Steve Kornacki Quotes

On the campaign trail, [Donald] Trump has threatened a trade war and repeatedly said that Mexico will pay for a wall on the Southern border.

I don`t know how it would have gone, but I do know this - Mitt Romney was looking at running and the reason he decided not to run was because he decided that someone was unbeatable. That someone was Jeb Bush.

We`re seeing point to something that`s happened over the last eight years during the [Barack] Obama presidency, and that is the Democratic electorate over the last eight years has gotten a lot more liberal.

To the extent anybody had heard of the [Charles] Kushner name at that point, it was a very tarnished name.

Bernie Sanders is usually speaking to the converted. He fires them up. It`s a completely different style of campaigning that he`s allergic to.

Donald Trump`s meeting with the president of Mexico comes after months of bashing that country and its political leadership. Trump has called the Mexican government corrupt and dishonest.

Immigration has been [Donald] Trump`s signature issue throughout his entire presidential campaign, and his supporters love him for it.

When Donald Trump had all of his opponents, when he had critics in his party saying what you`re calling for in terms of deportation of all 11 million is not practical, it`s not plausible, some were saying it is not moral, why wouldn`t he make argument then?

I`m going to say the New England Patriots fans [biggest winner of the year 2015]. I mean - bring it on. Bring it on. You know why? You know why? Because we won the Super Bowl, because we got Brady reinstated because we started 10 and 0. Bring on the heat because you can`t beat us.

The perception that Donald Trump has softened on immigration or is about to soften on immigration has some on the right concerned that he could lose support among his most loyal base of supporters, though he`d been drawn to his hard-line positions on immigration early in the campaign.

We are waiting for Donald Trump`s big immigration speech. There are lots of unanswered questions that remain about where exactly Trump stands on deportation forces, on what to do with the millions of immigrants who are here illegally now, and where he stands on the question of birthright citizenship.

He [Donald Trump] found that sweet spot in the Republican Party, just politically, where you had the rest of the party saying it`s just impractical. You can`t deport 11 million people. You can`t round them up and deport them, and his position was basically, hey, Republican voters. Don`t listen them, you can and I will.

Looking to Donald Trump`s immigration speech can he hang onto his base if he softens his stance on the issue that got him this far?

There was a change in tone in terms of the [Donald] Trump who showed up in Mexico City for this press conference.

Chris Christie's rise in politics in New Jersey, in many ways, was built on his takedown of Charles Kushner. He got national headlines for that prosecution.

Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, sort of the three big hitters on the Republican side.

Like the kind of voter who has been turned off to [Donald] Trump, who would normally vote Republican in an election like this, that`s who we`re talking about, can they get past - even if he comes to a position that`s more agreeable for them, a tone that`s more agreeable, can they get past the last year?

The specifics of the platform, I don`t think, are necessarily going to be written by Bernie Sanders, but the themes of the platform are going to be written by Bernie Sanders.

Here`s what I`m curious about. For the president of Mexico, this man, Donald Trump, is, it`s probably not an understatement to say, despised by many Mexicans.

[Donald] Trump met with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto, who has in the past compared Trump`s rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Here`s an interesting twist, though, President Pena Nieto later tweeting that he told [Donald] Trump in their private meeting that Mexico will not pay for the proposed border wall, Trump saying, though, in that press conference that it didn`t come up.

This is a terrible year [2015] in a lot of ways. You have Paris. You have San Bernardino. But there was, if you remember the summer, there was that attempted terror attack on the train in France. There were two U.S. Marines, there`s one other guy. They were three guys who got up and who stopped that attack. Nobody died. They are heroes and they are my people of the year, three of them.

Donald Trump, I guess one idea here if he`s flip flopping, has he bought himself cover with his base by all the inflammatory thing he`s said over the last year? But the flip side is, all of those inflammatory things, the voters he`s trying to reach by flip flopping, are they tuned out to him because of that?

I think three weaknesses have emerged for Hillary Clinton in early states.One is young voters. Another is political independents. He`s winning with independents who show up. But the other one - this is the inverse of what we saw in `08 - working-class white voters. In 2008, they stuck with her all the way.

Hillary Clinton's weakest group, though, is people under 30, the young.

We played all that rhetoric, all of the thing - the provocative inflammatory things [Donald Trump] said over the last year, does that all add up to buying him enough wiggle room with his base that he can get out and change his position like that?

Rush Limbaugh is saying he never took Trump seriously in the first place.

If you look at the Bernie Sanders of today and you look at the Bernie Sanders of a year ago [2015], when this started, he`s come a long way in terms of.This was a guy at the start of the campaign who had contempt for any personal questions.

Probably not a surprise that, among the people of Mexico, just 4 percent say that they have a positive opinion of [Donald] Trump. Seventy-five percent say they have a negative opinion.