NYC Radio: ABC's George Talks About NBC's Brian

Former senior advisor to President Clinton and current chief anchor for ABC’s Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos has had quite the career. He sat down with Alec Baldwin on WNYC 93.9 FM's  "Here’s The Thing"  Podcast to give an inside look at his transition from politics to journalism, and his thoughts on the Brian Williams scandal.

Some excerpts from the interview:

 On the Brian Williams scandal…

George Stephanopoulos:  And everybody has been watching this and trying to figure out.  It’s like when something happens in your business, you know, we are all following every twist of this and trying to put it all together.  I’m not friends with Brian, but I see him around a lot, I like him…But also, I got to say, I’m surprised, I didn’t quite understand how it got into the broadcast.  You know, we all are surrounded by big teams.  And that was a little bit surprising.

On applying for a job at ABC out of grad school…

GS: I was about 25 then, and I actually applied to ABC News, applied to Nightline and got a very kind but very terse one line rejection letter from Rick Kaplan at Nightline.

 On leaving the White House and moving into journalism:

GS: When I left the White House in early ’97, I guess I was, what 35, 36 then. I felt much older… white house years are dog years multiplied… I knew I didn’t want to be someone who just hung around Washington trading off of what he had done forever. I knew that in order to feel my age again, I had to start a different career.