McConnell is the most talented majority leader in a generation. He has complete control of his caucus and understands and exploits their weaknesses, ambitions, and desires. In an impeachment trial where his members knew Trump's guilt was absolute and unequivocal, he bribed and browbeat them into submission.

Trump devotees don't care about shrinking the size and scope of government. They don't care about the Constitution. They're not Republicans, except as a flag of convenience.

If there's one thing no one will ever mistake Ted Cruz for, it's a charismatic cult leader. Cruz scans more as the accountant for the charismatic cult leader than the guy ladling out the Kool Aid.

I believed that the donor class would cringe at the vast threat Donald Trump poses to the entire Republican Party, its brand, its prospects for expansion, and the nation.

I will not vote for Hillary, and I will not vote for Trump. At the end of the day, I believe that President Clinton would be less damaging to the Republican Party than President Trump. Because five minutes after she's elected president, every bit of this anxiety in our party disappears instantly. We will go at the main enemy as we do.

I'm not a squishy liberal Republican.

Stay away from national polls. They are always an illusion. They will always trick you into stupid political behavior.

The delta between who I am on Twitter and in real life is zero.

We were a family of incredible talkers, readers, arguers.

I'm going to keep correcting people, sometimes harshly, on the disparity between conservativism and Trumpism.

I'm of the philosophy that you wage a campaign of full engagement and you use every tool in the toolbox.

I'm not afraid of what people say about me. I don't care if people say, 'You're an awful person.'

I always advise my candidates, 'You better fight to the last bullet.'

I think that Republicans are going to deeply, fundamentally, and profoundly regret the way that they have - the way Trump has - framed the party with Hispanics.

Even as an empiricist, I have to say that I believe in luck. I've seen it too many times in politics to let it pass by unnoticed.

Trump would rather submerge himself in the lake of fire for a thousand years than talk about Russia again. It's the subject he can never avoid, never fully wash out.

It's not that I mind fighting with Trump's cheer squad... it's that it's so rarely a fair fight.

Even the most liberal reporters I know have a sense of drive and curiosity about what the Clintons are hiding, because they know it's always something.

Trump sees himself as the center of the media universe, the sun to which all eyes turn.

Con artists specialize in finding what people need, and Trump knows the media craves variety, scandal, secrets, and he-said-she-said stories, even of the most dubious provenance.

All my life, the Republican Party has been my political home. Helping it succeed has been my work for decades. It was never perfect, but families never are.

I really like Bobby Jindal.

Even as a Southerner, there's only so much corn-pone shucking and jiving about mama-and-gravy talk I can take.

Kasich does two fundamentals in presidential politics wrong; he talks, and he keeps talking.

Trump would have us revise and edit our historical memory of 9/11, turning it from a unifying narrative of heroism, tragedy, and war and recast it to serve the political ends of a man unworthy of the presidency.

Because Donald Trump has to destroy everything in his path, why not the true history of 9/11?

We should tell the true stories of that day to honor the memory and sacrifice of those who perished on 9/11 and in the long wars since.

As a Republican governor, a senator, or member of Congress, or as a Republican candidate, let me remind you: You're known by the company you keep. By associating yourself with or endorsing Trump, you own Trump's toxic radioactivity with voters outside his base.

I believed that the numbers and processes of modern campaigning that revolve around the meticulous use of data would matter in 2016. I believed Trump was merely a spectacle, a political sideshow who would be dispatched by the well-funded and the well-staffed major campaigns.

A large plurality of the Trump electorate believed the definition of 'conservative' was simply 'Not Hillary.'

Before the GOP became the party of Trump's gangster capitalism, they weren't perfect capitalists, but they at least paid lip service to the power of markets and capitalism.

Lord knows I'm all for lowering rates and simplifying the tax code.

FISA targets those who are 'agents of a foreign power.'

Obama was referred to in terms so glowing, so fulsome, so toadying that it was easy to pin down the journalist class of 2008 as a group of fangirls squeeing and fainting at his every utterance.

As Trump's mistakes pile up, Congress will be left on cleanup detail.

In politics, Victory Disease comes when a majority believes their position is so secure and immune from challenge that they forget the lessons of the past and can't imagine an outcome that isn't in their favor. Neither party is inoculated against it.

Trump is always Trump, and never, ever improves.

The prisoner never loves his warden, even if he obeys the rules from time to time.

All the fantasies of Trump-Bannon nationalism require a vastly expanded state, with greater powers over the economy and society.

There's an unspoken rule post-Cold War American Presidents have used when describing the awesome power of our nuclear arsenal; the more devastating the ability to destroy the enemy, the more restrained the language should be.

Every man who has sat in the Oval Office has felt the short, sharp shock when an ordinary day in the highest office in the land shifts from pomp and ceremony to urgent briefings, immediate choices, crucial decisions where lives are on the line. It's not something that may happen to a president. It's something that will happen.

Fame is an upshot of what I do. If you're a successful comedian or actor, then you're a famous one. But it's not the driving force. It's a by-product.

I'm a fan of the kind of political correctness that is about not promoting prejudice. But some people in America are offended by equality because when you've had privilege for so long, equality feels like oppression.

I don't know why other people are concerned about other people's lives that much.

How many times have we seen reality celebrities fall from grace - often through no fault of their own - and then go on a show like 'Celebrity Big Brother' and say, 'I want to show the public a different side of me.' And I'm screaming at the telly going, 'This is not therapy. This is voyeurism!'

What makes 'Derek' a different kind of sitcom - if it is even a sitcom - is its sincerity.

I don't mind what people say about me as long as it's an opinion or the truth. If someone says, 'He's the worst comedian in the world,' that's fine. If someone says, 'His face makes me want to punch the TV,' that's fine. But if they say, 'Oh, and I know for a fact he hunts squirrels,' I go: no, no, no... that's a lie.

There are no Hollywood stars speaking out for the elderly. They're forgotten, bewildered, and I don't think it's because people are cruel or don't care. It's because you don't want to think about your own mortality. I think people don't talk about it enough.

Stephen Merchant looks like a Muppet. I mean, he looks like Beaker.

Your reputation is still the most important thing that you've got.