Donald Trump/Quotes

Quotes by Donald Trump
""Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.""

- Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987)

"Howard Stern: Are you for the invasion of Iraq? Donald Trump: Yeah, I guess so. I wish, uh, I wish the first time it was done correctly."

- Interview on Howard Stern Show (11 September 2002), reported by BuzzFeed (19 February 2016)

""I don't know how you do it. I've put together some really impressive deals, but this thing you've pulled off, it's amazing: a Big N' Tasty for just a dollar. How do you do it? What's your secret? Together Grimace, we could own this town.""

- From a McDonald's advert (2002)

""[...] Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we're in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the county? C'mon. Two minutes after we leave, there's going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he'll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn't have. What was the purpose of this whole thing? Hundreds and hundreds of young people killed. And what about the people coming back with no arms and legs? Not to mention the other side. All those Iraqi kids who've been blown to pieces. And it turns out that all of the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong. All this for nothing!""

- Esquire magazine (August 2004); Donald Trump: How I'd Run the Country (Better) (18 August 2015)

""Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich.""

- Interview with Ashleigh Banfield on ABC's Good Morning America (17 March 2011)

""If you can't get rich dealing with politicians, there's something wrong with you.""

- Campaign Rally in South Carolina, July 21, 2015

""The fact is all lives matter. That includes black, and it includes white, and it includes everybody else. And we have... Democrats that are afraid to even say that.""

- As quoted in Trump trashes Black Lives Matter: 'I think they're trouble' (Business Insider'', 9 September 2015)

""If you’re in the White House, who wants to take a vacation? You’re in the White House!... What’s better than the White House? Why these vacations?""

- December 5, 2015 rally, quoted in Hardball with Chris Matthews, August 4, 2017

"We are losing a lot of people to the Internet. We have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them [about], maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Some people will say, 'Freedom of speech, Freedom of speech'. These are foolish people."

- As quoted in Google's Eric Schmidt calls for 'spell-checkers for hate and harassment' (The Guardian, 8 December 2015)

""I'm very angry because our country is being run horribly and I will gladly accept the mantle of anger. Our military is a disaster. Our healthcare is a horror show. Obamacare, we're going to repeal it and replace it. We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people. And yes, I am angry. I'm angry because our country is a mess.""

- Sixth Republican Debate in Charleston (14 January 2016)

""The people, my people, are so smart, and you know what they say about my people? The polls. They say I have the most loyal people — did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters.""

- Speech at campaign rally (23 January 2016), Sioux Center, Iowa

""You've been hearing me say it's a rigged system, but now I don't say it anymore because I won. It's true. Now I don't care.""

- Trump: GOP 'rigged,' but I don't care because I won (Washington Examiner, 5 May 2016)

""No dream is too big, no challenge is too great. Nothing we want for our future is beyond our reach. America will no longer settle for anything less than the best.""

- Victory Speech (9 November 2016)

""Many people have asked me how my time as a reality TV star prepared me for the presidency, the truth is there's very little overlap between the two. Very little. In one job, I had to manage a cutthroat cast of characters desperate for TV time, totally unprepared for their jobs, and each week afraid of having their asses fired. In the other job, I was the host of a smash television hit. Television's so easy compared to this.""

- 2018 Gridiron Club Dinner (transcript)

Quotes About Donald Trump
""This president-elect is the most unique that I have experienced in one respect, he has absolutely no baggage. He has no obligation to any particular group because he has become a president on the basis of his own strategy and a program he put before the American public that his competitors did not present. So that is a unique situation.""

- Henry Kissinger, Fareed Zakaria GPS (CNN, November 20, 2016)

""I didn’t think President Trump had a chance at winning [...] Trump was able to convey — oddly enough, a message from a billionaire who lives in Manhattan — a genuine concern for people who feel kind of left out, are sort of offended by all the political correctness they see around them, and didn’t feel like this is the America that they’re accustomed to.""

- Mitch McConnell, US Senate majority leader, One to One with Bill Goodman (KET, December 19, 2016)

""Trump took the elements of an independent candidacy — the lack of clear ideology, the name recognition of a national celebrity and the personal fortune needed to fund a presidential campaign — and then did what no one seemed to have thought of before. He staged a hostile takeover of an existing major party. He had the best of both worlds, an outsider candidacy with crosscutting ideological appeal and the platform of a major party to wage the general election. By the time he had finished, he had taken down two political dynasties: the Bush dynasty in the primaries and the Clinton dynasty in the general election.""

- Dan Balz, Donald Trump, America’s first independent president (The Washington Post, November 19, 2016)

""I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about. I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.""

- Jimmy Carter in an interview for The New York Times, October 21, 2017

""The president of the United States wakes up some mornings seemingly determined to convince as many people as possible that he’s unsuited to high office. Fortunately for him, he has a Twitter account allowing him to act on this impulse immediately and without any filter. [...] But the tweets don’t constitute the sum total of the administration. It’s possible that Trump sees Twitter—and his other provocations—as a way to stir the pot, entertain himself, stoke his base, flog his enemies, and vent his frustrations separate and distinct from decisions of government, undertaken under the influence of, by and large, impressive, well-meaning advisers. Trump’s presidency is much better than his Twitter feed. Although he stands ready and willing to convince you otherwise, 280 characters at a time.""

- Rich Lowry, The Trump Presidency Isn't Nearly As Bad As It Sounds (POLITICO, November 29, 2017)

""Television's coverage of Donald Trump from the 1980s to early 2015 portrayed Trump as a phenomenal business success, endlessly knowledgeable and fascinating, insightful, shrewd, entertaining, and funny — a larger-than-life character. Why are so many baffled that Trump managed to turn that image into a path to the presidency?""

- Jim Geraghty, Donald Trump's Pre-Presidential Media Dominance (National Review, March 21, 2018)

""President Trump has delivered on a number of promises for his base. But there was an impressive amount of breakage along the way. You might say he President Trump did as much demolition as he did construction. The press is doing a good job of telling us what he accomplished in 2017. But they keep leaving out all the stuff he broke that probably needed to be broken.""

- Scott Adams, The Demolition President (Scott Adams' Blog, December 28, 2017)

""It's funny how things change - Donald Trump's name was invoked on past rap records as a symbol of wealth and aspiration, now he's 'basically Adolf Hitler'. Yes, that is indeed the level of subtlety we're dealing with here.""

- Turkey_Beard, in his Rate Your Music review of Revival by Eminem (January 22, 2018)

""just because the president is active on twitter doesnt mean hes going to read every stupid fucking tweet you @ him in so for the love of GOD STOP DOING IT its cringe incarnate""

- plebcomics, May 2018 tweets