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
And I think I think he kind of liked me on celebrity apprentice He liked the way I was fighting back. I know that and But he fired me on that show and freed me from prison. He's historic. He fired and freed the same guy. Even Lincoln didn't do that.
Yeah, boy, it's a great question. Look, the hardest period during this whole thing was the months after the conviction to the day that you surrender because now you know you're going away and you're fearful it's going to be long. In fact, days, a couple of months before the sentence came down, I'm jogging, I'm running through the neighborhoods and I see that was newspapers back then.
It's a newspaper box, front page, big colored picture of me. I see it. I'm running past it. I saw the headline briefly. I came back running in place. I see it. 30 years to life. The prosecutors are asking for 30 years to life on me. Life. Yeah. Jesus Christ. I never took a penny. They don't even say I took a penny. It was all talk about politics. So, you know, I got home faster.
That sort of stuff quickens your pace a little bit, you know?
But that period was the hardest. The moment I stepped into prison, I write in my book that one advantage of crossing the threshold in the prison was that with every now, with every tick of the clock, you're one second closer to this nightmare, this Kafka's nightmare finally being over. One second closer to coming home to your daughters and to your wife, even though it might be 14 years.
And one less second, you know what I mean? But at least it's starting now. You've hit the bottom and now you're trying to climb it back up just from a time point of view. But that first day, I'll work backwards. I'll never forget the first night after that long, long day that I went through. You know, the media was covering me like I was OJ Simpson.
They were at my house at 5.30 in the morning when I kissed my little girl's goodbye. My little Annie Banani was eight years old at the time. She's in her pajamas and she hugs and squeezes me. And my daughter, Amy, she was a sophomore in high school. She was 15. And we're all in the foyer. It's all dark because you got all these media trucks around your house.
We live in a neighborhood, a normal neighborhood, just not gated. And they're all over the place. And so they look into your house. So we had to keep the lights off. Kiss my wife goodbye, my two daughters. The hardest thing I've ever did was saying goodbye to them. But you got to be strong for them. And you can't show those assholes in the media that you're dying inside.
So you've got to be strong when you step out. There's all kinds of film footage of that when I left. And there's a helicopter that follows me, a news helicopter from my house all the way to O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Like I was O.J. Simpson in that White Bronco. I called the chapter My White Bronco Moment.
and uh and then when i got on the at the airport there was this big gaggle of media there and then when i get on the plane these are on the plane they bought tickets so i can't even like you know get give it a second to think about what just happened me saying goodbye to my family and i'll be gone for worst case scenario 14 years but if i behave myself it'll be 12 and a half years right good behavior and then i land in denver
And they're there. And so I'm trying to leave the plane. They're all waiting there at the gate. And then the people in Denver were really nice at the airline. I think it was United Airlines. And they got me out a side door. And they had a car waiting. So I was able to leave. And for a moment, I thought I was away from the media as I'm about to drive to prison. But no, they caught us.
They caught up with us. And I got there a little bit early to prison. So I told one of my lawyers who was driving me, you know what? We're like a half an hour early. I'm already giving him 14 years. I don't want to give him 30 minutes more. Let's stop for a cup of coffee or something.
So I went to this little restaurant, a little fast food place called Freddy's in Denver, the Denver area, Littleton, Colorado. And it was really surreal because people knew who I was and they were really warm and loving. I'm signing autographs. You'd never know. I'm about to go to prison for 14 years. And then the time came to walk in.
And I learned later that Trump was watching this because it was all live on television. And he had tweeted about it that day. I mean, I got a million reasons why I love Donald Trump. I was so alone. Everybody of prominence in politics and government and in the media were calling me all these nasty things.
And here's Trump, the only guy who had some authority and had a following, was the only guy saying positive things about me. They were compassionate. He wasn't necessarily saying... He was saying that I denied it and I'm entitled to a presumption of innocence. But there was compassion with Trump. And he tweets that day. I learned later.
I didn't know it then, but I learned when I came home that he tweeted that I see him walking into prison. He gets 14 years. Murders and rapists get four years. Do you think this is justice? I don't. Just a loyal guy to a guy that was on his show because I don't really know him that well. But to me, it says a lot about who he is as a person.
But then I walked in, and I get greeted by all these inmates, and I was a – People ask me, were you afraid? I wasn't afraid of anything. My life was so beaten down by what they did. I was so disillusioned. I was angry. There was bitterness, but I was mostly heartbroken and sad and missing my children, fearful of my children, my wife. They were left alone. I couldn't protect them.
People knew where we lived. The media made sure that everybody saw where we lived because they were always in front of our house. I was worried about their safety. I knew I had all those years to do. And
um now i'm in prison and all these guys are watching me coming into their world on live television so i had two things going for me in terms of my my stock with the fellow inmates number one i was a quasi you know sort of a so i was a celebrity inmate they just saw me coming into prison nobody gets walks into prison live tv and the bigger part the more important part was i got what they call a 14 piece that's the vernacular of our inmates talk he got a 14 piece
It means he didn't snitch on anybody. See, anybody who gets a long sentence means they're getting punished because they wouldn't talk about anybody. The guys who walk in with light sentences become immediately suspect by the inmates. It's the culture there. As snitches. And they hate the snitches. Snitches are bitches who get stitches. Right? That's what they said. Sure.
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