YouSaid · the spoken record

Tim O'Brien

lines on the record: 67
first: 2020-10-01
most recent: 2020-10-01
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

“Well, thank you for having me on, David. You know, one of the things that Trump has done is he's ripped this band-aid off ideas we have about what our country's about and where our values reside. And I think as disgusting as he is about going about that, it's a challenge to all of us to stand tall for what we believe in and push back against all of these obscenities and be really open and clear about what we need to do to make sure nothing like this happens again. I'm glad to talk to you about this stuff and thank you for having me on.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I found it really meaningful work in that regard. But I think we also misread the landscape. Voters are smart. It's humbling how smart voters can be. And I think they were making calculated plays throughout the entire primary season about who can beat Donald Trump. And different people appeared to be capable of doing that.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tell their story to the world. I found on the campaign going into these areas where people were really distressed and concerned about their healthcare coverage and their jobs and the terror that is Donald Trump. Those were always the three issues in play. They're looking for you to help solve those problems. It's a very different relationship to those people.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, I think the theory of the case for Mike in the fall of 2019 was there was likely to be a brokered convention and the party, the DNC machinery looked underfunded and wobbly. And it was an opportunity to revivify the party's resources and make an argument for somebody who could bridge the gap between different divisions in the party. And I believe that. I thought that was a strong argument. I thought Mike's greatest skills is hands-on ability to solve problems was meaningful. I'd never worked on a camera. You know this far better than I do, David, that this world and that life. You know, I found it to be incredibly meaningful work. Again, this issue of, you know, Politics and public service. You know, when you go into a state or a town as a reporter, you're going in to try to listen closely to people and”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it has to be profound. You know, he got very lucky with Robert Mueller's investigation. I was deeply disappointed that Bob Mueller, as we now know through Andrew Weissman's recollections, but I think it was apparent even in the late stages of the Mueller investigation chose not to do a financial investigation of the president. And you can't under, if you're looking at Russia's influence over Donald Trump, their clear influence, and then looking at what possibly animates that, you can't understand that without following the money trail. And Mueller chose not to go that route. And I think during the times when the Mueller investigation was heated and it wasn't clear where he was going, Trump was like a caged animal. Then that went away, right? And immediately began trying to do corruption in Ukraine. But there's now it's revivified essentially in the DC.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Non pardonable and out of his control essentially, too. And that's going to be waiting for him whether he wins or loses in November.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To put money on their tables or to otherwise obfuscate or engineer their business dealings to make them look like something they're not. I think there's real issues around possible money laundering exposure that they have to be concerned about globally. And domestically, you know, one of their big projects in Lower Manhattan, the Trump SoHo Hotel, their partners on it, one of their primary partners on that was a career criminal. There were allegations among the partners in that project that it was being used for money laundering. All of the stuff's in play now. The other thing that's very significant is that it's the Manhattan District Attorney. And that's not a federal law.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think a lot of the themes that are in the Times' recent reporting this aren't new. I think there's some decade old themes, decades old themes here, but it's such an important public service that they're putting financial and numeric clothing on this, and portions of which are really indisputable. And Trump and his children, who also work at the Trump, is all the eldest children, Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric, all have serious legal exposure around the issue of whether or not the Trump organization has inflated the valuations of their assets in order to get investor, pardon me, investors or bankers.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And not just a tax fraud, but a bank fraud exposure. And accounting fraud. And in fact, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office is looking at those very things right now. They've made that public in a court file in about three weeks ago.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the tax returns are one avenue for seeing that written into stone because there is own returns and they're his numbers.