The Candidates: Elizabeth Warren
In Part 3 of our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, we spoke with Elizabeth Warren about how she came to be known as the blow-it-up candidate. With help from Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial columnist at The Times and founder of DealBook, Harry Reid, a former Senate majority leader, and David Axelrod, a former Obama adviser, we explore Ms. Warren’s rise to prominence as an advocate for overhauling the financial system — and how that rise helps us understand her run for president now. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
Background reading:The New York Times Magazine spoke to Ms. Warren in June, discussing the double standards that can confront professional women — and female presidential candidates.Ms. Warren has lots of plans. Together, they would remake the economy.We asked 21 candidates the same 18 questions. Hear Ms. Warren’s answers.
- Duration
- 45m
- Broadcast on
- 13 Dec 2019
- Audio Format
- other
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In Part 3 of our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, we spoke with Elizabeth Warren about how she came to be known as the blow-it-up candidate. With help from Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial columnist at The Times and founder of DealBook, Harry Reid, a former Senate majority leader, and David Axelrod, a former Obama adviser, we explore Ms. Warren’s rise to prominence as an advocate for overhauling the financial system — and how that rise helps us understand her run for president now. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
Background reading:
- The New York Times Magazine spoke to Ms. Warren in June, discussing the double standards that can confront professional women — and female presidential candidates.
- Ms. Warren has lots of plans. Together, they would remake the economy.
- We asked 21 candidates the same 18 questions. Hear Ms. Warren’s answers.
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
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My name is Jason Ross, and in the spring of 2009, I was a writer at The Daily Show with John Stewart, and we had a big problem because we had to make comedy about the financial crisis, and that was hard, much harder than writing jokes about something horrible like the Iraq war. Everybody understands war. Nobody understood the financial crisis. It didn't help that we couldn't even trust the experts because they're the ones who got us into this. In 2009, nobody had any credibility. The media didn't have credibility because they let it happen under their watch. Wall Street didn't have credibility. They created it. Washington was creating something called a money bazooka, so they didn't have any credibility with us. So we were kind of in a bind with some of these guests because we didn't trust them 100%, but we also didn't have the expertise to challenge them with much credibility. So we had some limited options, and it was always a lot of work, but on April 15, 2009, we had a guest coming on who would really give us the goods. I thought, what am I doing here? This is a really bad idea. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is The Daily. Part 3 in our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the top four Democratic candidates for president today, Elizabeth Warren. It's Friday, December 13th. Senator, let me get around here. We got it. Where do you want me? Right there. Yeah. There's your hot water. Got it. So thank you for making time for us. I'm delighted to be here. Let's just jump in. My colleague Andrew Ross Sorkin, so financial columnist at the Times, who's written a lot about your career, told me about what feels like a turning point moment for you back in April of 2009. So that's where I want to start this conversation. It's the height of the financial crisis, and you get a call from The Daily Show with John Stewart. What do you remember thinking when you got that call? Really? I mean, here I am doing this really wonky work as the financial markets are in free fall. The question every day is whether the banks can survive. Millions of families are facing for closure. People have lost their jobs, pension funds have gone down, and I have this little panel, the Congressional Oversight Panel, that is supposed to bring some accountability to this system. And I'm fighting the Treasury Department every day, the Federal Reserve every day, and just trying to talk about what's happening. And frankly, since there's no official legal power for that little oversight panel, to try to get more people engaged so we can put some pressure on them to get some accountability in what's going on with taxpayer money, and with these big banks and with the bailout following the crash, this $700 billion that Congress had authorized. And when John Stewart called, I thought, "Wow, I could talk to a whole lot of people who otherwise might not be watching this and be able to talk about what's going on," and start to put it in some context because it's not only. Think about where it is at that moment. It's about the crash and arresting the free fall and trying to save the economy. But it's also about understanding what went wrong. So we do the right thing next in terms of how we change the rules and regulations around Wall Street and financial matters. So you see, this is a big opportunity to explain what is going on to people. That's my first response. And then, I actually show up in New York to do the John Stewart show, and I've been watching it for a long time. And frankly, taking real delight in watching John Stewart skewer one guest after another. And all of a sudden, it's like realizing, "Whoa, I may be the turkey at this Thanksgiving dinner." So the closer I get to going on, the more anxious I get. And they put you back in this little tiny, tiny green room, where they have some food out and some drinks out. And I sat there. You could hear kind of through the walls, they're warming up the crowd. And I thought, "What am I doing here? This is a really bad idea." And I went to the bathroom and threw up. You threw up. Yep. And I thought, "I may look stupid, and more importantly, I may make the work look stupid." So once you kind of clean yourself off. And that's what I had to do. That's exactly. I still remember standing over this tiny little sink and washing my mouth out with my hand and putting cold water all over my chin and looking up. Look at myself in the mirror and thinking, "You think anyone can tell
Transcription truncated.
In Part 3 of our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, we spoke with Elizabeth Warren about how she came to be known as the blow-it-up candidate. With help from Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial columnist at The Times and founder of DealBook, Harry Reid, a former Senate majority leader, and David Axelrod, a former Obama adviser, we explore Ms. Warren’s rise to prominence as an advocate for overhauling the financial system — and how that rise helps us understand her run for president now. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
Background reading:The New York Times Magazine spoke to Ms. Warren in June, discussing the double standards that can confront professional women — and female presidential candidates.Ms. Warren has lots of plans. Together, they would remake the economy.We asked 21 candidates the same 18 questions. Hear Ms. Warren’s answers.