Chris Hayes Quotes

I would not want to be a politician... Let me tell you this: If I was campaigning, and I go against my opponent and he started attacking my character, and I leap over the table and choke him unconscious, would that help my campaign?

Newt Gingrich would cream Barack Obama in a debate.

Politics is a lot like acting. You have to be on all the time.

The whole celebrity thing didn't work for Hillary Clinton. She tried that in her campaign and it failed.

It just never comes across as a quality you want in a president that you're sitting in a room. It's almost as if they woke up and realized, You know, we're running against a former secretary of state. Our guy used to do the Miss Universe pageant around the world. Maybe we should try to heavy this up.

People are taking a closer look at Donald Trump. I think the best look they got was at the last debate. I think Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio prosecuted their case effectively. Donald doesn't have some great answers. When they talk, for instance, about immigration and releasing those tapes from The New York Times, we began talking about flexibility and immigration.

Jeb Bush brought it up at the debate and he was doing it very well, and all of a sudden, I don't know what happened, but he got shut down.

Don't worry about polls, but if you do, don't admit it.

Politics is just show business for ugly people.

Al Gore adopted three utterly different personas in three national presidential debates.

Ronald Reagan's advisors know that if he goes to sleep for even five minutes during the second debate, he'll be in trouble.

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close

Each of the participants [in a Presidential Debate] has a major objective and a minor one, in addition, of course, to appearing presidential. The major one is to get his messages across even if the questions don’t ask for them. The minor one is to avoid seeming unresponsive. That is why you will see the debaters answer some of the questions quickly, leaving time for what the candidate wants to talk about.

Nobody understood how to use television for his own purposes better than Nixon, despite his poor showing against John F. Kennedy in the televised presidential debate.

White House staff spends enormous amounts of time planning a president's every move so that his public persona reflects the mood of the public.

Marco Rubio, as an example, he's got no money, zero.I think that's fine, that's OK, maybe it's good politically to say you owe money because you overborrowed on your credit cards. He's got nothing. I mean, he's got nothing.

When you look at that debate stage, Mitt Romney could have dominated it maybe.

Hillary Clinton doesn't have a prayer. She does not make people feel good. She doesn't have the ability. She doesn't have the ability to be humble. It's just not in her. I mean, she's the Palace of Versailles every day in and out, and that's it.

The campaign for the White House is heating up with John Kerry taking heat for throwing his Vietnam medals away, getting a $1000 haircut, and wearing a 1970s wig known as 'the Leno.' There are really two sides to this story. And America can't wait for Kerry to present both of them.

I think if Donald Trump skipped out on a debate, for whatever reason he gave, I don't think it would help him at all.

Last night, we had the first gubernatorial debate. Some people are criticizing Schwarzenegger for not going. They say Arnold goes around telling people he cares, everything is going to be great, forget about everything he did in the '70s. Hey, it worked for George Bush.

John Kerry says that he wants to debate President Bush once a month until the election. This could be a risky move for Senator Kerry. If Bush doesn't show up for the debates, John Kerry may end up debating an empty chair. And that could be pretty much a toss up as to which one has the better personality.

For the Democrats, they're trying to avoid having the [Ben] Sanders- [Hillary] Clinton debate over and over again. But, to some degree, they're sentenced to that debate.

Phrase it in an interesting way; don't phrase it in a mean or unfriendly way. Bob Dole said that if there's anything he would have done differently, he would have said [to George Bush] "Start telling the truth about my record" instead of "Stop lying about my record." Frankly, had he done that, life might be different for Bob Dole today.

Whether it's her [ Hillary Clinton] guarded privacy or whatever else, I mean, there has got to be some sense that this is a human being that I can identify.