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His business ties, who he does business with, and sources of foreign income. And I think that's been this sword that's hung over the cloud, dark cloud that's hung over his administration since he became president because he is so fundamentally conflicted because of his financial and business ties. He can't make clean public policy given all of his business ties that he hasn't authentically distanced himself from. And it's wedded to the fact, you know, the framers never envisioned somebody like this coming into the Oval Office encumbered with all the financial conflicts of mystery he has, but also layered with the fact that he is uniquely corrupt. He doesn't believe in the rule of law, or he's unethical. He pushes every boundary around him. He's a profoundly lawless and corrupt man.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a senior columnist now. It's now Bloomberg opinion. But from, I guess I did three columns on the topic between 2015, four probably between 2015 and 2020, all around why doesn't he want these to come out? And I think there's four broad areas, and I think two of them aren't that germane to the future of Donald Trump. One is that they would show that his business isn't as robust as he claims it is. I think the second thing is it would show that he doesn't give a hoot about charitable giving. The two other areas that I think are really salient and important are”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm, yes, I am. There's an NDA around them. They weren't turned over in the court. They were given to my lawyers at Deva Voice and we looked at them in a conference room there. And I can't talk about the specifics in those returns. But I can talk generally about why Trump's worried by those returns. And I've written, I think, three columns.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I rolled over to my wife and I said, you know, this is like the ghost of Christmas paths or something. I can hear the chains rattling around in our attic.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two days, two eight hour days. My attorneys completely roasted him. And while he tried and did lie during that deposition, And my lawyers towards the end of the case made a motion to have it attached as an exhibit to some of the court papers arguing that the deposition was dispositive because it showed that my book was on firm footing and wasn't an act of malice. And they worked mightily to get the depression, the deposition suppressed. The court rejected that. It became a public document. He lost the case in 2009. And then he appealed it and lost, it didn't even appellate court wouldn't even hear it. The judges wrote scathing dismissals of the case. And it went to sleep in 2011. And I thought I was now permanently done with Donald Trump in my life. And then in 2015, he rolls down the escalator in Trump Tower. Yes.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and her two great partners on my case, Andrew Serezni and Andrew Levine, were an incredible legal team. Trump was represented by Mark Kasowitz. My lawyers ran circles around that crew. And I, frankly, my wife is a lawyer and she finds this perverse whenever I say this, David. But I actually enjoyed the whole thing. There were moments in it, you know, where, you know, like they deposed Bill Keller or Arthur Solzberger on really slender, where other people got harassed because of my lawsuit. And I did feel badly about that. But, you know, you don't get subpoena power often as a reporter. But you do if you're party to a lawsuit. And of course, we then as part of the discovery process got his bank records, his business records, and his tax returns. And then when it came time to depose him in December of 2007.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a big gap. And, you know, I don't really care how much money he has. I was more interested in how he'd used this to keep himself in front of the media for years. But he also was completely lying about it. And so he sued me. I think he thought, you know, he sued my publisher Warner Books and me personally. He didn't sue the New York Times because I think he thought the book publisher wouldn't back me up. He knew the Times would. And he thought, I think he thought the book publisher would roll over. And to their credit, they didn't. They hired Mary Joe White as my attorney former C. Attorney.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the problem with that deposition. So the book comes out in 2005. He sues me for $5 billion, which was a lot bigger than the advance I got on the book in 2006. It was essentially, you know, $5 billion was the difference between what he was saying he is worth at the time, which was $6 billion. And my sources were saying it was $150 to $250 million. Yeah, that's a big gap.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See who the real Trump was. And then that really interesting thing he said was number three, I don't really care what you write because I basically have my own printing press. If you say something negative about me, I can go on the today show or call up the New York Post and say, Tim O'Brien's a loser. Tim O'Brien's a whack job. He's a dog. And I'll just do that. I can do that. It's like I got my own printing press. And he's right. That's pre-internet when he's saying that to me. That's 2004. But now it's turbocharged.