we ought to realize by now (see Korea, see Vietnam, see Afghanistan, see Iraq, see Iran) that deploying the US military, or dealing billions of dollars a year of arms to our ally of the moment that can serve as a regional rival to our enemy of the moment, is not always the best way to make threats go away. Our military and weapons prowess is a fantastic and perfectly weighted hammer, but that doesn't make every international problem a nail.
Rachel MaddowThe artificial primacy of defense among our national priorities is a constant unearned windfall for some, but it's privation for the rest of America; it steals from what we could be and can do. In Econ 101, they teach that the big-picture fight over national priorities is guns versus butter. Now it's butter versus margarineโguns get a pass. Overall, we're weaker for it, and at enormous cost.
Rachel MaddowI definitely feel like it took me a while to learn the baseline things you have to do if you want people to hear you. That's why I've had the same haircut for the entire time that I've been on television and that's why I wear literally the same jacket every day. I keep all the clothes I wear on TV in my office on a little hanging rack. My girlfriend calls it all the colors of the German rainbow. Grays, blacks, a slightly greenish gray for the days that I'm feeling particularly festive. I'm not trying to accomplish anything in the way I look other than to be boring enough for people to hear me.
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 MaddowGiven how we know Russia feels about the State Department, seeing what`s happening to the State Department under this current [Donald Trump] administration is worrying and raises all sorts of questions about the connections between this current administration and Russia.
Rachel MaddowThere`s a reason people pause their lives to engage in political activism and pressure their local political leaders. Because as a whole, even if you can`t identify any one instance, as a whole pressure works and sometimes it starts with something as simple as pushing the button on the intercom.
Rachel Maddow