First presidency of Donald Trump

"As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?"

"So funny to watch the Fake News, especially NBC and CNN. They are fighting hard to downplay the deal with North Korea. 500 days ago they would have “begged” for this deal-looked like war would break out. Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily promulgated by fools!"

"In the meantime, people are suffering because of the Democrats. So we've created, and they've created, and they've let it happen — a massive child-smuggling industry. That's exactly what it's become. Traffickers — if you think about this — human traffickers are making a fortune. It's a disgrace. These loopholes force the release of alien families and minors into the country when they illegally cross the border."

"Having failed in efforts to control or curtail the president's tweeting, Priebus searched for a way to have practical impact. Since the tweets were often triggered by the president's obsessive TV watching, he looked for ways to shut off the television. But television was Trump's default activity. Sunday nights were often the worst. Trump would come back to the White House from the weekend at one of his golf resorts just in time to catch political talk on his enemy networks, MSNBC and CNN. The president and the first lady had separate bedrooms in the residence. Trump had a giant TV going much of the time, alone in his bedroom with the clicker, the TiVo and his Twitter account. Priebus called the presidential bedroom "the devil's workshop" and the early mornings and dangerous Sunday nights "the witching hour." There was not much he could do about the mornings, but he had some control over the weekend schedule. He started scheduling Trump's Sunday returns to the White House later in the afternoon. Trump would get to the White House just before 9 p.m. when MSNBC and CNN generally turned to softer programming that did not focus on the immediate political controversies and Trump's inevitable role in them."

"Trump seemed to love the adulation but said to Graham, "You're a middle-of-the-road guy. I want you to be 100 percent for Trump." This resembled the loyalty pledge that then FBI director James Comey said that Trump had asked of him. According to Comey, Trump had said, "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty," during their now famous one-on-one Green Room dinner in the White House during the first week of the Trump presidency. "Okay, what's the issue?" Graham asked, "and I'll tell you whether I'm 100 percent for you or not." "You're like 82 percent," Trump said. "Well, some days I'm 100 percent. Some days I may be zero." "I want you to be a 100 percent guy." "Why would you want me to tell you you're right when I think you're wrong? What good does that do for you or me?" Graham asked. "Presidents need people that can tell them the truth as they see it. It's up to you to see if I'm full of shit.""

"But in the man and his presidency Dowd had seen the tragic flaw. In the political back-and-forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring, crying "Fake News," the indignation, Trump had one overriding problem that Dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president: "You're a fucking liar.""

"but we have to do it gently because we're in the #MeToo generation, so we have to be very gentle. we will very gently take that kit, and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn't hit her and injure her arm."

"That’s other people that do that. I don’t. I’m very consistent. I’m a very stable genius."

"Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame. I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it's never going to be what it was and I don't mean that in a positive way. So I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad. I think you are losing your culture."

"The border with the Sahara can't be bigger than ours with Mexico."

"To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!"

"What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening"

"We're ordering 147 new F-35 Lightning fighters. This is an incredible plane. It's stealth; you can't see it. So when I talk to even people from the other side, they're trying to order our plane. They like the fact that you can't see it. I said, 'How would it do in battle with your plane?' They say, 'Well, we have one problem: We can't see your plane.'"

"You know, if you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID. You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture. The only time you don’t need it in many cases is when you want to vote for a president, when you want to vote for a senator, when you want to vote for a governor or a congressman. It’s crazy."

"We have the worst laws! How about chain migration? One person comes in and you end up with 32 people. The person that ran down 18 people on the West Side Highway, he's allowed to have -- and I think eight died. He has 22 members of his family in the United States because of chain migration. So we have to change this stuff, Rush,"

"How about chain migration? How about that? Somebody comes in, he brings his mother, and his father, and his aunt and uncle, 15 times removed. He brings them all"

"They haven't seen anything like what's coming at us in 25, 30 years. Maybe ever. It's tremendously big and tremendously wet. Tremendous amounts of water."

"I just wanna thank all of the incredible men and women who have done such a great job in helping with Florence. This is a tough hurricane. One of the wettest we've ever seen from a standpoint of water."

