Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Luke Russert:

I think comparing him to today’s era, it’s like in sports, it’s difficult to compare someone who played in the ’60s to playing now, right? I don’t know how he would’ve done it in social media. I think that would’ve been very difficult for him. And I think when people try and compare what’s happening today, you go, “Oh, we missed Tim. We want more Tim Russert.” So I don’t know if the landscape lends itself to that. I really don’t.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Luke Russert. When Luke was first introduced to the world, it was in June of 2008 at the funeral for his father, the legendary Meet the Press moderator, Tim Russert. Luke was then just 22 years old, and he delivered a eulogy so powerful that in the days and weeks that followed, clips of his words were featured on cable news shows. It was an occasion that Luke would later call both his worst day and his biggest opportunity. That’s because he was soon offered the chance to join NBC News, the same network where his father had worked.

Luke would go on to become a congressional correspondent and he was climbing the media ladder when suddenly, in 2016, he stepped away from it all. He’s written a new book about his decision to leave NBC to travel the world and what he learned about himself in the process. It’s called Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself. I spoke with Luke about his relationship with his father, the culture of Washington DC, and the perspective he gained from his travels. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

Now, let’s get to your questions.

So folks, I had already recorded the Q&A portion of this podcast early Tuesday afternoon, but I jumped back in the studio today on Wednesday because there were a couple of big news items related to the issues we care about and talk about on the show all the time. So I jumped back into the home studio to address a couple of these things. First, since the time of my first recording, there was a verdict in the E. Jean Carroll trial against Donald Trump for defamation and for battery. The jury reached a verdict after just about three hours of deliberation after there was a two-week trial. So I find that that’s a little bit quick. Part of the reason maybe it was as fast as it was is there was a lot of evidence, there was the absence of Donald Trump, there was some devastating testimony from Donald Trump himself, even though he didn’t testify at the trial, but in the form of his deposition testimony, his misidentification of E. Jean Carroll, the plaintiff, as his former wife, Marla Maples, the playing of the Access Hollywood tape and how he responded to it.

There might have been some level of discuss on the part of the jury with respect to those bits of evidence. I’ve typically found, although this is not always the case and certainly wasn’t the case here, when juries are deliberating with respect to a case where there’s someone who’s high profile or powerful, they don’t hesitate to find such a person guilty in a criminal case or liable in the civil case, but they tend to take a little bit longer. The fact that the verdict was rendered so quickly is a sign to me that the evidence was quite powerful and the defense didn’t do a very good job. So Trump wasn’t found liable on every single aspect of the case that was brought by E. Jean Carroll.

As some people have pointed out, I think they’re overstating the point of this, but Carroll had alleged that Trump raped her, but the jury didn’t find him liable for rape, but the jury did find him liable for sexual abuse. And part of that is understandable because rape has a very specific definition that relates to very specific conduct about which there was no forensic evidence. And so maybe the jury didn’t feel comfortable as unanimous matter finding him liable on rape. It happened 23 years ago. There were not a lot of details about the timing of it and there were no eyewitnesses.

Now, with respect to the sexual abuse finding, the jury must have found some of the other testimony compelling, including the support of two witnesses to whom Carroll reported contemporaneously after the incident, we know about those witnesses, but also two other witnesses that some people might find odd that their testimony was permitted, that of Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, who testified that they had been assaulted and forcibly groped by Trump, Leeds in 1975 and Stoynoff in 2005.

Now, the question is, how come that evidence comes in when it had nothing to do with E. Jean Carroll, it wasn’t related to E. Jean Carroll, and there were totally different times from the conduct alleged by E. Jean Carroll, which he puts it approximately 1996? Now, generally, as you may be aware, there is, for good reason, a general ban on propensity evidence, that is evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts to show the defendant’s character and to argue that the defendant acted in conformity with that character. As a general matter, that doesn’t come in because it’s not probative, it’s considered prejudicial, and we consider cases on a fact-by-fact basis. However, there are some exceptions to this rule, and Joyce Vance and I have talked about this on the Insider Podcast, you can bring in other act evidence to prove motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, absence of mistake. If someone has robbed a bank in a particular fashion and on another occasion he robbed a bank in a particular fashion, you can sometimes use the exception to the propensity evidence rule to show that there was a pattern there or it was absence of mistake.

Now, in the area of sexual assault and sexual misconduct, there is a specific rule that allows the introduction of that other kind of evidence. And in this case, Judge Kaplan concluded the testimony of these other two women and the Access Hollywood tape together were admissible under this other rule, Rule 415, which relates to similar acts in civil cases involving sexual assault or child molestation permitted uses. And so here’s Rule 415, which I think was a big problem for Donald Trump and his defense. In a civil case, and this was a civil case, involving a claim for relief based on a party’s alleged sexual assault or child molestation, the court may admit evidence that the party committed any other sexual assault or child molestation. That’s a pretty big exception to the general rule against propensity evidence. So I think those are the reasons why Donald Trump was found liable very quickly.

So what are the consequences other than the 5 million that he has to pay? Presumably pending appeal. Well, one listener asked this question, and it’s a question that came in an email from Bob who writes, “Dear Pre, if Donald Trump is found guilty in the E. Jean Carroll civil rape trial, will he have to register as a sex offender? Regards, Bob.” Well, it’s no longer hypothetical with a quick answer to your question, Bob, is no. And part of the issue is how you framed your question. It’s a mistake people make a lot. Donald Trump was not found guilty or not guilty in the E. Jean Carroll civil rape trial because, as I said, it’s a civil trial. So the options to the jury were liable or not liable. The options were not guilty or not guilty. Those are terms of art reserved for criminal trials where prison is a possibility and as a potential consequence of being convicted, Donald Trump this week was not convicted of anything.

It was a civil trial with respect to two claims, a defamation claim and the battery claim. And she was awarded substantial financial damages to the tune of $5 million. Now, with respect to sex registry, there are laws, there’s a federal law, and many, if not all, the states have a similar law. The federal one is called SORNA, which stands for the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. And many states, as I said, have a version of the registration statute also for sex offenders. But in every instance that I’m aware of, registration as a sex offender only follows a criminal conviction for sexual misconduct, not a civil finding as we had in the E. Jean Carroll case this week. But under SORNA and similar state statutes, certain sexual misconduct can include rape, sexual assault, child molestation, and other bad conduct. And if you’re convicted on one of those charges, you’re required to register with law enforcement agencies in the state where you reside, work, or attend school, and to keep your registration information up to date. Donald Trump may face various consequences from being held liable, including having to separate himself from $5 million if the case is upheld on appeal, but he will not have to register, at least for now, as a sex offender.

And as I mentioned, not just one big story but two big stories happened after we stopped recording on Tuesday afternoon. That’s why I’m back. The other big news is after a lot of speculation, George Santos, the lying congressman from New York, was charged in a 13 count indictment by the Eastern District of New York US Attorney’s Office. And it’s interesting, and I’ll say one more word about speed as I did with respect to the E. Jean Carroll trial, as we’ve seen, there’s a lot of understandable impatience when complicated cases are being investigated and people are wondering, when are these charges going to be brought once it’s known and revealed that an investigation is taking place? Well, this is pretty quick. I mean, Santos only came into Congress in January of this year. And the stories about his lying and prevaricating, they’re only a few months old and we already have an actual criminal indictment out of the Eastern District.

