Luke Russert appeared on the Today show via satellite this morning to share some fond memories of his late father, Tim Russert, who passed away on Friday. “I spoke to [Tim] at least two or three times a day,” Luke said. “There was always a lot of love from him. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t know my father loved me.”
Below, a roundup of what the newspapers and his famous friends had to say over the weekend:
From the New York Times: “[Al] Hunt, of Bloomberg News, said that in one of the last of their nearly weekly conversations, early this month, he and Mr. Russert relished the opportunity to cover this year’s presidential campaign. As his old friend recalled through tears Friday, Mr. Russert marveled, ‘Can you believe we get paid for this year?’”
From the New York Post: “Said longtime friend and attorney Robert Barnett yesterday: ‘If it’s Sunday, it will always be ‘Meet the Press’ with Tim Russert. I am absolutely certain that today he will be moderating in the hereafter with Bobby Kennedy, Pope John Paul, Richard Nixon and FDR as the guests. What a show that will be.’”
From the New York Daily News: “There was no tougher interviewer on TV, yet there was also no one who was more civil and properly respectful of the offices held by his question-and-answer subjects. Be they Democrat or Republican, all got good faith, a best effort at fair treatment and full opportunity to speak.”
From the Washington Post: “Tim Russert, without the slightest doubt, was in love with his life and lived it with contagious esprit. He got to do what he most wanted to do, and thus did it with a seemingly unstoppable zest. But nothing is unstoppable; that might be one cruel moral of the story.”
Katie Couric: “Tim was a big teddy bear of a guy, but he was also a pit bull of an interviewer. He always held people’s feet to the fire, often using their past words with great effect to reveal flip-flops or hypocrisy. While Tim was incredibly tenacious, he always did his job with great humanity and respect.”
Chuck Schumer: “Many forget, but most believe, that [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan would not have won his first re-election but for Tim Russert. Moynihan faced a formidable foe in Congressman Bruce Caputo, but Tim discovered that Caputo had exaggerated his role in Vietnam, ending any chance Caputo had for an upset.”
James Carville: “The biggest insult to him was that someone would come here and wasn’t prepared. If you came prepared, it was going to be a good interview.”
Mary Matalin: “You weren’t a candidate until you came on this show. There is no ‘gotcha,’ but it was not easy. You had to be ten questions deep because he was going to be twelve questions deep.”
Maria Shriver said Republicans such as her husband and Democrats such as her uncle Senator Ted Kennedy “were equally terrified, I think, to go on the show.”
Bruce Springsteen: “Tim Russert was an important, irreplaceable voice in political journalism … I’m going to miss looking down seeing that big smiling face in the crowd. Tim, God bless you. We will miss you.” —Noelle Hancock
