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The Current Transcript for August 18, 2016

Host: Connie Walker

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

These men are masters of the dark arts, and that's what people should understand about Steve Bannon. When I saw this news overnight my first thought was OK, nothing in this campaign is off limits now.

CONNIE WALKER: Well if you thought the US presidential election campaign couldn't get any darker, you may be in for a surprise. After this week's shakeup at Trump headquarters, that was one CNN analyst’s reaction to the appointment of the new Republican presidential campaign CEO Steve Bannon. He's a political operative with a flair for the dramatic, and his appointment could suggest that far from pivoting to a more traditionally presidential demeanor, Donald Trump could instead just be getting meaner. What it means in the race for the White House first up today. Then…

SOUNDCLIP

My dad saw every single game I ever played, and that's including major junior hockey, where you're traveling, you're playing three games in three nights. So that alone was crazy behavior.

CW: And that unfortunately was just the tip of the iceberg. Off the ice, Patrick O'Sullivan's father was a tormentor, pushing his young son to the point of abuse and beyond, and chasing his own NHL dreams vicariously through his boy. The former NHLer Patrick O'Sullivan opens up about the physical and psychological toil in his memoir Breaking Away. That's in half an hour. I'm Connie Walker, and this is the summer edition of The Current.

Trump's campaign shuffle is 'crazy pants,' says former GOP strategist

Guests: Jay Newton-Small, Beau Phillips, Kenneth Baer

SOUNDCLIP

Donald Trump, and this is a matter of mathematics, he is demonstrably the leader in virtually every poll by as wide a margin I think as we've seen in Republican primaries in decades. John McCain wasn't this far ahead, and to mock him using the Persians, and the Ayatollah, and the Russians, our mortal enemies. How's he supposed to act as commander in chief? Fox crossed a line.

CW: From back in January, that was media executive Stephen K. Bannon sticking up for Donald J. Trump in his feud with FOX News. And as of this week, that same Steve Bannon is leading Mr. Trump's US presidential campaign. It's part of a major behind the scenes shake up inside the Trump camp, presumably in an attempt to close the wide gap between the Republican candidate and Democrat Hillary Clinton. But bringing in Mr. Bannon has been controversial amongst Republicans, and it's likely to usher in even more controversy in this election season. Mr. Bannon after all has been dubbed the most dangerous political operative in America by Bloomberg News. For more on what has unfolded, I'm joined now by TIME magazine political correspondent Jay Newton-Small, who has been following the US presidential campaign. She is in Washington D.C. Hello.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Hi, thanks for having me on.

CW: Thanks for joining us. Let's talk about Trump's new campaign chief executive Stephen K. Bannon, who is he?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: So, he's the chairman of Breitbart News, which is a very conservative outlet, a website that was started by Steven Breitbart who passed away a few years ago. But a lot of his ideals were basically very anti-establishment, very kind of blow everything up, and the news site Breitbart has definitely continued with that vision. And Stephen K. Bannon has sort of always been leading the charge there since Breitbart died, and has really you know, not only incited Donald Trump to be as bombastic as possible, but he also really backed a lot of the Tea Party primary candidates, a lot of the Freedom Caucus to remove House Speaker John Boehner last year. So they have definitely been an agent of chaos within the Republican Party and one that is pretty loathed by most establishment Republicans.

CW: And Donald Trump's new campaign manager is Kellyanne Conway. Why is she being brought in?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: So, Kellyanne is someone I've known for many years. She is a pollster. She wrote a book actually, called What Women Really Want, with a Democratic pollster named Celinda Lake. She's actually been viewed as a very sort of moderate, works across the aisle, her specialty is female voters, bringing out women voters. She’s worked with Mike Pence, who's the vice presidential nominee for Trump for many many years, and so that's sort of how she entered Trump world. And she is someone who brings a very steady hand to the campaign, who brings a very experienced hand, can say here's where we need to target, here's where we need to go. That said, she's also been one of the people who said to Trump over and over again as Stephen Bannon has been, you just need to be you. You shouldn’t worry about trying to fit into the establishment box. You should just go ahead and say what you want, do what you want, no matter how sort of controversial that might be, because that's how you won the primaries, and maybe that's a great path to winning the general election.

