Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policy makers, and performers,
Speaker 1: to hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions
Speaker 1: change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. My guest today,
Speaker 1: Anthony Weiner is the subject of a documentary simply titled
Speaker 1: Weener that opens in theaters later this month. The film
Speaker 1: covers the former congressman's two thousand thirteen bid for New
Speaker 1: York City mayor, which ultimately ends in his defeat amid
Speaker 1: a sexting scandal. This was Weener's second time facing this issue.
Speaker 1: The first resulted in his resignation from Congress. But in
Speaker 1: spite of his problems, Weener does emerge in the film
Speaker 1: as an effective campaigner and one who is not without
Speaker 1: his supporters. It's easy to see why he's a natural.
Speaker 1: He's charismatic and quick on his feet. If you had
Speaker 1: won the election, the last election you ran for, how
Speaker 1: do you think things would be different right now in
Speaker 1: the city. I've always had this theory about mayors in
Speaker 1: New York City that we go from personality like mayors,
Speaker 1: you know, the coaches, the Giuliani's and then we'd like
Speaker 1: to kind of take a deep breath afterwards and have
Speaker 1: more of a commer or technical maybe. Guy and I
Speaker 1: had the theory that we were due after Bloomberg for
Speaker 1: more personality, kind of someone really enjoyed it, someone really
Speaker 1: like engaging in it, so and mixing it up a
Speaker 1: little bit more, and the blaza hasn't quite been man.
Speaker 1: I think there's kind of an appetite a little bit
Speaker 1: for a different head of personality. I would obviously be
Speaker 1: a different type of mayor than he. I mean a
Speaker 1: little more peripatetic, a little bit more like doing stuff.
Speaker 1: I had a thousand ideas, a little ideas, big ideas
Speaker 1: that I would have like been doing every single day,
Speaker 1: less kind of like this thematic thing that he's got
Speaker 1: going about being a progressive mayor. All that being said,
Speaker 1: you know that it's not as hard as a job
Speaker 1: as it used to be. You know, Money's boy. Well,
Speaker 1: so much of being a mayor is defined in the
Speaker 1: past has been to finding these two big things. One
Speaker 1: is the budget has always been very tough, very dependent
Speaker 1: on Washington, very depending on Albany. The second thing is
Speaker 1: that you get buffeted used to get buffeted by the
Speaker 1: tabloid wars constantly in New York City, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: chewing up mayors was what the tabloids used to do,
Speaker 1: and they're just not what they used to be. Like,
Speaker 1: you don't have the day to day headwind being a
Speaker 1: politician New York City that you would have in the past.
Speaker 1: And then the third thing is just that progressively, over
Speaker 1: the course of time, government at all levels has gotten
Speaker 1: more competent. It's less driven by just you know, guys
Speaker 1: who knew guys who knew guys and three fifty employees.
Speaker 1: It's not saying that every one of them is good,
Speaker 1: but are ways of spotting and weeding out the ones
Speaker 1: who aren't that good. I mean, you know, a day
Speaker 1: to day sanitation man works pretty hard, knows his job
Speaker 1: pretty well. Technology is a good way of keeping up
Speaker 1: with them. So those types of things have made the
Speaker 1: city less breakable than it used to. So you don't
Speaker 1: think the police is a kind of a closed chop
Speaker 1: and it's you gotta know somebody to be get a
Speaker 1: job well, less so than maybe it used to be.
Speaker 1: What I will say is this is that the size
Speaker 1: of the police department being bigger it's bigger than the FBI,
Speaker 1: it's one, it's one of the biggest parlemoud people. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're not all out on the street at the same time.
Speaker 1: But then they're arguably one of the larger paramilitary forces
Speaker 1: in the world, and they're incredibly efficient to do a
Speaker 1: good job. But invariably, every so often you're gonna have
Speaker 1: problems within any agency that large. But you know, very
Speaker 1: rarely does someone stop a cop on the street and
Speaker 1: day I didn't get mug today, Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Like you basically only see the cops when there's a problem.
Speaker 1: You know something's going wrong. But the recent pressure, in
Speaker 1: my view of the recent pressure on statistical improvement every
Speaker 1: day since crime has basically been eliminated in so many
Speaker 1: people's lives. I mean, it's a completely different city than
Speaker 1: it was in the seventies when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the idea of like you know,
Speaker 1: I have a four year old son, like you, when
Speaker 1: you were old enough to have a bike, you're old
Speaker 1: enough to have your bike stolen. Basically you're old enough
Speaker 1: to be the idea of Wilding and Central Park in
Speaker 1: the exactly. I mean, it's just even little things like
Speaker 1: if you had nothing to do when you wanted to
Speaker 1: get mugged, you got on the L train. You know.
Speaker 1: Now you get on the L train and it's all
Speaker 1: these hipsters and nothing else, and it's, uh, it's just
Speaker 1: a much, much safer, better city. And so we're not
Speaker 1: used to it. We're not a customers culturally to say
Speaker 1: things are better, but things are amazing now. One thing
Speaker 1: I wanted people to understand. I mean, you said that
Speaker 1: the budget was at the mercy of Albany and of Washington,
Speaker 1: and the city is still it's safe to say, in
Speaker 1: receivership from the economic crisis of years ago. They really
Speaker 1: don't handle their own finances without some rubber stamp from Albany. Correct. Well, Look,
Speaker 1: the City of New York is a creation, a constitutional
Speaker 1: creation of the state legislature and of the of the
Speaker 1: State Constitution. As such, it's not it's still The Mayor
Speaker 1: of New York City is a fairly powerful mayorality compared
Speaker 1: to a lot of other cities, and the city Council
Speaker 1: has a lot of responsibility. When you say it's a creation,
Speaker 1: what do you mean meaning the five counties have a
Speaker 1: special right, meaning literally, the political subdivision of the City
Speaker 1: of New York was a creation of law, is the
Speaker 1: creation of of the of the state constitution, and as
Speaker 1: such you're at the whim. And all throughout state law
Speaker 1: you'll see things like cities of excess of a million
Speaker 1: people must do a B or C. And you do
Speaker 1: have a state legislature. That's still so, where does the
Speaker 1: city's money come from? I mean, for people who don't
Speaker 1: understand the political process and as much detail as you do,
Speaker 1: they nonetheless recall that basic kind of primmer where federal
Speaker 1: dollars come largely from income tax, and state from sales tax,
Speaker 1: and municipal dollars from property tax. Is that still true
Speaker 1: in New York City that the problems comes from. Here's
Speaker 1: here's where the city less so than most cities, like,
Speaker 1: for example, our education budget is not tied to property
Speaker 1: taxes as it is in Long Island, a lot of
Speaker 1: suburbs and a lot of cities around the country, because
Speaker 1: we have two giant engines of revenue. One is the
Speaker 1: financial sector, which you know when you hear about people
Speaker 1: getting needs of scene bonuses, we're getting a piece of
Speaker 1: the action on those bonuses. Although the day to day
Speaker 1: transaction type of things don't create revenue for the city.
Speaker 1: But all the deals, the big deals, we're getting a
Speaker 1: little piece of that. And the second thing is real estate,
Speaker 1: which has I mean, it said, mind bogglingly high levels.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can literally buy a forty million dollar
Speaker 1: apartment in New York City and it's um. Those two
Speaker 1: revenue streams are very very strong. Now we do have
Speaker 1: a byzantine property tax assessment system, which has apartments being
Speaker 1: taxed a certain level, co ops being attached a certain
Speaker 1: certain level, and that it's it's another very complicated thing.