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very similar. And another point we were driving out to his golf course, he was driving and his Mercedes Maybach Maybach, and we were going out to Bedminster. And he said, you know, I could just sue you if I don't like the book. And I said, do you really want to sue a reporter with institutional backing? I said, yeah, I got no problem with that. And I said, well, then why did you participate at all? And this is on tape. This encounters in the book. And he said, well, three things. One, I really like you. I don't think that's true, but that's what he said. I think what that was. Well, it's certainly not true anymore. Yeah. He said number two, I considered it a challenge. I wanted to see if you could”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I said, after the book comes out, I said, Donald, you're not going to want to go to a boxing match with me in Atlantic City after this book comes out. He sort of pauses and he goes, yeah, you're really going to scalp me, aren't you? And I said, well, I don't, I'm not looking to scalp you, but there's a lot of parts of this book you're not going to like”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The 14th on acid, the whole design aesthetic of it. And he was getting ready to go in golf. And I was sitting in a corner of his living room. There was this big Muhammad Ali picture book on one of the tables. And when he came out, he saw I was looking through it. And he said, that's a great book. And I said, oh, you know, I think Ali's an amazing man. And he said, you know, we're getting into the elevator. And he said, you know, you and I should go to a match together sometime in Atlantic City.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's why I got the book contract because of the pieces that were in the Times. A number of publishers approached me. I didn't really want to do a book that was a purely Investigative book about Trump himself because I felt I had done that with Wayne. I really wanted to do a book that placed Trump in the culture and tried to answer this question of why does this guy who's stumbled or had full-scale blowouts and collapses in so many parts of American life maintained this traction, this weird traction in the American imagination for decades, whether it was casinos, real estate, politics, reality TV, and so on. And so I wanted to do a book that answered that question. And I wasn't sure if he was going to participate with that or not. But, you know, he was just, you know, I asked him at one point, we had gone up into his triplex at Trump Tower, which for those who haven't seen it in pictures or been there, it's sort of this cross between Caesar's palace and Louis.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because he's an addict. You know, he's so deeply insecure and he needs attention in such profound and bent ways that he can't He'll tolerate bad media coverage. He revels in good media coverage. But the thing that he can't tolerate is no media coverage. And he constantly identifies and cultivates reporters that he thinks have important control or participation in parts of a dialogue that he wants to participate in. And he can't help himself. He loves the very thing he claims to hate.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I first, although I was exposed to him through Wayne's book, the first time I ever interviewed Trump was for my gambling book in the mid 90s. And I interviewed him for that for just for the Atlantic City chapter for a few hours in his office in New York. Never covered him again after that. And then when I was at the Times, my job at the time was as a feature writer for the Sunday business section. Trump regards he's a New York kid and a Queen's kid who regards, I think, the Times as the sort of good housekeeping seal of approval really began to cultivate me. He would call me three or four times a week.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I sort of think he got out just in time. But, you know, he was, you know, Wayne was so shrewd. He was on to some of the FBI machinations around Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016. And Giuliani reaching into some of his old contacts in New York to help facilitate some of that. You know, it's really a loss that we don't have Wayne as both a witness and a”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I learned a lot from Wayne and Wayne's Trump biography is the foundational biography for anybody that wants to understand the World Trump came from. And Wayne was the greatest show editor.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Spotted Wayne immediately arrested him and put him in jail for trespassing, which allowed me to grab a glass of champagne and walk right into the party and cover it.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Series about Trump. And so I was really Wayne and I were tied at the hip during that project. At one point, Trump had a birthday party for himself. It would have been, I think like his 40, I guess like his 45th birthday. And he was doing it at Taj Mahal, which was going to go under water shortly. And he couldn't get enough people to come to his birthday party. So he publicly advertised that he was holding his birthday party in one of the main sort of auditoriums at the Taj Mahal. So Wayne and I said, what the hell? We should go to that birthday party and let's go report on it. And Wayne being Wayne, Wayne had like a wrinkled, crappy shirt and jeans, and I threw on a jacket and a tie to look presentable. And we got there and off duty Atlantic City cops who were working as private guards for Trump.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From 19, I guess 1990 to 92 more or less. Wayne had a house down in Ocean City near Atlantic City, and we had a sort of, you know, Wayne really built the first paper trail on Donald Trump back in. And remember, in the early 90s, there was no web. So we were going to the Securities and Exchange Commission and getting public filings. I was going to the casino control commission in Atlantic City and getting hearings transcripts. I was going to the division of gaming enforcement in Trenton and getting publicly available reports from there. And we had all this stuff on Wayne's table in his house in Atlantic City. And Wayne was an intrepid, smart, unstoppable investigative reporter who really knew how to do document work. And Wayne had done the first big Trump interview in the 1970s in the voice in, I think a three-part series, at least a two-part series.