The Daily - Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018

Episode Date: January 24, 2018

Tonya Harding had talent, but the world of figure skating wanted nothing to do with her. She was called “white trash.” And when Nancy Kerrigan was bashed in the knee just before the 1994 Winter Olympics, Ms. Harding became a villain. Now, 24 years later, her narrative is being revisited — and she is back in the spotlight. Guest: Taffy Brodesser-Akner, who interviewed Tonya Harding (now Tonya Price) for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily Watch. Today, the world of figure skating wanted nothing to do with her. She was called white trash. And then, Nancy Kerrigan was bashed in the knee, and she became a villain. Now, 24 years later, her narrative is being revisited. It's Wednesday, January 24th.

I'm not Tonya Harding. Oh, you're not anymore? No, I'm Tanya Price. Would you like to be listed as Tanya Price? Like when I write about you? Well, everybody knows me as Harding. It's Harding, right. Did you ever feel like, why won't it fade away? No. Or did you know it never would? I knew that this would be with me for the rest of my life.

In December, my colleague Taffy Brodesser-Ackner took a flight to Portland, Oregon, where she rented a car and drove north to Vancouver, Washington. That's where she met Tanya Harding for the first time. So I went out to meet her. We went to a bar and restaurant that she likes.

It's a skating-themed bar, and a pair of her signed ice skates hangs over the bar, and the bar looks like an ice rink. So she's known there. She is known. Who is this thing? I go a-walkin' after midnight. How do you look?

We sat down and we had a drink and we began to talk. And she is tiny, so that if you look at the pictures of us, it looks like I'm Gulliver and I'm visiting Lilliput. And she's so lively. She moves her entire body when she speaks. She shouts, she whispers, she laughs. I still have half a life. I don't know. She makes, like, dumb jokes. Get up and run! It's gonna kick your ass! And it did! She was very funny and very personable. I hunt with a bow and arrow.

She hunts for food, for deer and elk, although she, because she's a felon, she cannot use a gun. She uses a bow and arrow, and she can build things. She can fish. Oh, yeah. I'm the expert fisher. You are? Oh, yeah. They could get, you know, five or six a day and I got like 15. She believes in gun rights.

Because my husband's a muzzleloader. You have to tell me about that. Muzzleloader, old black powder. Old time, you know, the long. So that's a kind of gun. She wears a fur coat. Anyway, I have a black one. I have a full-length gray. They're both full-length gray ones. And I have a mink. And a conservative.

Can you vote? I choose not to. She cannot vote. Because she's a mink. And a conservative. Can you vote? I choose not to. You choose not to. She cannot vote because she's a felon. But she would have voted for Trump. We need a change. And, you know, I had a bunch of questions for her, but she had no use for my questions. She had things she wanted to tell me.

She wanted to talk about how nobody ever gave her a chance. And that was the great tragedy of her life. I mean, the media portrayed me as the villain and as the bad person since I was young. And it's just because growing up on the other side of the track, and it's like people don't seem to understand. This is just who I am. So where does Tanya's story begin? When does she first learn to skate?

She grew up in Portland, Oregon. And there was a skating rink at their local mall. And she walked by it once with her mother and just couldn't look away and begged her mother. Finally, her mother put her on skates. And she just had this preternatural ability, so much so that she won her first championship when she was four years old. Her coach took her on when she was three. I mean, I don't know people who are great at walking at three. She had to work while she was skating. She worked at the mall. I was working at Spud City.

A potato place? Yes. Okay. With all the different types of vegetables and toppings you can put on them. You can have it in different ways. She would eat broccoli and cheese. But without the potato. And then run off to skate during breaks or between shifts. Be able to go down and skate, come back, do some more work, go back down, skate.

And so my boss let me do that, which was really cool. She worked at hardware stores. She chopped her own wood. She hunted her own food. I mean, she was really, really poor. And even though other skaters were from working-class families, no one really lived that far below the poverty line, as far as I know. She sewed her own outfits.

Her mother also sewed those outfits. And put the sequins everywhere, so when your legs touched, you got cut. Oh, yes. They weren't expertly sewed, and the judges really were hard on her for it, for how tacky they were. What was a harding skating outfit? It's like, where do I put this big bow? How can I get more sequins onto this thing?

