My 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.

It is hard to know what Sarah Palin means in Republican politics anymore.

As proud and capable as it is, I think the idea that the military can build new countries is a tall order, and it's the sort of thing that we would only expect from a military that we have superresourced and thought of as supercapable.

The [Donald] Trump folks chose not to keep [Dan Fried] on. He was actually - I said he was actually the third-most senior diplomat in the foreign service.

The [Donald] Trump campaign turned on a dime instantly as soon as those WikiLeaks dumps started.

[Dan Fried] served under President [Barack] Obama and under President George W. Bush before that and under President [Bill] Clinton before that and under President George H.W. Bush before that and under [Ronald] Reagan before that and under [Jim] Carter before that. He has been there a long time.

I really believe in trying to increase the amount of useful information in the world and in being accurate in the sense that you can take what I say to the bank, even if you disagree with me.