Gwen Ifill Quotes

I think Donald Trump laid out a series of priorities that doesn't end with border security, it begins with border security.

The problem with State of the Union speeches is that they are, by their nature and design, alphabet soup. It's hard to know what a president really cares about when they run down a laundry list and check every issue box under the sun for fear they will offend some constituency if they don't.

How many State of the Union addresses do people remember? They don't resonate that way.

In the first State of the Union of his second term, President Bush made clear to Americans tonight that he is not going to play the role of a lame duck President.

I think, you know, we always tell candidates, show, don't tell, what you're all about. I think Hillary Clinton's speech was an important speech that people are going to look at and they're going to see not just the attacks on Donald Trump, but also her admission that maybe she'd been part of the polarization problem as well and she could do better.

[The Republicans] have come up with nothing. They say repeal and replace. That has alliteration.

Let's give the conventions back to the politicians. If we think there's any news, we can tack it on afterward as commentary. But the conventions should be their show, not ours.

Our government has become too responsive to trivial or ephemeral concerns, often at the expense of more important concerns or an erosion of our liberty, and it has made policy priorities more dependent on where TV journalists happen to point their cameras....

Look at those Republican [Presidential Primary Nomination] debates. I feel embarrassed as an American when I hear them orate.

The shelf life of a seventh-year State of the Union address is about five minutes. Presidents can propose stuff. They're probably not likely to get it done.

One of the biggest challenges for any new administration is contending with its predecessor's priorities and beginning to advance its own.

There's a line of thinking about Ted Cruz.

I think Donald Trump is gonna continue to unravel as much of the Barack Obama agenda as he can, and I think he's gonna continue to wipe the floor with Democrats wherever he can.

I'm not going to critique the president's every utterance, but I do think America is exceptional. America is different. We don't operate in any way the Russians do. I think there's a clear distinction here that all Americans understand, and no, I would not have characterized it that way.

But the irony is they think they're being tough on ISIS and Trump thinks he's being tough on ISIS. Senator Rubio in his interview with you touched on it very, very lightly.

If I was to interrupt this article every few sentences, asking you whether or not I was making a good impression on you, I hope and believe that you would think I was a servile jerk. Yet this is what our politicians are doing in every speech.

President Bush says we've turned the corner in Iraq. What is that, about 16 corners we've turned? I think they call that running in circles.

Do you think that we shall ever be admitted as a State into the Union without denying the principle of polygamy? If we are not admitted until then, we shall never be admitted.

Naturally the smart thing to do to solve your economic woes is to demonize the Democrats. And of course, Sarah Palin is more than happy to oblige. She's been saying that Obama hangs out with terrorists. And you know, I think the evangelical lady who's in a video getting blessed by a witch doctor, who's married to a secessionist, and can't name a newspaper -- she's right, Obama is scary.

Donald Trump is an American presidential nominee who was describing Russia in terms that they haven't heard almost ever. And so there is a belief that Donald Trump would be a collaborative, willing and I think perhaps quite able partner.

There's a lot that the majority, a big majority of the American people want to see us do and I'm very excited about that work. I think the Democratic Party has a record of being better for the economy when we hold the White House.

I think it was not a bad idea to wrap Barack Obama in the mantle of Teddy Roosevelt. He's been assuming a sort of progressive mantle, and he ticked off some large and systemic problems that this country faces.

I think that [Barack Obama] does say something that's - that is telling on that score, when he talks about the [George W.] Bush tax cuts and the swap he makes after the midterm elections, which is he doesn't agree with the Bush tax cuts.

We need to send Barack Obama back to Chicago - I'd like to send him back to Kenya, back to Indonesia. But not only that - we absolutely need to retake the Senate. It is imperative that we take the Senate.

There were two Republican responses to the State of the Union. So if you watched the whole night, it was kind of evolution in reverse. You have Obama, then Paul Ryan, and then Michele Bachmann. Then Animal Planet had a squirrel monkey give his take.