How about these puffy sleeves? And on picture day, her mother saw an opportunity for her to get skating pictures done. So she had to go to school on school picture day in a skating outfit and have them take her picture then. So that she would have a free photograph to use to distribute in skating competitions. Yeah. My relationship with my mom is really bad. My relationship with my mom is really bad. She is not, I mean, she's a good mother, but she's not a good mother.

She hits me and she beats me and she drinks. My mom's an alcoholic. Her teenage years were really rough. Her mother was incredibly abusive. Her mother put her down all the time, hit her, once threw a knife at her. I mean, my face was bruised. My face was put through a mirror, not just broken onto it, through it. This is an unhappy childhood. It was a terrible childhood. And honestly, you can still kind of hear the trauma in her voice about it. Say what I mean, you know.

It's just life. You deal with what is given you. If you're dealt with, you know, the scraps from the dogs, then you deal with it. And you were with Jeff because, like, you needed to get out. I mean, I met him when i was 15 she goes out on a date with a man named jeff galooly and they fall in love they spend a lot of time together and things are tumultuous between them as well he hits her as well but the mother is still so much worse that finally she decides to marry Jeff. And she was a teenager,

but she did it to get out of that house, even though she says he beat her too. Tanya's long program is meant to be very strong and very aggressive. She throws herself into everything. Beautiful double axel. The height that she gets in these jumps. But she was a magnificent skater.

Her spins are much faster than the other skaters that we have seen. And she's winning competitions. She's doing very well in competitions. It's very important in the content. She can do these jumps that no one's ever done before, at least not Americans, at least not women. Once she opens with the triple lutz combination. Oh, just beautiful. That's the part of the story that people always forget,

that she was out of nowhere, capable of doing anything and making it look easy. Tani, your first Worlds. First Worlds and you skated flawlessly. How did you feel? I felt really great. I went out there, had a lot of confidence built up, and it just felt great. It was really fun.

Not nervous at all? No, I went out there and I had fun. It was really fun. Not nervous at all? No, I went out there and I had fun. It was really great. The marks for composition and style are coming up next. This is something she's really tried to improve, her artistry. These marks may go down a little bit. And they do. But she has deducted a lot of points for her personal style,

for not being what the United States Figure Skating Association wants to put out into the world. She was wearing scrunchies. She was wearing sequins. She was skating to rock music. She wasn't skating to Mozart. She was wearing sequins. She was skating to rock music. She wasn't skating to Mozart. She was skating to ZZ Top. She was skating to Wild Thing by Tone Loke. She had blue nails.

Before, it was okay to have blue nails, which my mother would tell you is still not the case. I hated the word feminine. It reminded me of a tampon, you know, or panty liner. Come on, people. We don't want to talk about that. Maybe it's just something people kept telling you because I... Oh, I was always told I was fat.

I was ugly. I wouldn't amount to anything. If you wear that ribbon, they're not going to give you the marks. If you wear that dress, they're not going to give you the marks. If you wear that dress, they're not going to give you the marks. Oh, and make sure that you smile. I mean, who wants to smile to some of that crap they had me skating to? Let's do it. It was the perm.

It was the ripped pantyhose or the pantyhose that weren't exactly the skin color. It was her mother sitting there on the sidelines smoking. It was the husband and his disgusting friends coming to watch. It was the whole thing. And she smoked. She was a professional skater who smoked. Not on the ice, but near enough. No, because you're not allowed to.

But like putting out a cigarette with her blade because she had to go out onto the ice. And the judges would have seen all this and they would have judged it. They would have judged it. And the judges are really paying attention to this. They're very conservative and they like the artistry. Jumping anaphylasticism is her strength. It's the second mark, the presentation mark that could hurt her. And there were times where she confronted the judges. Would walk up to the judges.

She went backstage and she said to them, how am I supposed to do this? Why can't it just be about the skating? And the judges said to her, you know, presentation also counts. And she said, if you give me $5,000, I'll give you a good presentation. If you give me a $5,000 for a dress, you will get your good presentation. But in the meantime, get out of my face. Because I literally cannot afford to look the way you want me to look to be the thing you want me to be. Exactly. You know, like this was not what the U.S. skating wanted.

Now the question is whether she will become the first American to attempt and complete a triple axel jump. We will know that here whether she tries it or not. But in the 1991 skating championships, it's the third or the second or third move in the program. And she was just, I can't do it. I can't do it. Maybe I can do it. I had this little niche back here. It was saying, oh, my God, oh, my my God, oh my God. And I was saying, come on, I can do this.

No, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. No, I'm going to try to do it. And then she's off. And she is in the air. And she lands. Good girl. And she lands. Good girl! And I land it. Isn't that great? The first time an American, only Midori Ito, has completed a triple axel in competition. Oh, how nice! How terrific! And the moment you see on her face that she pulled it off.

Oh, yo! It is the expression of a lifelong dream coming true, of showing everybody. She was able to say to them, like, look, you counted me out. And look, you can't stop me from doing this thing that you can't even debate. It's amazing.

Tanya, you told me earlier in the week you were not going to tell anybody whether you were going to go for the triple axel or not. When did you make the decision and why? I made it yesterday, and I knew that I had nothing to lose. I could go out and do everything. And I'm so happy with myself. And I just want to thank God and my club, Carousel Figure Skating Club, for all their support, especially my husband.

I don't think I need to tell you, but you are in first place right now. Thank you very much. Congratulations. Back to you, Al. How nice, how nice. And she goes down in history. She is setting the pace for what people should be able to do on the ice. She is leading the world into what a woman

is capable of on the ice. And at the same time, she is a pariah. Tanya Harding is going to Germany. The only question is, will she be wearing silver or gold? Well, it doesn't really matter. She's created her own gold with this performance. We'll be right back. Now is the reason that you know who Tanya Harding is if you are not a figure skating fan. In Detroit today, there's been a violent attack on an American athlete. Nancy Kerrigan, the American figure skater, who was widely considered a favorite to win a medal at the Winter Olympics,

was attacked at a practice session for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Kerrigan was hit several times on the leg around the knee by what's being described as a club of some sort for a salient flag. The whispers began immediately that people close to rival Tonya Harding were involved. They talked to everybody and they're doing, I would say, a thorough investigation to try and find the man who did it. It's a mess. The bodyguard of rival Tonya Harding reportedly confesses he arranged the brutal attack. He says her divorced husband, Jeff Gillooly, gave the instructions. Jeff said break her landing leg.

Yeah, the leg that she lands on. Today, Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Galuli, turned himself in to the FBI. He has been charged with conspiracy to assault Nancy Kerrigan. The media screamed at her. They called her a liar. They called her white trash. They called her trailer park trash. After several days in seclusion, Tanya and her husband emerged from their Portland home. They would camp outside her house. They would set off the alarm on her truck so that she would have to come out. Tanya herself says that she did not know a thing about the attack on Nancy Kerrigan.

I'm not supposed to talk to anybody. At the airport, Tanya walked off the plane greeted not by friends and family like her return from nationals, but news photographers she did not expect. I don't know how you guys knew I was coming in. I didn't tell anybody. I can't believe this. You guys, will you go away, please? Did Tanya, while all this was going on, did she feel as though the country had made up its mind

about her and her guilt and her innocence before there were any real legal attempts to get to the bottom of this. I mean, that is where classism enters again, that everyone had decided that it was too delicious, that this white trash girl from Oregon and this beautiful princess from Massachusetts would be at war with each other, that it was too easy to think that she had done it. She was already thought of in the lowest terms. You know, tell me what you want to say. I apologize in advance if I offend anyone by saying this. But it wasn't just the bad guys.

It wasn't just the people that were involved in all this stuff that made my life hell. The media did this to me. They started. And then they, the media turned everyone against me because the media got 99% of everything they said wrong. So you think that the sin that the media committed was kind of painting you as guilty before you were...

I was guilty the day I stepped off the plane. So then what happens? So then what happens is that I think it was the FBI who decided that they would stall the trial or charges until the Olympics was over. Because it was so close to the Olympics. Nancy Kerrigan, out of nowhere, was able to skate again. And that was like a miracle. She recovered. She recovered.

Right now it is Tanya Harding's turn to skate, but this tortured pass she's taken to the Olympics continues here. On the day that they are set to skate, Tanya is late onto the ice. And now the public address is announcing Tanya Harding's name, and she's still lacing up her boots. Because her lace broke. And this is every skater's recurring nightmare. This is one that you wake up screaming from every morning.

And she's freaking out, and she finally just ties it herself. I think they just gave her a two-minute warning, a two-minute call. And she's trying to get the lace going there. This can really throw a skater off. She has two minutes. She has one minute. If she's not out here in 45 seconds, I think they're going to disqualify her. I'm not sure. I've never seen anything like this before at any competition.

