And now from the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio, The Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.

My CNN colleague Scott Jennings has in recent months made himself a kind of Rorschach test in the stormy arena of today's politics. But once a harsh critic of Donald Trump, Jennings has made himself a favorite of the right with his spicy on the lips defenses of Trump and his supporters. And predictably, he's enraged folks on the other side. But here's the thing. I know Scott. He and I regularly disagree. But he's not a caricature to me. He's a good friend. We had a great talk yesterday about his remarkable life's journey and the interesting path it's taken in recent months. Scott Jennings. Good to see you, brother.

Good to see you.

I have an announcement that I'm not going to make today about the future of the podcast. But I was absolutely hell bent and determined to have you on this podcast because I'm so goddamn tired of answering the question, why are you friends with that guy? Why are you friends with Scott Jennings? And we are friends. The whole conceit of The Axe Files has been it's hard to really disliked people when you actually know them as human beings. So my task here is not just to, I do want to quiz you on a few things in which we may have some differences, but also to to just explore your story as I know your story and maybe in some aspects that I don't know so other people will know as well. So you're not just a cartoon character on TV. So with that, I want to hear about Dawson Springs, Kentucky, which is kind of a sort of touchstone for the Scott Jennings story.

Well, I love to talk about Dawson Springs, but let me just first say, it's an honor to be on here with you. And and perhaps the most rewarding part of my last few years at CNN has been getting to know you and becoming your friend. You are the chief of all political pundits at CNN and maybe even in the entire industry. And to be able to be your friend and learn from you and spend as much time together as we did on the road and in New York this year for the 2024 election was.

Logged a lot of miles there.

'We--a lot of folks don't know you are the walkingest pundit and and and you can't go a block in New York City without somebody popping out to say hi to David Axelrod and to say other things to me. So it's.

I grew up there, so sometimes it's someone who I owed money. But yes, it's it's a great town. It's a great town to walk in, but it's as far from Dawson Springs as as one can imagine. Tell me about about Dawson Springs, about your family.

Sure. Well, I was born in western Kentucky. This is down in the very sort of extreme western part of the state, coal country down there. And I grew up, for the most part, down there. I did have a brief interlude in Louisville as a child after my parents divorced and and split up and moved away from each other. But but most of my childhood and most of my time was spent in Dawson Springs, it's a small town, just a couple of thousand people, you know, no stoplights, one very unnecessary four way stop and.

Just to irritate people.

Yeah, that's right. To slow the slowest down in an otherwise sleepy town. But it was it was a good upbringing. I learned a lot from the people there. I enjoyed going to a very small school there. Still keep in touch with a lot of my classmates from Dawson Springs. I think I had 30 or something in my high school class.

Probably improved your chances of making the varsity team.

'Yeah, I made. I could have made any team I wanted. I played baseball and golf. We didn't even have enough to have football, so I did miss out on that. I would have never made the cross-country team. Even even with the small number of, I could have never. But yeah, I ,look, I'm I'm the I'm the product of a very, very small, rural middle America town that for many decades thrived on coal mining, but lately fell on hard times. I'm the son of a, of a man who at different times in my upbringing was a factory worker, worked at a garbage dump and and did different things like that. And my stepmother, who I lived with with my father, was also a factory worker. And she also cleaned people's houses. And she worked at a convenience store overnight from time to time to help help make ends meet. But but that's that's where I grew up. And and it's still really where my my heart is, down in western Kentucky.

Your your dad, you said he worked at garbage dump but he had other jobs as as well over time. He was, he, said one time a union worker in, I guess a factory.

And yeah, he was a he was a factory worker and was involved in the union. And then later in life, after some layoffs from other jobs, he wound up working at Goodyear, which had a plant in Madisonville, Kentucky. But that closed. And then he and my stepmother ended up working at the Goodyear plant in Union City, Tennessee, which was quite a drive from Dawson Springs. But they decided to keep the family in Dawson Springs and make this drive together every night. So they were hardworking people and had some hard jobs and certainly experienced the undulations of the manufacturing economy as millions of Americans have experienced.

If people remember Dawson Springs, the name Dawson Springs, it's also because in 2021, some really, really catastrophic storms, tornadoes overcame the town and just destroyed much of what you knew of of Dawson Springs. I remember that because we were working together. That was. And I. And you went back there and literally picked through ruins.

Yeah, Virtually every dwelling that I had lived in save one, I think, had been destroyed by these tornadoes. I think three quarters of the houses in the town were destroyed. And I went there the next morning to find my dad and I. It was even hard to sort of visualize where the streets and where things were as you knew them because everything was gone. You know, all the the landmarks, the buildings, the trees, you know, the the vegetation. I mean, anything you had sort of mentally had a picture of was gone. And I did I did finally find my dad at his place, which was totaled. And we we went through that that situation together. It was it was a shocking thing to see that much destruction. And so many people lost everything they had. Some people died, in fact, in the apartment complex behind my dad's house. I think my dad, fortunately had heard it on the weather radio and he didn't have a basement. And just before everything hit, he had gone across town to get in the basement of a friend of his, thank God, because I, you know, I don't know what would have happened to dad given the devastation there. But it was a that was a crazy thing. The town's trying to come back and and and it's just when you have that much destruction, it's harder. And I know the people who live there and and decided to stay there are doing everything they can to bring the town back.

