Radio Personalities

"You'll leave this theatre in a different state."

"I think that in a campaign there are certain things that you are going to hear and certain behaviors that you will see that will be tempered by the -- after the election -- tempered by simply just going into the White House. However, that being said, I don’t think that the, for the lack of a better way to put it, the zero relationship with the mainstream media is going to be one of those things. Look, this media has not only impugned the character of half of the country, they’ve done this since 2008, 2009, they’ve definitely did this in 2010. Particularly when they were going to push the unaffordable health care act and get that passed. And they were trying to say anyone who disagreed with it, well you may have to check your soul and have a talk with Jesus, cause something’s seriously wrong with you. It’s probably because the president’s black. That’s one of the things that we all heard over and over again. They questioned everybody’s character. And so I am actually happy, because I have long been a huge critic of the media. And I hate that what I do is considered part of it. Because I don’t consider myself part of them. However, I am very glad to see -- I said this actually on television not too long ago -- I am happy, just frankly, to see them curb-stomped. I mean, let’s be real about it, Grant. These people are just the worst thing that could ever possibly happen just to the American political system right now with the way that they cover so many things. For instance, when -- nobody gets a fair shake on policy, no one gets a fair shake where it concerns immigration. They conflate illegal and legal immigration. They conflate a number of things, particularly the coverage on gun control. I have so many things that I hate about mainstream media, there is no way we’re going to fit it in the allotted time today. They are the rat bastards of the earth. They are the boil on the backside of American politics. I have no other nice way to put it."

"Dana is a fearless conservative who is not afraid to confront the liberal media bias head on,” the Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate said in the same statement. “She is a passionate fighter for liberty and an important voice for conservatives. I am thrilled to have Dana on our team and work together to win the White House in 2016."

"I think it’s easier to mourn over a lion that’s been killed than over a baby that’s been killed, I think that’s how far we are from our humanity,"

"As one of the original founders of the modern-day Tea Party movement, I watched grassroots conservatives support Ted Cruz’s David and Goliath success against Dewhurst and the Republican establishment. Cruz has fought to repeal Obamacare, shrink the size of government; he has defended our gun rights, our right to privacy, our sovereignty and borders. I personally feel that Ted Cruz is the best choice to reverse America’s road to ruin and am proud to support him in the 2016 Republican primary."

"They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance. All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness. And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth. I’m the National Rifle Association of America, and I’m freedom’s safest place."

"We’ve had it with your narratives, your propaganda, your fake news. We’ve had it with your constant protection of your Democrat overlords, your refusal to acknowledge any truth that upsets the fragile construct that you believe is real life. And we’ve had it with your tone-deaf assertion that you are in any way truth or fact-based journalism. Consider this the shot across your proverbial bow. In short? We’re coming for you."

"I’m what C.S. Lewis would call a ʽMere Christianʼ, and all of my two books are very, very much meant to be from the point of view of what C.S. Lewis called ‘Mere Christianity’, meaning that I don’t touch upon anything at all where Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians differ, they express just the basics of the faith, from a basic, ecumenical Christian viewpoint. They only talk about the Christian faith that they have agreement on."

"A comedian is not a man who opens a funny door. He opens a door funny."

"This new generation of networked people understand they are living through a third industrial revolution, but they are coming to realize why it has stalled: with the credit system broken, capitalism cannot sustain the scale of automation that is possible, and the destruction of jobs implied by the new technologies."

"The economy is already producing and reproducing a networked lifestyle and consciousness, at odds with the hierarchies of capitalism. The appetite for radical economic change is clear."

"Once the Internet of Things is rolled out, we are at the real takeoff point of the information economy. From then on, the key principle is to create democratic social control over aggregated information, and to prevent its monopolization or misuse by states and corporations."

"A basic income paid for out of taxes on the market economy gives people the chance to build positions in the non-market economy. It allows them to volunteer, set up co-ops, edit Wikipedia, learn how to use 3D design software, or just exist. It allows them to space out periods of work; make a late entry or early exit from working life; switch more easily into and out of high-intensity, stressful jobs. Its fiscal cost would be high: that’s why all attempts to enact the measure separately from an overall transition project are likely to fail, despite the growing number of academic papers and global congresses dedicated to it."

