Political Commentators From The United States

"The one thing that drives me up the wall is [people] saying, 'Look at all the deaths you Americans have caused in Iraq.' No! 'Scuse me? We invaded the place, we knocked over Saddam, and then Iraqis began killing each other... [B]ut who is doing this killing? Give me a break. These are Iraqis killing each other. So what did we do? If you're saying it's our fault that we unmasked them as knuckle-dragging savages from the 10th century — fine! I'll take credit."

"On the May 11 2006 broadcast of The Big Story, Gibson called for caucasians to have more children. His reasoning appeared to be in part to prevent Hispanics from ever being the racial majority in America. It is projected by the U.S. Census Bureau that persons of Hispanic descent will make up well over one-third of the U.S. population by the year 2050. The next day he said that he meant all Americans should have more children."

"On the May 10 2006, edition of Fox New's The Big Story, after the release of a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to U.S. President George W. Bush, Gibson compared the letter from the Iranian President to talking points and positions by Democrats. Gibson said, "Terry McAuliffe and the other Democrats should pay close attention to their talking points these days. That nut job running Iran, President — let's see if I can pronounce it — Ahmadinejad, sent President Bush a letter, and if it weren't postmarked Tehran, it might have been mistaken for a crank letter from an angry leftist in L.A. or Boulder or Cambridge, Massachusetts. Christians are not acting like Christians, says the Iranian president. Democrat talking point. WMD lies, says the Iranian president. Democrat talking point. Human-rights abuses in Gitmo. Another Democrat talking point. The gap between haves and have-nots. The Iranian president and the Dems in lockstep on that one, too.""

"In his defense of Ambassador John Bolton and repudiation of the United Nations and the Third World, referring to the Third World, "That latter group includes a huge number of so-called nations, little more than spots on the map that would get invaded, taken over, subsumed, eliminated, except no-one wants to get stuck with their problems of poverty, disease and corruption.""

"On the January 19 2006 edition of Fox News's The Big Story, after the release of a tape by Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, Gibson stated, "(Bin Laden) is talking to America's far left and saying, 'You know what. We're on the same side. So why don't you work on that hardhead George W. Bush? Bin Laden told us Thursday that our far left has been working for him. It's their poll results he quotes.'""

"On the July 12, 2005, edition of Fox News's The Big Story, host John Gibson said that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove should be given "a medal" for outing covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, adding that Plame "should have been outed by somebody.""

"Following the positive HIV test of adult actress Darren James on April 13, 2004, a new HIV scare led to a search for all potentially infected partners of the actor, as well as a two-month shut down of adult movie production in Los Angeles. Commenting on this on April 29, 2004, Gibson said that the actors "should not be surprised, considering what they do" and noted that "this was bound to happen to them sooner or later"."

"He also has stated that no one would care if France was a victim of a terrorist attack.Fox's Gibson on "golden opportunity" missed: If France had been selected for 2012 Olympics, terrorists would "blow up Paris, and who cares?""

"When London was chosen to host the 2012 Olympics, Gibson said that he regretted that Paris had not been chosen because it would have subjected that city to the threat of terrorism."

"I would guess it didn't exactly represent a profile in courage for the vice president to wander over there to the F-word network for a sit down with Brit Hume. I mean, that's a little like Bonnie interviewing Clyde, ain't it?"

"The Arab World is where innocent people are kidnapped, blindfolded, tied up, tortured and beheaded, and then videotape of all of this is released to the world as though they’re somehow proud of their barbarism. Somehow, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the sensitivity of the Arab world. They don’t seem to have very much. It’s going to come down to them or us."

"On the September 26, 2008 broadcast of CNN's "Situation Room", while sitting next to Wolf Blitzer, Cafferty directly highlighted Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's abysmal interview performance with Katie Couric earlier in the week. Cafferty stated, prior to playing a particularly embarrassing segment of the interview in which Palin stumbles across a murky, confused, ambiguous answer to Couric's query regarding the pending economic bailout package, "There's a reason the McCain campaign keeps Sarah Palin away from the press." After the clip's conclusion, he then went on to say, "...Did you get that? If John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72 year-old's heartbeat away from being president of the United States, and if that doesn't scare the Hell out of you, it should...I'm 65 and have been covering politics as you have [addressing Blitzer] for a long time, and that is one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen for someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country. That's all I have to say." Blitzer responded in a light-hearted, seemingly forced defense of Palin, stating, "Yeah, but she's cramming a lot of information..." Cafferty interrupted, "There's no excuse for that. She's supposed to know a little bit of this, you know. Don't make excuses for her - that's pathetic." Blitzer replied, "It was not her best answer. I agree with you on that," and the segment came to a close."