Can I ask you just sort of a political question that I've been obsessed about for some time, and that is you talked about this town as a town of coal miners. That's that's what the base was. I think it also had mineral waters, by the way. I think the Pittsburgh Pirates trained there because they thought there were healing waters there.

Absolutely true. You know, at the turn of the century, that century, everybody thought these mineral springs were magical.

So but it was a coal mining town. That's not unusual in Kentucky. We also have this thing called climate change, which has now become sort of a cultural issue. It's not just a political issue. It's not a science issue. It's a it's a cultural issue. It's a cultural issue because there's almost complete certainty among scientists that the stuff that we're putting in the air has made increasingly warmed the climate. And that has led to sort of more and more extreme weather conditions. But as I say to my friends who on the left, I'm also aware that if you made your living, if you made your living mining for coal or if that's the tradition in your area, well, that's an existential issue, too, if that goes away. But how do you I know you're now tipping through this minefield of contemporary politics, doing it pretty artfully, like there are certain immutable fact. What do we do about this? Because towns like Dawson Springs can't keep rebuilding just to be destroyed again.

I question whether Dawson Springs or any other mining town in Kentucky is personally responsible for the global.

No, no, it's not a matter of responsibility. I'm not trying to blame Dawson Springs.

But but I think I think you raise an interesting debating point because that's how people that live there or grew up there would hear that, you know. And and and I think the rush to try to overhaul our energy economy and our energy matrix, I think in the rush to do that, a lot of people forgot about the people who, as you point out, made their living and their parents and grandparents made their living in and around coal mines. And it's not just the miners, you know, it's the people who make the equipment.

Of course.

Go in the mines. And it's the people who have the local restaurant where the miners and the other people eat. I mean, there's a whole ripple effect. But when there's an assault on any kind of an industry that is ubiquitous in a region, and I and I agree with you, it has become a cultural issue, because I think the people in Kentucky and West Virginia and other mining areas got the idea that they were being disrespected, looked down upon, blamed and otherwise condescended to about global issues, you know, that to them are so far out of their, you know, over their heads. I mean, they're trying to get up and go to work every day to make ends meet. And all of a sudden, they seem to be at the center of a massive amount of blame. And and then it became a political issue, you know, and then it and it has spiraled from there. I. I still don't think we have really solved the issue. What do you do with these towns in areas where you were, where there's an attempt to rip away, you know, what had been for so many decades, whether that's coal mining or manufacturing or anything else? I actually think this this debate, this conversation we're having is at the core of what some somewhat led to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and other people transforming the Republican Party into the movement that we know today.

No, I listen, I feel really strongly that we didn't have the conversations. We haven't had the conversations that have to be had. It's interesting that you say it's what led to Trump, because I know that you've said your dad was sort of a canary in the coal mine. Not to extend the metaphor here, because you came from a family of Democrats.

I did. My grandfather, in fact, was an elected official. He had been mayor of the little town of Dawson Springs. He was a magistrate in hopkins County, which is like the county council or a city council, but at the county level and had been a wheel in the Democratic Party in my part of the state for a long time. My earliest political memories, honestly, are riding around in a station wagon with my grandfather, with people like Wendell Ford, former senator from Kentucky, Democrat, Democrat Carol Hubbard, whose was an Irishman from West Kentucky. You know, the congressional district from where I come from is is, was known as like the Rock of Gibraltar of the Democratic Party. I mean, it was absolute hard core New Deal Democrats. But I became a Republican and I was in high school when the Gingrich revolution happened in 1994. And I remember sort of being influenced by that. And when I registered to vote and voted, my first election was 96, and I voted in the Republican primary. And when they found out about that a back home that was, that was, that created quite a hubbub. But it was I think it came as quite a shock to my family that I had become a Republican. My dad was a huge Bill Clinton guy, probably no bigger Bill Clinton fan in the 90s than than my dad. A lot of union workers were back in those days. But I'll tell you this, he was the first person in 2014, 2015 to tell me that Donald Trump was going to be the next president. And he said, I know you're smarty pants and this is what you do for a living, but you need to understand it's going to be Trump.

You were working for Jeb Bush at the time, right?

Yeah. I mean, I had worked for the Bush family for years.

And we'll get to that. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, you know, I supported Governor Bush in the Republican primary. And but my dad, he knew it before basically anybody else that I knew. And when you look at the voting patterns of all kinds of people in rural and middle America, like my dad, who had been Democrats who came to really believe in Donald Trump. You know, hindsight's 2020. You can see it now. But back then, my dad was like the oracle of trying to trying to get me to understand what was happening in the country.

But this conversation that we just had about climate, the sort of interaction between the movement for climate change and the dissolution of long time industries that supported small towns, it's part of that. That's part of the that's part of the whole deal. It's the experts and the government sort of dictating in ways that made a lot of folks feel like they were being disregarded and left behind. But I don't want to leave your childhood without asking. You talk a lot about your dad. You don't talk about your mom. And I know that from our own conversations that it's tender. It's a tender subject. But you endured something as a child that no child should have to endure. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.

Yeah. I love my mom and we have a great relationship. My parents divorced when I was young. I don't have a lot of memories of them together, actually. Most of my memories of my parents are being shuttled back and forth between their homes, which were quite far away. My mom, after she and my dad split up, lived in West Kentucky for a little bit, but then moved to Louisville, which is a couple of hours away. So I remember these very long car rides. And I did live with my mother, my sister, my younger sister and I did live with her for some time when we were children. She ended up remarrying to an extremely violent alcoholic and witnessed some very, very unspeakable things and ended up moving back home to live with my dad and his new wife.

You actually, as a child, witnessed an attack. You thought your mother, your stepfather had killed your mother?

Well, I mean, I was little and, you know, and you you don't know exactly what's going on in a chaotic moment like that. But I knew I knew it was bad.

He hit her over the head with something heavy.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, something broke and it you know, it was a jarring moment. And it was sort of after that.

You and you and your sister flew out the window.

Yeah, we we went out that day. That night. And then ultimately, very shortly thereafter, I went to live with my dad back in back in West Kentucky. And and, you know, over over time, you know, my mother ended up leaving that person and ultimately she remarried into very positive relationships later on. But that that was, that was a scarring thing. And I won't forget it. And it's, you know, I don't, I don't love talking about it and don't talk about it because I do love my mom and she is very important to me. And she's very involved in our, you know, my kids life now and everything. But but it it was it was ugly and it and, you know, she she endured a lot in that relationship and I'm glad, I'm glad she escaped out of it.

Yeah. Well, I raised it, first of all, because these things become. I know from my own life experience, you know, you confront tragedies that, you know, shape your life in some ways, and they never leave you. But but they're they're formative in some ways. You've got four boys. You and your wife, Autumn, when you talk about your kids, it is with a tenderness that is moving to me. So obviously, family is very important to you. I grew up in a in a very dysfunctional family myself. So I'm grateful for the family that I have. I sat around on Thanksgiving and I just was in rapture to be surrounded by my kids and my grandkids, because I didn't really know that peace when I when I was young. I'm sure you feel some of that.

I do. And honestly, Axe, one of the things that I feel closest to you over is just our our shared conversations about your background and when you were a child, you know, some of the things that I saw and went through. And and when I hear you talk so passionately about how much you love your own family and how much that that means to you, you know, that that really speaks to me. You know, I mean, it it hits me in the heart because at the end of the day, what do you really have? You know, except your family? This is your legacy and your responsibility as a as a parent to give these kids every opportunity that, you know, that they could possibly want and maybe opportunities that you didn't have when you were a child. And I love them all very dearly. They're 15, 11, nine and seven that all boys and my wife and I do our level best to keep the house under control. We fail most days, but it's but it but it's a it's a glorious circus. And they're all different and they're all lovely and they're all beautiful. And, you know, all you can ever do in life is is try to do everything in the world you can for your kids and. And that's why, you know, that's why I work so much, honestly. It's one thing about my dad and my stepmom and my upbringing, you know, they worked a lot, you know, factories, garbage job, cleaning houses. I mean, they did whatever it took to make sure that I could move on to something different. And, you know, it's just a sort of a gear that I've never gotten out of. That's how I feel. That's what. I think that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to work and achieve so that the kids go on to something better, whatever it is that they want to do with their lives. And that's my mission.

Yeah, we used to call that the American Dream.

Yeah.

That's right. And, you know, I feel it strongly. My dad being an immigrant, a refugee, and, you know, I ended up doing things I never could have imagined or he could never have imagined. There's a big conversation about the viability of that today. And yeah, it seems to me that should be a big focus of our attention. Let me just say one last word on this. God bless your mom and thank God that she is in your your kids life lives, you know?

We're actually fairly close together. She lives over in southern Indiana. And I live just across the river just outside of Louisville. And she is part of our life and does a lot of things with my kids and comes to a lot of soccer games, a lot of baseball games and a lot of a lot of stuff. And and I'm grateful for that. My wife's family is also quite involved. My wife's family comes from western Kentucky, and they're very involved, too. And part of my upbringing, which I didn't mention, but I feel like I should, they both passed on. But my my father's parents, my grandparents, I probably spent some chunk of every day in Dawson Springs at their house because it was right near our house. And so this this sort of relationship with grandparents, I think is really important thing. I know when I hear you talk about your your little grandkids, how much it means to you. It meant a lot to me. And so as I'm raising my own kids, having grandparents involved and part of it, it's a it's a vital thing. And and I'm really, really glad that we have that.

I can tell you now as a grandparent, and I've got my fourth coming in a few weeks. I'm sure your, all of your kids' grandparents feel lucky to to be part of their lives. It's an incredible blessing. You get all the benefits and you don't have to do half the work. It's really a pretty good it's pretty, pretty good deal. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of The Axe Files. And now back to the show. You got a scholarship to the University of Louisville and the scholarship was a McConnell. You were a McConnell scholar. Tell me about that.