CW: Let's give people a bit of context here, Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman has been at the centre of a lot of controversy recently, what has been happening?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: So, Paul Manafort was brought in. And so just to give you a little bit, to take it another step back, Corey Lewandowski was the first campaign manager for Donald Trump who was fired about two months ago, and Paul Manafort was brought in. And he was sort of seen as the voice of reason, right? He was the establishment guy who was going to make Trump fit into the establishment. He was going to make Trump sort of beyond message and give these teleprompter speeches and go kiss the rings of the establishment Republicans. And that's been a real struggle for Donald Trump, to sort of fitting, being shoehorned into that box. He has resented the process, he doesn't like it. He said as recently as last week that he doesn't want to be a regular establishment candidate, and that sort of was a precursor to what happened with the campaign shakeup. At the same time, Paul Manafort is a pretty controversial guy on his own front. So, he's had a lot of shady kind of dealings. He was a political adviser for the Ukraine, you know, he has these kind of dodgy Russian ties, just as Russia was you know, sort of very coincidentally hacking the Democratic National Committee and potentially the Hillary campaign. And the New York Times reported last week, which stirred a huge controversy that he was being paid kind of under the table by these sort of pro-Putin groups in the Ukraine to kind of stir up revolution there. So, he has become increasingly controversial and potentially that's one of the reasons why Donald Trump decided to remove him as campaign manager. But I think it was also more of a sense of just stylistically Donald Trump wanted to be unleashed. He wanted to do this his way. If he's going to do it, he's going to do it in the Donald J. Trump way, rather than the way that everybody else has done it for generations.

CW: Charlie Sykes, who's a top conservative radio host tweeted that Trump's campaign has now entered the hospice phase. He knows he's dying and wants to surround himself with his loved ones. Is that your sense of what's happening here?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: I mean it sort of is. I mean, he definitely is in this place where he just wants to do it his way, and if he's going to lose he's going to lose on his terms, I think. I mean, it's a really insane turnaround to completely change your campaign strategy six weeks before early voting begins. And so I mean we literally have six weeks before early voting, it's less now, than six weeks before the voting begins in two states and another seven weeks before it begins in about a dozen states. Between now and then he has to completely overhaul his campaign, completely have a campaign message. And keep in mind that this is somebody who has refused to invest in traditional campaign trappings. And when I say that I mean he's had zero advertising. So, Hillary Clinton last month ran 61 million dollars worth of television advertising —Trump has run none. And he has zero campaign infrastructure on the ground, very very little. So I mean, Hillary Clinton has more offices in Ohio than Donald Trump has campaign staffers overall. So he has refused to really invest in the ground game either. And so he's basically betting the entire farm on his ability to hold monster rallies and really manipulate the media in the next six weeks.

CW: I mean that seemed to work during the primaries. Why are people advising against that approach now?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: So, what works in a primary, especially a Republican primary, where most primaries are closed — which means that only Republicans can vote in them — and are generally older electorates, and are whiter electorates for the Republicans, does not work in a general election America. There is not enough white people in America to vote to elect you anymore. There are not enough white voters, a majority white voter country we haven't been for a long time. So you need to reach out to Latinos, you need to reach out to African-Americans, you need to reach out to a lot more women. And there I think Kellyanne Conway can help Donald Trump if he can begin to tailor his message. But he needs to do that very quickly, and he needs to build the coalition of independent and moderate voters, and as well as keeping his base. And he's having a really hard time keeping his base, because the establishment hates him so much. Just a couple of weeks ago there was something like 40 national security Republicans who wrote, very prominent ones you know, I'm talking about former national security advisers like John Negroponte, who wrote a letter saying they would never support Trump. He lost Maine Senator Susan Collins last week. You know, every week has been this litany of established Republicans that he's lost. So if he can't have the base, he's got to appeal to the centre and he has to pivot pretty hard to do that, and thus far especially with his immigration rhetoric he has not been doing that.

CW: Alright, well thank you very much for that Jay we appreciate you joining us.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Thank you. Jay Newton-Small is a political correspondent for TIME magazine. She was in Washington D.C.

