BUFFALO, N.Y. - June 13, 2018 marked 10 years to the day since the death of Tim Russert. NBC Special Correspondent and longtime NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw spoke on the phone with 2 on Your Side about Russert's lasting impact on Buffalo and political journalism.
BROKAW: "Well, he was more than a colleague, we were like brothers. We both grew up in working class environments. He had more of an Irish background than I did, but I came from a family, my mother's maiden name was Conley, so we had that Irish working class attitude about life and especially a love of politics, and I miss him everyday. We often talk about him, what would Tim be saying about what we're going through right now? An enormous appetite for the news, for politics, for what was going on in the world and he was perfectly suited to be covering Washington. I don't know of anybody in my career who had a higher set of marks, if you will, across party lines in Washington than Tim did."
QUESTION: Tim spoke so lovingly and so often of Buffalo and his hometown. What did that mean for his time in DC and how did he bring that to Meet the Press?
BROKAW: "I always thought of Tim first as a citizen of this country. He grew up in Buffalo, and we heard more about Buffalo than we sometimes thought we needed to because he was so passionate about that working class community and the impact it had on his life. So I thought of him as an everyman goes to Washington. Well educated at Carroll, law degree, worked on the hill, so he knew all the parts and he then shared it with the audience and the audience always felt that he was one of them, not some guy who bounced into the Washington atmosphere and became someone else. He was always the guy from Buffalo who had the interests of the average American first and foremost."
Question: Hearing people reflect on Tim's life, Chuck Todd mentioned how he and other staff members often think "What would Tim do?"
BROKAW: "They still do and a lot of politicians say to me, Republicans and Democrats alike, some of whom had some tough times with Tim, 'God, we miss him,' because the dialogue that he brought to Meet the Press and his reporting was so honest and so insightful. I don't remember a correspondent going way back who had the same kind of adulation if you will across the board in Washington. Young people, older people, Republicans, Democrats, the professionals, it was must see watching. Of course, with ratings, he blew the lights out. He absolutely dwarfed the other Sunday morning shows and he never tired of it and unfortunately, I think it had something to do with how we lost him too early. I had a big argument with him in the beginning of that year, he put on a lot weight and I said, Timmy, you've gotta take off some of that weight, we'll have a contest, so I knew he would rise to that occasion, and he started losing weight right away. Then when he got down to where we thought he should get to, he thought he'd won so he went back to his old habits. He didn't let us know that his cardiologist had a lot of concerns about his heart condition. He didn't need to go back to Washington, he'd been in Rome with his family. He came running back to do Meet the Press on Sunday and I always felt that all the stress of travel probably contributed to what was the premature demise of Timmy.
QUESTION: How do you see Tim's legacy at NBC being carried on?
BROKAW: "I think that he'd be very proud of the crowd that we have now. These are young people, more women than men covering politics. They went through a very difficult and historic campaign and never blinked. They kept their eye on the ball, all of them, Kasie (Hunt) and Hallie (Jackson), Katy (Tur). In my judgment, it's the best team that we've ever had in Washington and around the country. If you tune in to Nightly News every night, then you're going to get the best pros that there are. The senior person obviously in Washington is Andrea (Mitchell), as tireless as she is, and then down through the ranks, they're not prima donnas, they're working reporters and it's a great tribute that they feel to the legacy that Tim left."
QUESTION: Anything you'd like to add?
BROKAW: "I keep in my bathroom, a cheesy beer sign from Tim's dad's American Legion Post in Buffalo that Tim gave to me at one point and I keep it there as a reminder when I brush my teeth in the morning of how much I miss him and how utterly American he was in everything that he did. He was passionate about the country. He was not a partisan. He was a strong Catholic. Sometimes, I would say Tim, you're going a little too far by saying 'If there's a God in Heaven, the Bills will win the Super Bowl.' and when they lost, I said that that proves God is a Baptist, Tim, not a Catholic, and that was always a line that he liked to repeat."