What has he been indicted for? Well, among other things, converting campaign funds, representations he made to people saying, “Well, if you give me money, it’ll go to my campaign.” And instead, he converted those funds to personal use. But there’s another set of charges, which is head-scratching to me, but maybe not when you consider the character of George Santos, he apparently lied to receive unemployment benefits in New York, $24,000 in benefits, not a lot. He lied to obtain those unemployment benefits because he had a job that paid him, I think, $120,000 in Florida as a consultant. And then third, there was a scheme in which he made false statements on his financial disclosures that he was required to make in Congress, in the House of Representatives. So in some ways, I’m not surprised that he was charged. This is a person who lies and lies and lies in every aspect of his life in connection with his campaign, in connection with his past, his background, his mother. It’s not surprising that he might lie in other aspects of his life.

Now, the interesting thing to me also is although it is the case, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, that merely lying to the public even at a podium, even if you’re in public office like Donald Trump does quite frequently, and George Santos does arguably even more frequently, those lies are generally not criminal. They don’t expose you to criminal liability. But now that he has been charged and a number of the charges are specifically about false statements and about lying, some of these other lies he’s been telling can probably come into evidence. Though he’s not someone who can claim that he’s generally credible and these relapses in judgment of they were mistake or they were honest and he forgot, this is a person who, in his regular life and public life, lies again and again and again. And those lies and that pattern of lying, even though on their own may not be criminally significant, do become significant at a trial for the charges that have been brought against him today.

And finally, whether you like it or not, the fact that he’s been charged with a crime doesn’t cause him to have to resign from Congress. As Steve Scalise in the Republican leadership in the House has said, he’s presumed innocent. That’s our system. True. But that does not mean that the House of Representatives and its leadership, Kevin McCarthy and his team, can’t take some action against George Santos. At the time of this recording, they have not taken any action, but we’ll see.

Now, the fact that part of the charges relate to his conduct in the House, alleged false statements on financial disclosures that are owed to the House that every other member of Congress has to fill out truthfully and honestly and candidly, to the extent he didn’t do that, that’s a problem for him and that’s a problem for the caucus. Now, he’s already been removed from his committee assignments. That was a good first step. We’ll see what, if any, further action will be taken.

I’ll be right back with my conversation with Luke Russert.

It’s been nearly seven years since Luke Russert left his job covering Capitol Hill for NBC News. He’s written a moving new book about some of life’s larger topics, overcoming grief, searching for meaning, and prioritizing family.

Luke Russert, welcome to the show.

Luke Russert:

Thank you so much for having me on. It’s an honor.

Preet Bharara:

The honor is mine, and it’s just great to have you here for so many reasons. I want to start off by saying that I feel a deep kinship with you for a number of reasons. Number one, your connection to Buffalo. Buffalo is the first place in the United States of America that my family lived. So it was our welcome to the country.

Luke Russert:

Oh, wow.

Preet Bharara:

So I’m very fond. We moved away from there to Jersey when I was very, very young, but it holds a very important place in my heart and the heart of my family. Number two, one of our other loves, shared loves, Bruce Springsteen. I should note for the audience that you made it a condition of your appearing on this podcast that we would spend a few minutes talking about Bruce. We did a little bit of that before we hit record, so we’ll do more of that. And then third, obviously, and what we’ll talk about a lot, is your dad and my lifelong reverence for your dad and respect for your dad. So it’s a real treat and honor to have you.

Luke Russert:

Well, thank you so much and it’s an honor, it’s going to be fun to talk about Bruce and just have a point of personal privilege. I’ve been so impressed with your career over the years. There’s not a lot like you, my man. There’s not a lot like you and working in government and seeing just how-

Preet Bharara:

Well, going back … And look, I did the thing in a much, much lesser littler version of what your dad did, and we’ll get into it going from the world of government. And he worked for senator, I worked for senator, and he went into journalism. I’m podcaster, not quite a traditional journalist, but we’ll talk about all that.

Luke Russert:

I’d love to.

Preet Bharara:

And especially the Bruce part as we unfold. And some of the stories about Bruce intertwined with some of the stories we’re going to talk about with respect to your dad. So congratulations on the book, Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself. First of all, was it a hard book to write in terms of labor or emotion or both?

Luke Russert:

Yes, it took quite a long time to write it. It was actually a book that was quite organic. It was born out of these journals that I kept while I was traveling. And I left NBC in 2016 and I started traveling because I needed a reset. I was not fulfilled. I didn’t necessarily know who I was, independent of my parents, independent of the Washington bubble that I grew up in. And so I set out to the road to travel to find myself or just, more so than anything, take a breather, take a reset. And I filled up these journals and some of it was stream of consciousness, part of it was what I was feeling at a given time, et cetera. And I was going through a difficult period in 2018 where the travel had not led to that quick essential aha moment.

So I went back and I started to review the journals. And when I looked over them, I noticed something and it was, I was looking for something which was a level of acceptance by my father that I could be my own person independent of him. And then secondly, I was trying to outrun something and that was grief, and dealing with the grief of losing him because if I ever really processed it, I felt he would be gone forever. So it was going through those journals that I saw those through lines and I decided, you know what, I want to write something about this because I think it can help people who may be lost in regards to losing a loved one or just where they are in their life if they yearn for a reset, et cetera. And the difficulty in writing was getting all the words out, seeing what I had, and then secondly being honest in the pros.

Writing about yourself is not the easiest thing in the world. My mom’s writer for Vanity Fair. She hates doing it, really doesn’t do it.

Preet Bharara:

Some people have no problem with it.

Luke Russert:

Yeah, some people do. And I did … I learned to, and I was fortunate that I had an editor who pushed me in that direction and he said, “Look, you got to be honest because the reader relates to honesty.” But part of writing in an honest way is you have to maybe portray yourself in a manner of which is not comfortable, where you did look bad. And I did that. It wasn’t easy, especially coming from a family with my father, which was keep everything close, keep everything inside. But, ultimately, I think it was a better book and a better experience for the reader.

Preet Bharara:

Let me ask you this question. I think it was Ernest Hemingway who gave the admonition, write drunk, edit sober.

Luke Russert:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

I did the opposite. So I have a book came out a few years ago and, I hope my dad’s not listening, I wrote sober but edited after some wine. Did you have one or the other?

Luke Russert:

So I would say a lot of the journaling was done oftentimes at bars by myself while I was traveling. And it’s funny because you can see what hour of the night that some of those things were written at. But as far as the book itself, most of it, that was all done in sobriety because I did try that one time and it wasn’t good.

Preet Bharara:

Well, the funny thing is, if you ever do that on the couple of occasions where I tried and I thought maybe my inhibitions will be lifted, it’ll be easier to write about some of the stories and some personal things about myself, I once did this … I was having a real serious case of writer’s block, and I went and had three glasses of wine in the middle of the afternoon at a local cafe with my laptop. I wrote some stuff. I’m like, “This is really good.” And, of course, the next day, I’m like, “This is the worst crap I’ve written in my life.” So I stopped doing that.

