It is hard to stay patient about policy matters where everybody agrees about what needs to be done and then it just doesn't happen, like reforming the immigration system and getting rid of family immigration jails and closing Guantanamo and criminal-justice reform. All these issues, there is basically consensus. There's no rational objections whatsoever, but it can't happen because of other stupid steps we have to take in politics.
Rachel MaddowThere are some political issues where mainstream press attention only hurts. We think about activism as being this generic model of consciousness-raising, then hopefully media attention, attraction of new people to your cause, building public support for your cause, then decision-makers reacting to that change in public opinion. That's true for some types of activism, but it is not true for all of them.
Rachel MaddowFormula 1 is a huge international phenomenon even if an otherwise car racing obsessed American public has always found Formula 1 to be a little weird.
Rachel MaddowThe [Donald] Trump administration got rid of the number one and number two most senior people ahead of [Dan fried] in the foreign service, so that did make him the most senior person still standing - but now he`s out, too.
Rachel MaddowMy idea of what was going on in politics was driven by activism. I came out when I was 17, and right away I started working in the AIDS activist movement. For me, politics was about getting drugs approved and getting prisoners access to the same kind of drugs that you could get on the outside. It was about getting needle exchanges approved. That was politics. These were policy problems that were killing people, and we were trying to get them changed.
Rachel Maddow