One of the things I advised Donald Trump to do was to make sure that, before he commits to certain courses of action, he has really dug in and thought through how various issues play themselves out.

If we’re going to have arguments, let’s have arguments — but let’s make them debates worthy of this body and worthy of this country.

In terms of my conversations with [Vladimir] Putin, these are conversations that took place before the election. As I indicated, there has been very clear proof that they have engaged in cyber attacks. This isn't new. It's not unique to Russia. There are a number of states where we've seen low-level cyber attacks and industrial espionage and, you know, other behavior that we think should be out of bounds.

Sometimes we take somebody who's been in the trenches and fought the good fight and been steady for granted. Sometimes we act as if never having done something and not knowing what you're doing is a virtue.

We've got to be able to have a conversation and recognize we're all Americans; we all want the best for this country. We may have some disagreements in terms of how to get there, but all of us want to make sure that our economy is strong, that jobs are growing. All of us want to make sure that people aren't bankrupt when they get sick. All of us want to make sure that young people can afford an education.

I don't think that there's a hard-and-fast deadline. . . .What we have said all along is that this is not an open-ended process, we are not in this just to talk for talk's sake. . . . We expect prompt, concrete steps to be taken over the next couple of weeks.

I'm going to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great.