The Presidency of Donald J. Trump Quotes

“More American troops were stationed within European allies, for example, at the end of Trump’s term than at its start. Numbers do not tell the whole story, however. Donald Trump left the country’s relations with its closest allies, especially those in Europe, more frayed than at any point since the onset of the short-lived “American Century” proclaimed in 1941.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Tohono O’odham Nation chairman Ned Norris Jr. explained. “We feel very strongly that this particular wall will desecrate this area forever. I would compare it to building a wall over your parents’ graveyards. It would have the same effect.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“How does one write about a president who uttered words appealing to white nationalists in 2020 and incited a violent insurrection against the U.S. Congress, but do so in the analytical language that one might use to describe tax policy?”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Trump’s willingness to attack the 2020 election process even after being impeached a few months earlier suggests that we live in an era when confidence in presidential power and party loyalty seems greater than concerns about congressional oversight or public shame.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“The Trump era conclusively proved that impeachment is not a legal process and should not be discussed as one.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Although Cheney and a few other Republicans broke with the president and voted to impeach, most did not.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Romney argued that “a President can indeed commit acts against the public trust that are so egregious that, while they are not statutory crimes, they would demand removal from office.” It “defies reason” to think the constitutional authors expected Congress to pen a “comprehensive list of all the outrageous acts that a President might conceivably commit.” Romney voted to convict on the abuse of power (though not on obstruction of Congress) because of Trump’s “appalling abuse of public trust.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Pelosi’s wariness seemed confirmed on March 22, 2019, when Mueller flubbed the unveiling of his team’s report on Trump’s ties to foreign governments. Although the report was devastating, Mueller’s initial silence allowed Attorney General William Barr to issue misleading characterizations that overshadowed the report’s details. Barr claimed that the report “exonerated” the president. The actual report documented a number of extremely problematic relationships between the president’s campaign and Russian officials. Mueller, who did not believe he had the authority to call for impeachment since the independent counsel law had expired, then made things worse by faltering in congressional testimony.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Attempting to set a new tone, President Biden signaled early on that he would seek stability and cooperation rather than an ongoing war with the intelligence community. On January 21, the president’s first full day in office, the White House announced that Wray would be staying on as FBI director and that Biden “has confidence in the job he is doing.” 51 They currently have no plans to meet for dinner.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“He attacked the FBI’s leadership with demeaning names: “nut job,” “phony,” “ignorant fool,” “major sleazebag.” 14 His most aggressive assaults often came in response to specific investigations, acts of retaliation and intimidation aimed at undermining FBI inquiries into his administration’s ties to Russia. To Trump, anyone who was not with him was against him, including a vast array of government employees who were supposed to be loyal to the facts and the truth and the law—and not to the Trump White House.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Trump’s ambitions and motivations notwithstanding, his legacy in the Middle East might best be characterized as tactical maneuvers and strategic incoherence. 3 Trump’s actions and tweets left the Middle East in worse shape than what he had inherited, as his policy unorthodoxy created a great deal of uncertainty.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Despite suggestions to the contrary (including by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo), there was no Trump doctrine; Trump’s version of “America first” prompted one analyst to define the administration’s strategy as “primacy without a purpose.” 2 As with other aspects of his foreign policy, Trump used a bully pulpit to declare America’s predominance in a region from which he otherwise wanted to withdraw.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“In reality, Obama won arguably the world’s most prestigious award in 2009 less for what he did than for whom he was not. He was not George W. Bush, whose administration was widely perceived in Europe as disdainful of longtime democratic allies and corrosive of international alliances. Obama vowed a different course, a return to pre-9/ 11 normalcy, and this is what the Nobel Committee endorsed.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“If the uprising in Baltimore was evidence of disillusionment with mainstream politics on the left, then Dylann Roof’s vicious murder of nine Black parishioners was proof of the same phenomenon on the right.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“By the time Trump left office, more than 5,500 children had been separated from their parents and 628 children still had not been reunited with their families.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“If Trump’s prosperity gospel made sense—if only because the Republican Party had preached it for so long—so Latino conservatives would adhere to it blindly, utterly perplexing was the idea that a twice-divorced, marital infidel, accused sexual abuser, spokesperson for whatever the opposite of personal responsibility was, could somehow be the pious defender of religious freedom. Yet that was exactly the argument that Trump’s faithful Latino supporters made during his four years in office. Even if Trump was not the best personal representative of morality, his Latino supporters whose politics were guided by their faith concluded that Trump was the candidate who best supported their interests, especially by pushing the Supreme Court far enough to the right that Roe v. Wade might be overturned.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“White power is both white supremacist and committed to violence. White nationalism, on the other hand, can refer in common usage to two very different things. One is the idea that there is something about America that is, and should be, intrinsically white, and that people pursuing policy making should ensure that this remains so. This kind of white nationalism includes inhumane anti-immigration policies targeting communities of color, disenfranchisement of voters of color, defense of purportedly “white” cultural forms and whitewashed versions of American history, and more. The second use of the term refers to people seeking a white homeland (also sometimes called white separatism).”