And new people come in, and it doesn't go along with their politics, and they fire me, end the column, silence a voice in Los Angeles. They can't silence it nationally, but they are able to do it there.

George W. Bush is a person who is totally disinterested in the world, uneducated. I'm not saying he's stupid. I don't think he's stupid. He's crafty as hell, but he projects well on television. And that's the real big problem. He is the perfect "what, me worry?" president.

The fact is ... that when totalitarian nations like China and Saudi Arabia play ball with U.S. business interests, we like them just fine. But when Venezuela's freely elected president threatens powerful corporate interests, the Bush administration treats him as an enemy.

I was able to do something that people cant do these days, which is to have quality time with the guys who were trying to be president and a number of them who got the job.

I happen to be one of those in the antiwar part of things who actually supported Bill Clinton when he sent the cruise missiles in to take out bin Laden. I had thought we had the right to use Special Forces to go in for bin Laden. He had attacked American embassies. He attacked ships. And so, I didn't see any need to coddle the Taliban.

The great enemy of any totalitarian regime is normalization and trade.

Eisenhower was a pretty peace-oriented president. Truman was a pretty hawkish. I would argue, if we had more time, I would argue Truman had a lot to do with getting the Cold War going.