'Well, we had virtually no money. I didn't know what I was going to do for college. And so I ended up applying for this scholarship at the University of Louisville. I knew who Mitch McConnell was. I had met him when I was in. The summer before my senior year of high school, I was part of this high school program in Kentucky called Governors Scholars. He has a daughter that's my age, and she was in it. I was in it. They pick like 1 or 2 kids from all the high schools in Kentucky. And I met him that summer. And and at that point, I was feeling like I want him to be a Republican. So I meet Mitch McConnell and I, I say, you know, I'm I'm Scott Jennings from Dawson Springs, and I really do support you. Now, at that time, he was preparing to run against a guy named Steve Beshear, who was a Democrat from Dawson Springs. And he looked at me and he said, a Republican from Dawson Springs. I really have met everybody now. And at that point I was like, man, I like this guy. And so I started looking into my options. And he had started this center at the University of Louisville, a Scholarship program, where they pick ten kids a year. And if you win, you get a full ride, four year, full scholarship to the University of Louisville. So I applied for this and it sort of heartbreaking for my dad, who was this huge this huge University of Kentucky Wildcats guy. But I ended up winning this scholarship along with a national scholarship from the Coca-Cola Foundation, which also was life changing in it, in it allowed me to go to college for free. I went for free and never took on any debt. And and that was where sort of my relationship with with Mitch McConnell started. You know, it is not an exaggeration to say that his intervention in my life at this point and then down the road in my career change the trajectory of what I was going to be able to do. I mean, there is no Scott Jennings without Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao's intervention. And I will never forget it and I will forever be grateful.

So, listeners, if you have complaints about Scott Jennings, send postcards to Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao, there they are the responsible parties.

I'm sure. I'm sure if you do send postcards, they won't be the first complaints they've gotten about me.

I want to talk more about McConnell, your relationship and about him. But you didn't start off on a political plane in college. You started off in journalism. Talk about that. I mean, you were really headed down that path.

I was. When I was in high school, I got a job at the local area radio station, country music radio station, you know, small station. So you're the disc jockey, the weatherman, the sports guy. You read the obituaries on Sunday morning, which can get you in a lot of trouble if you mispronounce them. But then you also do the news. And I and some of my greatest memories of that first job was going in there and grabbing those news rips off the matrix printer and reading the news. And from the first time I ever did it, I knew I wanted to be in the news. I just I knew it. I wanted to be a news person. So I get off to University of Louisville and I go down to the big radio station in town. 84WHAS, 50,000 watt AM news station. And I talked them into an internship, but they wouldn't put me in the news department. They put me in the promotions department where I did all sorts of silly things. And then one day I couldn't take it anymore. And I went down the hallway and I found the news director, Brian Rubelin, who was passed away since, but he I said, Look, I think I should be in the news. He hands me a newscast that he had just used on the air, puts me in a studio and says, Well, read this and let me hear it. So I read it and he listens and he says, I think this will work. And he hires me. So I'm no longer an intern. Now I've been hired to be in the newsroom at 84WHAS. And I did that all. That was my freshman year of college. I did that all four years. And for four straight years I thought I was going to be a journalist. That was that was where I was focused. That's what I wanted to do. And and and I spent more time in the radio news booth than I did in class at the University of Louisville. Sorry. Sorry to tell you professors, but that's where my head was.

They probably knew. So, McConnell. McConnell had other ideas for you?

Yeah. We obviously were in touch during the McConnell program. And I should say it's a nonpartisan program. It's a scholarship program. He doesn't pick the students. And the programing is is via the University of Louisville. So you go to class and now the program is much more robust and different than when I was there. But it's a political science focused program that the main benefit of having McConnell involved in it is he raises money for the scholarship, but also he's able to bring in all these amazing speakers and people, Democrats and Republicans and over the years. And so just exposure to people like that was was a huge part of my education. But when I was getting to the end of my time at U of L, he calls me up one day and I'm at WHAS, and he says, When are you going to get off the sidelines and get into the game? And I'll never forget him saying that. And he was recruiting me to go to work on the presidential campaign of then Texas Governor George W. Bush. And I was pretty well taken aback by that statement and offer. And he was persuasive, as we've come to know that, one of the most persuasive people in political life. And I said yes. And that was my first campaign, in the year 2000. George W Bush for president.

'And you ended up doing campaigns for and with McConnell in Kentucky, other campaigns in Kentucky. But in 2004, you ended up in the Bush White House. Before we get to that , let me just ask about Mitch McConnell, because to me, he's such an interesting character in our politics. First of all, he is a bridge from one generation to another and heralded at times, disparaged at other times. Today, not exactly a hero in your own party. But the thing that strikes me is he would say that he is a protector of institutions, that he believes in the institution of the United States Senate. He's the longest serving leader in U.S. Senate history. Takes great pride in that. And, you know, the protector of the filibuster. But on the other hand, you know, and this, a lot of Democrats will raise this, he was the guy who sat on the Merrick Garland nomination for ten months when Obama nominated Garland to fill the Scalia vacancy and then sped Amy Coney Barrett through the Senate in a matter of weeks. And that seemed like a norm-smashing, institution-straining kind of bit of gymnastics on his part. And it seems to me like there that these two things that were in contention with McConnell, one is he's deeply partisan and competitive, which you have to be to be the leader. And the other is that he's an institutionalist. But explain this guy to me.

I think, to your specific criticism about how he used the rules of the Senate and the US Constitution on the Supreme Court, I think he would say I'm simply I'm simply playing within the rules as they exist for me as a U.S. senator. Maybe it was creative, but the rules are the rules, and my job is to achieve outcomes and and then achieve outcomes for my party and for my political point of view. And there was there's no obligation in the Constitution for the Senate to quickly take up any kind of a Supreme Court confirmation. They do have advise and consent powers, but there's no timeline on that. And he would he would tell you that he thought the precedent was not to do it based on historical precedent. Because we had divided government and and the American people, he thought, needed a chance to weigh in on this. And then on the Amy Coney Barrett side, it was different circumstances. But again, I think he would say all this was done within the bounds of the rules of the Senate and the Constitution. And obviously, I understand why Democrats are upset about it and would be.

