Trump Administration Quotes

Each one of these decisions, even when they were ultimately reversed, set recovery efforts back further. Is this all a masterful conspiracy to make sure Puerto Ricans are too desperate, distracted, and despairing to resist Wall Street's bitter economic medicine? I don't believe it's anything that coordinated. Much of this is simply what happens when you bleed the public sphere for decades, laying off competent workers and neglecting basic maintenance. Run-of-the-mill corruption and cronyism are no doubt at work as well.

But it's also true that many governments have deployed a starve-then-sell strategy when it comes to public services: cut health care/transit/education to the bone until people are so disillusioned and desperate that they are willing to try anything, including selling off those services altogether. And if Rosselló and the Trump administration have seemed remarkably unconcerned about the nonstop relief and reconstruction screw-ups, the attitude may be at least partly informed by an understanding that the worse things get, the stronger the case for privatization becomes. ~ Naomi Klein

President Obama's administration, for all its racial posturing---failed to protect the people of Flint, Michigan, while the Trump administration has already awarded $100 million for Flint's clean-up efforts. ~ Horace Cooper

Astonishingly, the share of students who don't get education in contraceptives is going up, not down. The Trump administration even tried to cut off funding for a teen pregnancy prevention program (lawsuits forced it to continue that funding). What's confounding is that these same officials are often anti-abortion, yet they don't seem to understand that preventing unplanned pregnancies will reduce abortions. They believe that condoms will promote promiscuity, when condoms no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain. These same officials then thunder about the irresponsibility of girls who get pregnant, oblivious to their own irresponsibility. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

The nightmares I had been fending off had come home in the form of the Trump administration: a white supremacist kleptocracy linked to a transnational crime syndicate, using digital media to manipulate reality and destroy privacy, led by a sociopathic nuke-fetishist, backed by apocalyptic fanatics preying on the weakest and most vulnerable as feckless and complicit officials fail to protect them. ~ Sarah Kendzior

Idealistic? Ruddy stupid, if you'll pardon the language, miss,: Mr Roberts said. "All this talk about power for the people and down with the ruling classes and everyone should govern themselves. It can never happen, I told him. The ruling classes are born to rule. They know how to do it. You take a person like you or me and you put us up there to run a country and we'd make a ruddy mess of it. ~ Rhys Bowen

In the introduction, Amy Butler the senior minister at Riverside and a friend of Clinton's, referred to the Trump Administration as a source of anguish and confusion, and everyone nodded solemly'. ~ David Remnick

We need intelligence in this country. We need a certain toughness in this country, or we're going to end up like a lot of the other places, and we're not going to have a country left. ~ Donald Trump

One of the greatest weaknesses of Chris Mitchell's editorship of the Australian is that he has allowed Greg Sheridan to remain his foreign editor throughout. Sheridan is a man who argued in different columns that George W. Bush was the Winston Churchill of our era; that unlike mediocre politicians like Barack Obama and John McCain, the "new star" of American politics, Sarah Palin, was able to combine "celebrity" with "character"; that President Obama's "anti-Israel hysteria" was leading his administration toward "licensing a mutant strain of anti-semitism"; and that the United States would most likely be strengthened by the crash of Wall Street in September 2008. ~ Robert Manne

When people feel left out, left behind, and left without options, the deep void will be filled by anger and resentment or depression and despair about those who supposedly took away their livelihood or cut in line.
Trump brilliantly tapped into all these feelings. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

Any plan of administration which contemplates a concentrating of responsibility is open to the dangers which follow the creation of a bureaucracy. ~ Arthur Capper

During the heat of the space race in the 1960s, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ballpoint pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules. After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of approximately $1 million US. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on earth. The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The great thing about this town hall format is that it allows us to hear what's on the minds of Americans. Tonight, it was clear - voters have quite a few questions about the direction in which the current administration is headed. ~ Janet Napolitano

There's tremendous crime and illegal immigration is just incredible. As far as Rubio, he's very weak on immigration, you know, I have great relations with Mexico and I love the Mexican people, and the spirit of the Mexican people. These are people just pouring across the border. ~ Donald Trump

Rosette disappeared onto the dance floor. Wells sat in silence for a minute, watching the dancers. The worldwide cult of fast money spent stupidly. The worldwide cult of trying too hard. Moscow, Rio, Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York, London, Shanghai--the story was the same everywhere. The same overloud music, the same overpromoted brand names, the same fake tits, about as erotic as helium balloons. Everywhere an orgy of empty consumption and bad sex. Las Vegas was the cult's world headquarters, Donald Trump its patron saint. Wells had spent ten years in the barren mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He never wanted to live there again. But if he had to choose between an eternity there or in the supposed luxury of this club, he'd go back without a second thought. ~ Alex Berenson

...the postwar revolution in America's religious identity had its roots not in the foreign policy panic of the 1950s but rather in the domestic politics of the 1930s and early 1940s. Decades before Eisenhower's inaugural prayers, corporate titans enlisted conservative clergymen in an effort to promote new political arguments embodied in the phrase "freedom under God." As the private correspondence and public claims of the men leading this charge make clear, this new ideology was designed to defeat the state power its architects feared most - not the Soviet regime in Moscow, but Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal administration in Washington. ~ Kevin M. Kruse

Oh, I don't think Tom Sowell would tell anybody to join the administration. That's not his style. But I think his attitude has always been if it had to be done he'd prefer me to do it than somebody else. ~ Clarence Thomas

In the aftermath of President Obama's re-election, members of both the administration and the media trumpeted that Obama had received his long-sought mandate. Obamacare, Americans were told, was the law of the land. It could not be changed; it could not be stopped. ~ Ben Shapiro

Did you ever think one day you'd live through a global pandemic, with a doomsday virus, and the Joker is president? Sounds like a bad made-for-TV scifi movie. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

I think in Pakistan there is already democracy and no dictatorship. And recently a few years ago, the Pakistani people stood against the dictatorship of [Pervez] Musharraf and compelled him to resign. So now it is the people's democracy so I don't think any chance that the people should stand against this administration. Pakistan's situation is different than Egypt. They cannot be compared. ~ Shahbaz Bhatti

Trump's dictatorial tendencies and mendacity, negative attributes for many voters, poised him perfectly to manipulate the evangelical mind. Like the biblical god evangelicals worship, Trump is a thin-skinned authoritarian with totalitarian tendencies. He craves love and punishes any disloyalty or slight. Evangelicals have been taught to worship and adore that type of being above all others. This strain of religion cultivates a veneration for extreme authority. Studies bear this out: religious fundamentalism and a tendency to submit to authoritarianism are highly correlated. Trump acted like the character evangelicals worship and benefited from their ingrained adulation. Evangelicals were simply seeing in Trump a character they'd been taught to revere. As if to prove the point, Ann Coulter called Trump her "Emperor God". ~ Andrew L. Seidel

People sometimes approach me tentatively or suspiciously because of my father's reputation as a world-class negotiator, as if they think I'm about to take advantage of them. As if I know something I'm not letting on. ~ Ivanka Trump

Everyone is now [Donald] Trump. ~ Chris Hayes

A great leader has to be flexible, holding his ground on the major principles but finding room for compromises that can bring people together. A great leader has to be savvy at negotiations so we don't drown every bill in pork barrel bridges to nowhere. I know how to stand my ground - but I also know that Republicans and Democrats need to find common ground to stand on as well. ~ Donald J. Trump

I was in total shock. I work so close (to home) that I figured I'd return to work and the baby nurse would bring the baby to me, and I'd run home periodically, and I'd make it work. But every two hours? That's a whole other level. I'll have to make a nursery at the office. ~ Ivanka Trump

Economist Peter Orszag witnessed the workings of vetocracy and its nefarious consequences. Writing in 2011, he reflected on what he had just witnessed as one of the top economic policymakers in the United States: "During my recent stint in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget, it was clear to me that the country's political polarization was growing worse - harming Washington's ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing. . . . Radical as it sounds we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic. I know that such ideas carry risk. And I have arrived at these proposals reluctantly: they come more from frustration than from inspiration. But we need to confront the fact that a polarized, gridlocked government is doing real harm to our country. And we have to find some way out of it. ~ Moises Naim

John Frame's 'tri-perspectivalism' helps me understand Willow. The Willow Creek style churches have a 'kingly' emphasis on leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration. The danger there is that the mechanical obscures how organic and spontaneous church life can be. The Reformed churches have a 'prophetic' emphasis on preaching, teaching, and doctrine. The danger there is that we can have a naïve and unBiblical view that, if we just expound the Word faithfully, everything else in the church - leader development, community building, stewardship of resources, unified vision - will just happen by themselves. The emerging churches have a 'priestly' emphasis on community, liturgy and sacraments, service and justice. The danger there is to view 'community' as the magic bullet in the same way Reformed people view preaching. ~ Timothy J. Keller

All of us in our administration worked hard to support families in raising their children and succeeding at work. ~ William J. Clinton

With migration [in Europe] you look at the lines and you look at the tremendous amount of young strong men in these lines and you wonder what is going on? ~ Donald Trump

The common and continual mischief's [sic] of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion. ~ George Washington

Maybe nostalgia is itself the problem. A Democrat I met in Macon during a conversation we had about the local enthusiasm for Trump told me that "people want to go back to Mayberry", the setting of the beloved old Andy Griffith Show. (As it happens, the actual model for Mayberry, Mount Airy, a bedraggled town in North Carolina, has gone all in on the Trump revolution, as the Washington Post recently reported.)

