white-house-chiefs-of-staff

"I see my job as just sort of keeping the trains on the tracks and running on time here, so that the subject matter experts, and particularly the president and the vice president can do what they need to do to fix the country"

"[On Trump appearing to snooze] He's not asleep. He's got his eyes closed and his head leaned back ... and, you know, he's fine."

"And the vice president, who’s been a conspiracy theorist for a decade."

"[On Elon Musk] He is a complete solo actor [...] The challenge with Elon is keeping up with him [...] He's an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the EOB [Executive Office Building] in the daytime. And he's an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are. You know, it's not helpful, but he is his own person."

"The 2020 election. Coming to him after the 2020 election … and telling him what he thought was the circumstance wasn’t — which is how I got into all this."

"Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I'm going to say. But high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I'm a little bit of an expert in big personalities. [... Trump has] an alcoholic’s personality. [He functions with] a view that there's nothing he can't do. Nothing, zero, nothing."

"I cannot stress teamwork and mutual support enough. ... It's not magic — set goals and timelines for me and the team and then work to exceed them. Simple, yes, but this worked quite nicely on the campaign."

"Be smart with hiring. Remember what President Trump promised the American people he would do: Set goals and then exceed them in every area, with every staff member."

"If you are in Trump world, you are hyper‑competitive. You want to win."

"He’s been through so much: the lawfare, having been the leader of the free world, having had an assassination attempt. He’s a different person than he was."

"I think he's a better leader now [...] I don’t know that I had anything to do with that, but I think the country benefits from it."

"Trump doesn't depend on anybody."

"[but] I got an interview I got to run to"

"We’re gonna take back our country. 2012 is the time we are going to send Mr. Obama home, to Kenya or wherever it is. We’re gonna do it."

"Question: The question I have, if you’re sent to Congress, will you pursue some kind of investigation to find out whether or not this, uh, guy is really a citizen and entitled to those authorities? Meadows: Yes. If we do our job from a grassroots perspective, we won’t have to worry about it. We’ll send him back home to Kenya or wherever it is. We’ll send him back home."

"[Trump did a good job at the meeting] laying out a conservative agenda"

"Tillerson would merely become another example of a subordinate who believed his own abilities could somehow compensate for Trump's failings. Aligned with Tillerson were three generals, Mattis, McMaster, and Kelly, each seeing themselves as representing maturity, stability, and restraint. And each, of course, was resented by Trump for it. The suggestion that any or all of these men might be more focused and even tempered than Trump himself was cause for sulking and tantrums on the president's part. The daily discussion among senior staffers, those still there and those now gone- all of whom had written off Tillerson's future in the Trump administration- was how long General Kelly would last as chief of staff. There was some thing of a virtual office pool, and the joke was that Reince Priebus was likely to be Trump's longest-serving chief of staff. Kely's distaste for the president was open knowledge- in his every word and gesture he condescended to Trump- the president's distaste for Kelly even more so. It was sport for the president to defy Kelly, who had become the one thing in his life he had never been able to abide: a disapproving and censorious father figure."

"It was easier to go along for the ride. Donald's chiefs of staff are prime examples of this phenomenon. John Kelly, at least for a while, and Mick Mulvaney, without any reservations at all, would behave the same way- until they were ousted for not being sufficiently "loyal." That's how it always works with the sycophants. First they remain silent no matter what outrages are committed; then they make themselves complicit by not acting. Ultimately, they find they are expendable when Donald needs a scapegoat."

"While debates are meant to include tough questions and contrast candidates' visions and policies for the future of America, CNBC's moderators engaged in a series of 'gotcha' questions, petty and mean-spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates. What took place Wednesday night was not an attempt to give the American people a greater understanding of our candidates' policies and ideas"

"Nomination process known for a year + beyond. It's the responsibility of the campaigns to understand it. Complaints now? Give us all a break."

"I'm not gonna rule out anything, but we're not gonna have a registry based on a religion."

"It's really not about crowd size."

"It doesn't just say Christians. It also says persecuted Muslims get priority as well. So, this is not a Muslim ban.... And the reason we chose those seven countries was, those were the seven countries that both the Congress and the Obama administration identified as being the seven countries that were most identifiable with dangerous terrorism taking place in their country.... Now, you can point to other countries that have similar problems, like Pakistan and others. Perhaps we need to take it further. But for now, immediate steps, pulling the Band-Aid off, is to do further vetting for people traveling in and out of those countries.”"

"You don't get to tell us what to do, Reince. You don't get to tell us what to do any more than Barack Obama did. Barack Obama whined about Fox News all the time, but I've got to say, he never said we were an enemy of the people.""

"Hell these are Marines. Men like them held Guadalcanal and took Iwo Jima. Baghdad ain't shit."

"The border is, if not wide open, then certainly open enough to get what the demand requires inside of the country. Terrorist organizations could seek to leverage those same smuggling routes to move operatives with intent to cause grave harm to our citizens or even bring weapons of mass destruction into the United States."

"He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had."

