Tim Russert

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Tim Russert

Timothy John Russert, Jr. (born May 7, 1950) is an American journalist who has hosted NBC's Meet the Press since 1991. He hosts Tim Russert, a weekly interview program on CNBC, and appears as a frequent guest on The Today Show. In addition, Russert is also Senior Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief of NBC News.

Born in Buffalo, New York to Irish American Catholic parents, Russert is a graduate of John Carroll University and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. He is admitted to the bar in New York and the District of Columbia. Before joining NBC News, Russert served as counselor in New York Governor Mario Cuomo's office in Albany in 1983 to 1984 and was chief of staff to Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan from 1977 to 1982. An avid fan of the American Football team the Buffalo Bills, Russert usually closes Sunday broadcasts during the football season with some type of pro-Bills comment. Recently, he has also ended his show by mentioning the successes of Boston College football and basketball.

While in law school, an official from his alma mater, John Carroll, called Tim to ask if he could book some concerts for the school as he did while he was a student. Tim agreed, but said he would need money to do it because he was running out of money to pay for law school. One of the concerts that Tim booked was an unknown singer named Bruce Springsteen who charged $2,500 for the concert appearance. Tim told this story to Jay Leno when he was a guest on the The Tonight Show on NBC on June 6, 2006.

During NBC's coverage of the 2000 US Presidential Election he calculated possible electoral college outcomes on a marker board on the air, accurately predicting in advance that the election would hinge on "Florida, Florida, Florida." He often moderates political debates.

In 2004 Russert penned a bestselling biography, Big Russ and Me, which chronicled his life growing up in a predominently Irish working-class neighborhood in South Buffalo as well as his education at Canisius High School. Russert's father, a World War II veteran held down two jobs after the war, conveyed to his young son, through the methods of the "carrot and the stick," the importance of maintaining strong family values, the reverence of faith, and of never taking a short cut to reach a goal. He claimed to have received over 60,000 letters from people in response to the book, detailing their own experiences with their fathers, and in 2006 he released Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons, a collection of some of these letters. The book was again a bestseller.

Russert appeared briefly in a scene on the television drama Homicide as himself. On that show, one of the fictional characters, Megan Russert, was his cousin. Russert also appeared on the game show Jeopardy!

Tim Russert is married to Maureen Orth, who has been a special correspondent for Vanity Fair since 1993.

Ongoing Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that Russert was the first to tell him of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency agent Valerie Plame. Russert testified previously that he did not tell Libby of Plame's identity. This conflict in testimony has been speculated to be the basis for further investigation into wrongdoing in the act of exposing Plame's identity to the public.

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