Can we take a step back and as painful as it is to suggest, there might be listeners who are young and don’t fully appreciate who your father was as a news figure and as a journalist. And so I’m going to ask you, though, you obviously have the deepest connection of anyone to him. For people who are not familiar with the work of Tim Russert as a government servant, public servant, and as a journalist, how would you, in three minutes, describe his career, what he stood for, why people still think about him and admire him?

Luke Russert:

Well, he’s a quintessential American success story. He’s from South Buffalo, New York, the son of a garbage man who also worked as a truck driver. So two jobs for over 40 years. And he was the first member of his family to go to college, paid his way through school by working as a taxi driver, cleaning a rectory, tutoring, promoting concerts, all sorts of different odd jobs. And after college, ended up going to law school, although he never practiced law, passed the bar. And he went on to go work for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. And in 1977, a blizzard hit Buffalo and it paralyzed the city. And Senator Moynihan came to visit and my father escorted him around. And by the end of the day, he goes, “You know what, I need somebody like you back in Washington DC. Please come with me.” My dad goes, “I got my snow gear on.” He goes, “It doesn’t matter. We’ll get you close in Washington. Come on the flight with me.”

So he went back to Washington with Moynihan and rose to the ranks of being chief of staff. And he was greatly intimidated at first because he was in an office with these intellectuals from Harvard and Princeton and Yale, and they used SAT words all the time. And here he was, the son of a garbage man, he didn’t quite know where he fit in, and he voiced his concerns to Moynihan and said, “Maybe I’d be better off going back to Buffalo.” And Moynihan said something to him that he never forgot, which was that, what they have, you can learn, what you have, they will never learn. And that was a moment for him that said, “Okay, I belong.” And he parlayed that into a very successful reelection campaign from Moynihan in ’82 where he won over a million votes in New York State. Then went on to work for Governor Mario Cuomo up until the famous 1984 Democratic National Convention speech where a lot of people thought Cuomo was going to run for president eventually. And then he made the move over to NBC in ’84 as a vice president.

Preet Bharara:

Right. Well, let’s pause on that. So …

Luke Russert:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

… that’s one career trajectory that one goes on and I know many people who persist in that trajectory. And then he made the switch to NBC News. Why?

Luke Russert:

I think at the time, he saw that the next steps in politics were either he would get involved himself. There was a lot of people that wanted him to run, but he was never quite comfortable with it or that he was banking on Cuomo running for president. And we all know what his nickname was, was Hamilton, sorry, Hamlet on the Hudson, excuse me, which is that he never would actually go and run for the higher office. And whether my father was astute and saw that, who knows, but I think that played into it. Then also he got married and was growing, wanted to have a family, and had an opportunity to have a better salary.

Preet Bharara:

And he had you.

Luke Russert:

And he had me. So he made the decision, but when he did it, it was a difficult one for him to make because he didn’t have a traditional news background.

And he realized that there was one chance in the sense of you had to be completely nonpartisan and go in there completely objectively. It was also a time when news organizations were hiring from politics because they wanted leaders that understood people because the news business is people driven. You have to have viewers. You have to have readers. And he did a successful job at that. It wasn’t until 1991 that he was actually on camera. There was a lot of years there where he was working behind the scenes as the Washington bureau chief, as a VP in charge of the Today Show, where he was able to establish how the business worked and really help grow the NBC News brand.

Preet Bharara:

So then he eventually gets the perch of host of Meet the Press.

Luke Russert:

And that’s in ’91, and he takes Meet the Press, which is in third place in the ratings and makes it the number one Sunday morning public affairs TV show. And amass is a huge following.

My father was a very patriotic guy and he believed that if you’re going to make tough decisions, you have to be able to answer tough questions. And he learned as much as he could about his guests and then came at them almost in a prosecutorial sense from the other side, and it created for great television. But everyone who dealt with him felt that he was an honest broker because he went after Democrats as hard as he went after Republicans and vice versa.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Did he make enemies of any of his guests? Because he’s one of the few people, and I’ve been thinking about him and his style versus a lot of other people’s styles, people that I won’t mention by name, he was able to have to ask a tough question in a way that was not offensive to the guest. Is that a lost art?

Luke Russert:

I think so. I think part of it is that it’s grounded in civility, but it’s also grounded in a larger scale question, which is that you sir, you ma’am, are running for this position where you yourself believe you are better than so many others and that you deserve to represent millions of your fellow countrymen and women. And there’s an enormity to that. So when I ask you these questions, it’s not cause I’m coming at you personally, it’s because you yourself believe yourself to be the best. So you have to take the incoming. And I think a lot of people got that. And he was incredibly disciplined by never rising to a point of screaming or yelling his entire career. The only interview that he ever lost his cool was with David Duke who was running for governor of Louisiana.

Preet Bharara:

Well, give him that one.

Luke Russert:

A Nazi. And he said he just lost it because David Duke couldn’t answer basic questions like who’s the largest employer in the state of Louisiana?

Tim Russert:

What manufacturers are the three biggest employers in the state of Louisiana?

David Duke:

Well, we have a number of employers in our state.

Tim Russert:

But who are the three biggest manufacturers? Who are the biggest employers in the state of Louisiana?

David Duke:

I couldn’t give you their name right off, sir.

Tim Russert:

You don’t know who the biggest employers in the state of Louisiana?

David Duke:

Well, I don’t have the statistics in front of my [inaudible 00:24:21].

Tim Russert:

Are these the kinds of things that governor should know, who the largest employers are? How many people live below the poverty line?

Luke Russert:

And my dad says to him, “What did you hate so much about the United States that made you want to become a Nazi?” And that’s the only one that he lost his cool. My grandfather had a great line afterwards. He said, “Well, Timmy, if you’re going to lose your cool on somebody, you might as well be a Nazi.”

Preet Bharara:

You might as well be a Nazi. Do you think in the years since he held that job that the world has changed so much that if he were at the helm of a Sunday morning show, Meet the Press, or any of the others, that his style would still resonate? Or would it seem quaint or would it be refreshing? What do you think?

Luke Russert:

It’s a great question. I subscribe to the belief that when he died, it was really the end of an era. And what I mean by that is it was the end of the broadcast morning show, broadcast evening show, and the papers, a lot of it hard copy. And that was where in cable news and that’s where a lot of Americans got their news. It was before the internet really injected itself in your face every single day through social media. And that news was in that space. I think comparing him to today’s era, it’s like in sports, it’s difficult to compare someone who played in the ’60s to playing now. I don’t know how he would’ve done it in social media. I think that would’ve been very difficult for him. And I think when people try and compare what’s happening today, they go, “Oh, we missed Tim. We want more Tim Russert.” So I don’t know if the landscape lends itself to that. I really don’t.

Preet Bharara:

Well, you have to be glib and your dad was not glib. He was thoughtful. And those are different things.

Luke Russert:

They are, they are. It’s a great way to put it.