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it could be a kind of a fruitful partnership, and Wayne was looking for a researcher for his book. So I ended up working for Wayne while I was in grad school on his Trump biography as his researcher.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, David, you know, I began playing close attention to Donald Trump in 1990 when Wayne Barrett, who was a legendary investigative report, the village voice, he had written City for Sale, which is one of the great books about municipal corruption. He had Jack Newfield wrote that together. It was a bestseller. And Wayne got a contract to do a book about Donald Trump as his next book. And Wayne came to give a talk to the Colonia Journalism School about his goals and a professor at Columbia who was teaching me and was an old acquaintance of Wayne named Robin Risaig said, you two should meet.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was. I mean, I was never always happy at the New York Times. It is such a great institution like any big place that's got its flaws and makes mistakes. Sometimes they're egregious. But by and large, I think the daily paper the New York Times puts out is a miracle or its website now is a miracle too. And I was fortunate to be around great editors and colleagues there. I got opportunities to pursue a lot of different things there. They sent me to Russia for a period of time. And, you know, I could go on and on. Joe Lellevel, Bill Keller, Glenn Kramer, Larry and Gracia, Gretchen Morganson, Steve Engelberg. I could just name, you know. All sorts of folks.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The bank imploded because it had a lot of bad loans out there that people who should have been loyal to Harlem and weren't help engineer.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was very intimately involved and was on the board of the bank after Jackie died. And in the midst of the savings and loan crisis, the plug was pulled on Freedom National Bank and the argument was that white racists in Washington had shut down this black-owned bank because it was black-owned. Now, there's some truth to that because I think it was precipitously shut down in a way that white-owned banks elsewhere weren't. So there's no question that racism was at work. But when I began to report this narrative about what happened to Freedom National Bank, what became really clear was that a lot of potentates in Harlem, Harlemite insiders had diverted money out of the bank to projects elsewhere in Washington, D.C. or into speculative projects that were completely divorced from the mission Jackie Robinson set up for that bank. And that like any bank or any institution that makes crappy insider loans,”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think that lens and that affiliation for him made him deeply aware of how important economic empowerment was. And I think he founded Freedom National Bank to be a vehicle in Harlem for making sure loans got to small businesses that were black owned and mortgages got to black homeowners in Harlem. And that was his goal. His wife Rachel, a one, also an amazing, wonderful.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Freedom National Bank was such an important bank. Jackie Robinson was such an amazing, sophisticated man. He was a Republican, I think, for much of his baseball career and after. Juno”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so my friend and I went to Columbia with the idea of writing this business plan for this magazine while we were getting our degrees. And I had no hands-on business experience. I wanted to learn about accounting and finance in just a very utilitarian way. I wanted to have knowledge of how those disciplines worked and how to use them as a lens onto running a good business and how money works in the world. And I'm glad I did that. I got a lot out of that. But I was never going to be a businessman. I just wanted to have those tools. I mean, we did think we could write a much more sophisticated and sharply drawn business plan while in school there. That was also very kind of pointy headed approach to it. But that's how I ended up there.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, at that time, there was, you know, the village voice, which I did a lot of freelancing for. Progressive and liberal and left. And then New York Magazine, which at the time was sort of like a midwife to suburban living. And I actually don't think there was a magazine of and in New York that sort of existed between those two polls. And that's the space we thought we could fill. We were wrong. I'm been wrong about a million things.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And after my first year, I did my master's in an accelerated way. I just worked long hours, wrote my thesis Went to work for National Geographic as a summer job, basically, in between planning to come back to Colombia. The fellowship, though, was only for one year. If I wanted to do a doctorate, I would have had to have foot that bill have footed that bill myself. It was really expensive. And I wasn't given what I had seen in academia sure that I wanted to be in that world. So I just stayed, I stayed put at National Geographic for a year. I missed New York though profoundly I really got the New York bug, came back up to New York, taught history in a public high school. And a friend of mine from Chicago and I decided we wanted to try to start a magazine in Chicago or in New York in the late 80s. This is around 88.