Speaker 1: What it it is. It's kind of like one of
Speaker 1: these things, you know, camel is a horse designed by committee.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like over the course of time,
Speaker 1: different constituencies have put their finger on the scale and
Speaker 1: now created this weird system. So you're born in Brooklyn, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you went to Plattsburgh way up there in the boondocks.
Speaker 1: It's a province of Canada. Virtually, it is I need
Speaker 1: to be close enough that a thirty minute car ride
Speaker 1: can get me six and a half percent alcohol bre
Speaker 1: That was basically the criteria when my dad and I
Speaker 1: were talking, like where do you want to go to school? Son?
Speaker 1: It's you know, he's like, will he do. He's just
Speaker 1: a neighborhood lawyer guy. And my mom was a school teacher.
Speaker 1: But you know, like I basically said I was not
Speaker 1: good a student. They say, you can go anywhere you want.
Speaker 1: It's a sunny state over Seniork or a Cunee school,
Speaker 1: anyway you want. So I just I kind of look,
Speaker 1: what's the furthest one away that I can go play
Speaker 1: hockey every day? And who was the tougher one? Your
Speaker 1: mother or your father? Who are you? Like, I'm probably
Speaker 1: more like my dad and that I'm sucked up in
Speaker 1: the same way he is. But you know it's uh,
Speaker 1: probably my dad had the greatest kind of influence on
Speaker 1: the path I took in life, for good reasons and
Speaker 1: bad reasons. That you know, he was the he inspired
Speaker 1: you to go into politics, and not in that way, no,
Speaker 1: but he would be the one like arguing all the
Speaker 1: time and like, hey, you to defend your positions and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But you know, it's funny you
Speaker 1: actually had you you were there a little bit at
Speaker 1: the birth of my career. In a strange one, Let's
Speaker 1: see if you can figure it out. Has to do
Speaker 1: with Chuck No Glen Gary, Glenn Ross. You guys, you
Speaker 1: guys were filming while I was running for city council
Speaker 1: for the first time. You guys were filming. It's externals,
Speaker 1: I know what you guys call them by the Sheepshead
Speaker 1: based subway stop and I don't know, I think the
Speaker 1: outsides of the thing. And so crowd would form, like
Speaker 1: people in line. I'm like, what's going on? And she
Speaker 1: say bad? Like where not? You say, get some signs,
Speaker 1: get some signs. Totally, I'm like working the lines and
Speaker 1: I'm like a Jewish version out of that guy who's
Speaker 1: in this movie. I'm a Jewish version. I'm the Jewish Alpacino. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, when you're running for city counts, like
Speaker 1: a gathering of like twenty people is wow, I hit
Speaker 1: the jackpotty. And then I'm thinking, I, well, I should
Speaker 1: probably make an issue of all this double parking. These
Speaker 1: guys are doing, these Hollywood guys. But but yeah, that
Speaker 1: was it. Uh, that was like politics, don't you you did? No, No,
Speaker 1: I totally do. I totally do a movie. And we're
Speaker 1: gonna get to the movie. In the movie, you're waving
Speaker 1: that band or your and you look like a kid
Speaker 1: you're so happy. Yeah, and these people are all jumping
Speaker 1: up and down and they part of you loved retail politics, No,
Speaker 1: I love I love that stuff. I don't know who
Speaker 1: you were talking to, Um, maybe it's only been Jerry Seinfeld. Way,
Speaker 1: it's like all that. I just love power. It's clearly
Speaker 1: deals a power. People don't understand that, you know, to
Speaker 1: go into polo, going to any profession and to really
Speaker 1: enjoy to love it. And like a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of times you're doing you're enjoying the the constituent
Speaker 1: parts of a job, like being in Washington and sitting
Speaker 1: there and being committee hearings and passing laws that gratifies it.
Speaker 1: That obviously scratches an itch. You want to make the
Speaker 1: world better, But there's an element of that that is
Speaker 1: really not completely on the level because you're not really
Speaker 1: passing laws all that often. You're usually having hearings of
Speaker 1: things that you've heard before, etcetera. But when you're at
Speaker 1: home and you're you know, solving the problem from someone
Speaker 1: because they came in and they can't figure out you know,
Speaker 1: my my my husband has actually happened. My husband dropped
Speaker 1: his dentures down the sewo we don't know who to
Speaker 1: call it. They get the back and you're like trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, well, if it got washed out, I
Speaker 1: gotta call this guy. You want what switched to your
Speaker 1: throat so this guy's dns don't get washed away. Whatever
Speaker 1: it is, you've got to kind of like you are.
Speaker 1: You're either good at that or you're not, like unpacking
Speaker 1: how to do it, and you have to like it.
Speaker 1: Like I have run against in my day, people who,
Speaker 1: no doubt would be excellent presentatives in the classic sense,
Speaker 1: going there and casting the right vote and probably giving
Speaker 1: a good speech or writing a good book. But they
Speaker 1: clearly didn't like the other stuff. And the other stuff
Speaker 1: is not inconsequential. And I don't you know anyone who
Speaker 1: makes it, say, to congress or to be a mayor
Speaker 1: of a city, they've got to like that. You cannot
Speaker 1: fake that stuff. And I legitimately that's the only part
Speaker 1: of the job I really miss, is that is that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. You were in Congress? How long were
Speaker 1: you in the countress? I was in I was in
Speaker 1: a city council for seven years. I was in Congress,
Speaker 1: I guess thirteen years. In Congress for thirteen years. What
Speaker 1: was the shortest thing you did the city council. Now
Speaker 1: that you know, seven years, I mean like basically that
Speaker 1: the TikTok for me is I mean I never had
Speaker 1: you know, I have no marketable skills because I never
Speaker 1: had a real job out of college. I up at Plattsburgh.
Speaker 1: I wrote my congressman, who I had a look up
Speaker 1: in one of these guide books in the library. Who
Speaker 1: my congressman was, sent Ruck Schumer A letter spelled his
Speaker 1: name wrong. Can I come in violence and I basically
Speaker 1: do an internship there. They're like, you're there for six
Speaker 1: or seven years? Well what happened was I was an
Speaker 1: intern's finished six seven years. But I basically you know,
Speaker 1: liked and quill I failed upwards, you know, like for
Speaker 1: a while. Yeah, you're pretty good up in to mail
Speaker 1: was about six years. Just about everything that I mean,
Speaker 1: he if you can only have one political kind of
Speaker 1: mentor kind of guy you know so much exactly Eskimo,
Speaker 1: someone who you know, when I started working for Chuck,
Speaker 1: I was six three, had blonde here in a little nose.
Speaker 1: I kind of morphed into this semitic collectible version of myself.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, like because he did the inside
Speaker 1: game and the outside game about as skillfully as anyone does.
Speaker 1: Um So, then I just kind of like I did
Speaker 1: a few years in Washington in the eighties, and then
Speaker 1: when I decided I wanted to try it myself, I
Speaker 1: had this brilliant idea. I was going to move to Florida,
Speaker 1: where they're just there were like adding districts left and right,
Speaker 1: just so much population was being and I figured, a
Speaker 1: Jewish guy from Brooklyn, I'll fit and find down there,
Speaker 1: and Chuck I would have been I would have named
Speaker 1: I would have fit in great. You know, it would
Speaker 1: obviously you would have to lose the anthony somehow, but
Speaker 1: um and Chuck said, no, you should come back and
Speaker 1: work in my district. David okay, David Winer, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean totally the library. Yeah yeah, vote even though even
Speaker 1: though votes for a Winer, it just worked so perfectly, Dad, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, thanks that that might have been the problem.