"Globalisation was an unstoppable natural process; free-market economics simply the natural state of things. But when the country that designed globalisation, imposed it and benefited from it most votes against it, you have to consider the possibility that it is going to end, and suddenly. If so, you also have to consider a possibility that – if you are a liberal, humanist democrat – may be even more shocking: that oligarchic nationalism is the default form of failing economies."

"What happens to the state? It probably gets less powerful over time – and in the end its functions are assumed by society. I’ve tried to make this a project usable both by people who see states as useful and those who don’t; you could model an anarchist version and a statist version and try them out. There is probably even a conservative version of postcapitalism, and good luck to it."

"An economy based on information, with its tendency to zero-cost products and weak property rights, cannot be a capitalist economy."

"They are the working class 'sublated' – improved upon and replaced. They may be as clueless as to strategy as the workers of the early nineteenth century were, but they are no longer in thrall to the system. They are enormously dissatisfied with it. They are a group whose diverse interests converge on the need to make postcapitalism happen, to force the info-tech revolution to create a new kind of economy, where as much as possible is produced free, for collaborative common use, reversing the tide of inequality. Neoliberalism can offer them only a world of stagnant growth and state-level bankruptcy: austerity until death, but with an upgraded version of the iPhone every few years. And the freedom they cherish is perennially hemmed in by the neoliberal state – from the NSA’s mass surveillance techniques to those of the Chinese internet police. Above their heads, politics in many countries has become infested by a kleptocratic mafia, whose strategy is to deliver growth at the price of suppressing freedom and expanding inequality."

"For the big-mouthed racist right, theirs is a rebellion in favour of order. For them, as in the 1930s, all variations – of gender, race or sexuality – have to be interpreted as the strong versus the weak. They love the theatre of the mass rally, where the charismatic leader – the magic helper, as Fromm called him – can browbeat them so hard with illogic, that when "experts" confront them with the facts it does not matter."

"They are cynical about human rights. They don’t like immigrants or the European Union. They want the state to be strong and “defence”, generally, to mean attack. They are, basically, the racist grandad who is going to spoil your Christmas. These are the people pollsters have labelled “authoritarian ”."

"When Reagan and Thatcher came to power, "authoritarian populism" was a term academics used to describe their politics. Now it’s a phenomenon, growing rapidly, cutting across old definitions of left and right, goes the argument. But it’s not so simple and the phenomenon is not new. The term "authoritarian populist" is a construct that, if we are not careful, could blind us to the real roots of centrism’s sudden crisis – and to the answers."

"We have to stop saying things were well before COVID. It’s almost as though we give that away to the Trump and Pence. The reality is, Wall Street was well. The reality is, those who got his tax cuts were well. The reality is, though, that before COVID, they were trying to overturn healthcare. Before COVID, they were blocking living wages. Before COVID, we were not addressing the issue of poor and low-wealth people..."

"The Trump-Pence plan is talking about giving more money to the wealthy. In fact, the Trump-Pence-McConnell plan, they refuse to pass a stimulus because they want another $200 billion in tax cuts, they want money for a fighter jet, and they want to protect corporations from liability when those corporations didn’t protect their people from coronavirus... So, what we have is two different worlds operating. Pence, with a straight face, lying, basically said, “Vote for us, and we’ll take your healthcare and undermine your preexisting conditions. Vote for us, and we’ll block living wages. Vote for us, and we will not protect the environment...Vote for us, and we’ll put people on the Supreme Court who will be against your healthcare, against labor rights.” ..And so, we’re living in two different worlds. Not only will Pence and Trump not acknowledge racism when it comes to police violence, they are not even acknowledging the disparate racism in economics and in healthcare, and so forth and so on."

"Well, you know, when Pence talked last night, he told what my grandmother called a bold-faced lie. The first CARES Act, 83% of the money went to corporations and banks. It did not go to the people."

"Mike is intensely loyal. That’s a virtue. He has never uttered to me one syllable of disagreement with the president. And frankly, I admire him for that."

"We’ve taken different paths, but I’m not trying to suggest that mine is a more virtuous path than his. He’s in a position with considerably more power than I have, and there’s something to be said for that."

"[Pence has] got good experience and solid judgment and great background."

"One of the staffers said [Pence and I] looked like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, coming through those swinging doors, so we’ve called each other ‘Butch’ and ‘Sundance’ jokingly ever since."

