YouSaid · the spoken record

Susan Page

lines on the record: 61
first: 2020-10-22
most recent: 2020-10-22
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

“Challenge each other and interact with each other. And there was more evasion, particularly from Vice President Pence than I had expected. But it's not One thing I've learned in doing campaign election coverage all these years, especially in doing callbacks on our polling, which I've done a lot of, is that Americans are pretty smart. Voters are pretty smart. I didn't think that I thought that voters would recognize when a question was being not answered or evaded or dodged or when a candidate was being rude or in civil. And it's not that they didn't necessarily need me to tell them that. That said, I recognize the criticism. Somebody else might have handled this in a different way. I was heartened. Let me just mention two things I was heartened by.”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one of the things I tried to think about before the debate was what was my role? What was I supposed to do? Because I really felt like this was, you know, this was not doing a story for a newspaper or some other purpose. This was for the purpose of facilitating a debate in an important election for voters to see. Debate commission and most of the previous moderators emphasize the idea that you're not there, it's different from doing an interview, and it's different from being at a news conference and that your role is really to try to pose a question that they hopefully will answer shaped in such a way makes it harder for them to evade, although clearly it wasn't impossible for them to ignore the question I ask, and then facilitated conversation between them so that they would”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the people who have moderated presidential and vice presidential debates in the past for their thoughts about how to do it. And that was very useful. I did something else. I went off social media. And that's to be really crucial. It was very healthy. It cleared my mind. And one of my kids was not deliberately, but he was watching social media and he kept telling me, don't go on there.”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most Americans didn't have a good sense of Senator Harris. You know, she hadn't really been on the national scene for an extended period of time. So it was very important for her to look confident and competent so people felt okay about voting for Biden. They didn't have to worry about who his number two was. So I thought that way was relatively important. But still, the stakes were lower than they were in the presidential debate. And I was very... I was very concerned about having a civil debate, and I talked to Chris Wallace. Chris gave me great advice. You know, Chris has done a presidential debate before. He did one four years ago. He's a very skilled interviewer. I talked about what he thought what I should, what could make a difference. And in fact, I talked to all the living.”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, actually I didn't. I really, I was so looking forward to this debate and I love doing it. And even though there's a lot of criticism that has come after it, I'm not sorry. So no, I didn't think that. But I did think, how can I have a different kind of debate than that? And of course, in some ways, my cards were better because I had Vice President Pence, not President Trump, Vice President Pence, less disruptive a debater than President Trump, and also somewhat lower stakes. The stakes are lower in a vice presidential debate than in a presidential one, although there was some reasons to think that this vice presidential debate was relatively important, both because these two vice presidential candidates are tied to presidential candidates who are of record age, 74 and 77 at the moment, and also because I think”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I did watch the first debate, and I thought that Chris Wallace had a really impossible task. Not the debate he expected and one that just left, I think, him and viewers feeling kind of battered. So one of the things I did in Prepper. Did you say that?”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's funny. I've actually covered all three of Joe Biden's presidential campaigns. Some of them have been kind of short. More success You know, there are ways in which he's not a great candidate, right? He can be a little goofy. He is kind of prone to gaffs. Sometimes he talks too long. And it turns out to be kind of the perfect antidote to President Trump at this moment. He turns out to be quite tailored for the race in which he finds himself running.”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let me ask you a question, Dave If the coronavirus had not developed, erupted in China and spread so catastrophically across our country and the globe. And so the economy was like where it was in January. So not good for everybody in America, but pretty good for a lot of people. Unemployment, particularly record lows, would Donald Trump be winning right now?”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Especially a camp period where you really need to get some women to come back and vote for you, some women who maybe voted for you four years ago but have had some questions. You know, these attacks are quite out of sync, I think, with what some of these voters, it might have reluctantly voted for President Trump this time for what it's different from what I think they have been looking to see”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The idea that an aide or an advisor or a strategist, or even a family member can say to Donald Trump, listen, you've got to not do what you've done the previous 70 years of your life. It just seems to me unlikely that that's Advice he'll take. I mean, it is true that four years ago he had a somewhat more disciplined close to his campaign than he said than he has this time. But, you know, Donald Trump has gotten this far, including election to the highest office in our nation by being himself. And for better or worse, that's who he is.”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are reasons to think it doesn't matter very much given these record number of people who have already cast their ballots and given that the number of undecided or persuadable voters in America has got to be just vanishingly small. On the other hand, it's the biggest event we've got left. So if anything's going to make a difference, it is this final debate. And important both for how President Trump behaves. I think that first debate cost him something and also how Vice President Biden does. There are questions, you know, some voters have some questions about his age or his ideology, and so it's a chance for him to make a closing statement as well. But you're right, at this point in a campaign, especially with this campaign, most of it is cooked.”
2020-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 414 — Susan Page · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source