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when I moved to New York, I got a full fellowship from Columbia to do my history degree. And University of Chicago did not offer me any money. So that was simply the reason I ended up in New York.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really bad. You know, I was the only guy gene in this dojo of 15 very intense Japanese guys and one Australian who was my interpreter. And there were eight ranks of white belt eight to one before you got to be the first level one black belt. And then you'd go up eight. And I got to level three white belt. So I sucked, David.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yeah. I did that for eight hours a week and banked some money, did room and board, traveled around Asia and studied karate. And I did that free year and then came back and went to graduate school. I ended up.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did. Also, you know, well, so while I was in Peru, I applied. I wanted to teach history and I applied to graduate school programs in U.S. history. And I got into the University of Chicago and Columbia while I was in Peru. And I just didn't feel ready to come back and plant roots and do academia. I wanted to travel while I was still able to be rootless before I took on the responsibilities of a family and a career. I had always been fascinated by the Far East and I wanted to learn karate. So I went to Japan and I at the time Time Inc. had a program. I made a thousand dollars a month teaching English conversational English to Japanese businessmen. And that was enough to give me room and board. And then I freelanced teach English for insane amounts of money because that was also the 80s in Japan. And I could make about $200.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I think that's one of the reasons I went is I grew up in a comfortable affluent home and with not a lot of worries. And I wanted to expose myself to something that was radically different than what I grew up around. I was able to learn Spanish and immerse myself in this town and I think be part of a place where we could just do very hands-on solutions to people's problems. And I went there without it really being a, I mean, those sort of things aren't really resume builders. I went there purely for the experience of it.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and built a bridge so these folks could get their farm goods down to the coast and this was not sophisticated work i mean the engineer was a sophisticated man but he literally we we had sticks of dynamite that we were putting in the rock face lighting and running away exploding sides of the rock face so they could put the foundations of a bridge in um And then we put in toilets. You know, there were a lot of kids dying there of rectal diseases, and they didn't have toilets. And we put in a very rudimentary sewage system in that town. And I did that for a year.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that was a program. It was sort of like a Peace Corps program. It was sponsored by Georgetown University. It was run by a wonderful, amazing priest at Georgetown named Otto Hence. He had been running it in Nicaragua. That was back in the 80s until Reagan turned it into an anti-communist hotspot and horror show. So the program was moved out of there to Peru. I went down with 15 college classmates. We were given little briefs on different towns that needed very practical things. The town that I went to called Kio was up in the mountains. It was a small farming community that needed to get to the coast so they could sell their goods. And every spring the bridges got washed out by floods and rains. So we got donations from the north and hired an engineer in Lima.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is because you know he is so narcissistic and self involved that he can't begin to imagine that other people are motivated by those things. And so he constantly poisons the well around those sorts of topics”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%, and not just politicians, teachers. I've always been fond of teachers. I taught history to public high school in New York for a period of time, thought when I was in college that I wanted to be a history professor when I graduated. That's what I thought I was going to do. You know, doctors, we're surrounded by people who want to do good things in the world. Another reason that Trump poisons the well.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll get to that Well, you know, I mean, I grew up in a household where my father talked about FDR and JFK and always sort of asking these questions. I remember from a very young age of why do people like that decide to go into politics? They didn't have, they were both wealthy men. They didn't necessarily have to serve. One of them got shot. To me, you know, I didn't grow up with a jaundiced view of politics. I saw it as I equated it with public service, not power, and that people who went into it went into it with noble goals. And there could be really hardy and vicious disagreements about how to achieve those goals, but that it was goal-oriented and it was a noble thing. I think as I got introduced, how the world works once I grew up, I realized that a lot of it isn't Noble too. Still think of it as a great calling.”
2020-10-01 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 408 — Tim O'Brien · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source