"Well, I don't know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different. We're in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They're holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundred of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years"."

"I get paid to ask questions I don't know the answers to and to complain about the things that bother me."

"Is Anna Nicole Smith still dead?"

"On November 7, 2006, Cafferty called Donald Rumsfeld "an obnoxious jerk and war criminal"."

"Given the way these mutants treat women in their societies, the women are probably better off in U.S. custody. They treat women like furniture in those countries. If I was a woman, I think I’d rather be in an American jail cell than I would be living with one of those-whatever they are over there."

"I'll run just once — and just for the hell of it. I'll select the most qualified vice-presidential candidate possible just in case something strange happens and I win. After I'm sworn in I hang around long enough to sign an Executive Order requiring all airport screeners to have graduated in the top one-half of their high school class. Then I'll free all non-violent drug offenders, take a few spins on Air Force One and get to know the interns. Then I'll resign and let the vice president take the controls."

"I started out my political life as a bedwetting liberal. Young, idealistic — and dumb. Then I started paying income taxes. Thankfully I realized sooner than most the difference between what I earn and my "take-home" pay. For a few years I guess you could have called me a conservative. I was troubled, though, by the penchant conservatives have for directing the social lives of people. That led me straight to the libertarian philosophy. Simply put, I believe in freedom. I believe the Constitution should be amended with a clause which states that neither the federal nor any state government shall make any activity that does not violate, through force or fraud, a persons right to life, liberty or property, a crime. I firmly believe that if liberty is to be preserved in America, it will be libertarian thought, if not the Libertarian Party, that saves it."

"Politics? I'm a confirmed Libertarian. I believe that the principal difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats just want to grow our Imperial Federal Government a bit faster than the Republicans do."

"I've come to the conclusion that roughly 50 percent of the adults in this country are simply too ignorant and functionally incompetent to be living in a free society. You might think I'm off base, but every day around half the people in this country go out of their way to prove me right."

"Logic cannot support the premise that health care is a right. Health care is a service that is administered by another human being with the requisite skills and knowledge. To claim that healthcare as a "right" is to claim a right to the services of the health-care provider. In effect, this means you are claiming a "right" to a portion of that person's life – both a portion of the time already spent developing his skills, and a portion of the time spent practicing those skills on you."

"...I’ve moderated my hawkishness, but I’m still fairly much a military hawk. I mean, I thought Afghanistan was a perfectly justifiable war."

"I am basically a Clinton Democrat - perhaps more along the lines of how Clinton would have done things as benevolent dictator, or at least with a Dem Congress at his disposal, than how things were run in the 90s, but no flaming progressive."

"Tom, I'm a veteran. Okay? I did not get a deferment because I was too depressed to fight a war I supported in Vietnam. I'm a veteran. They want a more effective V.A."

"Well, there’s just no doubt [that fighting and winning the war on terror is in the top three priorities]. I mean, there’s a real disagreement about how to best do that obviously. I mean, this all sounds great and, and, and wonderful, and obviously we can all get to—you know, we can all come around inequalities and opportunity and, and energy independence and that sort of thing."

"If U.S. policies were so successful, why did the Obama administration have to send more troops to Europe to reassure America’s prosperous but poorly equipped allies, and why did Trump ultimately do the same, despite his all-too-obvious skepticism about NATO’s value?"

"It is obvious that this approach failed, which is why U.S. leaders now worry about unfavorable power trends in Asia and are actively trying to build a balancing coalition to contain Chinese power. I share their concerns and agree with this prescription (and said so in the book), yet Gavin apparently regards the policies that led to this worrisome situation as a great success. They surely were for China—but not for the United States."

