Sam Donaldson
Sam Donaldson
Samuel Andrew "Sam" Donaldson, Jr.is an American reporter and news anchor, serving with ABC News from 1967 to 2013. He is best known as the network's White House Correspondentand as a panelist and later co-anchor of the network's Sunday program, This Week...
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth11 March 1934
CityEl Paso, TX
sticks overcoming wells
If you have a setback, and you're not doing well and then you overcome it somehow, it always sticks with you. You know it could happen again.
military school suits-you
And from a military school which taught me that to fit into society, you can't just do anything you damn well please because it will suit you. And that it's much better to be with the winners than it is with the losers.
success congratulations mean
I don't know many people, if any, who have had some straight line toward success. I mean, they start here, they work hard, they've got what it takes, and they just go straight to the top over some number of years. Most people get a little failure.
mistake years president
In 27 years of reporting from Washington, I've never heard a President admit he made a mistake.
college thinking people
As I went to college, I went into radio and television. Now I suppose most people think that's one step ahead of basket weaving as a major in college, but it was part of the journalism department.
mother war years
But in 1941, on December 8th, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, my mother bought a radio and we listened to the war news. We'd not had a radio up to that time. I was born in 1934, so I was seven years of age.
texas hospitality born
Well, I was born in El Paso, Texas, it was in the nearest hospital to the family farm.
inspirational jobs likes
I'd rather work with someone who's good at their job but doesn't like me, than someone who likes me but is a ninny.
radio kind exciting
It was kind of exciting being on the radio. Not everybody was on the radio.
jobs people needs
Call me a braggart, call me arrogant. People at ABC (and elsewhere) have called me worse. But when you need the job done on deadline, you'll call me.
two trying president
So when I cover the president, I try to remember two things: First, if you don't ask, you don't find out; and second, the questions don't do the damage. Only the answers do.
believe views political
Let's face it many on the political right believe this President ought not to be there. They oppose him not for his policies and political view but for who he is, an African-American.
mother thinking want
And really, the basis, I think, of achieving some success in what I want to do today comes from my mother's push to get me to read and to make something of myself from the standpoint of an education.
war blood red
I saw a large, red dried swath that I immediately identified clearly as blood. I covered the war in Vietnam. I saw a lot of it [blood] there.