Mara Liasson Quotes

I think there is this rage on campuses about Donald Trump and - as someone who has written pretty explicitly about my disapproval of Trump - I can sympathize with that.

The function of liberal Republicans is to shoot the wounded after battle.

Another wing of the party seems to be putting its hands up. They're not all resisting and accepting the [Donald] Trump - the fact that he could very well win the nomination.

I think it's the entire Washington establishment that is against Trump.

The Democratic Party has to be run by progressives... because we can't let another monster like Donald Trump win again... even if we seem impolite in our fight back against him.

Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations.

I've heard this theory that this is basically Jeb's [Bush] people trying to get their supporters to basically put the stake in Marco Rubio because if people are talking about accepting [Donald] Trump over [Ted] Cruz, what they're really saying is Marco Rubio's no longer viable.

Make no mistake, the Republican establishment has been relying on the media to be a premier agent in destroying Trump. And they can't. Ergo, there's panic.

You just pick up any paper, and it's always talking about, how are we going to overthrow Donald Trump? I'm representing a tremendous - I'm representing millions of people that have - really feel angry and disenfranchised. And these are great people. And they like me and I love them. And I'll tell you what. We're not being treated right.

I guess the GOP may be more desperate than I thought to call somebody like me.

Paul Ryan I don't think wants to work. I think Paul Ryan wants the status quo, and I think Paul Ryan is a Never Trumper.

The G.O.P. is desperately seeking someone who can save the party from the fate of nominating Mitt Romney. But every time a non-Mitt throws his hat in the ring, the hat explodes.

The Democrats do not have their key agenda items do not have massive public support, and their attempts to destroy Donald Trump have failed. All of them. So all they can do now - the only thing they've got - is to split Trump's base away from Trump and that's what all of this today is.

I think that's what's - one of the things that is alarming to me is [Donald] Trump, and I think Trump supporters seem to believe, he won, huge upset, full credit to him, and has got the wind at his back. And Republicans on The Hill do want him to succeed, obviously, and they're deferring to him more than they deep down in private sort of wish - want to, but they are going to defer to him publicly for awhile. But I think that is going to run out faster than people think.

[Donald] Trump faces the perhaps accumulation of all the wealth in the world on the head of [Marco] Rubio, because Rubio's the last gasp of hawks and establishment Republicans.

Democrats are just as divided as Republicans these days. Embarrassed by their election losses, they are fighting over everything from their diagnosis of why Trump beat them in 2016 to how much to stake themselves on an oust-him-at-all-costs strategy now. Their internal battles may not be as sexy as the unprecedented hostile takeover of the GOP by an outsider president not beholden to it - yet they are just as consequential.

So let's see what they [Republicans] are going to do. If they're going to put together great programs, and everybody understands that they're good.

If you're going to run for president as the anti-Clinton, you should know that Democrats and their media friends will do whatever it takes to make you look Clintonian... The questions won't go away because Democrats are desperate to define Republican deviancy down to Clinton levels. The ugliness is just getting started.

Donald Trump has assembled a group of people who know how to, quote, get it done, whatever it is. Now, the left is not gonna be happy with the things they want to get done. And they're gonna continue to oppose it even when they benefit from it, they are going to continue to oppose it, unless Trump comes in with massive tax increases when of course the Democrats will sign on for that.

There's a certain attitude toward being presidential that is now going away and I think the other thing we're seeing is really a moment where I think Republicans are waking up to the fact that they should have been doing this a lot earlier. They should have been trying to get under Donald Trump's skin a lot earlier.

The more success [Donald] Trump has, the greater the energy poured into opposing him is gonna be. If you are thinking that at some point in these next four years that the opposition to Trump is going to lay down arms, so to speak, and join him, that's never gonna happen.

Republicans are now trying to stop Donald Trump. And there was much more ferocious and widespread criticism from Republicans of Trump this time around.

A lot of unpredictable things happened in the Republican party, but I think the notion that we're gonna demonize Donald Trump or we're gonna mischaracterize him is completely unfair.

I'm supporting anyone except Donald Trump.

It is hard to imagine a choice more stark than the choice between Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican Party, a clear establishment figure, and Stephen Bannon, a leader of the right-wing, the guy - Breitbart News Network, somebody who spent most of the time beating up on the Republican establishment.