Ep. 250 — Tom Donilon

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2018

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tom Donilon, former National Security Adviser to Barack Obama, chats with David Axelrod about his experience running President Jimmy Carter’s delegate operation during Ted Kennedy’s 1980 convention challenge as a 23-year-old, why he believes the U.S. pulling out the Iran Nuclear Deal was the worst diplomatic move since the Iraq War, and why a strategy that focuses on bilateral deals poses a structural problem for U.S. foreign policy interests – particularly when it comes to China.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Just one note before you start, this conversation took place late last month when the North Korea
0:06.4	summit was still in doubt, and before the calamitous G7 meeting in Quebec, that said
0:13.6	Tom Donnellan's observations are still very much on point.
0:24.7	And now from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, the Axviles with your host,
0:31.3	David Axelrod.
0:34.8	Tom Donnellan is quite simply one of the smartest people that I know.
0:39.1	I recruited him to help guide our debate preparation when Barack Obama was running for president.
0:46.9	He ultimately became National Security Advisor in the Obama administration.
0:52.7	He has a long and rich history in both diplomacy and politics, and I sat down with him recently
0:59.1	at the University of Chicago where he was visiting the Institute of Politics to talk about his
1:03.9	career and where in the world we are today.
1:07.9	Tom Donnellan, my good friend, good to see you again.
1:12.5	We spent a lot of good times together, some bad times together.
1:15.7	We'll get to some of that, but it's good to see you.
1:18.6	David, nice to be here.
1:19.6	Appreciate you doing this.
1:20.7	So the great, I've said this before, especially when I'm talking to friends, the great joy of
1:27.3	doing this is that you learn stuff that you never knew before.
1:32.7	I vaguely knew about your upbringing in Providence, but I got a richer understanding of it now
1:40.5	in St. Michael's parish in Providence.
1:43.9	Can you talk a little bit about that, about growing up there and the influences that you
1:50.8	had in your life?
	...

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