Ep. 495 — Rep. Fred Upton

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2022

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After more than three decades representing his Michigan hometown in Congress, Rep. Fred Upton announced his retirement in a speech on the House floor in April 2022. He joined David to talk about his famous Michigan family, his focus on bipartisanship, why he supports gun safety legislation, voting to impeach Donald Trump following the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and his decision not to run for reelection in 2022.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Music
0:06.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.
0:19.0	For more than three decades, Fred Upton was a solid pillar of the Congressional Republican establishment in Washington.
0:25.0	A center-right Republican, partisan for sure, but with a reputation for working across the aisle to get things done like the 21st Century Cures Act to spur medical discovery and innovation.
0:36.0	He worked with Joe Biden on that one.
0:38.0	Then in 2021, after the insurrection at the Capitol, Upton joined nine of his Republican colleagues to vote for the impeachment of Donald Trump and all hell broke loose.
0:49.0	He and his family were the target of death threats, Trump targeted him for defeat, and an unfavorable remap forced him from politics.
0:57.0	I sat down with Upton at a diner in his hometown of St. Joseph Michigan to talk about his journey from young age to President Ronald Reagan to this abrupt end to his career in Congress, where he has spent more than half his life. Here's that conversation.
1:11.0	Fred Upton, it's good to see you in the neighborhood here in your hometown.
1:22.0	Well, it's nice to have you as a constituent quite frankly when he I do.
1:26.0	I am, yes.
1:27.0	Post-Ukannon and New Buffalo Southwest Michigan is the place to be in the summer for sure, but it's actually not bad in the winter.
1:35.0	No, it's not. It's beautiful around here. We're in St. Joseph Michigan where you were born and raised and still live sitting on the, you, the sub podcast they can't see it.
1:48.0	We're at, we're in a restaurant on the harbor here and you, you had something to do with this, this beautiful setting.
1:58.0	Well, I worked with our then governor of Grand Home and Governor Snyder and this was a pretty contaminated site, industrial site for a lot of years.
2:08.0	And it's been completely transformed. In fact, we had the senior PGA here at Harbor Shores just a couple of weeks ago.
2:16.0	How'd you do did you play?
2:18.0	No, you know, I'm going to be retiring, but I'm not going to be a golfer. I need a lot of lessons. But it's really transformed the area.
2:27.0	Just just a little bit of history because you're sort of, you're sort of royalty in this area. Your family started a little company, a few generations ago called Whirlpool.
2:39.0	In fact, where we're sitting on a world, what was a Whirlpool site?
2:43.0	I actually made washing machines literally here back in the 70s. I mean, that's where the factory was.
2:48.0	How did the Uptans get to this area and how did Whirlpool come about?
	...

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