David Maraniss Quotes

I wasn't part of John Kennedy's vision of the world, or Lyndon Johnson's. I thought of them as anti-Communist imperial monsters.

Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war. I was trying to help him keep us out of war. And General Curtis LeMay, whom I served under as a matter of fact in World War II, was saying "Let's go in, let's totally destroy Cuba."

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.

You're not a baby boomer if you don't have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King assassination, a Beatles breakup, a U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and a Watergate.

The most intimidating world leader was Lyndon Johnson, who became U.S. President when John Kennedy was assassinated. He exulted in this power and liked to inspire fear.

Eisenhower was quite supportive of Kennedy and Johnson in terms of foreign policy.

There has been growing quite a strain of irritating feeling between our government and the Russians and it seems to me that it is a time for me to use all the restraint I can on these other people who have been apparently getting a little more irritated.

Kennedy was haunted by the Bay of Pigs invasion but carried the country through the Cuban Missile Crisis. He later increased the number of U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam to more than 16,000.

Look at what President Kennedy managed to achieve during the Cuban missile crisis. If Bush had been president in 1962, do you think he would have avoided a nuclear war?

From the moment he took office in January of 1961, Kennedy had been eager to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action by the United States.

Most people give Kennedy a passing grade, a good grade on the Cuban Missile Crisis handling, but what they don't realize, if he had had strength, if he had showed strength before, there would never have been a Cuban Missile Crisis.

[On Vietnam:] Kennedy cooked the soup that Johnson had to eat.

Ten Presidents have tried to do something about Cuba and the statis is quo.

… from the beginning, it was President Kennedy who said that it was politically unacceptable for us to leave those [Cuban] missile sites alone. He didn't say militarily, he said politically.

The military plan is basically invasion. When we attack Cuba, we are going to have to attack with an all-out attack," he said. This is almost certain to lead to an invasion. The Soviet Union may, and I think probably will, attack the Turkish missiles. Then the United States would have to attack Soviet ships. And I would say that it is damn dangerous. Now, I'm not sure we can avoid anything like that if we attack Cuba. But I think we should make every effort to avoid it. And one way to avoid it is to defuse the Turkish missiles before we attack Cuba.

The establishment on Cuban soil of Soviet nuclear striking forces which could be used against the United States would be incompatible with Soviet policy.

Kennedy was the driving force of reform in America.

Let me see the 'Cuban missiles on the island' picture. Trump needs to see it before networks need to see it.

In those years,'80 was the, at the turn of '79/'80 you had the invasion of Afghanistan. It was the period in which the Americans attempt to liberate, to, to liberate the hostages in Iran and all these, all these things, the atmosphere was freezing - boycott of the Olympic Games and all that.

[Donald] Trump is speaking in Philadelphia on military matters. He's doing quite well. I want to join a little bit of this in progress just to give you a flavor for how Trump is sounding.

I had the opportunity to speak at a recent fundraiser [for Hillary Clinton] and felt extremely honored that she would allow someone as, well, untraditional as me to stand at her podium.

JFK was leading the world, leading the United States into a new position with the Soviet Union. He was calling for the end of the Cold War. He would have been reelected in 1964 because he was vastly popular.

When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.

We all know who Donald Trump's talking to.

The Democrat Party loved the Soviet Union! The Democrat Party in the eighties and the seventies propped up the Soviet Union.