Speaker 1: That was probably it. I wish I was spoken to thank.
Speaker 1: Uh So. Yeah. So I basically came back round for
Speaker 1: the city council, won a six way raised by a
Speaker 1: couple hundred votes, and it was like your years in
Speaker 1: the city council. Um it was great. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I was electors at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, now I think people have gotten life was
Speaker 1: like twenty seven got elected and um had apprentice for
Speaker 1: the job, you know, ran against all the county organizations
Speaker 1: and county machines and everything else and still one. And
Speaker 1: so when I got in, I didn't really owe anyone
Speaker 1: all that much, so I can kind of do really
Speaker 1: what I wanted. And what was something you did that
Speaker 1: was memorable to you? Like, what, what's something that defines
Speaker 1: your period? Well, the thing I mean, I had a
Speaker 1: signature issue that kind of was visited on me. That
Speaker 1: so since I wasn't kind of an insider guy, I
Speaker 1: didn't have great committee picks, And so I was interested
Speaker 1: in the idea that people in public housing part of
Speaker 1: the reason they have such crummy lot in life is
Speaker 1: that their representation is never very good because who the heck,
Speaker 1: you know, they're not a lot of they're not heavily voting,
Speaker 1: they're overly poor, a lot of headaches. So I asked
Speaker 1: them to create for me a subcommittee on public housing,
Speaker 1: and by as fortune or misfortune would have it, in
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, there started to be this circumstance where
Speaker 1: there were these terrible fires in the hallways of the
Speaker 1: public housing developments, and no one knew what was going on.
Speaker 1: And I had a mole in the fire department who
Speaker 1: kept sending me documents that showed that a buddy of
Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani had started a paint company because he can
Speaker 1: make money selling it to the Giuliani administration, and the
Speaker 1: paint was horrible and flammable, and that people would be
Speaker 1: in the hallways and smoke in the in the lobbies
Speaker 1: in the hallways, and it was creating these terrible fires
Speaker 1: and people were dying. And because I was getting all
Speaker 1: of these in these documents, I knew what was going
Speaker 1: on and was able to stop it, but not not
Speaker 1: until I basically had this head on war with the
Speaker 1: Giuliani administration. Um what was eventually done about though we
Speaker 1: basically eventually the Julian administration fesst up and they but
Speaker 1: the guy had a business and they repainted everything like that,
Speaker 1: which was my original thing is you got to repaint
Speaker 1: all this stuff, like it's not enough just to like
Speaker 1: do asst housing city public housing, you know, and um,
Speaker 1: it's like a cousin of Giuliani or something like that.
Speaker 1: How did Giuliani react? Not very well? A funny story.
Speaker 1: So finally the New York Times does a story about
Speaker 1: it because another one of these stare hole fires, and
Speaker 1: I get another document, and the fire commissioner and now
Speaker 1: the mayor himself both say they have no way of
Speaker 1: knowing this was a problem. And I had a document
Speaker 1: that was directed to the fire commissioners to stamp received
Speaker 1: by his office. So I hold a press conferensations around
Speaker 1: the time of Christmas cold Day. I'm at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the steps of City Hall, which is where city
Speaker 1: councilmen do their press conferences, and I'm releasing this document.
Speaker 1: I'm standing in front of the cameras and I'm like,
Speaker 1: and I'm here to deliver this, this document to the mayor,
Speaker 1: who says that they had no idea of knowing, showing
Speaker 1: that they indeed did, and a cameraman and remember my
Speaker 1: back is to city Hall. My camera says we should
Speaker 1: give it directly to Mary. So that's why I'm here.
Speaker 1: Says no, directly to him. He's right there. So the
Speaker 1: mayor had walked up the steps with his son Andrew
Speaker 1: by the hand. It was right before Christmas. It was
Speaker 1: a cold day, It's like a Sunday or something like that,
Speaker 1: And the New York Times captured this picture of me
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the stairs and him at the top,
Speaker 1: me holding this letter and him like Zeus at the
Speaker 1: top of the stairs, like glaring at me down. The
Speaker 1: footnote of that story is he became convinced that someone
Speaker 1: in his office had given me his schedule to know
Speaker 1: exactly when he was going to be walking up with
Speaker 1: his son, and that one I had violated the whatever
Speaker 1: code I don't known't involved the families, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: it is. And he began an inquisition within his shop.
Speaker 1: How did we get in my stay when it's just
Speaker 1: weird fluke of scheduling that I happened to be standing
Speaker 1: there on a Sunday because I had this this semeon.
Speaker 1: It was one of the I mean that that was
Speaker 1: the van going tension with him after that. Oh well,
Speaker 1: I had been on. Giuliani famously kept a list, you know,
Speaker 1: one of these Nicksonian kind of ship lists, and I
Speaker 1: had been on that early on, and and it would
Speaker 1: probably just made it worse. But yeah, he sends someone
Speaker 1: out to say that, uh, the mayor wants see you,
Speaker 1: which was then still a big deal. I mean, let
Speaker 1: me go. I'm as this a councilman. I mean I
Speaker 1: would run into the mayor, but to be quality, and
Speaker 1: I'm what's gonna happen? I mean, did you want to
Speaker 1: apologize that you want to take this letter, did you
Speaker 1: want to say here's what we're doing about it? Or
Speaker 1: did he just want to yell at me? Whatever it was?
Speaker 1: And so I'm waiting outside, uh for him to summon
Speaker 1: me in about thirty minutes good bye, and the same guy,
Speaker 1: the same staffer that had said, wait, the mayor wants
Speaker 1: to see you, came out city changed. He doesn't want
Speaker 1: to see you. You can go, And apparently he was
Speaker 1: the game he was playing. I don't think it was that.
Speaker 1: I think that he was so livid at this that
Speaker 1: just wanted to tear my head off, and someone talked
Speaker 1: about and someone basically said yeah, and he changed his
Speaker 1: focus on instead. I want to find out how the
Speaker 1: hell he knew my schedule. But that's all. That's all
Speaker 1: secondary that that what it Well, it was the first
Speaker 1: time I kind of had a real issue in the city,
Speaker 1: how really doing good things. It was not kind of
Speaker 1: like this weird fabricated thing because it really was a
Speaker 1: dangerous situation. Um. And then the following year, I think
Speaker 1: I Chuck announces he's running for Senate against the motto.
Speaker 1: So then I announced that I'm gonna run, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have much of a chance of winning. It was
Speaker 1: like three men versus one woman, three guys from Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: one woment from Queen's and again just by you know,
Speaker 1: didn't have kind of really just a good strategy, just
Speaker 1: running and had knocked in a lot a lot of doors,
Speaker 1: won by a couple hunch of votes. Now you go
Speaker 1: to Washington and you're there for six terms, and again,
Speaker 1: what's what's a highlight? Aments It's tough to distill it
Speaker 1: down twelve years into you know, we give us one
Speaker 1: or two highlights of what the kind of work you
Speaker 1: were doing. Well, I mean, you've got us ever you
Speaker 1: were representing, Chuck was serving the Chuck's district. So I'm
Speaker 1: representing democratic district in New York City, but not as
Speaker 1: liberal as you might have met. For example, Obama in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight only got in my district. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it was as a matter of fact, when
Speaker 1: I had my scandal, and I left the Republican took
Speaker 1: it for for a brief cup of coffee, and then
Speaker 1: they redrew it again. So it's a pretty conservative district,
Speaker 1: and I kind of developed a rhythm after a while
Speaker 1: of prosecuting it by kind of like the old adage,
Speaker 1: there's nothing in the middle of the road but dead
Speaker 1: possums and yellow yellow lines, like, I'm going to really
Speaker 1: kind of lean into being being who I am and
Speaker 1: kind of being progressive on some stuff, being hawkish, and
Speaker 1: you're kind of being true to who I was, and
Speaker 1: rather than trying to shoot this middle line kind of
Speaker 1: leaning into stuff. But the real difference in Washington was
Speaker 1: when you were in the majority, you're getting stuff done,
Speaker 1: and when you're in the minority, warrant it's the bottom line.