Preet Bharara:

So related question, because your dad was very good at asking hard but fair and thoughtful questions of people, not got you questions, and if they knew their stuff, they did fine, and if they didn’t or they were dissembling or they’re dishonest, they were exposed by this smiling tough interviewer. We have on the scene now a number of people, including the former president of the United States, who I think are among the most difficult people to come along in a long while to interview fairly and professionally. Do you have a sense of how your dad would’ve dealt with some of these characters, including Trump?

Luke Russert:

So Trump’s a great point because in 1999, my father did interview him because he was thinking about running for president on the Reform Party ticket. And if you go back and watch the interview, it is on YouTube. And what he does with Trump is he asks him policy questions and really gets Trump on the record about abortion, about nuclear weapons, about serious, substantive things. And then brings the personality into it towards the end about, well, is there anything in your past, in your personal life, that could become problematic for your ability to run the world’s greatest democracy?

Tim Russert:

People will say to Donald Trump, who are you to tell us how to run a government to balance a budget before your companies went bankrupt, Mr. Trump.

Donald Trump:

You know what, absolutely.

Luke Russert:

And that’s how, I think, we would be best served from our interviewers if they would go that route. Meaning, that if you actually ask these guys about policy and know the policy well enough that they can’t run out the clock, they can’t just bluster and put on this jocular bravado, then they’re exposed. And, unfortunately, so much of the interviews now are taken up personality questions that are very, you said this horrendous thing, how dare you run for president, and they can just deflect and defend and go back to their 30%. So that’s where he excelled. And to the point you just mentioned, it was all of that hard work, which you did in the courtroom, too. It’s prosecutorial, it’s amassing so much evidence that it will be beyond a reasonable doubt. And there’s just not a lot of folks that do that anymore.

Preet Bharara:

It’s not just Tim Russert who prepared, and I know that you know this, but I don’t know how many of the listeners know this, and maybe this is not true of everybody who’s ever been on the show, and I’ve now had the honor to have been on that show with subsequent hosts. But when I prepared Senator Schumer for a Sunday morning appearance on Meet the Press, he prepared very rigorously and very thoroughly, I’m sure he still does, and he has an even larger perch in Washington now, we gave him a thick memo on the topics that were going to be covered. And when they related to the law or the Supreme Court or Criminal Justice or the Department of Justice, I was the preparer and we would moot him. I mean, that’s how seriously people took being on a Sunday show generally, but being on Tim Russert’s Meet the Press specifically. So it was a mutual preparation fest, which I don’t know that that still happens to the same degree as it did back then. Do you have any sense?

Luke Russert:

I don’t think it does because if you look at these interviews now, and by the way, I want to say this is no fault of the hosts, it really does come from this new style, is they don’t allow for the long 24-minute blocks or the 32-minute blocks where you could actually have a substantive conversation. Everything now is so chopped up. And you touched on something that I really liked, which is that when you had well-prepared guests like Chuck Schumer, like Dick Cheney, it was a heavyweight fight and I think the viewer caught onto that and they enjoyed it, too. And it was substantive for the American people.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I just remember preparing him a number of times. The only negative association I have with your father is that when Senator Schumer got invited to be on Meet the Press, and it was always in person back in those days, no remote, that was a Meet the Press rule, at least for a long time, it meant the ruin of my weekend. It meant I was going to be working Saturday, Sunday, I was going to be up at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning, but then I got to go to the set. And for relatively young staffer, that was neat.

I want to talk about DC a little bit and then I want to talk about your feelings when your father passed and what your response was afterwards. You say some interesting things about DC and the culture of DC and I think a lot of people share those views. I had a slightly different experience because I didn’t come to DC until I was about 37, which is your age now, I think. And even I got to sense the way it’s a transactional town and people care about power and their own ascendancy, some, but it was a lovely place for me to raise, for a few years, my very young kids. So I didn’t have quite the same cynical sense, but maybe that’s because I lived a long life before coming to DC. Tell people what you talk about in the book and how you feel about the District of Columbia and its culture.

Luke Russert:

So it’s a great question because I grew up here and most of my high school friends, I keep very close to me, and we keep in close touch and we hang out frequently. And that’s a separate Washington from the Washington I described in the book. And the Washington that’s described in the book is really one of the power structure that is nicknamed The Swamp. And that is one that it’s very transactional where people will be your friend, but you don’t necessarily know why are they being your friend? Is it because they’re trying to advocate for something? Are they trying to get something? And there are some very well-meaning kind, friendly people, but most folks have to be … You got to be on most all the time in some capacity. And that can be tiring and that can be worrisome. And that’s where I would gravitate towards more of my high school friends.

Growing up here, my parents did a wonderful job of trying to preserve a very natural sense of order. And what I mean by that is, all right, you’re playing baseball, you’re playing football, you go to your homecoming dance, you have your pep rally, you walk the dog out in the neighborhood, you’re away from the intensity of the culture. But then on the other hand, it’s like you’re going to high school with the Senate majority leader’s kid and he comes and talks to you about Meet the Press, right? So there’s overlap there. That being said, I think it is a very nice place to live and there’s plenty of people, by the way, who live here that have nothing to do with politics and they really much enjoy it. But if there is a through line that is problematic, it’s that sense of, “Oh my gosh, are we ever totally trusting?” And it’s hard to get over sometimes. And I think for me, I was worn out from it.

Preet Bharara:

What was your sense growing up about how famous your father was and how he was viewed in the world, and how did that affect you?

Luke Russert:

I didn’t put two and two together until, I think, I was about nine years old. And we would walk into a restaurant, I could hear the whispers at a table and someone saying, “Oh, that’s Tim Russert, that’s Tim Russert, that’s Tim Russert.” And I would say … And then I would go over to my friends and play dates and I wouldn’t see their dads on those little screens. So something is different. But I always saw myself a little bit as his sidekick, and I enjoyed that. I think that’s what made his death that much harder because he was my guiding light. He was who I looked up to and I was happy to be around and charted the course. But for me, there was a lot of responsibility. I mean, for all the advantages that came with it, there was also the very serious talks that, well, you’re not allowed to screw up because if you screw up against the newspapers, whereas if your friends do, it’s a nonstory. And that was something that was hard to live up to all the time, and I did my best but it’s a pressure, for sure.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Luke Russert after this.

My sense of your dad from all of his public appearances and how he conducted himself was, among other qualities, he had humility. And many people in his position and with his success in multiple careers can’t be bothered with humility. What made him humble? Is it something beyond his humble beginnings and being the son of a working class person, first in his family to go to college? Was it something else? And how did he try to convey that spirit of humility to you?

Luke Russert:

He used to always say to me that you’re always loved, but you’re never entitled. And from a very young age … So when I was 14 in the summers throughout the rest of my life, he said, “You have to go get a summer job and you have to earn a paycheck and you have to understand how the world works.” So I did landscaping one summer, I worked in pizza delivery one summer, I worked in delivering freight off a truck one summer. And it was in those jobs that he took a lot of pride that I was able to do them, but then also understand at face value how the world work, how hard it was for folks to make their rent, how some of them dealt with some very difficult personal things. And it was also a very deeply introspective look into how I did against the backdrop of a diverse America outside of my own bubble.

