Chris Hayes Quotes

American political life has reached the stage where a vocal and powerful group uses "liberal" as a term of contempt.... Never before in our history has this been true. Liberals and conservatives have disagreed and, on occasion, have stoutly fought each other; but not in the lifelong recollection of the speaker has any similar attempt been made to convert an honorable word for a socially useful attitude into a sling of mud to be thrown at a political opponent.

Politics has almost become an increasingly pejorative term in our culture. "Politicking" is not something to which we attribute a lot of value, but that itself is a major issue and a problem, and it is a decline in public culture, to have come to that point.

Professional politicians often claim they are not professional politicians. Trump genuinely isn't one.

Someone like Bernie Sanders can be in office for 30 years, but he's not the establishment.

And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the 'mob' - a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.

I think that in politics, when people want to discredit a particular position, they say, "Oh, they are liberals," or "They are conservatives; we are centrists." Everybody wants to be a centrist.

Marco Rubio was the darling of the Tea Party. Marco Rubio was elected as a Tea Party conservative Republican. Marco Rubio was sent to Washington clearly with the belief that he was part of a new conservative majority that was not tied to the establishment.

We have had too much of the Clintons, too much of the establishment, too much of Bushes. We have had too much of the old names and the old theories. It's time for a new theory.

The Washington establishment does not like the Tea Party. Don't you love all these politicians that run around and campaign as outsiders, anti-establishment, 'I'm not part of that Washington culture.' Well, then join the Tea Party, 'cause that's who's really anti-establishment, that's who's really a bunch of outsiders is the Tea Party. But you don't see those politicians who want to be considered outsiders joining or embracing the Tea Party, do you?

Hillary Clinton does represent the establishment. I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans, and by the way, who are not all that enamored with the establishment, but I am very proud to have people like Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva in the House, the co-chairmen of the House Progressive Caucus.

That's a very hard thing to help the establishment know. We're still an establishment that thinks the average mentality is something like 13 years of age, that never forgot H.L. Mencken's notion that nobody lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people. That's the horseshit the establishment has always lived with.

The establishment is divorcing itself from its base - from voters who are choosing a candidate who says he stands for things that are anathema to the establishment.

If you mention what he said about rapists from Mexico, there are some that come over - I can prove that with how many I have in the jail system - but I don't think Donald Trump meant that everybody coming over are rapists. Come on, he knows that and I know that.

Until now their line has been that the Tories are incapable of doing anything about poverty, and aren't interested in doing it in the first place. By contrast, Labour says, we are also incapable of doing anything about poverty, but would dearly love to do something. If we knew what.

And the word is capitalism. We are too mealy-mouthed. We fear the word capitalism is unpopular. So we talk about the free enterprise system and run to cover in the folds of the flag and talk about the American Way of Life.

What makes it possible for politicians to do so many things that are economically counterproductive is that neither the public nor the media know enough of the basics to understand what's wrong with what they're saying.

For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels; these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.

There are establishment Republicans who think Ted Cruz is not a likable guy. I don't understand that. I've had occasion to meet him twice, but just watching him on television, he's not unlikable, he's an dislikable.

The Democrats have lost a thousand electoral seats in America in midterm elections, 2010, 2014. The people of this country are clearly willing to vote against Democrats. They are clearly willing to vote for Republicans. But when you get to the presidential election, it better be somebody that's not just part of the establishment. That's the message, and that's what they're not getting.

How many years did people hate Obamacare? Now there's a poll out there that says Obamacare's never been more popular. Really? Really? Just how stupid do you think we all are? After whatever it is, six years of rising premiums, lost coverage, horrible treatment, no access, now all of a sudden, and there hasn't been any improvement in enrollment.

So when [Donald Trump] makes his address on the 40 days that he has been president, he has nothing to show for it but fear in every way.

Some labeled Jerry Falwell an American version of the Ayatollah Khomeni. People for the American Way, a group organized to counter the Moral Majority, launched a slick media campaign attaching the Nazi slur to the religious right.

I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.

Donald Trump, when he gives his speeches, talks like a populist. And he talks to middle class and working America and poor people. But when he governs, at least in his first 40 days, he governs like a hard-right guy.

I came out very strongly that we want a border, and the Mexican government probably convinced him that Donald Trump was saying not nice things about the border. And I think it worked out well. I don't think it was a positive, though. I think it was probably a neutral. I don't think it was negative, but it could have been a tremendous negative.