I don't look at polls, I pay no attention to them. I pay attention to the public, and the sense of where the public is on certain things, but you have to lead.

I think in Washington we have bigger issues than people being outraged by somebody else's tweet. They need to look themselves in the mirror and figure out whether they're serving the country or they're serving their party or their own interests.

Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles.

I don't want to get into an argument with somebody about how they ought to vote.

We're all hypocrites. We all say one thing and do another. But why don't we try to do what we say more than what we don't?

People would rather live in an area of poverty than in an area where there are no jobs, because if they live in poverty, they have a certain sense of hope they can get out of it. If there are no jobs, there's no hope. And bad things come from that.

Let me just suggest to everybody, and I hear - last February [2015], I said we needed to have people on the ground in a coalition with Europe and our allies. This is not going to get done just by working with the Sunnis. And it is not going to get done if we just embed a few people.