Upset not just Democrats, but a lot of institutionalist feel the same way. I mean, you call it creative, I would say in some ways very destructive, because every time a norm is shattered, it's very hard to reassemble it. So and I think we're going to pay a price for all the norms that have been shattered lately. You know. But that, you know, I don't, I think that's a I understand the argument you're making. I understand the argument he's making. But it is kind of an ends justifies the means argument.

We probably won't ever see eye to eye on this. And we talked about it many times. But he he he does describe the Garland decision as the most consequential thing he ever did in the US Senate. And it and it's not just because of the impact it had on the court moving forward. The political implications of it in the 2016 election was enormous. I mean, there are a lot of people and I, I think I'm one of them, who wonders whether Donald Trump would have won the race if not for McConnell's decision, because a lot of people, a lot of conservatives at that time were skeptical of Trump and had been skeptical. But that's that looming Supreme Court vacancy laying out there, I think brought brought just enough Republicans and conservatives to the table for Trump because they feared what Hillary Clinton might do with the seat.

Well, also because Trump Trump made a he made a very, very overt offering to Evangelicals and the right. He said he'd appoint some, he would only appoint people who would do away with Roe versus Wade, which they did. So, yeah, it is. I've. The one thing I'm not. The one thing I am not contesting is that this was very consequential. It was very consequential. It's, but it will be part of a long and complicated epitaph of him. But just getting back to you, you went to work for the Bush campaign in 2000. You're deeply involved in the campaign and you end up in the political office at the White House working for Karl Rove.

Yeah. In '04, I was dispatched to Albuquerque, a place I had never been in my life, and lived in New Mexico for a year. It was one of the states that changed from blue to red from 2000 to 2004. Iowa was the other one. It was the only state that border Texas in 2000 that Bush did not win, and I think he lost it by 366 votes or something. And then we ended up winning it in '04 about 5988 votes or somewhere thereabouts. Very close state. And yeah, that was then a springboard to get to go to, to achieve a dream, you know, work in the White House and, and you know, in the political affairs office under under Karl. It was. You know, when I first when I took the first campaign job in 2000, you know, that was sort of in the back of your mind, like, do you think I could make it to the White House someday? Will they ever let some, you know, kid from Dawson Springs work at the White House? And here here I am in January, February of 2005, walking through the front door there. And I still honestly can't believe it.

Tell me about that experience, because it wasn't it wasn't like you were a page. You had significant responsibilities. You traveled with the president, traveled on Air Force One, dealt with members of Congress. I mean, you you were deeply enmeshed in that. So tell me about that and tell me about Bush.

Yeah, working for Karl Rove in the White House meant you had your hands in a lot of things. For us in the political affairs office, domestic travel for the president was a huge part of our portfolio. We were part of the planning for every trip. And someone from political affairs went on every trip and wrote briefings for the president to ensure that he knew what we knew about what was going on in the places where he was headed. For me, too, I also had a big responsibility for personnel, and our office was deeply involved in working with presidential personnel on appointments. And when I took the job as a special assistant to the President for political affairs, Andy Card was the chief of staff. And we talked about his interest and the personnel side. And he said to me that, you know, in the White House sometimes it's hard to like break free of this idea that everybody who should be appointed to something lives within three blocks of the White House. And his charge to me was go out and sort of look across the country. You all in the political affairs office, you know, people in every state. And look across the country and see if you can find people who support the president, support his agenda, and might be of benefit in public service. And so one of the things I worked very hard on was recruiting people for boards, commissions, jobs, high and low level across the federal government who wanted to serve. And a lot of them were nontraditional picks. You know, people who, you know, maybe in the past would have been overlooked. But that was our charge from the chief of staff's office was find some folks that might otherwise be overlooked and give them a chance. And I'm I'm really proud that we we were part of that.

Well, you can relax because what used to be considered nontraditional picks now look very traditional given what we're seeing right now. But tell me about George Bush himself, because you got to know him. You traveled with him. You you briefed him.

Yeah. Well, my observations of him were first and foremost, that he deeply cares about this country, that he is an American patriot. I think he got one of the most unfair raps of all time in the way the press covered him as some dummy, you know, some idiot, some bumbler. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least from my observations. I got to go to the Oval Office on a number of occasions and be part of meetings with him where he was sifting through decision making on different issues. A lot of it was personnel. And, you know, it just was not the caricature that was created of him by the press, was just totally inaccurate. Frankly, I thought the same thing about Dick Cheney, who I also revere. But this idea that he was some evil, you know, Darth Vader, you know, looming over everything. I never I never observed any of that. And that honestly, I guess that has stuck with me over the years, just watching the caricatures that were drawn of these two guys that I work really hard to elect and then work for. I'm now very skeptical of the caricatures of other politicians that I see in both parties, because I see how easy it is to create narratives around people that may not be exactly the truth. But I always found President Bush to be extraordinarily engaged, quick, decisive. And to me, one of the greatest traits of him was that he didn't really care as much about sort of the political implications of something as long as he thought he was doing the right thing. Obviously, this manifested itself in some of his national security decisions and he's taken he took a lot of criticism for that at the time and still takes it today. But I always admired that was that he didn't he didn't care much, especially in the second term, about his own personal image if if he thought he was making the correct decision for the country. Very admirable trait.