So I really enjoyed those summers and those jobs, and that was all him pushing that. I think him personally, the humility really did come from my grandfather and that World War II generation. And my dad, he carried Buffalo on his back and he always thought that he had to remember where he came from, the city of good neighbors, and that to do anything differently would be to turn his back on his family and his community. And I think that’s really what, aside from his faith, was really what made up that humility was that this is my hometown, this is what I’m about, and I want those values to define me. I got to tell you, when being around the news business and you see some of those egos, I’m so impressed that they didn’t rub off on.

Preet Bharara:

Wait, wait a minute, wait a minute. There are egos in the news business.

Luke Russert:

Just a few, just a few.

Preet Bharara:

Name the top five. Yeah.

Luke Russert:

I would like a career after this podcast.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, well, we’re going to talk … So that’s an interesting thing you just said. So let’s come to the awful day in 2008 and I’m talking more than I normally talk because it’s just so great to have you. And I have a lot of thoughts and feelings and connection to a lot of these stories personally. And I remember I was working for Senator Schumer and it was an election year, and I was walking down the hallway in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. And at the time, we had Blackberries. I think the iPhone had been invented, but I didn’t have one. It wasn’t issued to me and I couldn’t afford one.

And you got these news alerts and I got the news alert about your father. And I’ve been thinking to myself, that felt like a punch in the stomach to me, and I’d only met him a couple of times. And the only other time, you’ll be surprised to hear this, that I can remember post being 35 years old that I felt a public figure’s death felt like a punch in the stomach. One was your dad, you’ll never guess who the other one was. They’re very similar in some ways, Prince.

Luke Russert:

No. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Because in part …

Luke Russert:

That was terrible.

Preet Bharara:

… he’s genius. And some other people, maybe I’m forgetting somebody, but I was very sad when McCain passed away and when Kennedy passed away. But those weren’t shocks.

Luke Russert:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

Those weren’t shocks. You describe with great detail and emotion what that day was like for you. Do you want to share some of that with the audience?

Luke Russert:

Sure. So it was June 13th, 2008 and we’re coming up on the 15-year anniversary, which is hard to believe. And I had been in Florence, Italy with my mother and a woman I was dating at the time, and it was a trip to celebrate graduating from Boston College, which I had just done three weeks prior. And my father was actually with us two days before and we were at the Vatican in Rome, and that was the last day I saw him was in Rome after a day at the Vatican, which was incredibly special. And I got a phone call after a day of sightseeing in Florence and we’re sitting at a cafe bar and I noticed the number, it was coming from NBC, so I assumed it was him. And I picked up the phone and I said, “Hello.” And I expected to hear my father’s voice on the end of the line, and it was his assistant.

And she said, “Hey, we’re trying to get ahold of your mom. Do you know where she is?” I said, “Well, she’s back at the hotel, she’s having dinner with some friends tonight, but what’s going on? I can maybe help you out.” She goes, “No, we really need to speak to your mom.” And I said, “Okay, but she’s not here. What can I do for you?” And they go, “Well, your dad fainted.” And I knew right away that that was it because in his entire life that I knew him, I think he missed one or two days of work. And my grandfather retired with all his sick days. So I write in the book to die on the job would be to dishonor it. And he really did die with his work shoes on. And it took about a half hour after that conversation once I was able to locate my mother and we were in the hotel room that the awful news was confirmed.

But one of the things that we were so blessed with looking back on it was having the ability to be overseas for that one day after the news hit because it gave my mother and I an opportunity to center ourselves, have a little bit of private grief before we came back to the US of which there was just such a public outpouring of grief that, really, we did not expect at any capacity. And there was a wake, which thousands of people came through here in Washington, DC and then eventually a funeral service. There was a private one in Holy Trinity Catholic Church and then one at the Kennedy Center that was public. But that’s my origin story, at least in a professional sense, is I’m three weeks out of college and this happy-go-lucky kid figuring out his next move. Yeah, thinking, yeah, maybe I’ll go into grad school for international relations, didn’t know, maybe take a gap year, do some social service abroad. I didn’t necessarily know. I was about to figure that out. And then I’m giving my father his eulogy and staring out at a church full of Barack Obama and John McCain and Joe Biden, Ethel Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton. So it was quite a fast growing up, if you will. Literally overnight.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I want to talk about the eulogy. And then you also gave a speech at the memorial, which millions of people … So I re-watched that recently. You had quite a different haircut back then.

Luke Russert:

I had more hair, too.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Well, didn’t we all? Didn’t we all?

Luke Russert:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

How did you decide you wanted to give the eulogy for your father?

Luke Russert:

In the Catholic tradition, it usually falls on a family member, somebody who was very close and the widow never does it. And it was not even much of a question when we were consulting with the priest. It was one of those things where it was my duty and I had to do it. I knew him better than anybody else and I knew that it would haunt me for the rest of my life if I didn’t do it. It’s actually a good question because that’s where the strength begins to build up was with that decision because people were saying, “Oh, you’re so strong, you’re so strong.” Well, it came from, I can’t let the guy down. And that was something that I did for a lot of years, which ultimately was detrimental to my own well-being.

Preet Bharara:

One of the great lines in your book, which I appreciate because I think that humor has a part everywhere, even on the saddest days, maybe even most needed on the saddest days. And you talk about giving the speech, and one of the things you talk about is how you see Ethel Kennedy, who’s experienced such loss, you see Joe Biden, who’s experienced so much loss, and your eyes locked with one or the other, but the support you really needed was towards the back of the room with your friends from St. Albans in Boston College as you write the ones for whom to them, I’m just talking about my dad, not some legend, just dad. They loved him for his parent role and their faces giving the support I need, I speak to them. But then you write, as you begin the speech, that it starts to go well and you write the jokes hit.

Luke Russert:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

That was important to you, that the jokes hit.

Luke Russert:

It was. And when you’re up there giving a eulogy, it’s so hard, especially one for somebody you love so much as your father. And one of the things that he was masterful at doing was being able to weave lighthearted moments into very serious conversations and topics. And I knew that I went up … If I was going to go up there, I didn’t want to cry at the lectern and I wanted to be the embodiment of him. And that was to drop in a few jokes in there and lighten the mood. And thankfully, they hit and they worked out.

I’m sorry to break the news to every charity group and university and club that he spoke to, but I had the same speech for all of you. He would just tinker it a little bit depending on who exactly he was talking to. So I would like to do the same thing from what I’ve said earlier.

One of the things with the jokes is that I just wanted to make sure that they honored his memory because he liked that jovial Irish sense of storytelling and having a joke thrown in there. And you also touched on another point was looking to my friends was really the only way I could have gotten through that speech because he was as friendly with them almost as he was with me. My dad, for being such a powerful Washington guy, did not like the scene. He did not like the circuit. He liked to be home. And I used to joke with him, I was like, “Well, Meet the Press is the greatest gig for you because you have to be home Saturday nights.” And he goes, “Bingo.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Luke Russert:

And I think they felt his passing is almost as much as I did because he was there for so many of my friends, too.

