Unbelievable Quotes

“Information coming directly from a politician or his team, without being vetted by reporters, is little more than propaganda.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“The point isn’t whether or not Trump is specifically interested in hurting me or any other journalist. It’s that his comments put us in danger.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Some politicians have a gift for language. Trump is not one of those politicians. His sentences call to mind an aerial shot of a burning, derailed freight train. The syntax is mangled. The grammar is gone. “Donald Trump isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one,” reads a Politico article from last August.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“But to the lady who curled my hair in the bathroom, who is now somewhere in a crowd that is laughing at the idea of Trump killing me: Thanks, my hair looks great.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Being a woman is a pain in the ass. You have to look “good.” Your hair needs to be neat—not just combed through, but “done.” Blow-dried, ironed, curled, sprayed. Your face needs to be enhanced. Foundation, powder, eye shadow, mascara, lipstick, blush, contour. Your clothes have to look sharp, too. And you can never wear the same thing twice—at least not in the same week. A guy can throw on the same suit every single day for a year and no one would notice. I’m not exaggerating. An Australian broadcaster tested it out. His coanchor, a woman, kept getting letters, e-mails, and tweets from viewers criticizing what she was wearing. He was appalled. He never got notes. So he wore the same blue suit day in and day out. Three hundred sixty-five days. Surely someone would complain. No one did. “No one has noticed,” he said at the time. “No one gives a shit.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Look, I get it. You can’t tell a joke without worrying you’ll lose your job. Your twenty-something can’t find work. Your town is boarded up. Patriotism gets called racism. Your food is full of chemicals. Your body is full of pills. You call tech support and reach someone in India. Bills are spiking but your paycheck is not. And you can’t send your kid to school with peanut butter. On top of it all, no one seems to care. You feel like you’re screaming at the top of your lungs in a room full of people wearing earplugs. I get it.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“That’s why we forget some of the craziest or most painful parts of our lives. We have to forget them, because it would be impossible to deal with the present if the past were such a second-by-second burden.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Trump is crude, and in his halo of crudeness other people get to be crude as well.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“He is the polar opposite of President Obama. Where Obama’s rhetoric soars, Trump’s rhetoric slithers. While Obama eats arugula, Trump scarfs Burger King. Where Obama is controlled and calculating, Trump is petulant and loud.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Every time we think Trump can’t go any further, he goes further. You can almost hear Jimmy Breslin say, “Beware always of the loudmouth taking advantage of the situation and appealing to a crowd’s meanest nature.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Seven seconds. Seven measly seconds. that's how long it took Trump to dismiss a lie he told for five years. He did not apologize. He did not take questions. It was as if his years of exploiting a divisive, racist conspiracy theory were secondary to a hotel tour--which, to him, they probably were.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Putin’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t a staring contest. It’s a land grab, the first of this scale since World War II. But when asked about it, instead of walking up to the plate and swinging at the softball (crack! more sanctions!), Drumpf put down his bat, walked down the third-base line, and kissed the opposing team’s head coach.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“I pull out my phone to write a reporting note to myself, typing “Katy sucks” into the subject line. Then I accidentally send it to the entire NBC News political e-mail list.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“you have to understand something about presidential elections in general. The politicians devise strategies and court donors years in advance. At the same time, newspapers and networks carefully decide which reporter they’ll match with which candidate. Trump wasn’t part of anyone’s plan. For that matter, neither was I. Five days into my New York trip, while I was running an errand, I got a call from a friend at work. “Hey, Katy. Heads up,” the friend said. “Deborah Turness [my boss] is going to assign you to Trump full-time. [David, another boss] Verdi is going to call. If you don’t want to do this, you better figure out what you’re going to say to get out of it. Don’t let on that I told you, but get ready.” Anxiety. Indecision. Italy. My vacation with Benoît is in just over a week. On the other hand, as good as life can be in Europe, there’s also a lot of professional boredom. It would be nice to get some TV time. And New York is unbeatable in the summer. I hung up and paced the sidewalk. Then I called a friend from CBS. “They want me to cover Trump full-time,” I told him. My friend had covered Romney in 2012. “What do I do?”