I mean, you went on to work for you worked for Mitt Romney in 2012. You worked for Jeb Bush, as we mentioned before, in 2016. And those guys are sort of on the fringes of the Republican Party now, they have been read out of the Republican Party by Donald Trump. You were actually very critical of Trump in 2016. And digging through my notes here to find some of those. But you could probably recite some of your own.

Yeah, no, I wasn't I wasn't a Trump guy in 2016. I mean, you know, you see the wing of the party from where I come, I, I was more interested in the more traditional Republican candidates and ultimately voted for Trump in 2016. But but certainly was not part of his primary effort.

'You wrote a column in the Louisville Courier-Journal: "at the core of Trump's candidacy as a call for greater executive authority with willful disregard for the constitutional limits placed on our chief executive. Conservatives, no matter how angry, should reject Trump's short term salve, which might kill the pain today but may lead to more damaging infection tomorrow." You wrote he "disrespected American prisoners of war body shamed a beauty queen. Feuded with a Gold Star family and tweeted at 3 in the morning about sex tapes." What's changed in your mind?

Well, I don't think Donald Trump has changed at all. Truthfully, I think he's the same kind of a candidate and represents the same kind of politics that he did in the beginning. It's part of his authenticity is that he really hasn't changed, you know, in terms of of attitude and style. I do. I do think one thing I have come to believe about the overall movement that he represents and the party is that that, and I don't think I understood this at the time, and this is probably what my dad was warning me about. And I didn't I just didn't understand it. In that he represents a breaking of the normal political pablum and, you know, back and forth between the politicians and the people that I had just, you know, it's what I grown up with. I had just come to accept it as part of the business. He comes along and breaks it. So I think initially to me, it was jarring. I get it now. I get it. And although I certainly have, he's done things over the years that I have not approved of or wouldn't have done. At the same time, I have come to respect the ability that he had to recognize just how angry people were with the normal political BS that that they were putting up with from both parties, frankly. And so I get it. I get it now. I've also become a little bit more accepting of his style. Because I think I have a better grasp now on what the American people are wanting out of their political system. And that's something a little bit more a little bit different and a little bit more responsive to their actual concerns. And I, I know there's a lot of debate in the party about whether this is good or whether it's bad. But at some point, the desires of the party, I think, should be somewhat subservient to the desires of the people. I mean, we are we are, after all, a government of the people. And there was a desire, there was a hunger among a lot of people for what he represented, which was basically a smashing of the political institutions that a lot of folks thought had failed.

We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of The Axe Files. And now back to the show. I actually agree with the last thing that you said. The question is what comes after the smashing? The smashing part in some ways is the easy part. The sort of building something constructive on top of it is another question. Just one other thing on this. You know, you and I sat together for many nights after January 6th in 2021. And I, you know, I admired the clarity and the courage that you spoke with. And I knew where it came from. It came from the heart of a guy who revered these institutions and the history of, of this democracy and so on. And you said then that Trump had clearly violated his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution to the best of his ability. And, you know, later on, you said, you referred to Trump as the Florida man who sits there with nothing much to do in a golf club but watch television. Now, that seems serious. Clearly violating the oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. So what you're saying is the guy has a genius for sort of mining and understanding, mining and speaking to the sense of alienation that people feel. And I agree with that. I think that he does. But violating the oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. You know, you've said to him you can't judge a guy on one day, but.

'Yeah, I was not happy that day. I was not happy in the weeks and months afterwards. I still think it was a terrible day, probably the worst day of his presidency. And it was a smear, a stain on his presidency and. And you know, the videos will live forever. And we'll always have these pictures and images of people defiling the Capitol. I hate it. I don't like it. Never going to like it. Not ever going to get comfortable with it. You know, four years later, my party chose him to be our nominee. It was obvious, you know, he was going to be the nominee. And. I ultimately got comfortable with voting for my party and our nominee. Again, like I said, I, I don't. You know, there are things about him that I didn't approve of on one day or another. But I thought that everything he was likely to do in a second term far outweighed everything that Kamala Harris was likely to do in another term in the White House. And I really had no trouble, honestly, whatsoever voting for him. I wrote a piece about it in the L.A. Times where I sometimes write columns explaining why I decided to support Trump. I thought that the election in 2024 was not about the past. I thought it was about the future and not just about the future of the country, but about the future of Western civilization. I thought a lot of the elements of the left had become overtly anti-American and believe the country was rotten, and I don't think Trump believes that. And so, you know, people look back in time on Trump and say, I don't like this. I don't like that. This was a terrible day, as January the 6th was. But I don't I don't know what what there is productive about sitting around and lamenting the past when you have a future to worry about. And I really, really, really became concerned about the future of the country under Harris and under some of the people that supported her. I think there are millions of Republicans just like me who would tell you they didn't like January the 6th and they hated it. They still don't like it or they didn't like this or they didn't like that. But the idea that you would have to lay down all of your conservative values and principles because something happened in the past and turn your vote over to people who fundamentally hate, disrespect you on a daily basis and who will do nothing conservative? No way. That was the argument some Never Trump Republicans were making, and you could see how successful it was. It was the least successful political argument in the history of presidential campaigns. It didn't work on me and it didn't work on millions of people out there who ended up coming home to Trump.