Preet Bharara:

And then you write, and this is remarkable, and as you say, you’re very honest here, so that’s a difficult painful thing for you to do, the loss of your father. And the speech was a very good speech. As you write, I’m told that it was very good, and I rewatched some of it in the lead-up to this interview. And you’re right, that single eulogy, that remembrance, will change my career trajectory and my life out of my worst day will come my biggest opportunity. Explain that and how you felt about that.

Luke Russert:

So almost immediately after I delivered that speech, I started to get calls from news executives and they go, “You’re so well spoken. We need more young people on TV. You have a political acumen from your parents and from being around Washington, and we want young people to cover other young people in the campaign. Would you have any interest?” And I was not naive to think that this opportunity would have come to me had I not given that speech or if I had a different last name. But I was also very much a believer in fate if there was a reason as to why things had unfolded to the degree of which they had. But I thought about it for a long time and I prayed on it and I spoke to my mom about it and she said, “Look, this is ultimately your decision. I’m not going to sway you in one direction or another. I think you need to grieve, but only you can come to the conclusion of when you’ve actually done that.”

And I was very headstrong young man, and I said, “You know what, I don’t want to sit around and be sad all day. I’m going to just throw myself into this and I’m only going to do it for one year to see how it goes. And if it’s a bad fit and I don’t like it, then one year is one year. I consider it my gap year and whatnot and move on.” And it was a very valuable learning experience early on. I was not insulated from criticism. I knew nepotism charges were going to come. Some of them were really mean and hard.

Preet Bharara:

Before we had this term, nepo baby.

Luke Russert:

Nepo baby, yeah, yeah. So someone jumped out as the original. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

The original nepo baby.

Luke Russert:

The OG. The OG.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Luke Russert:

Nepo baby. But I tell you, what it did was it taught me some lessons, which is that there’s a lot of people that wish you really well. There’s a lot of people that want to watch you fail. And it instilled in me a real deep hunger to prove the doubters wrong, which was something that it gave me a sense of purpose at that time along with upholding my father’s legacy. All that being said, if that becomes your focus, you’re not doing a lot of self-help. And I think, ultimately, I just burned out on that front.

Preet Bharara:

You said something interesting that we don’t really talk about much in the world. We talk about the people who helped us. We talk about the people who believed in us. We talk about the people who lift us up and propel us and encourage us and inspire us and all of that. We talk about that all the time.

Luke Russert:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

That’s what is interesting to hear about, that’s reciting debts you have to members of your family or friends. We don’t talk about, but you mentioned, are the people that wish you failure. And sometimes that comes from shocking places. People who are of your own age or generation or maybe in your acquaintance circle, because I experienced this. Look, I got a pretty big job at a relatively young age and not everyone was happy for me and not everybody wanted me to succeed. How did that manifest itself and what’d you learn about that?

Luke Russert:

It’s a great question because you do see the true colors of a lot of people who might be frenemies. They’ll be kind enough to you, but ultimately they view your success as detrimental to their growth. So they’re quietly rooting for you to fail. You have other people who generally want to support you and actually are doing that. And you have people that, just for whatever reason, absolutely want you to fail spectacularly. And it’s interesting, one of the things about my father was he was incredibly competitive and he had that, what I call, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant level of competitiveness, which is he did not want to lose. He hated losing, but he was able to put on a smiling face, which was authentic. But behind that smiling face was somebody who wanted to win. And I’ve always wondered, where did that come from? Just the I can’t fit in … Second place is the worst place to be. I think that was the chip on the shoulder he had from his upbringing and from being dismissed by people for many, many years.

But for me, that chip was, okay, here I am, I lost my dad. You might not like how I came into this position, but you’re coming at me. So just with all this vitriol and all this hate and all this anger, all right, screw you. I’m going to come back and prove that it was the right decision. And as you know, that’s a very powerful fuel.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Luke Russert:

But you don’t want to live in that space all the time because it ultimately will burn you out, too.

Preet Bharara:

Well, we’re going to get to the burnout in a moment, but some people say the best revenge is success.

Luke Russert:

Is a life well lived.

Preet Bharara:

Yes.

Luke Russert:

And a life well lived.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, life well lived.

Luke Russert:

Right. Lived in success. And that’s something where, to this day, I always tell people that, I said, “There are always going to be obstacles to overcome and they might be from your colleagues, but just keep on powering through.”

Preet Bharara:

I want to ask you more about your decision to take advantage of these opportunities to go into the same profession as your father. And your mother, we should also point out, is a very accomplished journalist herself. So not a slouch family that you grew up in. But did you, on the one hand, think part of the reason I might want to do this is it’s, in a way, honoring my father to follow in his footsteps like a baker’s child might join the bakery business. Or did you also think, “Well, a reason not to do this is I need my own identity and it’s maybe too easy to just do what my dad did?” How did you think about, feel about the footsteps question?

Luke Russert:

At the time, I felt that I was bringing comfort to people. And what I mean by that is that for a lot of folks, when they looked at me, they saw Tim and the light of Tim was still on, the flame was still burning. And that made them happy. And I gravitated towards that because when I was at the wake, there was so many folks who came up and just hugged me. And for many years, I would be walking down the street or I’d be sitting at a coffee shop or whatnot, and people would just come up to me and start crying and give me a hug. And I felt it was a duty to uphold my father and be there for those folks. Yeah, for them, for them, and for the public.

Preet Bharara:

Look, I will tell you, my wife and I were really thrilled when we started seeing you on television, A, because we thought you were terrific, but admittedly also for the reasons you describe. And we were rooting for you before I met you in a very, very substantial way. And I’m sure that was a feeling shared by many, many people.

Luke Russert:

It was. And it’s part of the reason why when I had great days, I really enjoyed it. And it’s also, though, something where as you get older, you have to reconcile with the fact is, okay, am I doing this for dad? Am I doing this for the viewer or am I doing it for myself? And I got to a point where I felt as if I wasn’t doing it for myself anymore, that I was in the full-time legacy management business, which for a lot of people, it’s a good business to be in. But I just reached a point where I wasn’t comfortable anymore and it was making me really anxious. And that’s when I decided it was time to reevaluate things.

Preet Bharara:

Before we get to your reevaluation, what are some of the high points and low points, you mentioned a couple of them, I guess, about being a journalist at that time? What was the best part? What was the worst part?

Luke Russert:

The best part for me was I adored being on Capitol Hill. I like to say it was like getting a PhD in American government with all primary source documents. I mean, it was so exciting. And even the worst days when we were in the middle of a terrible government shutdown or the lead up to the healthcare bill and you had to work 20-hour days for three weeks straight or whatnot, I just found so much value in them and I’ve found them so fascinating. I mean, the cliche of being on the front row seat to history, it is a really neat, wonderful experience, and I love that. I think the harder stuff, especially in television, is just there’s so much infighting and the job itself is hard enough when you have to deal with infighting in your network and then you have to deflect all the political vitriol that comes your way.