SOUNDCLIP

His grassroots game is awesome. I mean, I've seen Connecticut standing room only. I've seen him fly into all the different states and getting huge crowds and that's really impressive. And people wouldn't take the time to go and see him if it wasn't important and if they weren't going to vote for him.

CW: That's Lauren Martel, an attorney from South Carolina and one of the many Trump faithful who have stuck with the Republican candidate through thick and thin. But come election day this November, candidate Trump will need to win over an even wider base of voters if he's to stand a chance of becoming President Trump. And with each passing week, new questions arise as to whether that's still possible. We have two long-time Washington strategists standing by now to share their thoughts. Kenneth Baer is the founder and CEO of Crosscuts Strategies and a former Obama White House official. He is in Washington D.C. And Beau Phillips is the founder and CEO of Reset Public Affairs, as well as a former Republican campaign strategist. He is in Alexandria, Virginia. Good morning to you both.

MANY VOICES: Good morning.

CW: Beau what was your reaction to this latest shakeup in Mr. Trump's campaign?

BEAU PHILLIPS: Well, I know everyone is treating it like this big nuclear bomb and you know, yet another massive churning of the chapter in the novella saga of the Trump you know, thing. But it is just not all that incredibly uncommon for you know, presidential campaigns to have this sort of long-time first campaign manager who gets things set up over the course of a year or a year and a half, followed by kind of a grown up or an adult replacing that person for sort of this intermediary phase, followed by you know, kind of your final campaign manager, if you will. Now all of that said, that's like sort of a very rational answer, all that said this is a very irrational campaign and this is a campaign season like nothing we've ever had before. So I'm not trying to explain it away, because this obviously is a campaign in turmoil and these are not traditional campaign people that are being put in place. Bannon has never run a political campaign in his life, so starting at the presidential level is a little crazy pants. And Kellyanne Conway is a pollster who, you know, while she's been a strategist before has certainly never been day-to-day campaign manager. These are not ideal people for this role, so you know, it seems like yet more turmoil and not exactly the right people to be steadying a ship that is already you know, sort of in choppy waters. It's not a good sign if you're a Republican who supports Trump, and of course establishment insider Washington weasels like myself are not necessarily in that boat.

CW: And at this late stage in the campaign the timing is interesting as well. Kenneth Baer, what do you make of this late summer change?

KENNETH BAER: You know, I think Beau puts his finger on it. You know, if this was a normal campaign this could be explained away, but this is mostly politics as performance art that we're seeing. It is disturbing as a Democrat. As a partisan I welcome it, it shows that Trump is failing the first basic test to be President of the United States. And that is to successfully manage a presidential campaign and put your message out. That's good because I believe it's going to lead to a very large Hillary Clinton victory in the fall. As an American, this worries me because he's reached out to one of the more odious characters in our whole political firmament. One of his former editors described Breitbart News site as a site that openly embraced the white supremacist alt-right, which is a nice way of saying racist. And so you know, this is a very concerning thing that if their advice which seems to be let Trump be Trump, which means he's going to have you know, these rallies, it's either overtly or covertly sending signals to his base that are extremely divisive and really not good for the health of the country.

CW: Beau Phillips, the polls so far show that Donald Trump is well behind Hillary Clinton. What kind of impact do you think this shakeup will have?

BEAU PHILLIPS: You know, I don't know if this shakeup will have any impact whatsoever on the polls. One, the polls have been sort of wildly poor about sort of getting a sense of where crazy candidates like Donald Trump are, so I'm not sure how much stock I necessarily put in them, though I certainly do accept the premise that he's certainly behind her, especially in some of the key battleground states. And if I had to bet my own money I’d bet against him right now. That said you know, she's obviously a very flawed candidate who's having a very hard time. She should be blowing him away in the same way she should have had no problem disposing of Bernie Sanders in the primary. I mean my goodness, a 74-year-old socialist has never been a member of the Democratic Party in his life, you know, who won 20 something states. That should have been easy. So I wouldn't count him out by any means, he should be down by 30 points right? But nonetheless you know, whether or not he gets his stride back, whether or not he's able to you know, regain whatever it was he had in the primaries, probably doesn't have to do with whatever one or two people is managing his campaign, it will have to do with whether he can you know, get back to talking about the three or four core issues that seemed to resonate in the primary. I mean to his credit you saw him during the primary being about a handful of issues. It may not have been comfortable issues, it may have been issues people made fun of him about but you know, he was committed to talking about that wall. When was the last time you heard about the wall? Right now it's all about these petty grievances he has with the media and nobody seems to think that has any chance of helping him become president.

