Donald Trump, as a businessman, he's not much of a builder and he's not much of dealmaker and he certainly isn't very good at making expenses line up with income. But he is a marketing genius. He must have seen an empty market niche that no one but him filled.

Donald Trump is the least unpopular thing about today's Republican Party. I mean, the idea that a Mitch McConnell or a Paul Ryan could say, "Let's toss Trump overboard and return to our program of plutocratic politics, health care removal, massive income tax cuts for the affluent, deregulation of finance" - if they cut loose from Donald Trump, it's like, you know, storm in channel, continent cut off. If they cut loose from him, they are much likelier to sink.

Whenever you discuss politics, it is always better to use individual names rather then the term neocon.

While there is an attempt by the Trump people to say that California isn't really America. California certainly seems like America to me.

Elites are inevitable in politics. That is how politics is going to work. The question is, are your elites responsible, public-spirited? Do they think about the interests of others, not just themselves? And the story of Western politics since the beginning of the century is that as elites become more separated, more selfish, as they leave behind their populations and don't think about them, they become discredited. And the people look for alternatives. But the alternative is worse. Those rules of the game protect us all. And they are more precious than almost any political outcome.

One of the things we're all going to have to discover, establishment is just an abusive term for institutions. It's institutions that keep us free.

Trump is not just unlike a Republican, he's unlike a presidential candidate. The whole elaborate presidential process is designed to screen out people like Donald Trump. And that process broke down in ways quite unlike anything in the recent experience of the United States.