Lawrence O'Donnell Quotes

Politics in this country [USA] is always tough. It's always contentious, because this is a big country and a diverse country, and people have strong points of view, and we've got a great diversity of interests.

I'm a professor of national security studies, and I know a lot more about fighting than Rumsfeld does.

A little tough talk in the midst of a campaign or as part of a presidential debate cannot obscure a record of 30 years of being on the wrong side of defense issues.

National missile defense has become a question of theology, not policy.

The next President's National Security Advisor ought to be an economist, instead of the usual military officer or arms control expert.

Our military structure and tactics have been designed more to protect the service interest than the national interest.

I think the United States military is operating under rules of engagement that are too strict and that do not allow us to pursue victory. When I'm president, that will change.

Our national-security strategy must drive our military budget, rather than the budget setting our strategy.

The no-first-use policy for nuclear weapons was a well thought out stand... We don't intend to reverse it.

The Democratic Party has been perceived to have a deficit of credibility on defense issues since the Vietnam War, unfairly or not.

I think Israel's security measures are pretty strong.

I listen a little to the Democrats, and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense," Giuliani continued. "We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-September 11 attitude of defense.

General [James] Mattis has got a really intellectual mindset about how the United States should go about protecting its national security.

That intelligence capability is enormously important to the United States, to our conduct of foreign policy, to defense matters, to economic matters. And I am a strong supporter of it.

We're facing a very different sort of threat now, a more amorphous threat, al Qaeda, terrorism, and so on. And so the military has abandoned the two-war strategy.

The Republican Party is the party of national security. There's hardly a national security wing of the Democratic Party anymore. So if we turn away from it, that'll be a big problem.

A stronger defense is an investment in peace.

My course has never been about triangulation, and neither, really, is Bill Clinton's. It's not - it's about applying your values to the future in a practical and unblinking way, and that is an ideological view that is every bit as strong as views from the left or from the right.

This is a core principle of my presidency - if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.

I think one of the reasons I'm standing here instead of other people is that, frankly, I talked about it, we have to have a strong military.

I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars, which is a combination of the budget cuts Barack Obama has, as well as the sequestration cuts. That, in my view, is making our future less certain and less secure.

We do need our defense capabilities. It is a fact that the cuts we are facing today and the cuts that Senator [Ted] Cruz would have supported would leave us with an even smaller Air Force and a smaller Navy than the one we are going to be left with.

I can describe, and I've always been able to describe, what Republicans stand for in eight words, and the eight words are lower taxes, less government, strong defense and family values.

[Michael Flynn is] controversial among many people in the national security establishment, many people in the Republican mainstream. The thing about this appointment that, again, goes to me is most.

We're going to make our military so strong, so powerful. That nobody, nobody, is going to mess with us, that, I can tell you. We're going to take care of our vets. They are forgotten people. They've been the forgotten people. And we're taking care of our vets.