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

We're not free because other people are nice, maybe other people aren't nice that day. We're free because we expect the institutions of government to work impersonally. That we expect people in government to understand they don't work for the president or the prime minister, they work for the government. And the government is always there.

Venezuela has gone from being a democratic country 15 years ago to being totally not a democracy today. Usually that de-democratization doesn't take the form of a heavy handed police state.

So long as Donald Trump is powerful and popular, Fox News is going to achieve an advertising bonanza unheard of in the era of modern cable, because people will pay them to talk to the president.

We live in an age of de-democratization. The number of democracies in the world has been going backwards since 2005, and even many existing democracies including in Europe have been becoming less democratic.

[democrats] hated Richard Nixon, and no wonder. It was Nixon who sent Alger Hiss to jail, and Nixon who waged the Vietnam War after the Democrats gave up.

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.