Maybe it's also true, as my liberal friends believe, that what people in this part of the country secretly long to go back to are the days when the Klan was riding high or when Quantrill was terrorizing the people of neighboring Kansas, or when Dred Scott was losing his famous court case. For sure, there is a streak of that ugly sentiment in the Trump phenomenon.

But I want to suggest something different: that the nostalgic urge does not necessarily have to be a reactionary one. There is nothing un-progressive about wanting your town to thrive, about recognizing that it isn't thriving today, about figuring out that the mid-century, liberal way worked better.

For me, at least, that is how nostalgia unfolds. When I drive around this part of the country, I always do so with a WPA guidebook in hand, the better to help me locate the architectural achievements of the Roosevelt years. I used to patronize a list of restaurants supposedly favored by Harry Truman (they are slowly disappearing).

And these days, as I pass Trump sign after ~ Thomas Frank

Lacey said if he wanted to read a daily or regular critiques of the Bush administration, he would read the New York Times, and that's not what he wanted in the Village Voice. ~ Sydney Schanberg

By giving the FDA adequate resources and authority to both prevent outbreaks and intervene once they appear, we can support the administration's efforts to reassure the parents of America that the food they feed their children is the product of the safest system in the world. ~ Diana DeGette

Joan Durbeyfield always manged to find consolation somewhere: 'Well, as one of the genuine stock, she ought to make her way with 'en, if she plays her trump car aright. And if he don't marry her afore he will after. For that he's all afire wi' love for her any eye can see.'
'What's her trump card? Her d'Urberville blood, you mean?'
'No, stupid; her face - as 'twas mine. ~ Thomas Hardy

Do you mind if I sit back a little? Because your breath is very bad. ~ Donald Trump

It seems like everybody's weighing in on Trumps campaign - even Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. He said that Trump is 'probably the best thing to happen to politics in a long, long time.' Then Trump was like, 'Well, at least one Cuban loves me.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

I'm not a free trader, but I am a free trader, but I'm also a fare trader and a smart trader. I want to make sure that the United States gains something. So I think you would probably agree. ~ Donald Trump

We need to build a wall ... I don't mind having a big beautiful door in that wall. ~ Donald Trump

Lauren "Lo" Howard, proud graduate of Howard University where she majored in integrated marketing and minored in business administration. What was she now? Almost a convicted felon. Lo ~ Nako

In order to succeed in business a man does not need a degree from a school of business administration. These schools train the subalterns for routine jobs. They certainly do not train entrepreneurs. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Donald Trump announced that he is not running for president. He would rather spend his time making Gary Busey sell Snapple on the street. ~ David Letterman

or the need for a Trump 2012 presidential campaign ("This is what I've been waiting for my whole life, a president who's not afraid to tell the truth about being a lying asshole!"), ~ Chris Smith

Not only in personal relationships, but also in professional life, if like minded people work together, it is a beauty to witness ~ Rajasaraswathii

President Lyndon Johnson's administration was known for his War on Poverty. President Obama's will become notable for his War on Prosperity. We're speaking, of course, of Obama's plans to hike income taxes on the most wealthy 2 or 3 percent of the nation. He's not just raising the top rate to 39.6 percent; he's also disallowing about one-third of top earner's deductions, whether for state and local taxes, charitable contributions or mortgage interest. This is an effective hike in their taxes by an average of about 20 percent. ~ Dick Morris

It's the same as when I broke the melding bond. Our love doesn't trump the millions of people in the seven worlds. We must think of the greater good."
He pulled back from me and before I could blink he held my chin in his gentle grip. "And I will tell you again, Abigail, that nothing trumps our love. Nothing. ~ Jaymin Eve

Donald Trump has been called, by psychologists and clinical psychologists, over and over again, a narcissist with multiple sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies. ~ Gizmo, The Puzzled Puppy