I do think that there is a very unclear level of conduct in the Trump administration. That's one reason you're seeing this among so many different secretaries. Again, Trump himself has been bending ethics rules left and right.

You are never going to have, in a country as rich as ours [the USA], that borders a country as poor as Mexico, an end to immigration. You just won't. The question is, if you make it humane and if you make it regulated. It's much better for an American worker to compete against a regulated immigrant inside labor standards, than it is to ever to compete against an illegal immigrant.

One of my big beliefs about Washington is that we highly overstate the power of individuals and highly underrate seeing Washington as a system, in general, but, in particular, we highly underrate the power of Congress.

I don't trust this [american] government to be regulating corporations. I trust big business to be regulated [by itself] and to be a party to a decent solution.

We were badly held back not just by the technology, but by the culture of journalism.

If it's cynical, risky politics that brings a lighted match and a can of gas near the Democratic coalition, it should be named as such, and its consequences understood, and it should become part of the complex calculus we're all building to help us understand these campaigns.

Obamas finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They dont even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves.