Interview: Rod Blagojevich

Q: Is your decision to be on the show, to possibly get yourself known by your potential jurors in a positive way?

RB: No! [That] had nothing to do with it. It was an opportunity to do two things: One, to try to earn a living. The false accusations have created an environment where different people that, you know, were eager to talk to me the day before all this happened, are afraid to talk to me now because of the circumstances surrounding me. And so it’s hard to earn a living, and support your family. And like most Americans, we’re like everybody else. We have a mortgage on our home and we have, you know, bills to pay and credit card debt. And so Patti and I are doing the best we can to try to work through this, and earn a living. But we got offers from other shows. You know, that would be sort of like the Gosselin family and Meet The Kardashians, where the reality show was about your real life.

Q: You used to box in golden gloves, so did you ever think about getting into being a sports commentator?

RB: You know, it would be a good fit. And the political arena is not unlike the fight game in many ways. In fact, there are more rules in boxing than there are in politics. And I can paint for you a metaphor or analogy about my circumstances now. I mean it’s like a 12-round boxing match, and the bell rang. And before I got a chance to even like plant my feet, I got sucker punched. Hit below the belt. And I’m going to come back from that sucker punch. But anyway, go ahead…

Q: You’ve been governor of Illinois, and now you’re down and out. How are you fighting back, and trying to dig yourself out of the hole that you’ve been put in?

RB: I’m certain of a confident outcome. I know that I’m going to be vindicated, because I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. The government secretly taped my telephone for six weeks. And how upside down is it when they then take snippets of conversations, and they take it out of context. And then they falsely accuse you of things like you’re selling the president’s senate seat for money. Which is one of the biggest lies ever told.

It’s the opposite of Watergate and Richard Nixon. When Nixon knew he did something wrong, his whole struggle was to try to keep those White House tapes from being released publicly. I from the very beginning have said, play every tape. The tape will show what the truth is. And, you know, Winston Churchill said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on.” And I’m not writing myself off as someone who’s going to run for public office again someday. And where was the press on this? I sure wish we had Woodward and Bernstein today, because there’s an epic story here. And if you’ve got a few extra hours, you may want to make a name for yourself and get on this. Because this is a story that’s completely upside down.

And by the way, the day before my arrest I should point out I was the only governor to take on the Bank of America after the taxpayers bailed out big banks. They said they were going to provide lines of credit to businesses to keep people working, and they lied and didn’t do it. And the day before I was arrested by a curious coincidence, I took on the Bank of America. And I suspended $2 billion of business with them, unless they provided a line of credit to a company where 45 workers were about to lose their jobs.

All of that worked out. They provided the line of credit. That leverage with the Bank of America helped those workers. And then the next morning, I’m arrested. And they got me out of the way in part, so they can get that successor of mine in there. And he’s become an emasculated governor who’s caved into the pressure, and now he wants to burden people with a 33 percent income tax increase.

He actually proposed a 50 percent increase originally at a time when people don’t have any money. And you know, there are several ways if you want to hear, how he can get out of that deficit without raising taxes. One is—you want to hear it or no?

[Publicist]: Um, we’re actually running out of time.

Q: OK, thanks. And I didn’t think you looked like Donnie Osmond.

RB: Yeah. Me either!