YouSaid · the spoken record

Tim Alberta

lines on the record: 74
first: 2021-03-11
most recent: 2021-03-11
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 think that's right. I mean, at the end of the day, if you can find it in yourself to give people the benefit of the doubt and be a little bit more empathetic and try to sort of put yourself in their shoes and understand where they're coming from, doesn't mean you're ever going to agree with them even, but boy, it goes a long way toward just establishing some goodwill. And yeah, that seems to be missing right now. And again, as reductive as it may sound, maybe that's how we start to rebuild this thing.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, that's right, David. And I think that the In a lot of ways, as simple as it may sound, I feel like maybe that's a big part of what's missing in this current political environment is that too many relationships now are being defined by those political disagreements”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think with this election in the rear view, it's really an opportunity to go upstream from politics and think about those communities, think about sort of the fraying social fabric in America. I think you have a real crisis of confidence in this country that spans party lines and transcends any ideological divides otherwise. And so I think before we can try and tackle the problems of partisanship and ideological tribalism, we have to go upstream a little bit and try and think first and foremost about why are we so divided in the first place and how do we begin to heal some of those divides.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our Facebook groups representing the community. So there might be 5,000 or 7,000 members who live in the area who have joined this Facebook group, but the posts that get the most engagement in those groups are about what Tucker Carlson said on Fox News last night or some meme that's making the rounds spreading disinformation about some policy or some executive order or whatever. And the point is that even in these virtual communities, you have a total hollowing out of the things that actually make a community work, like a shared identity, a common purpose. They're not talking about fixing the street lamps or there's a grand opening at this new store. We should go check it out and help these mom-pop business owners. It's these sort of big national issues that are so easily demagogued and so easily misinformed. So that's something that I've spent a lot of time over the last 18 months thinking about. And for me,”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a real phenomenon when you think about how the two things that really animate my thinking, my reporting are these ideas of sort of institutional breakdown and the loss of confidence in American institutions and then sort of right next to that is this idea of the breakdown of communities and how I think on that score particularly David I've been so struck by the stories all here when I go to smaller towns and I'll talk with people and I've heard this time and time again how in a lot of these places they don't have the physical gathering spaces that or the physical gathering rituals that they once had so there's no longer a lion's club or a VFW or a Knights of Columbus Hall the hardware store where people used to hang around and drink coffee as closed right and what has taken its place in many instances”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think the big takeaway for me, David, in recent months thinking back on this campaign and on the previous campaign is that we are now so consumed, we Americans, we voters are so consumed with the hyper national, right? They used to say all politics are local, but really now all politics are national.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think kids have a way of doing that, and particularly kids who have to face great adversity and great challenges of their own. And the one thing kids don't do, David, they don't feel bad for themselves. They just power on, and they adapt and they adjust and they give it their all and rarely do you, you know, for me, that's been the great adjustment of my life here is telling myself that I am not going to wallow. I'm not going to be consumed with self-pity or why me, because really the great question is why did this happen to me? It's thank God that this happened to me because I have a beautiful little boy here and I was blessed with this opportunity. Be his dad.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hopes for him. He may never be some star athlete. He may never be a Rhodes scholar, but I know that he has great potential within him that looks very different than the potential that lives within my other children. And our friend Ron Fournier, my former colleague, wrote a great book on this subject about his son.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Boy, I have. And I come from a family of athletes, of jocks, of guys who sort of are loud and cocky and like to mix it up a little bit. And my eldest son, Abraham, is just the sweetest, gentlest little boy in the world. He's nonverbal, so he can't really communicate with us in many ways. But he's got extraordinary gifts that are not easily discerned and are not apparent to the naked eye. And so a big part of my journey with him through his almost seven years now on this earth has been to adapt and adjust my not only sort of my expectations, but sort of my great hope.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Struggles with mental health as so many Americans do. I mean, these are just the things that you don't always know about, and it's so easy to prejudge and have preconceived opinions about individuals based on just this lowest common denominator question of, well, who did you vote for or what's your party registration? And boy, in a lot of ways, doesn't it seem like that's the least important thing that we should know about somebody?”