Political Insider Quotes

Washington has become a permanent feudal class of insiders …those are people who are formally in office, staffers, journalists, hangers on … that becomes self-perpetuating … a Congress in which 42 percent become lobbyists… You have people coming here with no intention of going back to the farm.

The establishment, rigged, cozy system inside the beltway is not America.

Well, I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment, and I've learned quickly these last few days that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.

Along with Trump, there are few people, on either the right or the left, who would defend the system. The system is, everyone believes, broken: it's an insider's game; it's totally fixed; it serves itself. Trump codified this into a simple and vivid idea: the swamp.

I'm pretty happy not to be an insider anymore. There's just no common ground. I don't know if it's distrust or that the politics is substantially more partisan than the public. But there's no pressure to make a grand bargain on fiscal matters, on growth, on anything.

Donald Trump is the swamp.

This woman [Hillary Clinton] is as steeped and deep inside the establishment as anybody in this campaign.

When I was young, no one wanted to be one; now even the President of the United States would call himself an outsider. So now I'm for insiders.

Most of who's left in the administration now are all these yes men and fanboys who were van drivers or press flacks for Barack Obama in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2008.

I think one of the dirty little secrets that I try to reveal here is that Washington is not hopelessly divided. It's very interconnected. We're talking about people sort of feeding from the same insider trough, where if you are known as an insider, you are going to get paid and do very, very, very well.

Bob Corker was not the inside man that, certainly, Senator [Jeff] Sessions was. And he doesn't telegraph what's going on. He's been much more discreet about that.