Yeah, it was a close election. I mean, let's, despite what the president says, you know, it was not a mandate. It was a very, very close election, one of the closest elections we've had in decades and decades. You've sort of emerged as a kind of media figure. You've mastered the art of going viral. And and that's, part of it is that you are you are willing to engage in ways that are quotable and and sharp. There is a kind of own the libs quality to it. Tell me about that. It's obviously a. It's something you've thought about. You think about the persona you are on television. You must be getting a ton of atta boys from your tribe. Just as you know, I hear a lot of crap about you from from mine. But tell me about the calculation of sort of, this is the role I am going to play.

Well, first of all, there's a lot of libs to own. As you know, we sit out on these panels and and I'm frequently outnumbered. And so there's, it's a target rich environment. I. After the primary was over and I started to think about the nature of the race and what was happening in the country and what my job is at CNN, which is to kind of represent, authentically represent the what's the average Republican thinking? And once the battle was joined, you know, my view was the average Republican was thinking, okay, we have a race, this is our nominee. And he deserves all of the good, solid defense and offense on and in media that the Democrats get from virtually everybody else. And. You know, I sort of just kind of decided, look, half the country needs to be represented on these panels. And most Republicans were not sitting around navel gazing about whether they were going to vote for Trump. They decided what they wanted to do. And so on any issue of the day or any outrage of the day, there was a legitimate, in my opinion, a legitimate way to debate the issue and to strongly defend the average Republican viewpoint. And I know that that was probably jarring for a lot of our audience. But I, I firmly sort of came to the conclusion that half the country needs someone sitting here who can clearly articulate how they are responding to or reacting to the news of the day. And as you well know, there are plenty of people on television, some who still claim to be Republicans to this day or Republican strategists, which is debatable. But there are plenty of those kinds of people who are willing to go on TV and crap all over the guy and join in with the Democrats. That's just not where the average Republican is. I am I am the average Republican. I'm the average Middle America republican. And I think the role that I carved out here was just trying to articulate what half the country was thinking on any given day. And CNN, and I have to say, to credit our employer, they were willing to host these debates. Not very many people in media are willing to do that right now. And I thought our election coverage, starting particularly starting with the debate in Atlanta where you and I were out on set together all the way through the conventions.

And I was sitting under, I was sitting under a rain cloud. But yes. Right.

I know. Watching you get rained upon while we did that was a true highlight of my year.

Kind of a metaphor for the whole evening, I think.

But from that summer point forward, I thought the network did a good job of allowing actual conversation and debate about this election to unfold in a way that nobody else was doing, and a lot of its work was flowing through me. And so I leaned into that. And yes, I did gain some notoriety over it.

I mean, you have a certain genius yourself for creating these viral moments. From my standpoint, I, look, I'm not here to critique your like I said, I think you're good at it. You're also really, really smart about politics and government. You have, I know, reverence for the mission of it. So sometimes I hope sometimes I worry that that gets lost because the things that people remember are those viral moments, not the many moments in which you and I sit together and you offer analysis that I think is, like, spot on. And sometimes, by the way, some of that analysis is is saying, let me tell you how Republicans think about this, which is important for people to hear.

I think I think the, you know, this, I think some of the shows are different. And what is called for or the way it's set up or produced is different. You know, a lot of a lot of times you and I are together on some shows or on election nights or debate nights or whatever, and it really is set up for us to give more analysis. And some of the shows are set up to, you know, hey, let's just let's kick around the issues of the day. I view those as two different things truthfully, and I'm capable of doing both, and I do do both. In either case, I'm giving you an honest assessment of what I think the Republicans are thinking, how they're approaching something, I think and and I think there's value to the viewer in either case, whether Axe and Scott, or, you know, analyzing why a campaign did this or didn't do that or whether it's Scott, you know, debating a liberal over, you know, the Daniel Penney case, which I've been doing this week on the 10:00 show. In either case, I think what you're getting a look at is an authentic representation of how a Republican strategist or a Republican thinker is approaching the issue. I don't really have trouble shifting back and forth between both, and I don't really consider them to be at odds with one another. I think it just has more to do with what's the purpose of this show, What's the purpose of this segment? How is it set up and and what's the output that we're looking for here? I mean, some of my favorite days are when they let us on together and we can analyze the campaigns and the strategy and and so on. And I really do value those. I do think the more viral moments come when, you know, you wind up at a table with 3 or 4 people banging on you and you're effectively holding the line against, you know, you're like a lion tamer, you know. And I mean, this is why Bill Maher, you know, called me Lonely scott. This is why the British press calls me the black sheep of CNN. I mean, they see these shows where I'm, you know, effectively fighting off 3 or 4 people at a time. But but I'm not doing it for theatrical purposes. I'm just doing it because I think half the country deserves to have their voice represented at the table. You know, goodness knows the other half does. And and am I creative with it and am I do I think about the best and most memorable way to do it? You're damn right. But isn't that how you get the point across in politics? Creativity and communications? I mean, you're a comms guy, you know that?

