A Quote by Christopher Ruddy
Isn't it a little strange the FBI director has a private conversation with the president. Instead of saying to the president, Mr. President, you're new to this job. You're not a legal law enforcement guy. What you're saying is inappropriate to me.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
The most important thing to me is that the president Donald Trump fired the FBI director James Comey all because of the Russia investigation. That first justification given, again, the White House misleading the country about a major action the administration was taking, but the fact that they had a private conversation in which the president, by his own admission, was discussing the future of Director Comey in that job, and the president brings up whether he is under investigation, highly unethical, at a minimum, unethical.
The president has a duty and a right to oversee the FBI, and you know, he properly delegate the law enforcement to the FBI and try to insulate it from politics. But that's not to curb the president's authority over the FBI. So if he wants to meet with the FBI and give his opinion or even talk about his hopes, if indeed, he said that, he has every right to do so.
Mr. President, no one is saying you broke any laws, we're just saying it's a little bit weird you didn't have to.
Before the election, I reported on a story about a counterintelligence officer from another service sending reports to the FBI saying that his sources in Russia were saying that Moscow tried for years to cultivate and co-opt Donald Trump. I'm not saying that happened. I'm saying I hope the FBI took a strong look, because it is really hard to believe that a president-elect would be so callous in how he approaches this issue and so dismissive of the seriousness of it.
FBI directors serve at the pleasure of the president, but they often have terms that transcend partisan transfers of power at the White House. Firing an FBI director is a major problem from the point of view of a president who is already facing significant questions about investigations already underway.
I spent a lot of 2012 going around the country saying that President Obama was the most liberal and most incompetent president in my lifetime ever since Jimmy Carter. Now having witnessed the events abroad these last several days, to President Carter, I want to issue a sincere apology. It is no longer fair to say he was the worst president of this great country in my lifetime, President Obama has proven me wrong.
I met the former president of Iceland [Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir] once. I think she was president for, like, 16 years or something. She said she used to get letters from little boys saying, "Madam President, do you think it will ever be possible for a boy to be president?" Just like we assume that girls can't be politicians, they were assuming boys can't. That's what they thought. It's so crazy.
I do my job. I love my job. It's the best job I ever had. And it's probably the best job I will ever have. And I serve at the pleasure of the president. That's true of President Obama. That will be true of President Trump. And if and when a president decides that they want to replace me, I'll ride off into the sunset.
The idea that the president doesn't interfere in law-enforcement investigative matters is one of our deep normative expectations of the modern presidency. But it is not a matter of law. Legally, if the president of the United States wants to direct the specific conduct of investigations, that is his constitutional prerogative.
I always kid the president in different circumstances. Mr. President, a country's never going to be more optimistic than the president.
My dad challenged every president from President [Dwight] Eisenhower and Vice President [Richard] Nixon to President [J.F] Kennedy, Vice President [Lindon] Johnson to President Johnson and Vice President [Hubert] Humphrey. It`s challenging the administrations to do the right thing.
And I keep saying, whether you like the president or not, everybody has to pull together and help the president because, as the president goes, so goes the country, as the country goes, so goes your job, your ability to feed your family, your government.
There's a lot to learn from President Clinton. It kills me as a strong Republican saying it, but he was the most effective president during my lifetime. And when business got out of line, he smacked them.
I think, clearly, where you have a situation in which the Solicitor General tells me, 'I cannot in good faith argue a certainly legal position,' and if the president told us to argue that position, we would have to tell him, 'No, we can't do that, Mr. President.'
I agreed with everything he was saying when he ran for president. I was listening to what he said. I go, this guy thinks like me and I agree with him. Now he's changing. All he keeps saying is millionaires and billionaires don't pay their fair share of taxes.
We've had Vice President Pence visiting Tallinn, where he met not only with me but also with my other Baltic colleagues - Lithuanian President Ms. Grybauskaite and Latvian President Mr. Vejonis. And, of course, Vice President Pence has been very clear that NATO acts as a whole. Attack against one is attack against all.
Related Authors
Ambrose Bierce Quotes
American
Journalist
Andy Rooney Quotes
American
Journalist
Ann Coulter Quotes
American
Journalist
Anna Quindlen Quotes
American
Journalist
Bill Vaughan Quotes
American
Journalist
Dave Barry Quotes
American
Journalist
Dennis Prager Quotes
American
Journalist
Erma Bombeck Quotes
American
Journalist
Fran Lebowitz Quotes
American
Journalist
George Will Quotes
American
Journalist
Glenn Beck Quotes
American
Journalist
Hunter S. Thompson Quotes
American
Journalist
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
American
Journalist
Molly Ivins Quotes
American
Journalist
Rachel Maddow Quotes
American
Journalist
Walter Lippmann Quotes
American
Journalist