CW: Well, I mean this is not just you know, any person Stephen Bannon appears to be a really controversial figure. Do you worry that his new role could further antagonize Republicans who are already finding it difficult to support Trump?

BEAU PHILLIPS: You know, no campaign has ever been won or lost in the history of this country based on who the campaign manager was, and I don't think this is going to be any different. I think the only difference will be if he does sort of inflame the worst tendencies in Trump, and you know, continues Trump along the path of the kind of campaign that he's been running for the last one or two or three weeks, which is to say if the campaign continues to be an airing of Trump’s, as I said a moment ago, most petty grievances. You know, things that are personal, things that bother him, what he saw last night at 11:45 on MSNBC that bugs him into a 45 minute speech, then he'll lose for sure. If on the other hand you know, somehow they focus, if they let Trump be Trump about the things that people care about. About immigration which again, while we may not like what he has to say, we have to say it was resonating with people. About trade deals, about the you know, the whole make America great rhetoric that was resonating during the primaries, and might resonate during the general if he would just stick with it. Then he would have a chance of getting back on message and maybe fixing his poll numbers a little bit. But that would take a message discipline that he just hasn't shown for the last month. If Bannon can do that for him, he'll have done a service. It's hard to believe that Bannon's the right character to do that though, given his history.

CW: I mean, it seems as though there's some feeling that Trump actually needs to be appealing to a wider base than the people who supported him during the primaries. I mean does sticking to those messages about the wall that you said, do you think that's the right route to getting wider support?

BEAU PHILLIPS: Not necessarily, but it's better than what he's doing now.

KENNETH BAER: [laughing]

CW: All right. Kenneth what do you think? What kind of change in attitude or tone do you expect this new campaign team to bring to this election campaign?

KENNETH BAER: You know, unfortunately I think that you know, we're going to see a doubling down of the worst parts of Donald Trump, and there are many. And so you know, it's actually, that's the scariest part of it, and of what that leads to. Words have consequences. There are people out there who are hear inflammatory rhetoric and act on it. And we're seeing that already from the Trump campaign, whether it's you know, kids on the playground being taunted for who they are or even worse. And so that to me is the scariest part. I think as a political professional looking at the disorganization which is the Trump campaign, he is who he is. This is not going to change. There are, you know, there are no Trump campaign offices anywhere in the country. He's not running [unintelligible], he has no discipline personally, he has no message discipline, much as less personal discipline. His whole entire coalition that could elect him president is collapsing underneath him. You know, among Republicans right now he's polling in the low 80s, which it just shows he's just not even consolidating normal bases. And the truth is in the presidential level for the past two decades, we basically are a Democratic leaning country. So, this is just there seems to be no conceivable way he could turn around, but you know, this isn't over and anything could happen. And more importantly I think how we get to that end result could have big consequences.

CW: Beau Phillips, you know we heard that Trump supporter Lauren Martel earlier talking about not writing off Donald Trump. What do you think? I mean, there have been other presidential candidates Hubert Humphrey, Gerald Ford in ‘76, who’ve rallied to a close finish. Do you think Trump can do that here?