"During Wednesday’s debate, Vice President Mike Pence refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power if Biden wins the election. Instead, he referenced the Trump administration’s legal efforts to restrict mail-in voting. Rev. William Barber says the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts ahead of the November election, aimed primarily at Black and Brown voters, amount to “surgical racism with surgical precision.” The Poor People’s Campaign, of which Barber is co-chair, is leading a major voter mobilization effort to combat voter disenfranchisement. “They know they cannot win if everybody votes. They are terribly afraid of poor and low-wealth Black and Brown people voting,” he says."

"...Trump is many things. He is pampered, he is an immature man, he is a teenager craving unconditional, endless love from everybody. I don’t think he is fanatic. I’m not sure I would say about his vice president that he is not a fanatic, he probably is..."

"Trump was often just one yes-man away from doing what he wanted. One attorney general. One military commander. One vice president. Many of those who blocked Trump were complicated figures who had spent years enabling him before finally deciding he had gone too far. Even then they often remained in his orbit or refused to speak out. Mike Pence, Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, his four chiefs of staff, his lawyers, the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. For them, every day was a moral challenge, a series of tradeoffs in which they weighed the benefits of accomplishing whatever agenda had brought them into Trump’s world in the first place—whether patriotism or personal ambition or policy goals or simply partisanship—against the need to stop the situation from spiraling out of control. There was a not inconsiderable element of hubris to this; they believed they could manage him, and often succeeded for a while in doing so, only to claim they were shocked it had not worked out when it all ended badly, as it inevitably did. This book is their story too, because without them Donald Trump might have been just another angry old man shouting at the television between golf games."

"He is a man of character and accomplishment. He is the right man for the job."

"Trump spent his last hours as president handing out pardons like lawn care flyers to political allies and friends who had been convicted of serious crimes. Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, and some 140 others received Get Out of Jail cards, just as disgraced General Michael Flynn had earlier. Such massive subverting of the justice system strengthened the impression that for all his posturing, Trump had a career criminal’s appreciation of law and order. If you broke the law for Trump and remained loyal, you would not be punished. All the dedicated investigation it took to uncover deeply hidden facts, the careful presentation of evidence in court, the conscientious deliberations of jurors in fulfillment of their civic duty, and the endless appeals of guilty verdicts to higher courts became ultimately pointless because “the fix” was in at the end—provided you never crossed Trump. This amounted to good advertising for the future, should Trump regain power. He might as well have put up “Wanted” signs for criminals in the post office, except they would be recruitment posters promising big job benefits, including a presidential pardon for crimes committed on his behalf. Anyone who expected Trump to follow tradition and attend his successor’s swearing-in ceremony to help unify the nation did not understand the man who had spent four years splitting the country in two. But Mike Pence did attend, and President Biden privately thanked Pence when their paths crossed after the ceremony for honoring his oath to the Constitution on that fateful day two weeks earlier. Former president Bill Clinton and General Milley also personally acknowledged to Pence how much the nation owed him."

"I believe the time has come to institute a federal death penalty statute with accelerated appeal to ensure that those who engage in mass shootings face execution in months, not years."

"Reverend Barber, at one point during the debate, a fly landed on Pence’s head for nearly two-and-a-half minutes, prompting widespread commentary online. Professor Ibram X. Kendi, author of the best-selling book How to Be an Antiracist, tweeted, “As soon as Pence started denying the existence of systemic racism, the fly got him!” And you have a record last night, a ceiling shattered. Senator Kamala Harris made history as the first Black woman to debate a white man in a presidential or vice-presidential debate. She was the first Black woman, Indian American woman. The significance of this...? Amy Goodman"

"The Constitution is quite clear about the role of the vice president in the counting of electoral votes. It essentially says the vice president presides over a joint session of Congress where the electoral votes that are certified by the states shall be opened and shall be counted. And irrespective of the indictment, I want the American people to know that I had no right to overturn the election. And that on that day, President Trump asked me to put him over the Constitution. But I chose the Constitution and I always will. … I really do believe that anyone who puts themself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States. And anyone who asks someone else to put themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again."

"... And @Mike_Pence is endangering Americans by not quarantining after close contact exposure to #COVID19..."