"I watched Wednesday’s actions on the Hill brokenhearted. Horrified. That’s not us. Are peaceful protests allowed? Yes, it is our right. Have there been criminal riots in our past over any number of issues? Yes, and we should condemn and hold the rioters accountable regardless of the issue at stake. What happened Wednesday on Capitol Hill is different. This is an attack on our democracy, our way of life, and not just by the criminals who assaulted our Congress today. The good news is our Constitution is strong, and our people are overwhelmingly devoted to the rule of law. What we need to do going forward — what we have to do as a people — not as Democrats, or Republicans, or independents, but as Americans, is to ask ourselves how did we ever get to this place. We need to look infinitely harder at who we elect to any office in our land. At the office seeker's character, at their morals, at their ethical record, their integrity, their honesty, their flaws, what they have said about women, and minorities, why they are seeking office in the first place, and only then consider the policies they espouse."

"What can I add that has not already been said? A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France. A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said. God help us."

"I am pleased by the confirmation votes of Generals Mattis and Kelly. These uniquely qualified leaders will immediately begin the important work of rebuilding our military, defending our Nation, and securing our borders. I am proud to have these two American heroes join my administration."

"Where others saw fickleness or even lies, Kushner saw Trump's constant, shifting inconsistency as a challenge to be met with an ever-adapting form of managing up. Incomplete information, inadequate staffing- the appearance of impulsive decision making was all someone else's fault, according to Kushner. John Kelly had a less flattering assessment. "Crazytown," Kelly said."

"Trump, a former military academy cadet- albeit not an enthusiastic one- had touted a return to military values and expertise. In fact, he most of all had sought to preserve his personal right to defy or ignore his own organization. This, too, made sense, since not really having an organization was the most efficient way to sidestep the people in your organization and to dominate them. It was just one irony of his courtship of admired military figures like James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, and John Kelly: they found themselves working in an administration that was in every way inimical to basic command principles."

"In the wake of the immolating new conference, all eyes were suddenly on Kelly- this was his baptism of Trump fire. Spicer, Priebus, Cohn, Powell, Bannon, Tillerson, Mattis, Mnuchin- virtually the entire senior staff and cabinet of the Trump presidency, past and present, had traveled through the stages of adventure, challenge, frustration, battle, self-justification, and doubt, before finally having to confront the very real likelihood that the president they worked for- whose presidency they bore some official responsibility for- didnt have the wherewithal to adequately function in the job. The debate, as Bannon put it, was not about whether the president's situation was bad, but whether it was Twenty-Fifth-Amendment bad."

"The American people want climate action. New polling from Climate Power 2020 finds 71 percent favor bold government action on climate change, while only 18 percent oppose it... Running boldly on tackling the climate crisis, running on a Green New Deal, these are policies that can be popular in all 50 states. Democrats should run toward, not away from these fights. The evidence is clear: If we loudly make the case for bold climate action, we will win... We’ve never seen our country so eager to elect leaders who will take bold action to stop the climate crisis. Neither have we ever known a country in such dire need of such bold action. In a moment of historic unemployment, Democrats want to put millions of people back to work now by investing in bold climate action that would create millions of clean energy jobs and begin to repair decades of environmental injustice. That’s what the American people want too. By 23 points, voters support investing trillions of dollars in clean energy infrastructure."

"The remarks attributed to John Podesta, who is Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, are just extraordinarily patronizing and insulting to Catholics. What he would say is offensive. And if it had been said about the Jewish community, if it had been said about the Islamic community, within 10 minutes there would have been an apology."

"I agree with that in principle. Where would you stick the knife in?"

"Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter."

"We are going to have to dump all those emails so better to do so sooner than later."

"I'm definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it."

""You must tell them that there must be a new union or there will be chaos," he [Shevardnadze] implored me. That evening, when I hosted republic leaders for dinner — a mixed group of presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers — I saw around the table and in the conversation a microcosm of the post-coup Soviet Union’s potential — and its problems. Whatever euphoria that they felt with their post-putsch independence declarations had given way to a marked degree of realism. "Independence sounds nice, but we have to live, and we have to be practical," observed the Prime Minister of Moldova, Valeriu Muravsky. That was the persistent theme that I heard from every one of the republic leaders, with the sole exception of the Georgian Prime Minister, Vissarion Gugushvili, though even he spoke of the need for economic cooperation once Georgian independence was recognized internationally."

"My view is that you don't just talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies, as well. And the diplomacy involves talking to your enemies. You don't reward your enemies necessarily, by talking to them if you're tough and you know what you're doing. You don't appease them. Talking to an enemy is not, in my view, appeasement. I made 15 trips to Syria in 1990-1991 at a time when Syria was on the list of countries who are state sponsors of terrorism. And the 16th trip, guess what? Lo and behold, Syria changed 25 years of policy and agreed for the first time in history to come sit at the table with Israel, which is what Israel wanted at the time. And, thereby, implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist. Now, all I'm saying is that would never have happened if we hadn't been sufficiently dedicated that we were going to keep at it."

"We understand the need for assurances to the countries in the East. If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east."