BEAU PHILLIPS: I do. It would be crazy to count him out. You know, the guy just does seem to be made of Teflon. At one point during the campaign he joked, I think he regretted it, but he joked he could walk out onto 5th avenue in front of his Trump tower office building and gun a guy down, walk back inside, and his poll numbers would go up four points. And at the time it seemed like he really could. Now, obviously that's not exactly the case. But this is the first time in over a year that his poll numbers have dropped, despite over a year of saying some very incendiary things and frankly either untrue or genuinely foolish things. So you know, to listen to everything he said over the course of his campaign, to see some of the actions that he's taken, some of the petty fights he's gotten into and see that he's only down a little bit in certain states, actually up with certain demographics, really is shocking. And so I think that counting him out would be foolish, I think it would be very easy to fall into a sense of complacency. As Ken just said, he has no field offices in dozens and dozens of states, he's run virtually no television advertising whatsoever, his fundraising is you know, a little bit fudged. When people saw the fundraising numbers they were surprised it was so high. But it's really not that high, it's joint fundraising with the Republican National Committee and so that's RNC dollars, a lot of it. So it's not really just Trump dollars. Where when Hillary Clinton releases her fundraising numbers, it's Hillary money. It's not Hillary and DNC money. So her fundraising is pretty far ahead of his. And so you know, the idea that he's holding steady despite all the structural disadvantages, holding as well, he’s not steady but holding as well as he is despite all these structural disadvantages is fairly remarkable. And so you know, 80 days plus until the election, not even Labour Day yet, yeah absolutely he could come back. All the silliness of the last month could be forgotten if he suddenly has a good week or two in the states, and moves his poll numbers up just a few points. I mean, despite everything that's happened he really is only a few points behind her in certain key states. And national polls don't matter in the United States, you're really running for president of the 50 states and ultimately only four, five, six of those states matter. And only about a dozen and a half counties in those states matter. So you're running for president of about 21 counties in about six or seven states in the US If you want to be president.

CW: Alright, well we'll have to leave it there but something we'll continue to watch. Thank you both for joining me.

MANY VOICES: Thanks for having us.

CW: Kenneth Baer is the founder and CEO of Crosscuts Strategies and a former Obama White House official, we reached him in Washington D.C. And Beau Phillips is the founder and CEO of Reset Public Affairs and a former Republican campaign strategist. We reached him in Virginia. I'm Connie Walker, and you're listening to this summer edition of The Current.

ENCORE: Former NHL player Patrick O'Sullivan on living with an abusive father

Guests: Patrick O’Sullivan

CONNIE WALKER: Hello, I'm Connie Walker and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

CW: Coming right up, Patrick O'Sullivan's tortured road to hockey success.

SOUNDCLIP

[sounds of ice skating]

PLAY-BY-PLAY ANNOUNCER: Out of the near side, Canadians’ Richards long shot, knocked out, put in front as Dawes knocked it out of the air before it got to Montoya. Meanwhile, the other way O’Sullivan racing towards, and it goes in. [screaming] It goes in. Fleury tried to clear, it hit O’Sullivan, it goes in the net, it’s 4-3 USA. Unbelievable.

[crowd cheering]

CW: That was play-by-play of Patrick O'Sullivan scoring the winning goal for the United States against Canada in the 2003 World Junior Hockey Championship. It was a sweet moment for the young man, but the road to that goal was paved with much abuse and suffering. Patrick O'Sullivan's story is a cautionary tale about parents who strive for glory through their children. And it centres on his father who used violence and psychological torture to force his son into being the hockey player he never could be. Patrick O'Sullivan shared his story in his memoir Breaking Away: A Harrowing True Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph. He sat down with Anna-Maria Tremonti last October. And a warning, some listeners may find his story troubling.

AMT: What was going through your mind as you listened to that clip?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: You know what, I haven't heard that in a long time. That's a pretty big moment and it's cool to hear that.

AMT: You were playing for Don Cherry's team at the time, the Mississauga IceDogs.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Correct, yeah.

AMT: But why were you playing for the Americans on the world junior hockey?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Because I'm an American. Yeah. I was born in Toronto and I spent a year or two here as a kid, but my parents, my mother's American, and I was born up here because they were visiting. I was born early and they didn't spend a whole lot of time up here. So that's why.

AMT: Your father wanted to play hockey. Tell us about his hockey career.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Well, I talk about it in the book and truthfully there really wasn't much of a career. I think he had aspirations that he was nowhere near good enough to fulfill, and I think that was one of the major issues with the abuse and how I was treated. And I think he was living through me the majority of you know, my childhood. And I think in a way, in a weird way, he also was a little bit maybe jealous of how good I actually became. Which is bizarre, because that's all he wanted and everything that he was doing was in his mind to make me better. But I think it maybe exceeded you know, what he thought I could be and I think he didn't like that.