There’s just so many things that you have to manage at one time. Some people, they handle it really well. Other people self-combust. I think I was probably in the middle, but it’s not easy. And I think one of the sad things, and I live this because I saw it, was the news coverage in o’08, ’09, and ’10 was relatively civil. And then when Twitter really gets going, everything just changed and it really blew up what had been something that was more, I thought, respectful and journalists started to read about themselves and then started to compete with one another and people would throw spears at one another. And I don’t think we’ve ever recovered from that. And the current news environment is an outgrowth of a very aggressive system that social media implemented.

Preet Bharara:

I want to talk about the trigger for you leaving journalism and starting to travel, but before I do that, I wanted to go back for a moment to talk about the memorial and your eulogy. And one of the most remarkable things that happened that day, at least from my perspective, was that a person we mentioned at the outset of the interview, Bruce Springsteen, sang and he sang my favorite song, which I understand is also your father’s favorite song, Thunder Road. How’d that come about?

Luke Russert:

Yeah. So my father and Bruce were friends. My father was very close with Max Weinberg, the drummer of the E Street Band, and they had gotten to be very close over the years and friendly to the point where they spoke almost weekly and often dine together. And my father actually paid for law school by booking a Bruce Springsteen concert in 1975 and used the money he made from that show to pay for law school. It’s a true story, along with some money from a Pinochle game, but that part, we don’t talk about as much. But just always grew up … I grew up with Bruce as the background music to my household whose, far and away, my father’s favorite artist.

So when he passed, they were on tour and got a message from Max soon after it happened and he was just so sorry. He goes, “Bruce is going to go on stage tonight and say something.” And that was in … I believe he was in Cardiff, Scotland when that happened or Wales, forgive me if I’m getting my geography mixed up. And then they reached out and said, “Well, is there anything we can do?” And I think someone in my family was like, “Well, Tim loved Bruce. If Bruce wants to play a song, that’d be great.” And Tom Brokaw was involved in it and Bruce sent a wonderful adaptation of Thunder Road that …

Preet Bharara:

It’s one of the best.

Luke Russert:

… to this day-.

Preet Bharara:

I still listen to that.

Luke Russert:

And I tear up when I watch it. It’s just so beautiful, especially [inaudible 00:55:42] “Luke, this is for your pop.” And it’s just Bruce Springsteen’s met the moment for so many years and he did it that time, too.

Preet Bharara:

As I said at the outset, he did this interview on the condition that we talk about Bruce for a few minutes. You got two more minutes to talk about what Bruce means to you. The way I describe it is I always like to paraphrase John Stewart who said once on his former show, “Do you like Joy?” Because if you like Joy, you should go see Bruce in concert. So as I mentioned to you before we started recording, I saw his final show on this leg at MSG. I thought it was phenomenal. And I wonder if you had the same reaction that I and some other friends of mine had, which is they seem more playful this concert tour than I’ve seen previously. There’s a little bit more making of faces and Stevie and Bruce mucked it up a little bit at the microphone. I thought it was also more instrumental. I thought there were more horns than I usually hear. Did you have any of those reactions or different ones?

Luke Russert:

I did. I think coming out of the Springsteen on Broadway where Bruce really went into a deeply internal journey and gave it to all of us, which I am so blessed to be able to see on the second time around there. I think that, at least from how I see it, gave him a sort of … That was an outlet to get a lot of things off of his chest. And I think what you’re seeing in this tour is the playful banter that they were known for a lot in the ’80s and the joking around and playing through. I was really touched, though, about how he mixes in the very real sense of mortality. But then it has these happy moments intertwined without the show as well. But to close the show with, I’ll see you in my dreams, is just so perfect, right?

Because you have the party and then it goes into this solemn end, but you leave still uplifted when I think, at least for me, and I wrote a whole book about this, was getting to that place of peace and getting to that place of peace is through acceptance. And I think through Bruce [inaudible 00:57:47] accepted his mortality except that he’s not going to be able to do this forever. But what he’s been able to do is a beautiful thing and he’s spread so much joy for so many people and that comes together every night when he’s in concerts.

Preet Bharara:

You’re going to see him when he comes back for the stadiums?

Luke Russert:

Yeah, I’m very excited for that. Definitely Camden Yards in Baltimore. That one, I’ll probably ball my eyes out because that was just such a special place for my father and I when I was a young kid, and they don’t really have concerts there. So that’ll be a special one for me. And then I’ll probably sneak over to Nats Park as well.

Preet Bharara:

So after Bruce sang, and this is famously known, and I saw you do an interview a few days ago with Andrea Mitchell and you talked about this, and it’s almost hard to believe if you weren’t there, but I see on the TV that there’s … Because it had been raining, I guess, that there’s a very robust rainbow over the District of Columbia. And I remember leaving my jerks in office because I had a little TV in there to go outside and see if it was CGI or not, and it was not CGI. Talk about that.

Luke Russert:

So we had a soundtrack for when people were processing in and out of the Kennedy Center, and the song we processed out was Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which was one of my dad’s favorites. And it was there, and I don’t know how else to describe it aside from dad saying hi, but on a very difficult day, that was just a moment which was so incredibly affirming. And what I mean by that is that it affirmed that dad was okay, that I did a good enough job, and that we were going to get through this. And I held on to those rainbows. I still do to this day. They’re such a source of comfort for me. And one of the things I write about is no matter what your faith is, just be observant. There’s a lot of signs out there that sometimes we miss, but look for them. They’re around us.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s fast forward. You are a highly successful on the merit in your own right, nepo baby, doing your journalism, but you’re starting to get a little, I don’t know if burned down is the right word or if that’s a phrase that you use, but you get summoned as you write in the book to a very powerful person’s office. I can’t remember now if he has a glass of wine in hand or not. Who is that person? And what did that person say to you?

Luke Russert:

He has a cigarette in his hand. There’s a can of cigarette.

Preet Bharara:

I knew it’s some vice. I knew it was something.

Luke Russert:

Yes. And a golf magazine and it’s House Speaker John Boehner.

Preet Bharara:

John Boehner.

Luke Russert:

Who I covered rather aggressively. And I thought he was upset about coverage. I thought I was going to be chewed out for something that he didn’t like. But he is a very kind guy and a chill guy.

Preet Bharara:

But he summoned you personally and alone, right?

Luke Russert:

He did.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Luke Russert:

It’s one on one. And he asked me, “What are you doing here?” And I said, “Well, sir, you called me into your office. What do you mean what am I doing here?” He said, “No, what are you doing here on Capitol Hill?” He goes, “You’ve been here about eight years. You could do this job with your eyes closed. You may benefit from getting out of here because I know a lot of folks that stay here 20, 30, 40, 50 years, and this was their entire life. They never left. And make sure that that’s what you want, that you’re not just doing this for others or for your dad, and make sure that this is really something that you value because there’s a whole world out there. And each year that goes by, you have less of an opportunity to grasp it and understand it.” And it was an incredibly eye-opening conversation because I had harbored some of these feelings before that.