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“The Columbia law professor Tim Wu argued in 2017 that new conditions had made speech overabundant and attention scarce, and had thereby enabled new means of manipulating public discourse—such as “flooding” information channels with fake news and propaganda, or unleashing “troll armies” on disfavored speakers. In his view the main threat to political speech was no longer the use of the levers of government to suppress dissident opinion, but rather the mobilization of online mobs and the capacity to drown online discourse in a sea of misinformation. (Trump himself, as Wu recounted, was a pioneer in the use of both of these tools.)”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Todd did a double take: “Wait a minute—Alternative facts? … Four of the five facts he uttered were just not true. Look, alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“The consequence of these conspiracies became manifest on January 6, 2021, when hundreds of Trump supporters, encouraged by right-wing media and Donald Trump, stormed the U.S. Capitol in a deadly insurrection aimed at overturning the election. There was a time in the United States that such startling violence would have bought at least a few days of unity. But with blood still drying on the Capitol floor, more than one hundred Republican members of Congress voted to overturn the election and spread conspiracies about a “false-flag” operation that had already begun to circulate within right-wing media. Over the next twenty-four hours, hosts went on air to denounce the violence, then immediately began to argue, falsely, that left-wing agitators and Antifa were responsible for the insurrection.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“The claims of the president directly contradicted much of the early public health information. And while information would sometimes find its way onto the networks, more often they would parrot the president’s misinformation—and, because conservative outlets were his primary source of news, he would parrot theirs. That led to a situation where, for instance, the Fox News medical contributor told Hannity viewers on March 6, 2020, that “the virus should be compared to the flu,” calling flu-level illness the “worst-case scenario.” Misinformation spread about masks, lockdowns, and even death totals, which pundits on Fox News, Newsmax, talk radio, and social media falsely argued were much lower than reported. 23”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“And as someone whose path to the White House ran through Fox News, Trump saw television and politics as inseparable. Appearance, narrative, airtime, and headlines were more important to him than policy and governance. So it is no wonder that when he looked to staff his campaign and his administration, he was heavily influenced by Fox News. After Roger Ailes, the CEO of Fox News, was forced out in 2016 after years of sexual harassment, accusations he became an adviser to the Trump campaign.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Trump had also staffed key agencies with officials who were not interested in fulfilling the missions of the agencies, 51 a hallmark of conservative governance since the Reagan years, leaving huge organizational voids in places like the State Department.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Gingrich didn’t survive to enjoy the fruits of his success, however, since young Republicans persuaded him to step down after their poor showing in the 1998 midterms and because he was having an extramarital relationship at the same time the GOP was going after Clinton for doing the same.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Studies showed that the way members of each party consumed their news reflected this reality. For instance, Republican voters were generally more willing to believe what they heard from conservative media outlets than Democratic voters were from liberal platforms.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Trump’s election and the fiercely loyal support he received from the GOP—even when stoking a violent insurrection against the U.S. Congress in the final days of his term—exposed how one of the nation’s major political parties had been radicalized. Top leaders were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to preserve their party’s power. As Stuart Stevens, a major Republican campaign operative who had managed Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012, argued in his book It Was All a Lie, “In the end, the Republican Party rallied behind Donald Trump because if that was the deal needed to regain power, what was the problem? The rest? The principles? The values? It was all a lie.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“For supporters, he was virtually a messiah, fighting against elements of the country that were gradually undermining what they saw as our traditions and our social fabric. By the time his four years were over, an ending that Trump never accepted and insisted to his supporters was a fraudulent outcome, the United States was torn apart.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“His version of conservative populism played into the nativism, racism, sexism, insular xenophobic nationalism, and white rage that all had deep histories in this country. Not only were these uglier values part of the American political tradition, but in varying degrees they had served as a foundation of the strategies used by politicians who championed white working-and middle-class Americans. Trump just took it to another level and did so without any sense of hesitation or shame.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“Trump likewise had a keen feel for how the Republican Party had moved far to the right over the previous decade, with a formidable media infrastructure to broadcast right-wing messaging. Politics was polarized; Republicans were radicalized. From attacking Mexican immigrants to railing against a corrupt, biased media, Trump played directly into this modern reality.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment

“In early October, the media reported on an audio recording from 2005 during an interview with the entertainment program Access Hollywood. While speaking off-camera, without knowing that he was on tape, Trump recounted his sexual conquests to the host Billy Bush and boasted of having sexually assaulted women. “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” When Bush said, “Whatever you want,” Trump replied, “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
― Julian E. Zelizer, The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment