Luke Russert: ‘I never viewed it as I had to pick up the torch and move forward’

NBC News correspondent Luke Russert Tweeted this photo last night:

One of my favorite pictures of my dad is him talking to Elizabeth Edwards in NH in early ’08. May she be risen.

Tim Russert passed away a few months after this photo was taken. Edwards died yesterday after a 6 year battle with cancer.

In a Daily Beast interview this week Luke Russert tells Howard Kurtz: “My father really saw me as a focus group in a way, as someone who was removed from the Washington spin game. He would often ask me what I thought about certain politicians and certain issues.”

“I never viewed it as I had to pick up the torch and move forward,” Russert says in the press gallery in the Capitol, the ornate building where he spends most of his waking hours. His dad “often told me I could do whatever I wanted to do as long as I worked hard and did it with honor.”

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