"I present a different set of counterfactuals in the book (and a few other places), suggesting that adopting offshore balancing in the 1990s would have 1) led to better (though not perfect) relations with Russia; 2) made the 9/11 attacks much less likely to happen;"

"Far from making ‘America great again,’ this epic policy failure will further tarnish the United States’ reputation as a country that knows how to do things effectively."

"Polarization will continue to hamper efforts to address the pandemic. It will encourage and facilitate foreign interference in U.S. domestic politics (or even the mere suspicion of the same)....and it makes other states warier of making long-term agreements with the United States because they cannot be sure that any promises that U.S. officials make will survive the next election cycle."

"So here’s my challenge to Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos, the Sulzberger family, and anyone else who runs a major media operation: Why not hire a realist? If you’re looking for some suggestions, how about Paul Pillar, Chas Freeman Jr., Robert Blackwill, Steve Clemons, Michael Desch, Steve Chapman, John Mearsheimer, Barry Posen, Andrew Bacevich, or Daniel Larison? Give one of them a weekly column, and then you could genuinely claim to be offering your readers a reasonably comprehensive and balanced range of opinion on international affairs. I mean: What are you folks so afraid of?"

"So here’s the puzzle: Realist advice has performed better than its main rivals over the past two-and-a-half decades, yet realists are largely absent from prominent mainstream publications."

"Deng Xiaopeng's “Four Modernizations” began the process of unleashing China's enormous potential, but the United States consciously aided its ascent, based on the hope that doing so would hasten its transition to democracy, turn Beijing into a “responsible stakeholder,” and bind it so tightly within U.S.-led institutions that future conflicts would be easy to manage. One is hard-pressed to think of another case where an overwhelmingly dominant great power deliberately facilitated the rise of the only country that could possibly pose a serious challenge to its privileged position."

"Finally, this election will not end the deep polarization and reflexive partisanship that have roiled U.S. domestic politics for more than two decades, and this condition will continue to exert baleful effects on America’s international position."

"Second, we can be confident that neither Trump nor Biden is going to resurrect old-style neoliberal hyperglobalization."

"We may not know who the next president is for some time. But there are a few things we do know."

"This argument carries some obvious implications for the next U.S. administration. First, as Sino-American rivalry heats up, winning (or at least not losing) will require more than tariffs, restrictions on Chinese students and high-tech firms, and bombastic speeches. It will also require preserving or regaining the lead in critical areas like artificial intelligence and 5G technology, which in turn means leveraging and incentivizing the impressive innovative capacity of U.S. firms and research institutions."

"...stop subsidizing the security of wealthy allies that have the wherewithal to defend themselves; and stop pursuing hyperglobalization without regard for its damaging consequences at home and its impact on the balance of power abroad. We believe these adjustments would allow the country to concentrate its resources on the challenge that a rising China presents and help address the accumulating problems it faces domestically."

"In his response, Foreign Minister Jack Straw said that September 11 had not come in response to any Western attack, and was itself in part responsible for the Iraq War. Straw seems unaware that according to the September 11 Commission report, al-Qaeda conceived 9/11 in some large part as a punishment on the US for supporting Ariel Sharon's iron fist policies toward the Palestinians. Bin Laden had wanted to move the operation up in response to Sharon's threatening visit to the Temple Mount, and again in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp, which left 4,000 persons homeless. Khalid Shaikh Muhammad argued in each case that the operation just was not ready. As for Straw's contention that September 11 caused the Iraq war, he should be reminded that Paul O'Neil reported that the very first Bush cabinet meeting he attended, in late January 2001, was "all about Iraq" and that the 9/11 Commission found no evidence for operational cooperation between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda."

"One of his charges is that I am accusing the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon of "dual loyalties." That is true, but not in the way Lake imagines. I believe that Doug Feith, for instance, has dual loyalties to the Israeli Likud Party and to the U. S. Republican Party. He thinks that their interests are completely congruent. And I also think that if he has to choose, he will put the interests of the Likud above the interests of the Republican Party."

"The precise reason for Hitchens’ theft and publication of my private mail is that I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having “threatened to wipe Israel off the map.” I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel’s Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people. But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.” It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks."