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Jimmy Breslin say, “Beware always of the loudmouth taking advantage of the situation and appealing to a crowd’s meanest nature.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Nothing short of Trump shooting my daughter in the street and my grandchildren” can dissuade me from voting for Trump, a woman told Ashley Parker of the New York Times. So imagine how you would feel if every time you turned on NBC, you saw my reporting on this figure you love—this figure you think will lift you up, save your job, make your country great again. Imagine how you’d feel if every night and all day this little blond-haired girl was shining a critical light on your beloved figure. Who is she to question his plans? Double-check his statements? Follow up on his promises? You would hate me. And people do.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“On December 5, at 11:45 A.M., Hope Hicks wrote: “Katy, Mr. Trump thought your tweets from last night were disgraceful. Not nice! Best, Hope.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Being a woman is a pain in the ass. You have to look “good.” Your hair needs to be neat—not just combed through, but “done.” Blow-dried, ironed, curled, sprayed. Your face needs to be enhanced. Foundation, powder, eye shadow, mascara, lipstick, blush, contour. Your clothes have to look sharp, too. And you can never wear the same thing twice—at least not in the same week. A guy can throw on the same suit every single day for a year and no one would notice. I’m not exaggerating. An Australian broadcaster tested it out. His coanchor, a woman, kept getting letters, e-mails, and tweets from viewers criticizing what she was wearing. He was appalled. He never got notes. So he wore the same blue suit day in and day out. Three hundred sixty-five days. Surely someone would complain. No one did.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Hillary Clinton recently called Trump's supporters a 'basket of deplorables,' and while some might be easy to single out like that, most aren't. A lot are your coworkers and your neighbors. They're your taxi driver, your fireman, and your supermarket cashier. They're the mom in riding boots and a Barbour coat helping her cute daughter with her school science project. You would never know that they're Trump supporters, quote unquote deplorables.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“We made small talk about the absurdity of the situation. . . . She was lovely in every sense of the word, and she was a good reminder that Trump supporters are more complex than the one-note candidate they cheer onstage.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“The key is to build, lean back, build some more, lean back again. And repeat.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Trump pointedly refused to condemn endorsements from a white supremacist and former KKK leader, but that can dissolve into hazy memory when he’s speaking with an African American pastor. George Orwell said seeing what’s in front of your nose demands a constant struggle. It’s also a constant struggle to recall what’s in the back of your mind.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“ask an older woman in a flowery red dress what she thinks of the tape. She takes an uncomfortable breath and then smiles. “What person hasn’t said it?” she says. This is not the answer I am expecting. “I haven’t said it,” I say. “Well, good for you,” she says. “You’ve said you’re going to grab women by the—?” “No. Don’t be stupid,” she says.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“inside a Trump rally, they can tell a woman she’s ugly and needs more makeup. They aren’t deplorables. They are patriots.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“Obama is Muslim!” “Hillary Clinton is a cunt!” “Immigrants need to get the hell out!” “Fuck you, media!”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“He is using her gender against her, seeming to imply that being a girl makes her unfit for the presidency. He says that she doesn’t have the “strength or stamina” to be president. Or that she doesn’t have the presidential “look.” Or that she was “schlonged” by Obama.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“For months he has portrayed Clinton as someone who is only successful because she is a girl. He argues that, as a candidate, “the only card she has is the woman’s card,”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“He calls Clinton “the devil.” He says she has “tremendous hate in her heart.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“People seem drawn to Trump’s rallies in the same way that they are drawn to a professional wrestling match, and as with a professional wrestling match, they seem divided between people who believe all they see and hear, and those who know it’s partially a performance. The scariest thing about being at a Trump rally is that you don’t know who believes it and who doesn’t.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“I appreciate what you’re saying,” he says. “Take care of yourself. . . . Be fair to me, Katy. . . . You and I should be friends.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History