Speaker 1: And I was in the minority most of the time.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks, while you're yelling at the top
Speaker 1: of your lungs of that podium on YouTube, I'm not dude,
Speaker 1: I wasn't. I yelled once, and even in the midst
Speaker 1: of my most ferocious yelling, I observed regular order. I
Speaker 1: called him a gentleman. I'm aout criticizing, No, I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that there's a little bit of yelling.
Speaker 1: You you were very wound up. There was one time
Speaker 1: I was yelling and the other time it's just being
Speaker 1: a New Yorker. Brother. That's the way the way we're all.
Speaker 1: You brought the New York to But so I I
Speaker 1: mean it is I mean what happened in Washington since
Speaker 1: the time I was there in the eighties as a
Speaker 1: stafford to when I got elected, there used to be
Speaker 1: a core of let's say, a quarter of the place
Speaker 1: that you do you would like to hang out with,
Speaker 1: like you would like to have arguments with Democrat and
Speaker 1: Republican like that took the time to learn stuff, had
Speaker 1: a philosophical view on it, kind of wanted outcomes, like
Speaker 1: they wanted to do stuff like if you sat across
Speaker 1: the tables, is what do you want? What? What do
Speaker 1: you want? And you can kind of then it becomes
Speaker 1: a little where then it's a problem solving thing that
Speaker 1: actually is not. It's kind of interesting now and that
Speaker 1: has given way, and maybe I contributed to it has
Speaker 1: given way to a different type, which is you guys
Speaker 1: that are basically like this ain't gonna happen. It's not
Speaker 1: on the level. We basically are just going to fight
Speaker 1: about this, So let to be really skillful at the
Speaker 1: Christians and Lions element of the show of like where
Speaker 1: we go out and we fight over stuff, and those
Speaker 1: types of people are now the center of gravity in Washington.
Speaker 1: And so notwithstanding of the fact that you might be
Speaker 1: one of those people and you're good at it, it
Speaker 1: kind of is a shitty way to kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, go through like what you can sit in
Speaker 1: the Judiciary Committee and you can see an issue of
Speaker 1: gun control or of of abortion rights or something like that,
Speaker 1: and you're basically pressing play. You know, you might be
Speaker 1: good at it, but you're just pressing play on your
Speaker 1: speech that you gave and you you understand how to triangulate,
Speaker 1: You understand what the other guy is gonna say. So
Speaker 1: the part of it that's frustrating is that you're not
Speaker 1: passing laws, So like, now why are you there. You're
Speaker 1: there to do this show and that's okay for thirty
Speaker 1: minutes a week maybe, but it's not there to be
Speaker 1: there all week doing it. And then my other problem
Speaker 1: was I was in a weird space in that I
Speaker 1: was kind of young, like you there, it's still an
Speaker 1: older place and you know, you know, going out, you know,
Speaker 1: having a bunch of drinks and just hanging out with
Speaker 1: fat cigar like they didn't do anything for me. And
Speaker 1: and I don't think the people are venal and I
Speaker 1: don't think that they're not decent people. And you don't
Speaker 1: get Washington unless you're being elected by people and you've
Speaker 1: got something on the ball. It wasn't the kind of
Speaker 1: crowd that you wanted to spend days and days and
Speaker 1: days on end with. And that's really all you're doing
Speaker 1: now is sitting around stewing in your juices and you know,
Speaker 1: waiting for the next you know, vote MP, vote to impeach,
Speaker 1: your vote to overturn some law that you care so
Speaker 1: in a career in which someone's got to leave a
Speaker 1: position for that position to become opened up, and meant
Speaker 1: you it gets to be two thousand eleven and you
Speaker 1: decide is mayor something you thought about before? But five
Speaker 1: I ran and I had an amazing experience. You know,
Speaker 1: I had zero expectations of me, nothing, you know, of
Speaker 1: the polls. I didn't have to get my seat to run.
Speaker 1: I ran because it's the job, that's the job, that's
Speaker 1: the job. I was you know, that's the job iways
Speaker 1: meant to do. Like I like problem solving. I like
Speaker 1: being the kind of the spokesman of a thing. I
Speaker 1: like the city, like I just it's like, I love it.
Speaker 1: I love the city. I love I love the neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: I love the idea. I I'm something of a student
Speaker 1: of it, and like I admire mayors and I liked
Speaker 1: what they do. And I also um realized that I
Speaker 1: didn't have a legislative temperament sit there and do three
Speaker 1: yards in a cloud of dust for five years to
Speaker 1: work on an immigration bill someday that's sort of study
Speaker 1: copyright law and like be the expert on that. I
Speaker 1: just didn't have that temperament. I just want to get
Speaker 1: ship done, and I wanted to do it quickly. I
Speaker 1: wanted to do stuff. And when you're the mayor of
Speaker 1: the City of the York, the stuff you can do
Speaker 1: with a phone call is a lot. You can solve
Speaker 1: a lot of people's problems that way. So in two
Speaker 1: thousand five, I ran as a I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know how it's put. It is about as long as
Speaker 1: shot as you can get. We're running against Bloomberg was
Speaker 1: on the Republican side, and I had a borough president
Speaker 1: Manhattan Borough President of the Bronx who had run before
Speaker 1: city council speaker and then me. Um. But it was
Speaker 1: a great experience. I I made run off, surged at
Speaker 1: the end, did it just right, was relaxed the whole time,
Speaker 1: doing my thing of doing issues every single day. No
Speaker 1: one cared, no one was showing up, but I liked
Speaker 1: doing it, and I just put myself in a position
Speaker 1: to take advantage when the other guys either made mistakes
Speaker 1: or took me too lightly. Um. Two thou We're gonna
Speaker 1: run again two thousand nine was my moment boarded that
Speaker 1: when the extended the term limits right, that was the
Speaker 1: tough I've never been so outraged. That was so jarring
Speaker 1: to me because it was really even for someone who's
Speaker 1: a politician for a long time in New York City,
Speaker 1: you understands how things goes, the sheer goal of it.
Speaker 1: A rich guy buying buying it for the third time,
Speaker 1: actually spent a hundred million or more nineties something million
Speaker 1: on the previous TIF. You add it all together, it's
Speaker 1: a quarter of a billion dollars we know of. And
Speaker 1: then it's all the walking around money there, but that
Speaker 1: part having a free spending guy, it's one thing, but
Speaker 1: he basically bought the newspapers to do this, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't get away how would you get away with
Speaker 1: over just for your listeners who are in steep to
Speaker 1: New York. The voters of the City of New York
Speaker 1: put term limits in. I donmight have a big, big
Speaker 1: fan of terments, never have been. The voters then again
Speaker 1: were asked to consider it. A few years later, they
Speaker 1: again reaffirmed it says we still want to do it.
Speaker 1: How was the city council empowered to set it aside?
Speaker 1: Well that the way the low was written, No, it's
Speaker 1: you can Well it's a good question, I believe, and
Speaker 1: it was challenged in court, and I believe you can
Speaker 1: make a pretty good argument that there should be a
Speaker 1: hierarchy of things. And when the voters vote on something,
Speaker 1: the only way to undo it is when you do it.
Speaker 1: We don't do a lot of referendums in our city.
Speaker 1: We just don't do it. And so this California, right,
Speaker 1: it's very unusual. And so this was an unusual constructor.
Speaker 1: This was one of those rare cases that the City
Speaker 1: of New York had done something by voter referendum. So
Speaker 1: the city council said, it's a law like any other.
Speaker 1: We make laws and pass laws all the time. We
Speaker 1: can get out from under it. I think the courts
Speaker 1: made a mistake in a collegeing, but the courts generally speaking,
Speaker 1: really do let legislatures do their thing unless they think
Speaker 1: there's a real important reason to step in. And at
Speaker 1: any rate, the city council and the mayor who had
Speaker 1: repeatedly said he would never support changing tournaments, and the
Speaker 1: city council repeatedly said they would never change it, so
Speaker 1: they ran. They both campaigned saying they would ever do
Speaker 1: any such thing. It was so feign and you can't
Speaker 1: imagine it was such an unpopular thing. I was about
Speaker 1: s the New Yorkers wanted it to stay. It is
Speaker 1: so voted to put them in the first place, and
Speaker 1: that kind of an undoing of the public will, notwithstanding
Speaker 1: the substance when I can, I don't care about terminists.
Speaker 1: I mean this case, it impacted me on the poster child.
Speaker 1: Who would impact it because I was going to run,
Speaker 1: but it was so offensive to me. I really could
Speaker 1: not imagine it would ever happened. Like the very scaffolding
Speaker 1: of our relation of citizens relationship to their government was
Speaker 1: now being undone right because it's it's one thing to
Speaker 1: change the law that happens, and even a popular law
Speaker 1: that happens. When you start saying we're gonna put something
Speaker 1: out to vote for you, the people, and we're going
Speaker 1: to kind of discard it for our own self interest,
Speaker 1: the psychic over there's also there's been on a republic
Speaker 1: sense to it as well. I mean, and this is
Speaker 1: New York City, this is not like some sleepy town.
Speaker 1: So my position was, if you want to do this
Speaker 1: and you believe it's the right thing to do, let
Speaker 1: people voteing in. And I said I will join you
Speaker 1: and putting that on the ballot. If that's what people say,
Speaker 1: then so be it. But um, I had seen what
Speaker 1: it was like to run against a billionaire and I
Speaker 1: had to decide whether I wanted to do it again.
Speaker 1: Remember something else that and actually really complicated the decision
Speaker 1: for me. Barack Obama just been elected. There was this
Speaker 1: notion that finally we in Congress, like all these things
Speaker 1: I wanted to do that I was telling you earlier,
Speaker 1: you really don't do you just sit around and do
Speaker 1: nothing or you're in the opposition party, you could do
Speaker 1: like you know, healthcare for him, holy cow, you know,
Speaker 1: the stimulus, like these things that we were on the
Speaker 1: verge of doing. Um so like when I I think
Speaker 1: I wrote it up in from New York Times, like
Speaker 1: explaining why I made the decision I did. It's not
Speaker 1: often you get a chance to kind of like a
Speaker 1: lot of people say, well, I want to spend more
Speaker 1: time with my family. That's why I'm gonna do, Like,
Speaker 1: I really do want to go back to Washington he
Speaker 1: gets some stuff done. I was, no, it was no longer.
Speaker 1: Like I didn't have a sense that it was now
Speaker 1: or never. I was now, like leading in all the polls.
Speaker 1: I thought, I could, you know, maybe wait for for
Speaker 1: for some more time. But it was a very painful
Speaker 1: because I had that I thought I I was was
Speaker 1: my moment and it uh, it didn't work at But
Speaker 1: I think it's a scar on Bloomberg's legacy that really
Speaker 1: can't be removed. After the break. Anthony Weener on the
Speaker 1: difference between politicians and movie stars when it comes to
Speaker 1: surviving scandals. Explore the Here's the Thing archives where Ed Rowlins,
Speaker 1: Republican campaign advisor talks about the Jimmy Carter presidency. You know,
Speaker 1: he was a micromanager. He was an engineer, and he
Speaker 1: wanted he wanted to manage everything. And the reality of
Speaker 1: the president isn't a management job. The president is an
Speaker 1: inspirational job, and he sets a direction. He has four
Speaker 1: or five big decisions to make every day. If you
Speaker 1: have an inability to make decisions, then they basically stack
Speaker 1: up on you. Take a listen that. Here's the thing. Org.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the thing.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Anthony Weiner. Wiener is a former
Speaker 1: congressman and has run for New York City mayor twice.
Speaker 1: He's also the veteran of two major scandals that brought
Speaker 1: unwanted fame to him and his wife, Huma Abaden, a
Speaker 1: longtime aid and current vice chair of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
Speaker 1: Wiener says the unrelenting media coverage and painful public interactions
Speaker 1: led to some very dark days, and somehow he managed
Speaker 1: to pick himself up again. The reason I had the
Speaker 1: problems that I did was the reason that I was
Speaker 1: able to survive it, and that some wiring, some emotional
Speaker 1: wiring that wasn't attached just right made it possible for
Speaker 1: me to do dumb things and kind of reach out
Speaker 1: and be connected to strangers and things like that and
Speaker 1: have conversations over this whatever it did, not never meet
Speaker 1: them and be fine with that. It might be the
Speaker 1: same kind of emotional miss wiring that made it possible
Speaker 1: for me to be in this storm and not let
Speaker 1: it completely debilitate me. Your compartmentalize. I don't even know
Speaker 1: if it's that formal a thing that happens. I just
Speaker 1: don't think that. It's kind of like, to some degree,
Speaker 1: the emotional input is not getting in, like it's not firing,
Speaker 1: you know, not firing correctly, and so you don't kind
Speaker 1: of feel it as much. But all that being said,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie to you that I was not
Speaker 1: reading my clips during this stuff. I was not watching
Speaker 1: John Stewart scure me. I was not, and so it
Speaker 1: might have been harder for many people who were around me,
Speaker 1: Like I remember my friend Harry calling me up while
Speaker 1: as everything's going on, and there's twenty TV stations outside
Speaker 1: my house, and this is when the scandal first broke, saying, ye,
Speaker 1: you want me to come over and bring you some
Speaker 1: food or something like that, whatever it is in it,
Speaker 1: It dawned on me pretty you wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: I was gonna do something nuts to myself and commit
Speaker 1: suicide or something like that. It was harder actually for
Speaker 1: people watching it happen. But he represented one of the
Speaker 1: fifty different views of my scandal, like everyone looked at
Speaker 1: as a Roy Sach test for their own experience. You know.
Speaker 1: So some people as many people come up to me
Speaker 1: in the streets now and say, my god, you were
Speaker 1: treated terribly to come up to me and said, boy,
Speaker 1: what an idiot you are? Has come up to me
Speaker 1: and say, you know, why are you out on the street,
Speaker 1: why aren't you home? You know, with with with your
Speaker 1: with the bill of your Mets hat pulled down over
Speaker 1: your eyes. Everyone views the thing and sometimes and I
Speaker 1: would get calls from people who I hadn't spoken to
Speaker 1: in a while being the most generous friend. And it
Speaker 1: occurred to me after a while, as grateful as I
Speaker 1: was for that gesture, that is probably because something happened
Speaker 1: in their lives that they're like before before, for the
Speaker 1: grace of God, they're you know, go I kind of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: so I don't really. I didn't like view the presses
Speaker 1: of God. This is like so outrageous what they're doing
Speaker 1: to me. I'm like, I know their role in my world.
