Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2018

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael McFaul is the former U.S. ambassador to Russia and author of the book "From Cold War to Hot Peace," which chronicles U.S.-Russia relations during the Obama administration. He joins David Axelrod to talk about his path from Montana to Moscow, his early involvement in Democratic movements, Putin's Russia, and much more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, the Axviles, with your
0:12.5	host, David Axelrod.
0:15.7	I met Mike McFall on an Obama campaign plane in 2007, shortly after he had joined as
0:23.1	advisor to Senator Obama on Russia and national security issues. Already one of America's noted
0:31.1	Russia scholars at Stanford, Mike came into the administration to work in the National Security
0:37.4	Council and ultimately became our ambassador to Russia, where he had a stormy tenure. He just
0:45.0	released a great new book called From Cold War to Hot Peace, Tracing America's frayed
0:50.5	relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia, and he came by the Institute of Politics to talk about
0:56.0	it, where we sat down for this conversation. Mike McFall, it's really good to see you. We spent some
1:05.4	good time together over the years and we'll get to that. But the one of the joys of doing this is I
1:14.6	learned, even about old friends, more than I knew before, and I learned about your upbringing in
1:23.1	Montana, which is not exactly the profile of a US ambassador to Russia. So talk a little bit about
1:32.5	that, grown up in Montana and your folks. Well, I grew up in Montana, my whole life until I went to
1:38.6	school as a 17-year-old kid at Stanford. My dad was a country-western musician. And that's,
1:47.5	you know, if you know anything about the business, that means sometimes you're a country-western
1:51.2	musician and sometimes you're not working. But he was a school teacher originally, right? He was
1:57.7	this great musician, kid from Wisconsin. What do you do with a degree in music? You become a teacher,
2:04.4	ended up in Glasgow, Montana, which is really on the edge of America. Yeah, it's right on the Canadian.
2:11.5	Yeah, up there, more ICBMs, probably than people. And then he just one day, he wanted to go on the road.
2:18.1	He was sick and tired of teaching. He wanted to play for a living. So his instrument was the saxophone.
2:26.0	His music of choice was jazz. But there's not a lot of jazz gigs in Montana or the greater
2:34.6	northwest. So over the years, he can play anything and everything. And he adapted to the circumstances.
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