AMT: He thought he was really good and just never got a break.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yeah. He was one of those guys that never got a bounce in his mind, and you know, he ended up getting screwed around everywhere he went. And he just, I don't think he could ever take responsibility for anything in his life, not only his hockey career but anything else.

AMT: He attended your games when you were a boy, pretty well every one of your games. What was he like on the sidelines?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Well, my dad saw every single game I ever played and that's including major junior hockey where you're traveling, you're playing three games in three nights, so he wasn't holding a real job or anything else like that. So that alone was crazy behavior. But he would scream and yell and he tried to put himself in places in the arena that you know, he wouldn't be around other people. And I could tell by looking at him, exactly how upset he was and how bad it was going to be for me after the game.

AMT: How upset he was, would he yell things?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yeah, he would yell. He would give me like hand signals and a lot of them were like what exactly he was going to do. As far as like hitting me, or if it was going to be the you know, working out stuff, the exercises or whatever. So it's hard to try to have a good game when you're constantly worried about how bad you're going to get hit and stuff after the game, so.

AMT: Let's talk about that. How bad, you say you get a hint at how bad it would be after the game. What would happen after the games?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Well, around six or seven was when the physical hitting started taking place. And you know, the weird thing is he would do it as soon as we got out of the arena. And you know, in areas where I'm sure people saw stuff. And that's one of the more difficult things for me to accept about everything that happened to me growing up, was that nobody did anything about it.

AMT: So what would he do?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: My dad would, as a six, seven year-old, he would kick me, he would slap me in the back of the head. And at that point, a lot of it was the extreme exercising that I was doing--

AMT: [interposing] Ok, but just stay with us. He would kick you and slap you. What would he say to you?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: He would call me a fag. He would call me pretty much anything in the book.

AMT: He would berate you for your performance on the ice?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yeah, yeah. It was never good enough. I was a pretty good little player as a kid and I'd get five, six goals in the game and you know, it didn't matter how good I was, there was something else. He had something going on that it wasn't about how I was playing on the ice.

AMT: And you say that there was exercise. Tell us about the kind of exercise routine he put you through.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Oh wow. I mean, I was doing things at six and seven that professional athletes do. As far as like length of training and the amount of different stuff. And my dad loved to kick me out of the car, like on the road, and like run home. And you know, when you're a little kid sometimes you wear your equipment to the rink and you wear it home. So I had to get out on the road — and sometimes there were busy roads — and like, run in my equipment and it's snowing or anything else six, seven, eight years old. You know, that was a regular occurrence and--

AMT: [interposing] You would run behind--

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: The car, yeah. Or sometimes he would drive away. I wouldn't know where he was and he would wait maybe a mile or two.

AMT: This started when you were six or seven.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Oh yeah.

AMT: This continued through into your teens.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yes, and the older I got the more, the exercise was always extreme, but the physical violence really escalated the older I got. It got to the point where I really realized around 12 or 13 how bad it was. Like, as a kid it's hard to know that anything that's going on in your house isn't going on in other houses.

AMT: Part of that was because you were always doing the exercise. I want to get back to this. Your father would sometimes work nights, you write. And then he would come home in the small hours of the morning and he'd wake you up.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yes, that was the--

AMT: And what would you do?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: When I was sleeping, yeah like my dad would come home, maybe have a few drinks or something and he would be angry and he'd rip me out of bed, hit me, and then I had to start exercising.

AMT: What kind of exercises would you do?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: I mean push ups, sit ups, running, just stuff like that--

AMT: [interposing] How long would that last?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Like, I would do push ups and my dad would whip me with like a leather jump rope. Stuff like that so, and you know, this would go on for hours at a time. And yeah, I mean around 15, 16 it got to the point where if it didn't stop somebody was going to potentially die. Like I was, I didn't know which one of us it was going to be but something bad, real bad, was going to happen.

AMT: You were just a little boy. I'm wondering when you went to bed at night, what did you think? Did you cry? What did you do?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: I mean, I cried when I was being abused. Once it was over I didn't cry because that was like the good times.