Speaker 1: I always have The underlying challenge that I have is
Speaker 1: I'm a guy name winer with pictures out there that
Speaker 1: that ded of sending it is hard for people to understand, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and that, and that you can't plow through the tabloid
Speaker 1: and the talk shows and everything else. So there's just
Speaker 1: that you did. You're not left with enough oxygen, And
Speaker 1: how are skillful? You know? I have this conversation with people.
Speaker 1: I think if anybody could do what you could. I
Speaker 1: said to my priests once, I said, who passed away?
Speaker 1: I said to him, you'd say confession now face to face.
Speaker 1: They have what's called reconciliation no more in the booth
Speaker 1: with the screen. They come in and I said, what's
Speaker 1: that like for you? He says, Well, the women come
Speaker 1: in and say that they've met a guy at work
Speaker 1: and there in love and they have real feelings. And
Speaker 1: the guy comes in and says he's met a woman
Speaker 1: at work and he's just fooling around with her. It's
Speaker 1: just sex. And he goes, but I come from the
Speaker 1: Thomas Aquinas school, where the sins of the flesh or
Speaker 1: the least of our concerns. He said, I want someone
Speaker 1: to walk into this reconciliation says to me, bless me, father,
Speaker 1: for I have sinned. I have an abundance of pride
Speaker 1: when someone will say that to me, because now I
Speaker 1: know we're getting somewhere. Well. I can tell you that
Speaker 1: everyone you included apparently think they have the magic words
Speaker 1: to say. But what complicates all of this is is
Speaker 1: that I am limited by the idea that I know
Speaker 1: what I did is is serious and a very narrow
Speaker 1: sense of the impact that I had on my wife
Speaker 1: and my family and everything else. And so all that
Speaker 1: being said, I don't have a lot part of you know,
Speaker 1: you asked the question how do I do it with
Speaker 1: the press today. I don't believe in letting the cultural
Speaker 1: shame keep me in a place. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: saying that that they may be right, they may be right,
Speaker 1: I might be an asshole, and and I definitely it
Speaker 1: sound like I don't feel great deal of regret. And
Speaker 1: then I don't every once in a while to say
Speaker 1: say fun, you know that was close I could have
Speaker 1: really had this dream thing that I wanted. But now
Speaker 1: standing here, it's a fairly binary choice I have. I
Speaker 1: either go and be there's the best I can me
Speaker 1: and do the best I can, or I throw in
Speaker 1: the towel and be and And it wasn't in the
Speaker 1: in the internet culture that we have the number of
Speaker 1: people who are so fired up at the idea that
Speaker 1: I have the audacity to still live my life. And
Speaker 1: this is why I kind of why I ran in
Speaker 1: two thousand and thirteen again after this. If you're an actor,
Speaker 1: if you're you know, Tom Cruise, and you have some
Speaker 1: crazy scientology thing, or you're you have a messy divorce
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, you go, do you know, uh,
Speaker 1: Mission impossible five and it's done. You Basically you're out
Speaker 1: on your press store. People are asking you about how
Speaker 1: you did that stunt, people paying, they go see the movie.
Speaker 1: If you're Alex Rodriguez, you go play baseball, get a
Speaker 1: couple of home runs one after another, you win a pennant.
Speaker 1: You're thing he's done. In politics, you don't just say
Speaker 1: I'll be okay, I'll be the Secretary of Defense for
Speaker 1: a while. Like you don't do that because the path
Speaker 1: to get there is really difficult. And so this notion
Speaker 1: of like getting back on the train. Everyone not everyone,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people have the same thing. Well,
Speaker 1: you should go back and run for something again. You know,
Speaker 1: I had a nice run. I mean I had a
Speaker 1: you know, I served in the city council. As you
Speaker 1: said in Congress, I did it for a while. It's
Speaker 1: not and but it's not easy just to kind of say,
Speaker 1: all right, let's put it behind you by running for
Speaker 1: something again. I think I would like to do it.
Speaker 1: I am sensitive to the idea that the nature of
Speaker 1: my scandal might jam people up if they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's out, he's in the room with you know, teaching
Speaker 1: you know, you know, teaching college students or something like that.
Speaker 1: So I've kind of not put people in the position
Speaker 1: of asking them to do that kind of the film
Speaker 1: you talk about you went to therapy, What did that
Speaker 1: do for you? A lot of it is about getting
Speaker 1: in touch with this idea about what what motivates you
Speaker 1: would animate you. And there's no doubt about a couple
Speaker 1: of things about me that that we just kind of
Speaker 1: touched on it became obvious, is that I'm very into
Speaker 1: the action, And I don't spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: thinking about what's animating the action because and and political
Speaker 1: and that exactly. Politics is the great job for that.
Speaker 1: You've got a problem to fix, Just go fix the thing.
Speaker 1: You know, You're not spending a lot of time navel
Speaker 1: gazing about it. You just go fix the thing. But
Speaker 1: in emotional life and in a healthy person, you're thinking
Speaker 1: for a moment, you're taking deep breaths, you're understanding what's
Speaker 1: motivating you to do something. Like people would say after
Speaker 1: my scandal, it so what else did you do that?
Speaker 1: I mean, that was weird, like you're having communications with
Speaker 1: people you haven't met and whatever it is. And I
Speaker 1: would have to say, you all, honestly, I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like I was like thinking it through and like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be. It was me acting obviously in
Speaker 1: something in a kind of impulsive way that was that
Speaker 1: was wrong. So there was a little bit of that
Speaker 1: and also a little bit of like figuring out like
Speaker 1: what went wrong early on in my life that led
Speaker 1: me not to have that kind of wiring. All that
Speaker 1: well done, But none of it turns back the clock,
Speaker 1: and none of it really changes all that much about
Speaker 1: it just kind of makes you more aware of help
Speaker 1: you stuff. I think it did only in as much
Speaker 1: and maybe I understand a little bit about why I
Speaker 1: was doing stuff and make me a little bit understand
Speaker 1: what was animating me about stuff. But you know, Congress
Speaker 1: made me crazy too. I mean not to not that obviously,
Speaker 1: I don't blame the job, but I was saying the
Speaker 1: idea that of a place that you're getting rewarded for
Speaker 1: being glib and good at arguing and and clever on
Speaker 1: format and performing and clever on your feet and like
Speaker 1: being the guy who can summarize the Obamacare exactly. I'm
Speaker 1: like that, like and so that kind of stuff. And
Speaker 1: also the weird kind of feedback loop you get in
Speaker 1: Congress in the Internet age is you can find thirty
Speaker 1: thou people who think that Michelle Bachman is a smart person.
Speaker 1: Like you can find stuff, so you get reinforced even
Speaker 1: when it should be moments where you're like, that was
Speaker 1: not a good day. I should not have said that
Speaker 1: to that guy. I shouldn't have shut down Megan Kelly
Speaker 1: that way. I should have thought I had been more
Speaker 1: thoughtful and more whatever it is. And then you you
Speaker 1: know in the internet world, it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you're like, I love it when you go on Fox
Speaker 1: because you kicked their ship out of them and everything else.
