Businesspeople From The United States

"Sounds like we got some fans and some haters."

"Here's our state's junior Senator bragging about terrorizing Ohioans with malicious lies in order to change the subject in the national election he's losing."

"We have built a foreign policy of hectoring and moralizing and lecturing countries that don't want anything to do with this. The Chinese have a foreign policy of building roads and bridges and feeding poor people, and I think that we should pursue a foreign policy, a diplomacy, of respect and a foreign policy that is not rooted in moralizing; it is rooted in the national interests of this country."

"Historically, the choice of the vice president makes no difference. You're voting for the president. And you can have a vice president who's outstanding in every way—and I think JD is, I think that all of them would have been—but you're not voting that way, you're voting for the president."

"And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I'm skeptical. But it really didn't work out for the kids of those marriages. [...] And that's what I think all of us should be honest about, is we've run this experiment in real time. And what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that's making our kids unhappy."

"Did you see me on FOX Primetime recently? I needed to speak DIRECTLY to patriots like you about the serious issue of radical childless leaders in this country. [...] We can’t have people who don't have a direct stake in this country making our most important decisions. We've allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths - they're invested in NOTHING because they're not invested in this country's children. Fighting back won't be easy - our childless opponents have a lot of free time. That's why I need YOU to stand with me."

"I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another."

"President Trump and I are proud to be the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history."

"Our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country,"

"President Obama came on the scene right as so many people in my community began to believe that the modern American meritocracy was not built for them. We know we're not doing well. We see it every day: in the obituaries for teenage kids that conspicuously omit the cause of death (reading between the lines: overdose), in the deadbeats we watch our daughters waste their time with. Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren't. He wears suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we're lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn't be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it--not because we think she's wrong, but because we know she's right."

"At a pivotal time in my life, Barack Obama gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams. For that, I'll miss him, and the example he set."

"I don’t think that 60-70 percent of working-class white voters would have supported a Muslim ban before Donald Trump said something about a Muslim ban. I think that all you have to do is go back to the most recent Republican president and the way that George W. Bush encouraged us to think openly and supportively about our Muslim citizens. There is an element here where I think it’s not just that Trump is exploiting something but he’s also leading the white working class to a very dark place."

"In 4 years, I hope people remember that it was those of us who empathized with Trump's voters who fought him the most aggressively."

"Donald Trump is frankly dangerous."

"My view is both that Trump is tapping into some racially ugly attitudes, but also that he is leading people to racially ugly attitudes."

"I quickly realized that Trump's actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd."

"When people read Breitbart every single day and convince themselves that Barack Obama is a foreign terrorist, that is not a problem of government. That is a problem of community failure, and we have to recognize that."

"America doesn’t have to constantly police every region of the world. We should empower people to police their own regions of the world. One: We would save a lot of money. Two: We’d save a lot of focus."

"I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people, and when the courts - because you will get taken to court - and then when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it."

"If you're a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case you should be ashamed of yourself."

"The next time that we get power, whether it's...President Trump round two in 2024...I think the thing that we have to take away from the last ten years is that we really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power."

"Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy)"

"The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check. And since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on."

"[On NPR, August 2016] I can't stomach Trump"

"[Interviewed by Charlie Rose, October 2016] I'm a Never-Trump guy. I never liked him."

"I think this election is really having a negative effect especially on the white working class. What it’s doing is giving people an excuse to point the finger at someone else, point the finger at Mexican immigrants, or Chinese trade or the Democratic elites or whatever else."

"Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us."

"Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us."

"My God what an idiot."

"I think that I'm going to vote third party because I can't stomach Trump. I think that he's noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place. And ultimately I just don't share Hillary Clinton's politics."

"I don't think most Americans, whether they like her music, are fans of her or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from their interests and the problems of most Americans."

"The American media totally ignored this stuff, until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do."

"Eggs, when Kamala Harris took office, were short of $1.50 a dozen. Now a dozen eggs will cost you around $4."

"Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country."

"I think there's a chance, if I feel like Trump has a really good chance of winning, that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton."

"In two days, we are going to take out the trash in Washington, D.C., and the trash’s name is Kamala Harris."

"The question each European nation needs to ask itself is this: are you prepared to defend yourself? And the question the US must ask is: if our European allies can't even defend themselves, are they allies, or clients?"

"“Humans appear to have some need to look down on someone; there’s just a basic tribalistic impulse in all of us,” Vance recently told The American Conservative. “And if you’re an elite white professional, working-class whites are an easy target: You don’t have to feel guilty for being a racist or a xenophobe. By looking down on the hillbilly, you can get that high of self-righteousness and superiority without violating any of the moral norms of your own tribe.”"

"This pet-eating panic was built on nothing. It turns out not long after his first post about Haitians eating pets, his campaign actually called the Springfield city manager, who remembers Vance’s staff asked point-blank: ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’ and he said: ‘I told him no.’"

"In the US, justifications for the war often depend on a contemporary domino theory: unless we stop Putin in Ukraine, he won't stop there. But the time has come for Europe to stand on its own feet. That doesn't mean it has to stand alone, but it must not continue to use America as a crutch."

"Trump's biggest failure as a political leader is that he sees the worst in people and he encourages the worst in people."

"Far from just repeating claims he’s heard, Vance has actually helped create much of the chaos he’s now trying to exploit."

"Vance seems to assume that large numbers of native-born white people don’t constitute ethnic enclaves, and that communities of immigrants somehow do (and he’s clearly uninterested in understanding the forces, positive and negative, that often make newcomers cluster). MAGA has been a largely white movement of non-urban people who seem to think, like Trump himself, that people unlike them are scary and that there is only safety in homogeneity. So if you bend it around and maybe turn it inside out, there’s some “she made him do it” logic to Vance’s declaration “What happens when you have massive amounts of illegal immigration? It actually starts to create ethnic conflict. It creates higher crime rates.” It’s just that the conflict and crime doesn’t come from the immigrants."

"I’ve said a lot of stupid things on camera, sometimes when you’re in the public eye you make mistakes and again. I think the best way to deal with it is to laugh at ourselves, laugh at this stuff and try to have some fun in politics."

"The United States has provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long."

"It turns out he’s pretty good at parroting racist lies like the spineless dips--t that he is."

"So Vance knew it was a lie this whole time. But instead of just admitting that. he and his campaign have been scrambling to dig up new bulls--t evidence — all of which either bears no resemblance to the claims he’s made, or falls apart at the slightest scrutiny."

"What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission. As he told a New Hampshire crowd—folks all too familiar with the opioid scourge—he can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein. The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action—from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals. Yet so long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning. There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it. I’m not sure when or how that realization arrives: maybe in a few months, when Trump loses the election; maybe in a few years, when his supporters realize that even with a President Trump, their homes and families are still domestic war zones, their newspapers’ obituaries continue to fill with the names of people who died too soon, and their faith in the American Dream continues to falter. But it will come, and when it does, I hope Americans cast their gaze to those with the most power to address so many of these problems: each other. And then, perhaps the nation will trade the quick high of “Make America Great Again” for real medicine."

"I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country."

"While it’s tempting, and I’m sure it would make some big headlines, don’t worry any-ev-everybody I’m not going to try to take off my shirt here."