Top 214 Quotes & Sayings by Lawrence O'Donnell - Page 3

National security adviser is not a position that requires confirmation. This is a pick that like [Donald Trump] Chief of Staff, he gets to choose on his own and have installed.

We know what we believe and we`ll come back and win or not if we sit back.

Why I supported Keith Ellison for chairing the DNC because I know Keith. And I know he`s not going to take a lot of stuff. He`s going to be in the halls of Congress arguing. But he is going to go out to the protests and talk to people.

Look, [Mitt] Romney comes from a religion founded by a criminal who was anti-American, pro-slavery, and a rapist. And he comes from that lineage and says, 'I respect this religion fully.'

He addressed a black lawyer as "boy". That`s why Jeff Sessions couldn`t get through Senate confirmation process under the old rules followed by Democrats and Republicans.

A number of foreign policy experts distanced themselves from Donald Trump, not Michael Flynn.

Michael Flynn is a very controversial figure for a variety of reasons.

How much trouble did the Democrats cause for a particular nominee on the way to actually being confirmed.And usually it`s very little.

Senator Bernie Sanders saying in effect that he wants Washington to operate under the old rules, where someone like Steve Bannon would never be allowed to visit the White house, never mind work there.

If Jeff Sessions had been an editor of something like "Breitbart", Ronald Reagan wouldn`t have even nominated him.

National security advisors are not there to be advocates, generally. They`re not there to be partisans, they`re not there to be ideologues.

This is someone [Michael Flynn] who is considered a loyalist and as we have watched this transition process unfold, again roiled by reports of turmoil, Donald Trump seems to be really focusing right now in this initial phase on loyalists.

The "New York Times" interview shows that the president Donald Trump believes he can get through the special prosecutor`s investigation of obstruction of justice with the simple words "I don`t remember". Jeff Sessions has been publicly attacked by the president. And in the middle of that attack, the president told all of his teammates who were in the Oval Office that day how he is going to testify when Robert Mueller asks him under oath if he kicked all of them out of the room when he asked to speak with James Comey alone.

The screening in the United States is the toughest screening of any country in the world in terms of refugees, that accepts refugees. And of course there are those that don`t accept any, or ever have, no matter what kind they are.

Melania Trump`s husband tweeted this: "Cher, I don`t wear a rug, it`s mine, and I promise not to talk about your massive plastic surgeries that didn`t work."

Go head Taggert. Take your best shot.

Jeff Sessions wished he wasn`t the attorney general. The president Donald Trump has the most incompetent cabinet in history, and he`s unhappy with only one of them. Only Jeff Sessions.

The question was, have you heard from anyone on the [Donald] Trump transition team? We have not been contacted.

[Adviser is] the ones who do the job very well are the ones who lay out the range of options, filter down the range of options that are available to the president, lay them out in an honest, brokerage way and then let the president make the choice among those options.

Senator Jeff Sessions is reportedly on the [Donald] Trump shortlist to be either the next Secretary of Defense or the next Attorney General of the United States.

The Republican Party is saying that the president of the United States has bosses, that the union bosses this president around - the unions boss him around. Does that sound to you like they are consciously or subconsciously deliver the racist message that, of course - of course, a black man can't be the real boss?

It is amazing that Jeff Sessions is still in the job. Any self-respecting Attorney General of the United States would have publicly resigned as soon as the president`s words became public. It is now clear that Jeff Sessions is going to be a witness against the president of the United States. It`s also clear that the Donald Trump's defense to special prosecutor Robert Mueller is going to be, "I don`t remember".

While alcohol ... continues to wreak havoc in America, supported by a $6 billion-a-year alcohol industry advertising campaign extolling the joy of inebriation, the far less harmful drug of marijuana remains illegal and continues to ruin people's lives - only if they are caught possessing and convicted of that crime.

[Michael Flynn is] controversial among many people in the national security establishment, many people in the Republican mainstream. The thing about this appointment that, again, goes to me is most.

Someone who traffics in much more than what Jeff Sessions said back then will be with the president every day in the White House as his senior strategist.

National security advisors, like White House Chiefs of Staff, their job generally if they`re - if they`re competent and qualified and effective is to be honest brokers in the White House.

169 House Democrats signed a letter to the President-elect [Donald Trump] urging him to "rescind this appointment [of Steve Bannon ] immediately."

So many people, so many amateurs like Donald Trump believe that "I don`t recall" is an absolutely fail-safe position and you can`t get caught in perjury.

