Matt Taibbi Quotes

[The Electoral College] affords a moral certainty that the office of the Presidency will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.

The press doesn't just cover presidential campaigns, they influence them by making arbitrary decisions about who is 'top tier' and merits coverage.

The night before I began my career as a presidential campaign reporter, in September 2007, I finished Theodore White's 'The Making of the President,' the classic account of the 1960 race, which opened up a new era of campaign reporting.

Many people - especially those people who earn livings by convincing editors and bookers that rich and influential strangers consider their thoughts and opinions interesting - have ideas about who should or should not run for president.

As someone who's been covering presidential campaigns since the 1950s, I have no delusions about political reporting. Candidates bargaining access to get the kind of news coverage they want is nothing new.

The West Wing seems to be feeding the myth about how presidential politics are.

I don't believe the American people want a Gelding in the White House.

If the American President had control of the media, his job would be much easier.

The presidency is an office for which none of us is great enough.

To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.

Most people have this protective view of the presidency. Anybody who holds the office is always gonna get the benefit of the doubt unless the media spends four years destroying them like they did Bush, and with Bush not returning fire.

Hillary doesn't play. She has more experience and exposure to the presidency than any candidate in our lifetime - yes, more than Barack, more than Bill. So she is absolutely ready to be Commander-in-Chief on day one. And, yes, she happens to be a woman.

Presidential campaign and White House are two aggressively separate things. They still think I'm the weird kid in the corner, so I don't have much power. But I'll definitely do something to help.

I've been a news junkie as long as I can remember - and once you've covered a presidential campaign, it's nearly impossible to tear yourself away. There's so much at stake.

The fact that a TV star can become president should be old news since [Ronald] Reagan, and old news since the Nixon-Kennedy debates - which the famous story, whether or not you agree, is that if you listened on the radio, Nixon won; if you listened on TV, Kennedy won.

I was incredulous as the bias of the media in terms of the candidates [for presidency]. I was incredulous at the fake news.

The democratic race is really boring when the media is basically writing stories and spending money to ask questions in a poll about somebody who is not even a declared candidate.

The media is terribly worried that Donald Trump is going to influence people. The media will tell you, I mean, crazy Mika, Ms. Brzezinski, actually said that she worries that Trump may actually end up controlling what people think on jobs and the economy. And it's not the president's job, it's the media's job to tell people, to determine people exactly what they think.

The popular choice, by more than 2 million votes, is a completely qualified candidate for president.

The story is whether or not the villains, in the eyes of the media, will win or can be stopped. But when you change the dynamic and make it [Donald] Trump versus Hillary [Clinton]? Well, we already know the media has already once gotten caught up and captured and totally engrossed in the Trump story 'cause they don't know how it's gonna end day to day.

The presidency does not yield to definition. Like the glory of a morning sunrise, it can be experienced.

The media is trying to rig the election.

You have people talk about the media as a coequal branch when talking about Republicans. "You know, Republicans have to overcome the media, and then the Democrats." Wait a minute. Why should anybody have to overcome the media?

When you do a computerized poll, where people are comfortable, Donald Trump vote goes up very dramatically. And I think people don't realize the effort by the elite media, the totally dishonest effort to submerge him, has had an effect.

Twenty-two percent of Americans say their primary news source is Fox News. It's divided our country in a way that we haven't been divided probably since the Civil War, and its empowered large corporations to get certain kinds of politicians and ideologues who are in the United State Congress elected -- the Tea Party ideologues who control the Republican Party.