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man, 1000%. I mean, you are preaching at the choir, David. I mean, I just, I was raised to believe that everybody has a story, that everybody is made in the image of God and that they have strengths and weaknesses and that they need to be treated with respect and generosity. Because you're right as a special needs dad, beautiful little boy who has so many struggles in this world, I want to make sure that other parents who are going through those things, siblings who are going through those things, maybe people themselves who are going through things that aren't really visible but who are saddled with great emotional baggage or have”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Covering things from the ground up to sound like a broken record, it pays such dividends because you really get a perspective that's hard to get otherwise. And so I had actually met in the course of my travels quite a few parents who would talk to me about their challenges and about how it seemed like the government was completely indifferent to what the obstacles that they faced just on a daily basis in trying to make it work. And so it just felt to me like, listen, there are a lot of, you know, it's a two-hour debate. You can only fit in so many things, but it felt like in a lot of these debates, we spent some of those debates in 2020, some of those democratic primary debates. We'd spend half of them talking about Medicare for all”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really does. It really does. From the inside out, it changes your whole world. And so that was important to me. But I had also had several interactions with voters. And this is where, again, sort of”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For a number of reasons. First and foremost, our oldest son, Abraham, is autistic. As you know, David, there's just nothing that shapes you as an adult quite like having a child with a disability. And it changes everything about you. It changes.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, the very first meeting we had with the folks at PDS who are our partners in that debate, it was Judy Woodruff and Yamichel Sindor and Amna Nawaz were my three co-moderators. And then there's a handful of other executives and their producers in the room. And we were going around sort of giving some of our very top tier ideas for like the really important questions. And I said, look, I've got a couple of things that are really important to me and really only one that I think is kind of non-negotiable because it's just an embarrassment that we don't talk about these things in presidential campaigns. And they said, well, what is it? And I said, well, I want to ask about people with disabilities and how we help integrate them into communities and into the workforce.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Carolina has, then I can do it anywhere, right? But I do think that that notion fails to appreciate, again, just how dramatically things have changed even within the last four or five years, right? In other words, that, yes, as we said earlier, that there was this continuum and that none of this appeared overnight and that it was already tracking in a sort of an ugly direction, but it got turbocharged when Donald Trump came down that golden escalator.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, you look at those pictures, and you can just see how this plays, right? I've spent over a decade covering Republican politics. I can already see in mind's eye what those blog posts look like, what the smear campaigns look like on the ground, mailers going out, calls going out, Facebook posts and Twitter posts and social media being sort of just pervaded with sort of ugly identity driven attacks on her that, you know, who is she really, right? Can we, you know, what's up with this family? Her dad wears a turban. I think it's, I mean, listen, and her whole argument, David, is that, well, I overcame these forces in South Carolina. And if I can overcome them there in a place with such a sordid racial history like South Carolina.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Want to be really honest? Probably not. Quite surprised if she were able to surmount those forces, even stripping away the anger about her condemning Trump and the allegations of flip-flopping and not having a core, all of that stuff aside, which that's politically problematic in its own right. But even setting those things aside, David. And I wrote about this in the piece. There are pictures of her, for example, on the internet of going on a pilgrimage to this temple, this Sikh temple in India. And she's.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was new to him. He felt like there was this really surge of racial politics on the right late in the Bush presidency in a way that he hadn't seen it before. And I think that that's obviously only intensified in the decade or so since.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's hard to escape consciously or subconsciously in my own reporting the role that race and xenophobia and sort of nativism in general play in informing the electorate. And obviously, you take this all the way back to 08, David. I mean, we talked when I was writing the book about McCain and not just the famous moment at the Rally in Minnesota where he rebuked the woman, but really throughout McCain's entire campaign, he was dogged by immigration reform and his efforts with Ted Kennedy to try and reform the immigration system and how people felt like he was selling out America and that he was trying to change the racial complexion of America. And that was something that McCain, who was, you know, he had been around, he'd seen a lot.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They also grew up in a small town in rural Maryland after 9 11, where people thought that they were Muslim extremists and didn't quite know what to make of them. And so, you know, it's something that she and I talk about a lot. And as a dad raising biracial kids in a country that is so consumed with race and identity.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look, so I grew up in this small whitebread town in the Midwest, right? And the first time I ever brought my then-girlfriend back to meet my friends, meet my parents, a couple of my friends and I joke that you would have thought that there was a Bengal tiger walking through town. I mean, people were just snapping their heads. I mean, it's like, and yeah, I mean, that is a big part of my thinking about this country. Her parents lived sort of the quintessential Indian American dream where they came here without a diamond in their pocket. They opened up a little motel. They still run this little motel out in rural Maryland. And they're very modest folks, but she and her brother both went on to earn undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees. And they will be obviously much more successful than their parents' generation.