partial pixelation. You remember fragments. But it was the only thing I was ever really interested in. I was enamored by John Kennedy. My mother.”

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

18. “When I was eight years old, the first thing I ever did in politics was hand out stickers on election day the weekend before canvassing for Bill Bradley and the Democratic slate in Was one of my parents' really good friends, family friend, lifelong friends, a guy named Nick Silos. So Councilman Silos, Bill Bradley at the top of the ticket, and of course he was with the Knicks, so why couldn't you be for anyone but Bill Bradley?”

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

19. “But my grandfather in the depression, which was a formative stories of my kids, there were six kids living in a two-bedroom apartment. He was the only one with a job. He was a barback, and when he wasn't working behind the bar, he was walking the railroad tracks, picking up coal that had fallen off the trains to heat the house, to heat the apartment wasn't a house, it was an apartment projects. So really people who believed in the country, believed in the promise of the country. When I was a kid, really young, I said once, you know, well, what if I don't want to go to college? I just remember the rebuke, the anger. My father just the certitude that you would go to college. You would go.”

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

20. “He's a member of the Republican Party in good standing. Certainly wouldn't regard him as pro-Trump. I think he represents a pragmatic Northeastern Republican tradition. I think he serves honorably in a citizen legislature with more than 400 members where they get paid $100 a year. He was involved in a conspiracy of sorts with Democrats when they had a nutso Tea Party Speaker of the House up there that both sides worked together to depose them. And somebody who served eight years in public service, I imagine when he was 18 years old starting out with the phone company's alignment, he never imagined himself as the deputy majority leader of the New Hampshire legislature.”

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

21. “And so, my father and his twin brother were the product of a second marriage, and Uncle Bill, my grandfather's twin, who had fought in Normandy, got polio in the early nineteen fifties, and someone who had survived the European theater from Day Forward spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. But my dad didn't have a college degree, started out working for the phone company. He was a union lineman. He got promoted into management, played a pretty significant role ultimately at the very end of his career as the head of Bell Atlantic's Environmental Protection Department, rose on his wits and his skills and his intellect, and was deeply involved in the restoration of phone lines and phone services so Wall Street could open after the 9-11 attacks. Moved to New Hampshire and ultimately became the”

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

22. “They were from Bayonne, my dad's side of the family. My grandfather was an interesting guy. He was a twin, and my father was a twin. My grandfather and his twin brother, Bill, who jumped into Normandy with the eighty second airborne, but both of those brothers lost their first wives and first child in childbirth.”

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

23. “North Playing Field. Well, first off, it's good to see you. Always, David, and real happy to be able to finally get this done. North Plainfield is a New York City bedroom community about 25 miles outside the city. The bus stopped up at the corner and my dad would hop on it and go into New York when he worked there or to hack and sack. And it was a town made up of mostly Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics, the cultural center of the town was the Italian-American club. I remember when I was about nine years old, I asked my mother, I said, hey, mom, why doesn't dad come to church with us? And I said, you know, I know he's friends with Father John. They play in the card game together. And my mother took a deep sigh. And his long, pregnant pause, and she said, your father, he's a Protestant. And I just, you had no idea what that was.”

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