I'm a national security liberal, which I tell people because it's meant to sound absurd.

At a time when America should be doing everything we can to lead the fight to defeat ISIS and other radical jihadists, Donald Trump is playing right into their hands.

I feel like I have more in common with conservative people who have activist causes in their hearts and who are interested in electoral politics than I do with somebody who doesn't care, doesn't have any political interests, doesn't know what policy is, and doesn't think any of it matters to them. If you care, we're actually going to have a basis of conversation. We might supplementally get along very well, and that might be complicated and fun in a way that is more constructive than you'd expect.

I have a file of letters and bits of ephemera from friends who have died. I have had lots of friends who died of AIDS.

It makes sense in that environment that you would hold on in the U.S. government to the people who know their way around this particular block.

The downside of playing dumb is that you sound dumb.

[Tom Cotton] is known for his efforts to scale back legal immigration. Legal. He wants to stop legal immigrants from coming to this country. That`s very popular in Republican politics .