"And you know the interesting? When I did it, and I was really being tough, and so was he, and we were going back and forth, and then we fell in love. OK? No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they're great letters. We fell in love."

"Reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave nations vulnerable to extortion and intimidation and that is why we congratulate European states such as Poland for leading construction of a Baltic pipeline so that nations are not dependent on Russia to meet their energy needs. Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course."

"Today I stand before the United Nations General Assembly to share the extraordinary progress we've made. In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country. America's— so true. [assembly laughs] I didn't expect that reaction, but that's OK."

"America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism."

"I know you're not thinking. You never do."

"Only do it if I can test her personally. That will not be something I enjoy doing either."

"I have a natural instinct for science"

"You know they have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned, it's called a nationalist, And I say 'really, we're not supposed to use that word?' Do you know what I am? I'm a nationalist."

"Now how ridiculous: we're the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits"

"It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't, Number one, you don't need that. Number two, you can definitely do it with an act of Congress. But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order. It's in the process, It'll happen, with an executive order."

"You gotta take care of the floors. You know, the floors of the forest. It's very important. You look at other countries where they do it differently, and it's a whole different story. I was with the president of Finland, and he said, "We have a much different— we're a forest nation." He called it a forest nation. And they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem."

"Reporter: Have you read the climate report yet? Trump: I've seen it. I've read some of it and — it's fine. Reporter: They say the economic impact could be devastating. Trump: Yeah. I don't believe it. Reporter: You don't believe it? Trump: No, no. I don't believe it. And here's the other thing: You're going to have to have China and Japan and all of Asia and all of these other countries — you know, it addresses our country. Right now, we're at the cleanest we've ever been, and that's very important to me. But if we're clean but every other place on Earth is dirty, that's not so good."

"One of the problems that a lot of people like myself we have very high levels of intelligence, but we're not necessarily such believers. You look at our air and our water, and it's now at a record clean. But when you look at China and you look at parts of Asia and when you look at South America, and when you look at many other places in this world, including Russia, including just many other places, the air is incredibly dirty and when you're talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small and it blows over and it sails over. I mean, we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the Pacific, if flows, and we say where does this come from. And it takes many people to start off with."

"I want to thank Vice President Mike Pence, A tremendous supporter, a tremendous supporter of yours. And Karen. And they go there and they love your country. They love your country. And they love this country. That's a good combination, right?"

"I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck. People in this country don't want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I won't blame you for it. The last time, you shut it down. It didn't work. I will take the mantle of shutting it down."

"Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at 7, it's marginal, right?"

"Well, I don't see it. I spoke with Bibi, I told Bibi. And, you know, we give Israel $4.5 billion a year. And they're doing very well defending themselves, if you take a look. So that's the way it is. The United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world, We don't want to do that."

"For all President Trump's talk these days about Democrats trying to make America socialist, the reality is that he is the king of big government. The federal bureaucracy is just as large, centralized, careless with spending, and intrusive under Donald Trump as it was when Barack Obama was in office. In many cases, it's bigger. This is an uncomfortable truth for Trump supporters. Rather than hew to traditional conservative beliefs about a limited federal role, Trump has allowed government to balloon. He's especially vexed when we inform him the government will never be large enough or powerful enough to execute his spontaneous propositions. The US federal budget deficit was actually declining under the Obama administration, from $1.4 trillion in 2009 when Obama took office to $587 billion in 2016, just before he left. Credit for the remarkable downward trend goes to congressional Republicans, who forced a standoff with the White House in 2011. They demanded a budget deal that would bring the deficit under control. This was the Budget Control Act, a law that slashed federal spending, put strict annual limits on future expenditures, and placed a cap on the government's "credit card." It was considered the conservative "Tea Party" movement's crowning achievement."