She's got to hurry. 30 seconds, she gets onto the ice. It's not going to hold me. She'll skate to the music of Jurassic Park. She skates terribly in the end. She couldn't do any of the jumps. It was so horrible. Nancy Kerrigan is only four minutes away from a possible gold medal.

And Nancy does her skate. And she lands every jump. She doubles it. and she lands every jump. She doubles it. It was just beautiful. Olympic dreams do come true. She's been through so much to deliver this performance.

What a great moment for Nancy Kerrigan. And she gets the silver. Brenda and Daniel Kerrigan's daughter has seized the moment and made it her own. I would like to begin by saying how sorry I am about what happened to Nancy Kerrigan. I am embarrassed and ashamed to think that anyone close to me could be involved. I had no prior knowledge of the planned assault on Nancy Kerrigan. I am responsible, however, for failing to report things I learned about the assault when I returned home from nationals. Many of you will be unable to forgive me for that.

It will be difficult to forgive myself. I have since reported this information to the authorities. Despite my mistakes and my rough edges, my lawyers tell me that my failure to immediately report this information is not a crime. And so she was sentenced to 500 hours of community service. She was sentenced, I think, to some probation, and she could handle all of that. But then at the end,

you have to forego your membership in the U.S. Figure Skating Association. You have to give up your career. And she had dropped out of high school. What else was she going to do? Well, let's see, my very first job, I worked at a metal fabrication company. Since the ban, she went back to living the kind of life that the people around her seem to be living. Welding. Really? You've been a welder?

Oh, yeah. I worked in Sears in the hardware department, and I knew as much as most of the men that worked there. I tried waitressing for a week. Didn't work. Because I have no idea how many trays I dumped on me in a week. You're so good at balance. I didn't have my skate fund. What are you saying?

Now I'm in your shoes. You can only... A little apron thing. But she was too famous. Hmm. In the not good way. I boxed. Well, I tried to box.

So here comes Tanya Harding, as we said, the only world-class athlete of the six that will take the ring tonight. She's already talking a little trash. I'll be interested to see how the fans receive her. And then I worked for World's Dumbest for almost five years. She did five years as a commentator on a show called World's Dumbest. I mean, some of the shit that, excuse me, some of the stuff that I've seen, hilarious.

I'm going to let Tanya handle this one. Anything involving people falling on ice, she's your expert. These guys were a 6.0. And she tried to make ends meet. The money was good. It paid my bills, which was really good. I mean, I've never had the expensive things in life. I mean, my favorite store is Walmart, basically, because they have all the clothes. They're cheap.

And it's cheap enough that if they do get ripped or something on them, you could afford to get more. And I just cannot see spending 50 bucks on something that holds my titties when I can buy it for 30. Right, right. And she couldn't use her fame for anything good. Nancy Kerrigan was riding a Disney float with all her Disney money and her sponsorships. And Tanya was not. So she very much ends up kind of where she began. She ends up where she began.

And it is a tragedy. And she just had a life where all she could do is be reminded. She was never allowed to move on from it. I mean, I've had death threats. I've had rats thrown into my mailboxes. Shit left on my door, left in my mailbox, all over my trucks. You name it, it's been done to me. And that's a really, really scary way to live.

You know, she could be going along her business when suddenly that Sufjan Stevens song comes on that's about her. Tanya Harding, my star. Well, this world is a cold one, but it takes one to know one. And God only knows what you are. And during the summer, when we were down 20 points, folks said, see, he can't win now unless he kneecaps the frontrunner. He's going to have to do a Tonya Harding on her. She'll be sitting there watching television when Barack Obama talks about giving the competition a Tonya Harding. Give her a whack. Connie Chung was interviewing Tonya Harding earlier right here on the CBS television network.

Top ten questions now. Connie Chung asked Tanya Harding. Here we go. Number ten. Would you walk through the metal detector for me one more time, please? Number nine. Do you think you could kick my ass? Number eight. Wow. Number eight. Can you help me and Maury have a baby? Well, I think that's uncalled for. She is a punchline. She is a verb. She never knows when it's going to happen. And that's a really hard thing to outlive.