It`s hard to think of John McCain without thinking about what a ball of energy he is. I remember when I was working in the Senate, he just, enters every room and went down every hallway at the highest speed possible and just was always that way. I think people saw that when he was running for president, that that`s the way he handled everything. It`s just this constant never let up attitude.

Michael Flynn not exactly cut from that cloth. Someone who has very strong views about almost everything in the realm of national security and defense.

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn would fit into that broader pattern.

Donald Trump hasn`t decided, and most importantly, we don`t know if the old rules still apply.

I`m just learning that according to a source familiar with the transition process, President-elect Donald Trump intends to select Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as his national security adviser.

Why in general, when you`re putting together a White House staff and putting together a good one, you`re looking for someone there who is not someone who`s going to be heavy-handed.

Sixty one percent of Donald Trump`s supporters believe that President [Barack] Obama was not born in the United States.They believe Donald Trump`s lie about where President Obama was born, the lie he started telling four years ago and has since replaced with other hate-driven lies like the thousands of Muslims Donald Trump lies about having seen celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11.

Actually, Congress just did pass a tax plan like Donald Trump`s.They passed a tax plan which some Democrats voted for, significant number of Democrats which gave huge tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations.

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn ran the defense intelligence agency from 2012 to 2014. He served as a top national intelligence adviser to General Stanley McChrystal in Iraq.

Michael Flynn was one of Trump`s top national security advisors throughout the campaign.

The president Donald Trump told the "New York Times" that he regrets appointing Jeff Sessions. And when a president expresses no confidence in a cabinet member, then that cabinet member owes the president his resignation. When the president does it publicly, which is something we just have never seen before, then that cabinet matter really has no choice from that minute forward, absolutely no choice.

[Donald] Trump is now. And we don`t know what the rules are now.

That`s why somebody like a Tim Ryan can go to a bar in Youngstown just as well as in Congress and talk to working people. Democrats know how to carry the message. We just have to take some telephone new voices and bring them forward.

Melania Trump`s husband tweeted this: "Arianna Huffington is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man. He made a good decision."

Because Republicans defected and voted with all the Democrats to reject Jeff Sessions` nomination when they discovered that when he was working as a prosecutor in Alabama, he called the NAACP Un-American.

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.

I don`t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She [Hillary Clinton] is saying Russia, Russia, Russia. Maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia. But it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people.

According to the international organization for migration, more than 1 million migrants have arrived in Europe this year, the most since World War II. Half of them were Syrian.

Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist candidate for president was the Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986 and he tried to get Jeff Sessions` nomination through that committee, but he couldn`t.

Let`s be the Democrats we know we have always been. And maybe every once in a when an opposition that lets you get even more tougher and clear about what you`re about. I think that`s a good thing for Democrats.

I agree that we have to have the toughest screening and vetting that we can have, but I don`t think a halt is necessary. What we have to do is put all of our resources through the Department of Homeland Security, through the State Department, through our intelligence agencies, and we have to have an increased vetting and screening .

I was looking at the Trump hits on me, I have to confess, all of which made me laugh. And I thought, you know, he never goes after guys` looks. He only does the looks thing with women. And then I found this one. "Lawrence will soon be off TV, bad ratings, he has a face made for radio." So, he has gone after, at least one guy, on looks.

I`d like to curl up in a ball like Hillary [Clinton]said she would but she is out. And I think we all have to go do that. The fact of the matter is we don`t have the luxury of pulling back from this.

In recent years, we`ve made historic investments in NATO, increased America`s presence in Europe.

I am confident that just as a America`s commitment to the transatlantic alliance has endured for seven decades, whether it`s been under a Democratic or Republican administration, that commitment will continue including our pledge and our treaty obligation to defend every ally.

I remember the first few months of the [Ronald] Reagan administration when all sorts of things happened too fast. We cannot allow that to happen.

Under the old rules, Steve Bannon could never get a security clearance. But there could be a new rule, the Trump Rule.

Safety concerns are reasonable. Banning refugees is certainly not.

This year [2015] has shown with painful clarity that our existing systems, approaches, and funding, are inadequate to the task at hand, and to the amount of human suffering that is ongoing.

The fourth largest city in America is under water tonight and we don`t know when we will see it again. We don`t know how long it will take for the waters to subside.

I think we should not do what the Republicans did, which is to spend eight years saying they would do absolutely nothing because we do stand for the country.

The Daily Beast reports today that if Steve Bannon is denied a security clearance, the President could simply overrule that denial and order that security clearance.