Rod Blagojevich
speaker
701 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 26 Mar
Rod Blagojevich’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Obama wasn't trying to force it. He was trying to make a deal to persuade me to do it. Or what would you get out of that? That's what we discussed for six weeks, and the FBI was talking about that. And we discussed all kinds of crazy ideas, a lot of good ideas. Spent two days talking about the possibility of appointing Oprah Winfrey. What? You might appreciate this. Yeah, I know.
She's from Chicago.
Okay. So we spent six weeks talking about all kinds of ideas because this was, to quote me, fucking golden. I'm not giving it up for nothing. We got a chance to do something with this. And all of these ideas and thoughts were discussed with my governor's lawyer on all those calls, largely because I knew these people were chasing me. They wanted to be sure whatever decision I made, it was legal.
We didn't cross lines or make a mistake. Maybe I missed something. And, you know, this was unique. And so I explored all kinds of ideas. I even spent one conversation. I think you might appreciate this. They played this at court in my first trial. My wife sitting there, loving, dutiful, devoted, faithful wife, sitting in a courtroom every single day at both trials.
And the media is in there every day. And they could do whatever they want, these prosecutors. The judge was their guy. And so they're playing all these tapes out of context. They're not allowing me to play tapes. We want to fill up the context. They only play 2% of the tapes. They denied 98% of them. To this day, those tapes are covered up because all kinds of people are on those calls.
There wasn't anything illegal about it. But Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid at the time was the Democratic leader – every possible big-time Democrats on those calls with me. But to go back to some of these crazy ideas, I was trying to appoint someone who was black but not in politics. I was looking for a military hero of some sort. Everybody wanted me to make them senators, you can imagine, in politics.
I wanted to think outside the box, and we were testing all these ideas, including Oprah.
If that's the case, I'm going to do what Ellen DeGeneres did. I'm going to move to England.
So anyway, so I'm at the first trial, they're playing these tapes and they had to give you these transcript books so you can see in writing what you can actually hear when they play the tape. And by then I had gotten used to trying to know what was coming so I can brace myself, you know. And they pick all the unflattering stuff. But none of it's criminal.
And if you put the rest of the calls in there, it fills out the context. Of course. So in this one particular call, I asked my lawyer, Quinlan's his name. Hey, Quinlan, what's the rule again on residency requirements? How long do you have to live in Illinois to be a senator? And he said, just one day. And you got to be 30 years old and you can be a naturalized citizen or American-born citizen.
So I say, because we were not finding the black military hero, why doesn't somebody go to California, ask Halle Berry if she'd like to be a United States senator? She comes to Illinois for one day, I'll make her a senator and maybe I could fuck her. I'm joking around. Right. Well, they play this, you know, in court. Oh, boy. And there's my wife sitting right there, you know. Oh, boy.
And I look ahead and I'm looking at the clock and there's like 10 minutes to go before noon where the judge is going to recess for lunch. And I'm thinking if I could just get there before they play this tape, I could at least, you know, kind of prepare her for what's coming. Right. And I made it. And so I tap her on the knee and I kind of showed her the book and I said, look, I was just kidding.
And her reaction was, what are you, 16? Right.
Yeah, and let's face it, most of us like that stuff.
No doubt.
So years would go by, and I'm sitting in prison. I'm making one of my nightly calls home, and my wife's on the phone. And that Billy Bush tape came out. What a slimy thing to do to Trump, right? It comes out, and everybody's writing him off as a president. He can't win. Pressured by his party to get out of the race.
And my wife was offended by it, and she's telling me, you have two young daughters. How could you possibly defend this? And I said, let me take you back to a day in court, okay? Before you judge somebody else, look at your own husband. And I told her about the Halle Berry thing and what I said. And I said, this is, you know, as you explained it.
And I think people have to realize that so many of these things that are taken out of context are taken out of context for a reason. It is to mislead the public and prejudice them against things.
Both.
Yeah.
Showing 281–300 of 701 · page 15 of 36
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