But more than that, she feels that people did not really understand the mitigating circumstances of her life. She has spent so much time begging people to understand, here's what really happened to me. My head went through a mirror. Here's what really happened to me. My mother threw a knife at me. Everyone ignored it. Here's what really happened to me. My mother threw a knife at me. Everyone ignored it. Here's what really happened to me. And she feels like once you see that, then you can understand who you're dealing with.

If only people understood me, they wouldn't hold all of this against me. And that's not true. It didn't happen. Because every interview came down to, okay, okay, we get it. You were poor. You were abused. Did you do it? Are you sorry?

You never said to Jeff, let's do this. No. You did attempt to make an apology. Did you not? I've apologized several times, yes. Did you apologize to Nancy Kerrigan personally? Yes, I did personally. You did know,rigan personally? Yes, I did, personally. You did know, didn't you?

You did know what was happening. Excuse me? You did know. You did know what they were planning to do, didn't you? No, I did not know anything prior. I did find out after the fact. Maybe it suits you to play the victim, but I think the victim in all this wasn't you.

It was Nancy Kerriganan who had her Olympic dream shattered quite literally in her legs. I believe that we all thank you so much. I appreciate being on your show, but I think I'm going to have to say have a good night. Does she think in this moment that she's the one owed an apology? She absolutely thinks she's owed an apology. We were awful to her, she says. We were her abusers, she said. Her mother abused her. Her husband abused her.

Then we abused her. And we kept on abusing her. It strikes me in this moment where we're reckoning with how the country and the media treat women, especially stories of women in the past. Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky, reevaluating how we talked about them in the moment, how we saw their story, did we really understand them? Is Tonya Harding another case of a woman

who was tarnished for unfair circumstances? I think that what we're reckoning with now, because she is a far more complicated case than Anita Hill or Monica Lewinsky, who were not accused of violent crimes. Right. I think the way to include Tanya in that is to ask, have we allowed her to move on in a way that we would let a man move on?

The answer is no. The answer is, how many runs did Anthony Weiner have? Congressman Anthony Weiner admitted today that he had lied about sending explicit messages to women online. Joining me now, Mark Halpern of Time Magazine. He did something that he said today he knew was wrong and reckless, but he did it. I would like to tell you about the amount of times I have seen people come over and hug Mike Tyson, a convicted rapist. Mike Tyson endorsed me. I love it. He sent out a tweet, Mike, Iron Mike.

You know, all the tough guys endorsed me. I like that, OK? I saw Eliot Spitzer at a party being warmly greeted by people. But early last year, Spitzer was brought down by his involvement in a prostitution scandal. He resigned 13 months ago and has remained largely silent until now. With the U.S. economy in turmoil, the man once known as the Sheriff of Wall Street is back. Governor Spitzer, good morning. It's good to see you. Good morning, Matt.

Thank you. We let people move on. We never let Tanya Harding move on. And I don't know if we deserve to be able to give ourselves the victory lap that all of these kind of feminist think pieces about her, which she objects to, by the way, have been giving her. Why does she object to them? She does not want any kind of liberal, gooey love applied to her right now. As far as she is concerned, you had your chance. She could have used you back then.

She could have used your think pieces. She could have used your protections back then. And she did not get them. And she has no use for them now. I was a liar to everybody. But still, 23 years later, finally, everybody can just eat crow. That's what I have to say. I'm sorry, but you know what? Y'all did this to yourselves. If you were to say leave this earth and come back, what would you come back as? I think an eagle.

Why? Because I can soar through the sky and see everything and be free. An eagle is also a very solitary being. I don't know. It would be just, you know, peaceful. Here's what else you need to know today. The Times is reporting that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was recently interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, becoming the first member of President Trump's cabinet to speak with the investigators. Sessions could be a key witness in the case. He met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak twice during the investigators. Sessions could be a key witness in the case. He met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak twice during the campaign, a fact he failed to disclose during

his Senate confirmation hearings. If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do? government, in the course of this campaign, what will you do? Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians. And I'm unable to comment on it. The Times found that Mueller has also spoken to former FBI Director James Comey, whose firing by Trump prompted the appointment of the special counsel.

We're going to have to start on a new basis, and the wall offer is off the table. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has withdrawn his offer to fund President Trump's border wall, a deal he'd said the president accepted in exchange for protecting the Dreamers, then backed out of, leading to the government shutdown. An aide to Schumer reportedly called the White House after the deal fell apart to say Trump had missed an opportunity. the deal fell apart to say Trump had missed an opportunity. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.