We got we're going to run out of time here, and I don't want to run out of time before we talk about where this goes for you from here. You you were mentioned in connection with potentially being the White House press secretary. I know you had an opportunity to go in or possibility of going in in 2017. You didn't choose those. You just went on the editorial board of the L.A. Times where you write columns. You're considering what your media options are right now. I guess, who are you? Do you want to, what do you want to be? What is your, do you see yourself more as a journalist? Do you see yourself more as a political figure? Might there be a political future for you? I'm just trying to paint the future here.

Sure. Well, I've always considered myself to be a journalist. Believe it or not. I approached most of my jobs, whether it's been in media or my private consulting work or politics or this commentary work. I always think of myself as a journalist in this way: am I dealing in things that are true? Am I using facts? Am I honestly arriving at conclusions? Am I giving people an accurate picture from my perspective of what's going on? So I always think of myself that way, which stems all the way back to that first job I ever had. Right now, my main focus is on being the best conservative Republican commentator in the country and giving the most authentic representation and defense of what half the country just voted for. That's my main focus. And I'm not, you know, I'm not I don't really have my my fingers in the new media landscape as much as I do the old media landscape. CNN, L.A. Times. You know, I've written for Gannett and my hometown paper in the past. I still very much believe in the role that those things play. And I also very much believe in the idea that conservatives, honest, authentic conservative opinions and voices need to have a place in those venues. And I will tell you, I think a lot of conservatives in the country believe they are no longer represented in mainstream media. A lot of people in middle America don't believe they are represented in mainstream media. And so one of the things that I'm very focused on is making sure that there is some representation of middle America and middle America, conservatives in these major media institutions. And I think I've done a fair job of that this year. I think it's vital that institutions warehouse people from across the political spectrum, whether that's universities, which are obviously overly represented of of the fringe, liberal, progressive, you know, persuasion. Media outlets, corporations. I mean, these are major institutions that have a huge influence on our daily discourse and on the public affairs in our country. How can they how can you operate those things with any credibility if you don't warehouse conservative voices and authentic conservative opinions? So at the moment, Axe, that's my mission. I do firmly believe I will be back in public service someday. I have not ruled out the prospect of running for office.

Honestly, just listening to you, it sounds sort of like you want DEI for the right, that somehow you feel that the right is unrepresented and you want to be an apostle for making sure that there are right wing voices, conservative voices everywhere.

My view is that if you if you believe that we need trusted institutions to function as a society, I would submit that these institutions have to be hospitable to people's voices from across the political spectrum.

But but but the reverse is also true, which is that if the reaction to that is to try and silence voices, to out scream, to defeat, to eliminate people who have different points of view, that's not a prescription for progress. That's a prescription for zero sum game trench warfare, which doesn't seem like a productive way to move forward as a as a country to me.

Well, I would tell you that I think some of the most prominent. People in our political culture who are looking to stamp out the voices in the public square on the left. Then you and I may have a disagreement about this.

Yeah, we do.

But I will tell you that after after our CNN stuff, one of the most common criticisms I get on social media is why is Scott Jennings allowed to be there? Why is he allowed to talk? Why is he allowed to exist? And I think the impulse on the left to try to shove conservative voices out of the public square is a real impulse. I don't I'm not arguing that you are. I mean, I know debate is productive.

Well, no, no, no. I mean, yeah. No, listen, I think it's for. I resist those. I answer that question all the time. I'm grateful that you are there. I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss these things with you on a regular basis, both on the air and off the air. And it's my fervent hope that we get the opportunity to keep on doing that. I will press you because I know that there are going to be days when this president is going to do some things that you are not going to like and that you are going to think are wrong. And I'm going to press you on those things as someone who has at times been drummed, drummed on by my own party for speaking honestly about the presidents of my own party. But, you know, I think that's our responsibility. I've seen you do it. I know you'll do it again. And if you don't, I'll just whup on you.

Well, this conversation has been very meaningful for me, as have all of our conversations over the last few years, but particularly the last few months, because this campaign, unlike the 2020 campaign where we were all trapped in our boxes, just gave us the chance to get closer and I have no fear of saying this publicly. I do love you, David. You have become one of my greatest friends and mentors, and it has been the best part of this job becoming close to you. And I admire you deeply. The day that you took me around New York City and showed me where you grew up and showed me the corner where you first saw JFK campaign in 1960, you showed me the restaurant where you used to meet your dad for lunch, and, you know, you and I shared some some close personal connections that day. And no matter, no matter what happens to either of us in the future, I just want you to know I'll never forget these times, because it's been a it's been a truly meaningful experience. I've come to think of you. I don't have a big family, but I've certainly come to think of you as part of it. So I appreciate being on this podcast.

That means a lot to me, brother. Right back at you. You've probably just ended both our careers.

In Kentucky, how can I ever get elected to the Senate now?

But it's great to be with you. Thank you for doing this.

Thanks, Axe.

Thank you for listening to The Axe Files, brought to you by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio. The executive producer of the show is Miriam Finder Annenberg. The show is also produced by Saralena Barry, Jeff Fox and Hannah Grace McDonald. And special thanks to our partners at CNN, including Steve Lickteig and Haley Thomas. For more programing from IOP, visit politics dot uchicago dot edu.