"She was fusion politics indeed. She was the second Black woman to be the vice president on a major ticket, first on the stage to debate. You know, I couldn’t help but go to the Book of Exodus, where it talked about where God said, “If you don’t let my people go, I’m going to cause flies to come as a sign of what’s wrong. But I won’t let the flies be on the people, but the fly will be a symbol that you’re just wrong. You’re lying. Let my people go.” And Trump and Pence need to let the people go. They’ve been holding poor and low-wealth people hostage, essential workers hostage. It’s time for a change in this country. William Barber II"

"I want people to know that I had no right to overturn the election, and that what the president maintained that day and frankly, has said over and over again over the last two and a half years, is completely false. And it’s contrary to what our Constitution and the laws of this country provide. You know, I’m a student of American history, and the first time I heard in early December, somebody suggests that as vice president, I might be able to decide which votes to reject and which to accept. I knew that it was false. Our founders had just won a war against a king, and the last thing they would have done was vest unilateral authority in any one person to decide who would be the next president. I dismissed it out of hand, but sadly, the president was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers that kept telling him what itching ears wanted to hear."

"Mike Pence did an incredible job, and I'm getting a lot of credit because that's really my first so-called choice."

"I didn’t sense the president was downplaying anything,"

"I trust you, Tim [Giebels], but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car."

"Last week, I did not yield to pressure to exert power beyond my constitutional authority to determine the outcome of the election, and I will not now yield to efforts in the House of Representatives to play political games at a time so serious in the life of our Nation,"

"The American people can be confident that this president wants to reopen the American economy as soon as we can safely and responsibly do it. But we believe, with the guidelines to open up America again, we've given governors around the country our very best counsel about how they can do just that. And we'll continue to work with governors to make sure that they have the guidance, that they have the council and they have the resources to accomplish that. And to put the coronavirus in the past someday and to put America back to work."

"There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, that I possessed unilateral authority to reject electoral college votes. And I heard this week, President Trump said I had the right to "overturn the election". But President Trump is wrong — I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election."

"No one wants to reopen America more than President Donald Trump. And I think the American people have known that from weeks ago when the president declared that important balance, we have to make sure that the cure isn't worse than the disease. Because the reality is that for all of the sacrifice the American people have made, sacrifices that literally have saved lives, the truth is that there are real costs including the health and well-being of the American people to continue to go through the shutdown that we're in today. And so the president laid out new guidelines for every state in the country to say that if you’ve seen cases decline for 14 days, if you're in a position to do the kind of, the kind of testing and you have the health hospital capacity that we want to encourage every state to examine the way to go to phase one. And that's the new guidance that we're giving."

"Chuck Todd: I understand that. I've given you a lot of leeway here. I've not been wanting to interrupt you. That's not true, I always want to jump in on some things. I've given you a lot of leeway. Why is the president trying to undermine the guidance you've been laying out and that he's been -- he laid out this guidance on Thursday and undermined it on Friday."

"We believe that under the phase one criteria that we have a sufficient amount of testing at that level to allow states to begin to responsibly reopen. And literally doing more than 150,000 tests a day now, a number that we believe we could double once we activate all the laboratories around the country, we're confident that that would enable any governor who's otherwise met the criteria of 14 days of declining cases to be able to have the testing capacity sufficient to monitor people that may have symptoms so we can identify them and do contact tracing and also deploy the resources to vulnerable populations, nursing homes and particular vulnerable populations in our city to ensure that we don't see a resurgence of the coronavirus. So yes, we think we've laid a strong foundation for testing for phase one and we're going to continue to expand testing going forward for the nation in the weeks and months ahead."

"Mike Pompeo and Vice President Pence, they both long for the rapture, for the end times, for Jesus coming down to the Earth and killing all the unbelievers with his flaming sword. This is what they are all about. This is why they allowed the embassy to move to Jerusalem. Go back and check the remarks that were made at that time, the prayers that were given and so forth. This is, in a word, a very different U.S. administration, but in the same hands of the military-industrial complex, of the national security state, of all the people who want warfare to be the raison d’être of this empire at the same time."

"Yes, some of his parleys that violated our rules were taken down, including the ones you are talking about."

"It really is good to be back with all the patriots in the NRA, men and women who stand on the ramparts of freedom, defending all the God-given liberties enshrined in the Constitution of the United States every day [...] With your support, the Trump-Pence administration championed freedom for four remarkable years, and every single day we stood without apology for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms."