If you're working on better conditions for prisoners, if you make that a popular issue and you invite mainstream media to weigh in on that subject, you're going to end up with a much more regressive public-policy environment than if you approach it in a quieter way. It's not because the public is stupid, it's just that people with only a cursory interest in something are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to it. That's impossible to explain in a cable-news media... it doesn't make sense.
Rachel MaddowParticularly when we are a country where leaders turn over every few years and - I mean, in Russia, Vladimir Putin has been in charge for 17 years and counting, right? That`s a disadvantage for us in terms of knowing the players, having a long-term plan, right?
Rachel MaddowHopefully life is long. Do stuff you will enjoy thinking about and telling stories about for many years to come. Do stuff you will want to brag about.
Rachel MaddowI feel like Americans have always studied nationalism as a foreign phenomenon. And now, we`ve got a nationalist movement in our country that has a very articulate spokesman in the senior counselor to the president [Donald Trump].
Rachel Maddow