Frank Rich Quotes

The majority of Americans, the ones who never elected George W. Bush, are not fooled by his weapons of mass distraction.

To be sure, administrations since Ronald Reagan had gone out of their way to massage and 'spin' news to the president's advantage, while the media did its best to un-spin it.

People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.

WikiLeaks is exposing our government officials for the frauds that they are. They also show us how governments work together to lie to their citizens when they are waging war.

For most Americans, Friday afternoons are filled with positive anticipation of the weekend. In Washington, it's where government officials dump stories they want to bury. Good news gets dropped on Monday so bureaucrats can talk about it all week.

The distinction between reality and fiction in America seems like it is becoming really blurry. With its religious fanaticism, reality TV programs and fake news broadcasts being aired by the government, the States feel like they are entering the Dark Ages.

No one knows if Saddam is still alive. They keep showing old footage of him on TV saying that it's live. You know, it's like the same thing we do with Dick Cheney.

People are entitled to believe the government is constantly lying to them, but it isn't.

In 2004, I wrote 'What We've Lost,' a book about the Bush administration. It sold only reasonably well, in part, I think, because the book was a horrific downer, an unrelenting account of the administration's actions, bungles, deceptions, half-truths, untruths, and downright corruptions.

Terrorism is in good part an effective government propaganda; it serves to deflect attention from governmental abuse toward a mostly imagined, highly dangerous outside enemy.

The Internet has made it much more effective and cheaper to spread propaganda.

Come to find out, the Russians were never afraid of the Americans. They weren't raised with the terror that we were by our government. I was struck by how our government misled us for so many years.

I also focus on Bush and his administration - who do a lot of lying - and how a right-wing media has allowed them to get away with a lot of stuff that, in a different media environment, they probably wouldn't be able to get away with.

In a 24/7 news cycle, with all the shrieking, howling voices and rapid-response and instant spinning and Soviet-style disinformation-mongering, a good idea has a shelf life of about, um, six seconds.

Sensationalism sells: Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

I was cranking out that bullshit on Nixon's crime policy before he was elected. And it was bullshit too. And we knew it.

This is an administration that has gotten 600 Americans killed by not telling the truth. I don’t see why anyone would believe any of the political ads.

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them.

We live in a time when fictitious election results elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.

We're learning a tremendous amount of propaganda from television and the Internet.

Trump has broken the news system because he has found ways to go out there, get attention, say a lot of things that are untrue and confuse the public.

In this war on truth we are all living in, 'hoax' is a potent, malicious, ugly little word and Trump has been using it more every year. So has Fox.

There's nothing new about the government protecting corporations and calling it the freeing of the world or bringing democracy to bereft nations. Nowadays, the media have to be there for them, to keep you from asking too many questions, from getting together with other people who might want to do the Jeffersonian thing and call out the government.

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.

But the biggest fake of the year, Paul Begala's last smile