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, and yes. So I couldn't even hope to give you a simple answer on that because we're talking about tens of millions of people, right? But I think that in my experience, I've divided it into probably roughly three things. And I think you probably touched on all of them. I think there is a significant and larger than we're comfortable acknowledging segment of this that has to do with race that has to do with when we say that people don't recognize their country anymore that sentiment more than any other i think does come back to race right people look around and they think this is you know this is not this doesn't look like the neighborhood i grew up in this doesn't look like the community i grew up in let me ask you a sensitive question”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, anyway, getting back to Michigan for me felt like a fresh start in a lot of ways. And I really pitched my bosses at Politico hard on this, saying, guys, look, we want to be a national publication. We want to cover national politics. We should have a national presence, right? Put me on the ground in my pickup truck and I will just drive. I will just talk to voters. I will cover these things from the ground up. It was absolutely the most rewarding experience of my life reporting, spending that 12 months on the road from November of 2019 through November of 2020. I interviewed thousands of voters and just filled up notebook after notebook after notebook. And then I just started writing these dispatches in which every single person quoted was just a voter, that no strategist, no pollsters, no party officials, no politicians. And the reception to it was absolutely incredible. I mean, people really engaged with it.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thought, you know what, if we're going to move, maybe we should just move now. And that part of it, David, that sort of happened to coincide with a real anxiety that I had about the way that we, the media and me personally, how were we going to cover this race in a way that was substantially different from the way we'd covered it in 2016? Because I really felt a great deal of”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it did. It really did. And by way of background, David, we had, my wife and I, we had started thinking a few years earlier about getting out of Washington. Neither of us had ever really been enamored of DC. We didn't feel like it was a great fit long term for our family and for our young kids. Actually, when I was writing my book, which came out in the summer of 2019, by the time I finished it and submitted it to the publisher, my wife and I sort of talked and said, maybe this is our ticket out of town. Maybe the book comes out and then I get through 2020. I was under contract with Politico through the 2020 election. So our plan was to come back probably to Michigan after the 2020 election. And then my dad died 12 days after the book came out. And suddenly we found ourselves in Michigan.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now essentially surrendering and saying, yeah, you know what? Never mind because the stakes are too high and we can't afford to be idealist.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They had to sort of embrace a reality or a way of political thinking that they had long rejected, which was that everything is binary, that everything is relative, that you can't afford to be idealistic in politics or moralistic in politics, that you have to look sort of in a cold and clear-eyed way at the choices in front of you and choose the one that is going to do the least harm. I don't think it's that mindset that's necessarily all that extraordinary, but it's the people who embrace that mindset, the very people who, as I said, sort of through the Clinton presidency and I think for many years preceding it through the years of the moral majority and the religious right, the very people who were sort of on the front lines of advocating this sort of this idealistic approach to politics were”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Famously, boasted about the size of his genitals from the stage. And of course, all I could think to myself was, you bastard, my mother is in that audience. How dare you speak like that? And afterwards I talked to my dad, and I wrote my story. I think the headline from that story was like Republican Party implodes in Motor City Train Wreck or something like that. And I talked to my dad afterwards, and he was just beside himself. It was sort of disgusted by the whole thing, wondering, you know, he had told me before the debate that he was leaning towards Kasich, maybe Rubio. So anyway, all that to say, David, that I think for a lot of people who I've interviewed who sort of exist in that space, they didn't get to become Trump voters until that summer, maybe even that fall. And at that point, I think for a huge number of these folks.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Until he didn't, right? And the next thing you know, he's hitting 35, he's hitting 40, he started to hit 45 and 50 in a couple of those primary states in the south. And what's interesting on the second part, when you ask about people like my dad. So, you know, my dad voted for John Kasich in the primary. My mother did too. And in fact, quick funny story, you'll appreciate this. Someone from their church, there was a debate at the Fox Theater in Detroit, a Republican primary debate, and somebody from their church had a spare set of tickets and asked my dad if he'd like to go with my mom. And so they said, oh, sure, they've never done anything like that. That would be fun. So I was in town covering that debate. And I took them out for dinner beforehand. And then we parted ways. And that was the debate where Donald Trump”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And grievance and resentment. And it's tough to sort of put your finger on how exactly how someone can take those forces politically and mold them into a movement. But Trump did, and he did it at a scale that I didn't think was possible. So, you know, did we think that he could get 10, 15, maybe even 20% of voters? Yes. But even as late in that race, David, as February or early March of 2016, the knock on Trump was that he had a ceiling of 30%.