"The state of Israel is a project of Jewish nationalism that is as legitimate as any other national project. But Israel as a state is not perfect and cannot be above criticism in democratic societies, including practical criticism."

"A group of Israeli rabbis has issued a call for the Sharon government to cease its policy of cavalierly allowing the killing innocent civilians in the [Palestinian] Occupied Territories in the course of its military operations against radical groups. They say such actions are inconsistent with the essence of the Jewish religion. Too right! Judaism has given us so much that is noble in ethical religion, and what the Likud is doing is an insult to that long and glorious tradition. Likud's real roots lie not in the Bible but in Zionist Revisionism of the Jabotinsky sort, which is frankly a kind of fascism."

"“A second issue was the attitude of Shi‘i clerics, government officials, and laypersons toward Hindus. The clerical attitude can be easily summarized. Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi harbored an almost violent animosity toward Hindus, arguing that the Awadh government should take stern measures against them. He divided unbelievers into three kinds, those (harbi) against whom Muslims must make war, those (dhimmi) who have accepted Muslim rule and pay a poll-tax, and those (musta’min) whom their Muslim rulers have temporarily granted security of life. He insisted that Imami Shi‘ism accepted only Jews and Christians as protected minorities (dhimmis), and even they could only achieve this status if they observed the ordinances governing it. He differed with Sunni schools that considered Hindus a protected minority... He wrote that Muslims could only grant infidels personal security (aman) in a country they ruled for one year, lamenting that the government had long treated as grantees of personal security the Hindus of northern India, who openly followed their idolatrous religion, drinking wine, and sometimes even mating with Sayyid women. He complained that the irreligious Sunni Mughal rulers of India neither made war against the Hindus nor forced them to accept Islam. Legally, nonetheless, the lives and property of Hindus could be licitly taken by Muslims.” (p. 225)"

"At the height of his popularity, in the late 1930s, 50 million people—two-thirds of American adults—read Winchell's syndicated column and listened to his Sunday-night radio broadcast."

"Hated, feared, and revered, he presided over Table 50 of the Stork Club on East 53d Street in Manhattan, creating and destroying celebrities at the drop of his trademark gray snap-brim fedora."

""It's not the position of this program, or me, or [wife/program producer] Kathy [Bay], or anybody associated with this program to try to educate anybody about anything. You take from this program what you want; if you think I'm a wacko left-wing communist nutcase - fine! Run with it...jerk! If you think it's a fun program, go with that. If you get something - a link - go with that."

"How do you stand this? I don't care who you are; man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, Jew, gentile, it doesn't make any difference - how do you stand this? I can't. I can not...I can't handle this- You wanna know how I deal with this? When I finish these topics, or these letters, or these diaries, or these reports, and the show's over, I have to blank my mind - literally. Can you do that? I can, I have learned how to do that. I blank it out. I don't know where Israel is, I don't know what Palestinian means, I don't know what burned and mutilated children have to do with anything - it means nothing, it goes away. I must draw a dark black curtain in my consciousness. I can not deal with this, how do you? I have children, I've had children, I have grand-children, I have a four-and-a-half year-old... This is not right! This is not right... [Mike cuts feed to music early]"

"They were fascinated with Clinton's penis, and they never got a chance to see it, which is all they wanted. They wanted Clinton to have to disrobe in a court of law during the deposition that he had to give for the Paula Jones case. They didn't get a chance to see his penis. All Republican men are hooked on Viagra. ... Levitra, Cialis. These are what Republican men need in order to get an erection. And it's because they never got a chance to see Clinton's penis. Now they have transferred that to Hillary [Clinton]'s vagina. They are desperate to see Hillary's vagina. They must...they are fascinated with Hillary as a bitch goddess of some sort, and they want to worship at the vagina. They are sick, sick people... What would happen if Hillary died tomorrow? They would construct a Hillary Clinton vagina at which they would worship. Now, they hate the vagina as well as worshiping at it... They are sick. I've never seen a group of people more sick, in this country, than Republican men. They are sick beyond belief. But they are hung up on genitalia. First it was Clinton's penis, now it's Hillary's vagina. This is where they will always remain."