Flashback: Brian Williams Tells Alec Baldwin about Being Shot Down in Iraq

Corwin Parks | February 5, 2015
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Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin, March 04, 2013
Transcript:


"Alec Baldwin: I never—I feel the same way. I think one thing that you and I have in common, and that is, it’s a decision you make. It’s like literally to me, it’s always the same image. And that is I’m in a ski chute. I’m in the chute of a ski run of a black diamond ski run; a very, very tough ski run. I say to myself, ‘There’s only one way down.’ I get a sense that you’re the same way, which is that, you know, as much as we’re like, ‘Pinch me, pinch me’, one of the ways we succeeded was we just jumped out of the plane and we pulled the ripcord and took it one step at a time, and we turned around, next thing you know, we’re skating.

Brian Williams: Yeah, there’s this ‘I got this’ syndrome. I guess I do say to myself and to others, ‘I’ve got this.’

Alec Baldwin: Yes I can.

Brian Williams: And I don’t know where that unbridled confidence came from, and I’ve done some ridiculously stupid things under that banner, like being in a helicopter I had no business being in in Iraq, with rounds coming into the airframe, but I -

Alec Baldwin: Did you think you would die?

Brian Williams: I also—briefly. Sure. There have been probably more than -

Alec Baldwin: A handful of those?

Brian Williams: Yeah. But and -

Alec Baldwin: Do you tell yourself that’s the job?

Brian Williams: Oh absolutely. You have my job and not go and sense and cover and feel these dual wars that we have asked these millions of terrific Americans to go fight, and they’ve raised their hands and volunteered for the honor of it, would be malpractice."

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