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had never picked up on an appetite to just sort of slash and burn. And that was new in 2016. There was a difference. I've talked with other reporter friends of mine about this to make sure I'm not crazy when I've observed this. And they all agreed there was a difference when you would talk to people at a cruise rally versus people at a Trump rally, right? You'd meet a lot of voters who were pretty far to the right, but the people at a cruise rally tended to be maybe a little bit more sort of ideological about it, maybe a little bit more intellectually engaged on certain issues, whether it be budget and deficits or immigration or healthcare, whatever it is. Whereas at the Trump rally, it was a lot of just sort of unharnessed anger.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so there's a couple of answers to unpack there. I think the first one is. What I got wrong, what I underestimated, was the degree to which Despite having spent the last few years covering all of these Republican politicians who were really almost carrying themselves like anarchists. And you'd look at them and say, geez, they don't want to reform things. They just want to burn everything down, right? And there's a difference. I guess I did underestimate the...”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it really wasn't until Trump won that New Hampshire primary going away where he beat the field by about 20 points. That was really the first night in covering the entire campaign where I sort of sat back at the hotel bar in Manchester late that night and thought, you know what? He's going to win. But it took a while for me to get there.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I've got to be honest, it was late. I mean, I clung to a fairly conventional view of politics and of Republican politics for quite a ways in that race. And even saying that, David, I should note with an asterisk that I was very high on Ted Cruz from the beginning. So when I say conventional view of politics, I guess I just meant that, you know, that somebody who didn't even belong to the party like Donald Trump, this reality TV show sort of cartoonish character, that he, there was no way that he was going to come in and convince all of these evangelical social conservative voters to vote for the guy who's been divorced three times and who lives in the gilded suite in Manhattan. I couldn't see that working, but I could see somebody like a Ted Cruz sort of disrupting the status quo and sort of waging war on the establishment.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. Rich Lowry, who's the editor of the National Review, I said, you know, Rich, I said, look, if I come to write for you guys, if I come to report for you guys, I'm going to write some things that are going to make conservatives look real bad. And the first time anybody tries to pull any of my punches in a story, I'm going to quit. And I don't know if that's a position you want to put either of us in. And he really went above and beyond and said, no, no, listen, you're coming on to be a reporter. That's what we want you to do. I went to work for the National Review in October of 2015 and I worked there for the next 14 months. And during that time, my coverage of Republicans in the primary and specifically of Trump, it was very critical, very, I mean, very clear-eyed, pulling no punches, and not only of Republican politicians, but of major conservative donors. So all things told, it actually wound up being a very good experience there. And I never felt any pressure.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Listen to this day if they meet my wife at a Washington cocktail party. Like colleagues of mine will sort of grill her trying to get an answer. And she always laughs. Like, I couldn't tell you. I couldn't begin to tell you. I was pretty skeptical about going to work for National Review. But I went to New York and I sat down with Rich Lowry and I told him exactly what I just told you. And I said, look, Rich, if I come to work.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who was running the National Review, the Washington Office, we got together and she said, look, you know, NR has its blind spots, but I think they deserve credit where it's due here because they realize that there is so much interest in this presidential cycle, in this Republican primary, and that their readers don't just want to read a bunch of opinions on the website. They want to read reporting. And she said, look, you are as good as anybody right now plugged in covering Republicans. You're super well sourced. Would you want to come work for us? And I had gotten to know her a little bit. We were friendly. And I had some big reservations. I really did because I had never worked in partisan media. I never saw myself working in partisan media. I'm not an ideological person by nature. And I just really...”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, it's pretty interesting what happened was in the fall of, well, late summer of 2015, I had transitioned off the hill pretty recently and I was assigned to cover the 2016 presidential campaign and I was given a nice raise and was writing for National Journal Magazine quite a bit. I had written several cover stories for the magazine and I felt like I had really made it and found my spot in the organization. And very abruptly, the magazine shut down and the organization essentially went into what could be generously described as a tailspin. They started buying out a lot of big contracts. So I was effectively left out in the cold in the fall of 2015. And Eliana Johnson.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think we have yet to fully grapple with how it changed our country at its core, right? That we are a fundamentally different country today than we were just 12 or 15 years ago. And the Tea Party was one manifestation of that, but there are others. And I think Trump in many ways was the ultimate manifestation of that. And so, yeah, so here I am on the ground level covering these guys. And I think the instinct for a lot of the institutionalists around Washington, like a John Boehner, was to just sort of brush these folks aside and say, listen, I was a hell raiser when I came here too. That's just sort of the way of the world. And once they're here for a little while and we put them in a headlock and kind of teach them the ropes and tell them how to get things done, then they kind of relax and they fall in line. And that's how party politics works. I don't think Boehner or his lieutenants or the folks running the Republican National Committee, I don't think that they to this day have quite internalized just what a sea change that era of politics was.