Speaker 1: That's so great. When maybe the things that animated me
Speaker 1: to go into politics and to be good at it,
Speaker 1: meaning wanting to win fights for people that were the
Speaker 1: underkind of the underdogs, like being in there, like not
Speaker 1: backing down, not liking bullies. Not that what made me
Speaker 1: a democrat. It made me someone who is progressive, made
Speaker 1: me someone who liked arguing with people who I thought
Speaker 1: were wrong and who were in plicit of power when
Speaker 1: other people were. Probably that type of kind of feistiness
Speaker 1: and battling. I think it's probably the same wiring that
Speaker 1: doesn't leave you enough space to kind of think, all right,
Speaker 1: maybe everything is in a fight, maybe everything isn't a conflict.
Speaker 1: Maybe you should kind of get in touch with like
Speaker 1: some other emotion or some other feeling. Um. But it
Speaker 1: does like a warrior, like you like it when people say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we like that you're fighting and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And but then it became more and more of well
Speaker 1: I need more people to like that I'm fighting, or like,
Speaker 1: what do you think about me? Fighting or this this
Speaker 1: type of stuff. I don't think it's particularly healthy, but
Speaker 1: it is. You know, it probably is the same things
Speaker 1: that drive me, that drove me to be good at
Speaker 1: some elements of my life, led me to be fucked
Speaker 1: up at other elements. What are you doing now? Not
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, you know, I've got a four
Speaker 1: and a half year old at home that I kind
Speaker 1: of like the stillness of being the guy who's taken
Speaker 1: care of him and like that. I mean, it's like,
Speaker 1: it's funny, it's funny. I was very self conscious about
Speaker 1: this idea of being a you know, stayed on dad
Speaker 1: is a little bit of exaggeration, but being a dad
Speaker 1: as a primary right, being a dad as kind of
Speaker 1: that's my job. What's my job is dad? And with
Speaker 1: whom it being on the road as much as she is,
Speaker 1: and my sense of obligation of like giving her some
Speaker 1: space to be able to do her things. Now that
Speaker 1: she sat, unfortunately and helped me to do my things,
Speaker 1: I want to let her do hers. And she's got
Speaker 1: the deal. She has stuff that they didn't resolve in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. You know, she came so close
Speaker 1: working on that campaign and wants to get this done
Speaker 1: and to give her the sense that you can do
Speaker 1: whatever she needed that Jordan was going to be okay.
Speaker 1: But there's another element to it. It's kind of like,
Speaker 1: why does my redemption as a politician, as a public
Speaker 1: figure have to be as a public person and a politician.
Speaker 1: Why can't it be just doing this other important element
Speaker 1: of my life? Really well, like no one may see
Speaker 1: me being a dad, and it might not be something
Speaker 1: you can measure, like I get this number of votes
Speaker 1: or this number of people that wrote me positive letters
Speaker 1: or this number of times I was on hardball or something,
Speaker 1: But I know I'm really good at it, and I'm
Speaker 1: doing it every day. And and like you seem to
Speaker 1: me like someone who was at a place, you're at
Speaker 1: a level, you're at a stage, and there are multiple stages,
Speaker 1: and I've been there, you're at there's multiple stages, and
Speaker 1: even though our circumstances are different, multiple stages of recovery
Speaker 1: from these dynamics. And let's say it's eight stages and
Speaker 1: you're at stage five, let me finish, and you've got
Speaker 1: a couple more stages to go. And when you get
Speaker 1: to that stage, there's something you're going to do that
Speaker 1: you have to do. Who gives a fuck about whether
Speaker 1: this college kids in the class you should be teaching
Speaker 1: the class. I don't know. You're right, people, that's a
Speaker 1: very good way to look at it, in that I'm
Speaker 1: still getting my footing. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: currents here right. One is the wife's got the big
Speaker 1: thing going. No no, no, one just some fine own
Speaker 1: personal thing. One is the world looking through my thing
Speaker 1: through their own lens and deciding this disqualifies me for
Speaker 1: some other thing. And besides politics, I don't know about hell.
Speaker 1: I don't want him to be on the board of
Speaker 1: Coca Cola less we want to Cocola associated with that guy.
Speaker 1: Or on the other hand, you know a radio station
Speaker 1: that wants me to be a shock shock jock on
Speaker 1: their station because as it's great, okay, weener like whatever
Speaker 1: it is. So I'm still filtering what other people think.
Speaker 1: And then totally I would I would. I would love it.
Speaker 1: I love a splitting headache every day. The other thing
Speaker 1: is that, um, it's a synops thing, right, Like my
Speaker 1: synops has fired in a certain way for so long.
Speaker 1: Like I know politics and I know governance, and I
Speaker 1: know the latter, and I know how to do this,
Speaker 1: and I know how to climb and whatever it is.
Speaker 1: I might not have been guaranteed success with without my scandal,
Speaker 1: but I know it really well. And now I've got
Speaker 1: to redirect somewhere else midlife. I'm fifty one years old,
Speaker 1: so I've got to like redirect to a different place,
Speaker 1: and that takes a little while to do. And then
Speaker 1: there's this third element of I'm so happy with Jordan's
Speaker 1: and kind of like being at this peaceful place where
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I've got to go on and
Speaker 1: be again measure my life by how many prests I'm
Speaker 1: doing that week, And it's figuring out. I think there's
Speaker 1: a happy medium, a quiet place where you go, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: you might not become the mayor of New York, but
Speaker 1: somebody who could become the mayor of could learn something
Speaker 1: from you that you passed. You could help make a
Speaker 1: mayor but firmly believe it. But how do you do yours?
Speaker 1: You can pay it forward, but how do you do
Speaker 1: your thing? So you like, you've got the stuff that
Speaker 1: you're known for and the TV stuff that is in
Speaker 1: the movies, which you're amazing. And and and then I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan. You've got this which scratches this it's that
Speaker 1: you're able to do, and then you have this, you
Speaker 1: have amazing family in this two tiered sense that you've
Speaker 1: got the little ones, you get the old ones, and
Speaker 1: everything else. That's the kind of thing I want to
Speaker 1: try to find. Like maybe I still do a little
Speaker 1: bit of teaching people about politics and talk about politics,
Speaker 1: but I gotta tall something. If tomorrow I can call
Speaker 1: it the new owner of the Islanders and like help
Speaker 1: run their team because they're not doing a great job,
Speaker 1: I would do it. I would totally do it, totally
Speaker 1: do it. And if I if you know, I live
Speaker 1: in fear of whom I saying I want to move
Speaker 1: back to Washington work for Hillary, Like I live in
Speaker 1: fear because I love New York City. If there's some
Speaker 1: way that I can contribute here somehow without actually being like,
Speaker 1: you know, like hood Hillary is gonna win? Is that
Speaker 1: what she wants to see She's going to do? I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, it's funny she is. Here's the
Speaker 1: straight strength of whom is that she's the vice chair
Speaker 1: of the campaign. She is constantly living in this planning
Speaker 1: mode that has to be by almost by definition seven
Speaker 1: eight days ahead, thinking about media buys, think about state
Speaker 1: by state primaries, and everything else in her own life,
Speaker 1: having a conversation with her of like what happens? What
Speaker 1: what if you win New York? And then like do
Speaker 1: we have time maybe to go to Disneyland with Jordan?