AMT: Could you sleep? Or were you scared?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Oh, I was absolutely scared. And for me now, one of the things that bothers me the most is that my mother was in the house for all of this. A lot of it she saw, there was no stepping in. I mean, she would try once in a while but you know my dad would shove her out of the way and that was just, you know. So yeah, so it wasn't like at the end of the night I had anybody to talk to or I had, I just liked it because my dad wasn't around me, and I would take whatever amount of time I could get before it would happen again. That's just how I lived.

AMT: You say that at some point you realized you're not going to do this anymore. And there was a night your father showed up, you were playing against the Ottawa 67s, and you were driving, you were driving to Toronto I think, were you not? Or Mississauga.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yeah. What happened was it was a road game for us I was playing for the Mississauga IceDogs and by my mother and father had driven to Ottawa for the game. So after that game my dad was so enraged he told me that he was going to force me to quit hockey, I wasn't good enough. At this point I'm leading, I'm going to win the CHL Rookie of the Year. I'm like top 5 in the league scoring, like, I'm having a great year. Our team wasn't very good but I couldn't have been doing any better, like it wouldn't have been possible. So he says I'm not good enough to play anymore, he's going to take me home. So after the game we walk out, I had my equipment to go to put it on the bus to get back on the bus to go home with my team. And he took, grabbed me off the bus, took my equipment and threw it in the van with my mother and hit me a little bit. And there's people outside and like some of my teammates, these poor kids are on the bus watching this like what is going on. And so we end up driving back, he's going to drive home to Michigan he's taking me and my mother and that's it's over. So on that car ride that was when I was like this is it, like this is the time. Something has to change. It was a bizarre feeling, I almost felt calm even though he was throwing stuff at me like he usually would, he was yelling at me and swearing at me.

AMT: You write that you're in the back and you're behind, and he's looking at you in the rear view mirror and throws things and says things.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yeah. That was one of his things he would always do, he’d have like soda cans and he'd throw them. At that point in my life that was nothing I was even concerned about, like I would catch them or you know, that's just how it was. But we had to stop in Toronto and get my sisters who are staying with my father's parents. And when we got back to the house there, I got out of the car and my mother got out, and my dad's like go get your sisters and get back in the car. I said I'm not getting back in the car with you. This is where this ends. And he said, “oh yeah do you think this is where it ends?” So he got out of the car too. We fought on his parents front lawn for five minutes maybe. And for anybody who's ever been in a fight in their life would know that that's a really long time.

AMT: OK, you say you fought. What did he do?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Fistfight. Fistfight. Like, at this point I'm ready to do whatever--

AMT: You’re fighting back.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yeah, and I had fought back a little bit before that, but I'm ready now to go as long as this takes. Like, I don't know what's going to happen but I'm not stopping. My father's parents’ house has a big bay window in the front. So his parents are awake watching this through the window. And you know there's snow on the ground and I’m dirty and like bloody and all that stuff, and I got marks on me and it just, we just didn't stop. And I said like, this is it? Like this is all you got type of situation. I'm like I'm not getting in the car with you again like I said to you already. And I just started walking to the house and he didn't follow me. And I got inside, and I'm not sure who exactly had dialed 911 but I got onto the phone, and I think once my dad saw that like his whole family, his parents had watched that happen, that's why he didn't come after me into the house. He got back in the van and he left, drove away. Police came, I talked to them and they got a warrant out for his arrest and that was pretty much how it came to an end.

AMT: Did you think your father might kill you that night?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yeah, that was a situation where I wasn't going to stop so maybe it was going to take that. Like, I didn't know that it was going to stop or when it was going to stop. I mean, I was ready to run. I was ready to do whatever to end it, to get to a phone if I had to do it that way. But yeah, I mean there were times before that when I was a little bit younger and I couldn't physically really do much to stop him, where I was more scared for my safety and my life than I was that night. Like, I was I think more prepared for it than he was that night.

AMT: The police come and they talk to you.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yeah.

