Remembering Charles Krauthammer

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2020

⏱️ 104 minutes

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Summary

Born in 1950 in New York City and raised in Montreal, Charles Krauthammer, who died two years ago on June 21, 2018, was an indispensable voice in American public life for nearly four decades. His writing and speaking—covering politics, religion, religion, technology, sports, and many other subjects—enriched our public life profoundly. A staunch defender of American exceptionalism, he was one of the most eloquent writers of his generation. As Bill Kristol put it, he was a rare combination of extraordinary courage and intellect. Originally released in April 2015, this Conversation with Charles covers his education, his political reflections from the 1980s through the 2010s, his upbringing in Quebec, his work in medicine, and his thoughts on Israel and Zionism. In it, some of Charles Krauthammer’s extraordinary wit, wisdom, and character shine through.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. Today we're going to the Conversations Archives to celebrate the life and work of someone I missed very much, my friend Charles Crowdhammer. We had this conversation in 2015, and he reflected, I think, in very interesting Crystal and I'm very pleased to have it with me today.
0:36.0	My friend Charles Krauthammer. Charles, thanks for taking the time to do this.
0:40.0	Happy to be here.
0:41.0	So we first met, I think when I came to Washington in 1985, you'd been here a few years, and
0:45.6	you had just written a terrific piece that became a very important piece on the Reagan
0:49.6	doctrine, I think
0:54.0	to me but that Charles Krauthammer guy he wrote that terrific piece but he came here as a speech writer for Walter
0:58.8	Mondale.
0:59.8	That's right and people asked me how to you go from Malta, mono to Fox News and the answer I give them and the answer I'll give you
1:06.7	is I was young once but I'm recovered from my youth.
1:10.7	No it's true. The Reagan doctor is an interesting thing.
1:14.0	I remember we were sitting around, I was working at the New Republic in those days, which was sort of
1:19.4	famously liberal, but I had a pretty aggressive anti-Soviet hard-line foreign policy side, which is what attracted me to it, and I did a lot of writing in foreign policy.
1:31.0	And I remember saying in one of the editor in me, there's something very peculiar going on.
1:35.6	For most of our lives, there were guerrilla movements around the world, and they were
1:39.9	invariably national liberation, and they were communists or
1:43.2	Soviet supporter or Chinese supported Vietnam Cuba. I mean that was the
1:47.9	norm and then I said you know there's an interesting counter development that we
1:52.2	have any communist guerrillas in Nicaragua. you know there's an interesting counter-development that we have anti-communist
1:53.7	guerrillas in Nicaragua and goa afghanistan of course this was
1:57.9	the moo jardine and uh... and we're uh... backing it i wonder what it means and one of the people at the meeting said
2:04.8	well you ought to write that. I wasn't actually thinking of doing it so I put that
	...

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