"Donald Trump was not interested in penny-pinching. He may try to project the image of a man working to save taxpayer dollars, and it's true that he can be talked out of stupid ideas if they cost too much. But that's not because he's trying to save money so it can go back to the American people. He still wants to spend the money, just on things in which he's personally interested, such as bombs or border security. Trump recoils at people who are "cheap." Today he is sparing no expense on the management of the executive branch, spending so freely it makes the money-burning days of the Trump Organization look like the five-dollar tables at a Vegas casino. As a result, the budget deficit has increased every single year since Donald Trump took office, returning to dangerous levels. The president is on track to spend a trillion dollars above what the government takes in annually. Just look at 2019. The president proposed a record-breaking $4.7 trillion budget. That's how much he suggested the federal government spend in a singe year. Since Trump took office, the US debt- much of which we owe to other countries that we borrow from- has grown by the trillions, to another all-time high of $22 trillion total. To pay off our debts today, according to one estimate, each taxpayer in the United States would need to fork over an average of $400,000. This should set off fiscal tornado sirens across America. We cannot keep borrowing money we can't pay back, otherwise our children will pay a steep and terrible price."

"Willful ignorance is the fairest way to describe the president's attitude toward our enemies. He sees what he wants to see. If Trump likes a foreign leader, he refuses to accept the danger they might pose or ulterior motives they bring to the table. That's what makes it so easy for him to offhandedly dismiss detailed US threat assessments about nation-states or urgent alerts from our closest allies."

"Our enemies and adversaries recognize the president is a simplistic pushover. They are unmoved by his bellicose Twitter threats because they know he can be played. President Trump is easily swayed by their rhetoric. We can all see it. He is visibly moved by flattery. He folds in negotiations, and he is willing to give up the farm for something that merely looks like a good deal, whether it is or not. They believe he is weak, and they take advantage of him. When they cannot, they simply ignore him."

"Donald Trump's words do more than drive his team crazy. They are dividing Americans. He may start fights on Twitter and at the microphones, but we are continuing them at home. Studies show that Republicans are becoming more partisan, unwilling to veer from the party line, and Democrats are doing the same. The one thing the two sides can agree on is that the phenomenon is real. A Pew Research Center survey released in 2019 found that a whopping 85 percent of US adults said that "political debate in the country has become more negative and less respectful," and two-thirds said that it is less focused on the issues. Where do they pin the blame? A majority believed President Trump "has changed the tone and nature of political debate for the worse." The verbal acrimony has real-world consequences. Our divisions make us less likely to engage with one another, less likely to trust our government, and less optimistic about our country's future. When asked to look forward to the year 2050, Americans were deeply pessimistic, according to another survey. A majority of respondents predicted that the United States would be in decline, burdened by economic disparity and more politically polarized. Nearly the same percentage of Democrats and Republicans agreed on the last point. In the nation's capital, the president's bull-in-a-china-shop language is inhibiting his own agenda. He can't get consensus on Capital Hill, even on previously uncontroversial issues. Democrats aren't exactly trying to restore bipartisanship, but there might be hope if the figurehead of the Republican Party were not treating them as mortal enemies rather than political opponents. Instead, every big idea becomes radioactive upon release. Every line of the budget is a trench on the political battlefield. We constantly struggle to sell the president's priorities because he is his own worst enemy."

"we're getting out and we're getting out smart and we're winning, we're winning. OK. But just to answer your question, Over a period of time. I never said I'm getting out tomorrow I said I'm pulling our soldiers out and they will be pulled back in Syria, that we're getting out of Syria. Yeah absolutely. But we're getting out very powerfully."

"Iran is no longer the same country Iran is pulling people out of Syria. They can do what they want there, frankly, but they're pulling people out. They're pulling people out of Yemen. Iran wants to survive now."

"I know more about drones than anybody. I know about every form of safety that you can have. (January 2019)"

"I think nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do, because I'm the biggest contributor. (1999)"

"I know more about people who get [TV] ratings than anyone. (October 2012)"

"I know more about ISIS than the generals do. (November 2015)"

"I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better than almost anybody, based on my results, right? (November 2015)"

"I know more about courts than any human being on Earth. (November 2015)"

"[W]ho knows more about lawsuits than I do? I'm the king. (January 2016)"

"I understand politicians better than anybody."