AMT: Was that the first time you ever told an adult what had gone on with your dad?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yeah, yeah it was, yeah, the first time. First time I had yeah ever really even spoken about it, because it's not like I would talk to my mother about anything.

AMT: In 2004 The Fifth Estate tracked your father down in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I have a clip here. This is Bob McKeown speaking with John O'Sullivan.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN O’SULLIVAN: I wanted him to be a great player and he will be. Obviously I went over board.

BOB MCKEOWN: You would admit that you went over the line.

JOHN O’SULLIVAN: Of course I did. I can't tell you how many times I've read that I saw him bloodied on the front lawn of my parents. I kicked him in the ass twice, you know. I got kicked in the ass a dozen times when I was growing up and I deserved it every time. I kicked him in the ass. After a game up from Ottawa I brought him back to Toronto, I was at my parents. And they charged me you know, and I got what I deserve. If anyone's wanted to be a player it's Patrick, and I want him to be a player too and he will be. And I wish them all the luck.

BOB MCKEOWN: He is a pretty great player.

JOHN O’SULLIVAN: Oh, he's great and he'll get better. And he’d be even better if he did what I told him. [laughing]

AMT: Patrick O'Sullivan, what do you think? What goes through your mind when you hear your father's voice and what he says there?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: The first thing that comes to mind is delusional. I mean, when I hear that clip and that's not the first time I've heard it, but he really cannot see anything wrong with his behaviour or what he was doing. And really the most telling thing is at the end there when he says I'd be even better if I did what he told me to do.

AMT: You make the point about adults when a child is going through this.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Mmhmm.

AMT: And there were people who told you that they thought your dad was just an involved, “an involved or a very involved parent”. Anybody who's got a kid in hockey practice might recognize an involved parent.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Yes.

AMT: There's a bigger lesson here. What do you want parents at ranks this winter to take away from your story?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: I think the main thing is to realize that you are not the difference between your kid making it to the NHL or not. That's just the simple facts. I mean, you're not going to be the person that pushes them to that different level. The reason that kids make it in hockey or in anything else, in any other sport, or if it's the music or the arts or whatever you want to talk about, it's because they're willing to put in more time, their own free time. Their time when maybe their friends are playing videogames, or they’re skipping school dances or whatever, it's the sacrifice that the kids make for themselves. And it's within them to do it. I didn't make it, I didn't make the NHL because my dad had me on this crazy program that turned me into this hockey robot. I made it because I loved the game. I spent all my free time doing it even when I wasn't told. That's why I made it. And that's really the message for me is nobody can get through to people like my father. I mean, we heard him talk there, a person like that isn't going to pick up my book and be able to look in the mirror and say wow I need to change some things. I mean, people like my father are too far gone. But there are people who are capable of assessing what they're doing as a parent and adjusting it.

AMT: When's the last time you saw or heard from your father?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Wow. I saw him at a game when I was playing maybe three or four years ago, right around the time when I was going to have my first child. But I mean, I haven't communicated with my father in almost 15 years.

AMT: You're married, you have two sons. How old are they?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: They're two and a half and four and a half.

AMT: What will you tell them if they want to play hockey?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Well, funny enough they recently decided that they want to learn how to skate. So, we've been doing that and I'll support my kids in doing whatever they want. I obviously could help them a lot if they decide to play hockey. I would prefer that they didn't, selfishly. I’d love if my kids played baseball or golf or something, but if they really you know, want to pursue hockey I certainly won't prevent them from doing it.

AMT: What do you hope comes from telling your story in this book?

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: I hope just the awareness factor is raised up a bit for this stuff. It's always been something that is, nobody wants to talk about. And I think society has really changed in the last maybe four or five years with being more aware of mental health. It's just, it's something that you can't run from. And most people either don't have the means or they don't ever figure out a way to try to fix some of the issues they have, and they just try to live with them. And a lot of bad things can happen when you try to do that.

AMT: Patrick O'Sullivan, thanks for sharing your story.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN: Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

CW: Patrick O'Sullivan's memoir is called Breaking Away: The Harrowing True Story of Resilience, Courage and Triumph. He spoke with Anna-Maria in October. That's our program for today. I'm Connie Walker, thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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August 18, 2016 full episode transcript

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