I think what happened is that everybody's impressions got formed in those first few minutes. And I felt like, by the latter part of it, I kind of clawed my way back into the discussion. But everybody's impressions were set at the beginning. And wholly apart from me and whether I was good or bad, you know, there were a lot of hostile questions.

I do think that the instant nature of the reaction now, I do think it has an effect, that people's instant reactions to things are valid and valuable. But they're not always right, and they're not always capturing the full reality.

I do think it's true that a huge amount of the oversight that the White House engages in with respect to the Executive Branch is out of fear that somebody's going to do something crazy and drive the president off a cliff.

It's the spring of 2012, that the [Barak] Obama administration would be embracing the argument that the Affordable Care Act was a tax, and that was going to, itself, be a political albatross.

What we once thought of as necessary and proper reasons for ostracizing and marginalizing gay people, we now understand do not justify that kind of oppression.

After a couple of years, I realized that this was actually true, that his gave me the ability to go to a different place and, hopefully, have a stronger impact.

I think what happened is that everybody's impressions got formed in those first few minutes. And I felt like, by the latter part of it, I kind of clawed my way back into the discussion. But everybody's impressions were set at the beginning. And wholly apart from me and whether I was good or bad, you know, there were a lot of hostile questions.