I was anxious. I didn’t know if I wanted to do the job anymore. I didn’t know necessarily why I was doing it. Was I doing it for myself or was I doing it to uphold a legacy? And what Boehner did was almost give me a sense of validation because he had a very similar upbringing to my father, he worked his way through college, came from a large Catholic family, in his case, Cincinnati, and he had a fellow Rust Belt boy. And when he said that to me, it was a, “Oh, gosh, this is the guy who’s at the top of his game. He’s second in line to the presidency. He got the Pope to come to Congress for gosh sakes.” And he’s saying, “Hey, go check out something else.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, get out.

Luke Russert:

It was a really eye-opening. Get out, get out. It was eye-opening.

Preet Bharara:

Are you sure he wasn’t just trying to get rid of an aggressive reporter?

Luke Russert:

No, because he was gone soon after that.

Preet Bharara:

And so that actually made you think.

Luke Russert:

It did. And I think one of the things that I write about, and you obviously know this very well, too, is when you are in those positions, especially around government, there’s always the next thing. It’s always the next thing. And the hamster wheel never stops. And, okay, there’s the next budget negotiation, there’s the next Supreme Court decision, and how is that going to be legislated, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I realized that I had never really taken any time for myself and never really processed all that it had happened and never really tried to understand why I was maybe not whole, why I was unfulfilled. And so I knew that the only way to do that was I had to get out. I had to leave the bubble that had been quite good to me but also had shielded me from releasing the world.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask you a final personal question and then let you go?

Luke Russert:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

Well, it’s not too personal because you talk about it yourself in the book and you talk about, and I think it’s important that we talk about these things and make it comfortable for other people to talk about them, and to be in solidarity with people who have things like anxiety. And you talk about your anxiety and you have a line in your book in which you say they’re people, even if they’re hidden, compartmentalized, or stored away these anxieties, there’s still something you have to deal with. And you write, “I realize I’ve been white-knuckling my life.” What does that mean?

Luke Russert:

So white-knuckling is when you ostensibly power through and you are unconscious of the level of trauma and stress that you’re carrying. And it’s something which, especially for men, is an easy thing to do because it coincides with the idea of toughness. And there’s a difference between being tough and consistently white-knuckling. If you’re … Okay, let’s say you’re sick one day and your company really needs you to perform or, in your case, you got to go to the courtroom, I’m not feeling well, but I’m going to come through it because, my gosh, the whole case is resting on this or it’s the state of the union, I got to perform. All right, that’s one thing. But if you are consistently waking up and you feel anxious, you feel off, and you consistently white-knuckle, which is you’re grabbing the side of the chair to get through something without passing out or without falling over, that’s a problem.

And I write about in the book how there was one moment at the Capitol where I was so anxious about the job. I felt as if my necktie was strangling me. And I actually fell over in one of the tunnels and I caught myself along the wall and a person saw it and they go, “Are you okay?” And I just completely lied and I said, “Oh, these are new dress shoes and they’re slippery.” They weren’t, they were three years old with a hole in the bottom. And it’s one of those things where you don’t talk about it because you don’t want to get into that space of vulnerability because vulnerability, I think, for a lot of years, for me, I associated with, “Oh, I’m weak. There’s people who have it so much worse off than me. I’m this privileged kid. Yeah, I endured death, but shut up, Luke, just keep doing your job.” And ultimately, it doesn’t work like that. You got to wrestle with, why am I feeling this way? And I was able to do that once I was able to get away from the job a little bit.

Preet Bharara:

So I lied. That was my final personal question. I do have one final professional question, which maybe you didn’t think I was going to come back to. At some point earlier in this interview when I jokingly said, “Name some terrible people in media,” and you said, “I hope to have a career,” are you telling us something? Because you have not asked me my advice, but this is not a bad inflection point, not a bad moment. You’ve done some reflecting. You’ve written a book, people are seeing you on TV again, they’re being reminded of your demeanor and your ability to speak plainly and intelligently about things that are going on, not just in your own life, but about everything else. Is there a contract that you’re looking at or that you would look at?

Luke Russert:

I like the storytelling space. I don’t know if I would ever want to go into the daily political grind again, but I never say never about anything. I mean, one of the things that I find so fascinating, and it goes back to what you and I spoke about in the earlier part of this conversation, is that we really don’t know what the format’s going to be. And I’ll just give you one example. When I was in NBC, it was absolutely paramount that you had to be tethered to the camera and you had to be available to go on at all times, and it had to be at the bureau or on the Capitol or whatnot, and now they put Zoom on TV. Now, they have people reporting from their cars through their phones.

Preet Bharara:

From their crappy closets.

Luke Russert:

Yeah. And it’s like … Yeah, from their closet space. It’s all like, “Oh, okay. It’s not as difficult as it used to be because you don’t have to be chained to the TV camera at the White House on a Sunday for 22 hours.” So we’ll see. But I like this storytelling space and I like not being directly involved in politics on a day to day. I’ve been so blessed to have such a wonderful response so far to this book. A lot of people have written to me and said it’s helped them through grief and that was the whole reason why I wanted to do it. And I’m ecstatic that that’s the case.

Preet Bharara:

Luke Russert, the book is Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself. Thanks so much for being with us. That was really great and a treat.

Luke Russert:

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Luke Russert continues for members of the CAFE Insider Community. To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

I want to end the show this week by talking about loneliness. You may have seen that last week, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published an 82-page advisory about the negative health effects of loneliness and went so far as to call it an epidemic. The advisory calls attention to the increasing rate of loneliness among Americans of all ages, a trend that started even before the COVID-19 pandemic. And the consequences of loneliness can be more severe than people may think. Depression, anxiety, heart disease, stroke, and dementia. Research shows that the effects of loneliness and social isolation can be as severe as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Basically, loneliness kills.

Now, we can talk a lot about what is causing such profound loneliness in the country, and we likely will. But today, I want to highlight the work of a group of women to combat loneliness.

Walking. Yes, walking. City Girls Who Walk is a group dedicated to a weekly walk around Central Park in New York City. Strangers, friends, friends of friends, New Yorkers and tourists joined together every weekend with the intention of simply walking and talking. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the group’s founder, Brianna Kohn, started the Walking Club last March after many of her friends had left the city during the pandemic. She was lonely and looking for new ways to make connections. So she posted on her popular TikTok page, inviting followers to join her for a walk in the park, and people showed up. One year later, City Girls Who Walk brings hundreds of women to the park every week to stroll and meet new people, and it’s inspired similar events in cities all over the country. Photos of the group show people with their dogs, their kids, and extra layers in the winter months.

Yes, they’re that committed. They’re not just talking the talk, they are literally walking the walk. And the goal of the community has been realized. These women feel more connected and less lonely than they did before. One walker told the Journal, it can be hard to make friends in a big city. This is pretty easy. You just show up and walk. Another said, “It’s pretty surreal to have strangers become friends.” I wanted to highlight this story because I know that loneliness can feel crushing in our post-pandemic world of social media and remote work. It can be difficult to find connection and community. And sometimes the solution can be as simple as taking one small step and then taking another and another. If you want to check out City Girls Who Walk, take a look at the episode show notes.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Luke Russert.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag Ask Preet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 66924 Preet. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. The CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Wiener, Jake Kaplan, Nama Tasha, and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.