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly right. And I write about that a lot in the opening chapters of the book, that you sort of have to place these things in the context of that continuum you're describing, you're right. You could trace it back. I mean, hell, if you wanted to, you could trace it all the way back to, you know, the birchers and to goldwater. Yes, yeah. But in the modern era, David, what's so interesting is that I think as the Bush presidency is winding down and the country is war weary and the economy starts to tank and then we elect a black man president and suddenly this is like a powder keg, right? So you're right that it was a continuum. The trajectory was certainly pointing in one direction over a period of time. But suddenly this confluence of events, the economic and the political and the cultural just sort of all intersected in a way that”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And really absorbing everything in their orbit and understanding strategically how they were positioning themselves on a certain piece of legislation or a fight with the White House and how they were going to try and sell it to their conference. And then the next day I'd be with the Renegades, with the Tea Party conservatives who were plotting how to disrupt what the leadership was doing. And it was a really fascinating reporting experience to sort of be capturing both sides of that in real time and watching them try to outmaneuver each other.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those smaller rooms, right? And it was an incredibly fortuitous time to be taking that approach because the rank and file, all of these freshman lawmakers who had come in to Congress in 2010, they were trying to burn the building down. So what I wound up doing was, and I can't take credit for it in hindsight as being some master strategist. But what I wound up doing was I really was able to cover cover Congress and cover the Republican Party in Congress sort of the way that the wire covers both the cops and the criminals. You know what I mean? You're sort of capturing it from both sides. So one day I'd be with Cantor and Boehner and those guys.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“David, I'd really count this as another one of the big breaks because when I went to the hill and I had sort of dabbled off and on the hill, I was for a while sort of doing different covering campaigns, writing newsletters. But really, when I went to the hill full time, you're right. It was just after the big tea party wave had come crashing over Washington. And a lot of folks really weren't quite sure what to make of it. And what I really What I really tried to do, you know, I was initially assigned to cover House leadership, which is, you know, which is a great gig. But as a new reporter, I found it much easier to sort of work my way from the bottom up. So kind of start with the rank and file members, try and get to know them. And then you sort of develop some more sourcing and you build those relationships. And then you can kind of work your way into those.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the kid that walked out of there after six months was much better prepared for a potential career in journalism than the kid who had arrived there, who was very raw, very green.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's funny, David, because you're absolutely right. And I worked after, well, I'm fast forwarding it, but I did wind up working for years at the National Journal where there was actually a A policy when hiring summer interns, I mean, quite literally a policy where they all came from Ivy League schools. This was sort of the edict from on high. But the Wall Street Journal was a really incredible experience for me because it spanned the very twilight of Bush's presidency and then the beginning of Obama's presidency. And they had me do a little bit of everything. They'd have me, I covered the Census Bureau. I covered Congress. I covered DC statehood. I did a little bit of everything. It was basically a bad, really in the truest sense it was a baptism.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and look, so I think that's absolutely right. And I could go chapter and verse on that. And we should talk a little bit more about it. I want to be clear, I'm not being falsely self-critical when I talk about how I believe that you were.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I still know and keep in touch with. And they're very diplomatic about it. But I just know for a fact, looking back, that I was not ready for that, that I did not belong. I think the intern they had this semester before me had been like the editor at like the Princeton paper and the intern the semester after me was from Harvard. And I was this kid who transferred to Michigan State and barely had scraped together. But Tim, let me ask you.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was. I got to tell you, I mean, to this day, I can remember getting off the foggy bottom metro my first day in Washington, D.C. And I'd never even gone there on like a school trip or anything. So I never, I didn't know anybody there. I packed up my Oldsmobile with as much stuff as I could fit in there. And I rented a little room for 400 bucks a month. I just, I tried to be a sponge and soak it all in, but I was way out of my league though. I mean, and it was, it's funny because some of the people who mentored me there.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Almost, you have these moments in any career where you have a light bulb goes off and you have sort of a moment of clarity. And for me, having taken all of these journalism classes, but having never really practiced much journalism, I sort of had this light bulb moment there as a 21-year-old covering the State House thinking, you know, this journalism thing is actually much simpler than any of these professors are making it out to be. Basically, all I have to do is get these people to tell me stuff that they shouldn't be telling me, and then I have to turn around and write about it, right? And I mean, it just, it kind of clicked. And suddenly I was breaking a lot of news. I was pretty good at it. I realized for the first time in my life, this was something that I really had a knack for. And so I had all these clips and I bundled them together and mailed them out. And the next thing you know, I got a letter saying, hey, do you want to intern at the Wall Street Journal in Washington? And I'd never even been to Washington. I didn't know how I could afford it.”
2021-03-11 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 433 — Tim Alberta · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source