Speaker 1: And as I can't, I can't think of I can't think,
Speaker 1: I can't, So to have a conversation about January seventeen
Speaker 1: not even conceivable. Um So, all of that being said,
Speaker 1: I kind of like what you. I kind of see
Speaker 1: you as kind of that kind of rhythm I want
Speaker 1: to have, Like I I want to figure out the
Speaker 1: kind of things that I like doing. I do like
Speaker 1: kibbitt singer about politics, but I don't want to go
Speaker 1: do split screen arguing with people again. And and I
Speaker 1: I find much more pleasure and having people stop me
Speaker 1: on the street and I explained to them that what
Speaker 1: they just heard is bullshit and that it's that's not
Speaker 1: really And I am fascinated with this thing that everyone
Speaker 1: is trying to figure out, which is how younger people
Speaker 1: are consuming information about politics and governance and how to
Speaker 1: participate in that conversation in a way like find like
Speaker 1: they're talking and they're doing so you go to Reddit,
Speaker 1: for example, and like this notion of apathy or the
Speaker 1: notion that these young people don't care. We've left them
Speaker 1: to some degree in electro politics, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that there's not so some way to find them. And
Speaker 1: Bernie's tapping into maybe something or so I'm fascinated with
Speaker 1: that is kind of almost an academic level, like where
Speaker 1: is the new conversation about governance and politics going on?
Speaker 1: And how do you find it and how do you
Speaker 1: inform it a little bit um And I do think
Speaker 1: that we're kind of getting close to an almost existential
Speaker 1: crisis in our democracy that the founding fathers did not
Speaker 1: think through. They would thought through about something happening too fast,
Speaker 1: did not think through this scenario where a relatively small
Speaker 1: number of people can stop anything from happening at all.
Speaker 1: And how we kind of figure out a way to
Speaker 1: jerry rigged the system to fix that problem or to
Speaker 1: work around it. So these things interesting me, last, but
Speaker 1: not least, what do you want your son to know
Speaker 1: that you know? What do you want your son to
Speaker 1: learn that you've learned? Well? The I'm force fed a
Speaker 1: tougher version of that question of like, well, what do
Speaker 1: you want Jordan's to know about about Dad? Like what
Speaker 1: like I don't care about that? What would you like?
Speaker 1: What kind of man do you want Jordan to be?
Speaker 1: I guess I, you know, one of the things if
Speaker 1: there's been a salutary and there are several, But I
Speaker 1: look at the public maelstrom around people's foibles a lot
Speaker 1: differently than I did. You know, you you develop an
Speaker 1: appreciation for people who are chewed up and spit out
Speaker 1: in this build up, tear down kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: it's given me, you know what I want someone to have.
Speaker 1: I want someone like Jordan's to have this notion of perspective,
Speaker 1: like you know, there's bad stuff, there's not so bad stuff.
Speaker 1: They're complex people doing good and bad things and like
Speaker 1: and the well, we lose a little that nuance. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that in defense of me so much
Speaker 1: as I say that now I view the world a
Speaker 1: lot more that way. You know who you are, not
Speaker 1: who you are on your worst day. That's not who
Speaker 1: I am. Right, no one should be defined by the
Speaker 1: shittiest thing they've ever that they've ever done. Um, But
Speaker 1: I and I think that we're in a world that
Speaker 1: in a weird way, we have this this cacophony of
Speaker 1: information going on, but everyone is tugging to this absolute
Speaker 1: pure place, like we've lost this conversation. Nuance is lost,
Speaker 1: like it's almost it's almost considered contemptible in political life,
Speaker 1: like just have a nuanced, thoughtful position on something. And
Speaker 1: I guess I want him to be someone to to
Speaker 1: grow up being someone that sees that sees complexity, that
Speaker 1: sees that, you know, good stuff happens in badstone humanity
Speaker 1: and like see the and and see see that that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff and I and not be so sure
Speaker 1: that you've got it right. Um, And that's kind of
Speaker 1: like those are the conversations I most like having when
Speaker 1: people are sure they've got something right, and I see,
Speaker 1: you know what, that's not really right, so and answer
Speaker 1: your question kind of to see complexity, see new ones.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I love the city is that
Speaker 1: there's ways to do it, and hopefully I'll find some ways.
Speaker 1: I'm going to just finish with this one more time.
Speaker 1: I know you're going to ignore me because you're just
Speaker 1: a tough You're very thing. I'm ready. I wasn't aware
Speaker 1: that I that you had you had said something, I
Speaker 1: had to go ahead, and that's something on Did I
Speaker 1: leave some opening? No, No, you've been been very gracious.
Speaker 1: You have been very You've been very open. Get back
Speaker 1: on the ice. The metaphorical, I get back on the metaphor.
Speaker 1: I love your brother. But let me just it's not
Speaker 1: it's not like it's not like it's like, yeah, go
Speaker 1: ahad so go out for run for some by the way, something,
Speaker 1: Get back on, get back on the ice and public
Speaker 1: a lot. Am I doing here? Right? I think that
Speaker 1: I'm doing what you said. I mean I'm here. You know,
Speaker 1: when people ask me questions, I usually answer them right.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not. I'm not. What's done is done? Dude,
Speaker 1: MyD you Is there anything have I have? I said?
Speaker 1: I mean, you're doing this half of you know, boy,
Speaker 1: this is kind of tough and everything else, and half
Speaker 1: hold your head up. I mean, you too are giving
Speaker 1: me conflicting message. No, no, Michael, my message is not
Speaker 1: conflicting my message. I want you to get back out
Speaker 1: there and get into what you're also asking me to do,
Speaker 1: like reflection on a dark period of my life and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And you know, I think that
Speaker 1: that's only normal because what interested in advance of you
Speaker 1: doing the one. I'm curious what your thoughts are on
Speaker 1: the other. Like when I when I went through what
Speaker 1: I went through in my life. Oh, I did a
Speaker 1: lot of I was curled up in a fetal position
Speaker 1: for months doing a lot of thinking. And it does
Speaker 1: change you. Yeah. Well, that's the other thing that you
Speaker 1: realize pretty quickly when you've been through of these things
Speaker 1: and no one gives a shit right like you think
Speaker 1: when you're in the middle of it. Now, when it's
Speaker 1: you know, I mean all, with with all due difference,
Speaker 1: your ship was nothing. Come out of mind was like
Speaker 1: becoming like a ridiculous thing. Um, But it doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look I can't say stuff like other people
Speaker 1: could say, Like I can't say I didn't murder anyone,
Speaker 1: and I didn't go to jail. I didn't I frankly,
Speaker 1: I think I did my job pretty well even in
Speaker 1: the height of this thing and everything else, and that
Speaker 1: even when it's yourself. Well, but I just right, because
Speaker 1: it's it's I. I can't say those things. Other people
Speaker 1: have to judge those things. But all of that being said,
Speaker 1: it's true, I'm walking streets. I'm not. I don't you know,
Speaker 1: it's not I'm I'm okay and other people are not
Speaker 1: okay and I'm and I fully, I fully get that
Speaker 1: and I and I appreciate the opportunity to have have
Speaker 1: talks like this and I'm trying to be as transparent
Speaker 1: or like you can't run for mayor after having a
Speaker 1: scandal and then suddenly say, oh, I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: that anymore. It's like I'm a public person. It didn't
Speaker 1: work out, um, but I still get to be be
Speaker 1: it of you. By the Great Alec Bola. Is there
Speaker 1: anything else you'd like to say before we wrap it up?
Speaker 1: I want to give you the last word. Uh no, no,
Speaker 1: you you do. This is your This is a god
Speaker 1: this is uncomfortable. Is a solid B plus interview. We're done.
Speaker 1: I do know this much. Anthony Weiner will find his
Speaker 1: way back into public service. His brother Jason said, quote
Speaker 1: no one has been harder on him than he has
Speaker 1: been on himself, and he believes that the scandals could
Speaker 1: make his brother a better politician. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to. Here's the thing