I was appointed U.S. attorney by President [George] Bush on September 10th, 2001, and the world changed enormously the next day, and that happened in my state.I will make no apologies, ever, for protecting the lives and the safety of the American people. We have to give more tools to our folks to be able to do that, not fewer, and then trust those people and oversee them to do it the right way.

The fact of the matter is, we need to have a very clear message. We haven't had that from the current president. And you've seen the violence in his home city of Chicago. This is just another example.

I think the presidency is much too serious a thing to just play politics with.

China need to be fought back on. And what we need to do is go at the things that they are most sensitive and most embarrassing to them; that they're hiding; get that information and put it out in public. Let the Chinese people start to digest how corrupt the Chinese government is; how they steal from the Chinese people; and how they're enriching oligarchs all throughout China.

Never be easy for any president to deal with any Congress. But republicans got to work together. We got to get things done.

The truth was you can't continue to spend the kind of money our spending on all these entitlement programs. I think we need more people in public life who are willing to say, no, we can't afford certain things. No, we can't do certain things.

Remember, at the end of the day [election] campaigns are always about the candidates.