Max Boot Quotes

No matter which party is in the White House, doubt in America's democratic institutions rattles our nation to its core. This should not be a partisan issue for any reason, as any candidate or party could be on the receiving end of a hack at any time.

The Russians are clearly a big adversary, and they demonstrated it by trying to mess around in our election.

The way the United States intelligence community operates is it doesn't limit itself to the protection of the homeland. It doesn't limit itself to countering terrorist threats, countering nuclear proliferation. It's also used for economic espionage, for political spying to gain some knowledge of what other countries are doing.

This, in my view, is the highest responsibility of the President of the United States, which is to maintain the safety of the American people.

What's sort of remarkable is that, especially in the Israel and the Russia cases, you have got a U.S. citizen, Donald Trump, siding with a foreign leader against the U.S. president. There is a reason why president-elects have tried to remain mute during their transitional periods, relatively, because you just don't want to be for somebody - some other country against your own government, and especially when you're about to take the helm of that government.

Our country regularly uses military force, but only a fraction of Americans serve in the military. This means fewer and fewer people have a direct link to the military, and yet it remains as important as ever that we have a rich understanding of what we are doing as a country.

I predict, that if the establishment can't stop Donald Trump in the primary process, they will make an effort to stop him at the convention. I mean, Governor Mitt Romney has pretty much telegraphed this.

Career politicians do not have the courage to prioritize spending and say no to demanding special interest groups who do not reflect the best interests of the country.

We will start by modernizing our cruisers to provide the ballistic missile defense capability our nation needs. This will cost around $220 million per modernization as we seek to modernize a significant portion of these 22 ships. It will also mean jobs for our country.

The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced for it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off.

It's more of a strength model to say that [Vladimir] Putin will do what it takes to defend his country. But that's why Putin is dangerous and Russia is a major cause of concern for us .

I think that what is true is that the Russians intended to meddle, and they meddled. And it could be another country in the future.

Israel has legitimate concerns about its security relative to Iran. I mean, you have a large country with a significant military that has proclaimed that Israel shouldn't exist, that has denied the Holocaust, that has financed Hezbollah, and as a consequence, there are missiles that are pointed towards Tel Aviv. There are very good reasons why Israelis are nervous about Iran's position in the world generally.

We have people across this country who are scared to death. Because I could tell you this, as a former federal prosecutor, if a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, California, is now a target for terrorists, that means everywhere in America is a target for these terrorists.

We, Americans, have the best country on the planet. We have schools, universities, food, water, energy, peaceful neighbors, low corruption, you name it, deepest and widest capital markets. That doesn't mean we shouldn't identify problems. We don't have a divine right to success.

I am extremely energized to be in the Senate, because the Senate is the only emergency brake on the Trump train right now. And we have to use that emergency brake in a smart way to keep him from hurting our country, our reputation, our values, and our citizens.

Putin doesn't conduct elections in the Western sense of elections. This is more accurately probably described as a plebiscite, where people are supposed to express their support for him. The Russian system is not unique in this respect, but it is rather interesting. Here, in the West, the impression that people have is that Putin runs the whole country. This is not so, at all. To a certain extent, you could say that he runs the Kremlin, and this means that it's, in some situations, hard to tell whether it's him running the Kremlin, or the people around him running him.

Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country. Otherwise, we don't have a country. Our enforcement priorities will include removing criminals, gang members, security threats, visa overstays, public charges. That is, those relying on public welfare or straining the safety net, along with millions of recent illegal arrivals and overstays who've come here under this current corrupt administration!

I was so shocked when Donald Trump publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans. That is just unacceptable.

I want more rules, more scrutiny, and to defend the country.

If we want to really reduce foreign influence on our elections, then we better think about how to make sure that our political process, our political dialogue is stronger than it's been.

It should never be the goal of U.S. foreign policy towards any country to have a - quote, unquote - "good relation." Then what? What do we get out of that? We get - Trump is helping the approval ratings amongst Russians. How does that advance American national security interests?

Political correctness gets in the way of all too many things in this country of ours, I am not a subscriber of political correctness by any means, shape or form.

Espionage is never a laughing matter. And in fact, this is not a political issue. I don't want to get this confused with the back and forth we might have about economic issues or anything else. This is a matter of national security now. And I find it very frightening that Donald Trump is encouraging any foreign power to breach a campaign and try to influence the outcome of the election.

In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.