Presidential Obligations Quotes

My belief was that it was not only the President's right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws. Under this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done many things not previously done by the President.

The authority of Congress must be respected …. The President must confine himself to his executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws.

Basically, if you become president, you must swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and what the Constitution says.

I think the voters believe that when you become president of the United States, you have a higher obligation and a higher standard than anybody in the world. And if you violate that standard, they're going to remember it on election day.

There is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes or makes it the official duty of a President to have anything to do with criminal activities.

Entire generations of Americans have come of age since the ancient time when the president's power was constrained by a duty of candor to the American people.

No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.

As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes. I cannot see you.

The failure of a President to provide information to Congress about impeachment inquiries is itself and impeachable offense.

I think whoever is the president [he] must guard your liberties, must not erode your rights in America.

There are circumstances where the President could fail to follow the will of Congress when doing so would interfere with the core of his responsibilities.

In general, presidents do sit for interviews or respond to requests from prosecutors because they take their constitutional responsibility to faithfully execute the laws seriously, and running away from a prosecutor isn't consistent with faithfully executing the laws.

I’m not your lawyer. But if I were in your shoes, I’d tell the President to burn the tapes immediately and then proclaim he’d done so as a matter of national security and executive privilege and out of an obligation to protect the office of the presidency.

Presidents live and work in a house of history. They dwell with ghosts. Present power and the weight of the past are ambient realities of daily life in the presidency, and the two are intimately connected.

I'll always respect that institution of the presidency, and I'll respect President Trump.

When you run for president you have certain obligations. One of them would be to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest.

I talk to the press five days a week … The president—how often does he talk to the press? His press secretary talks to the press every day, okay. But I happen to think the public should demand he should. I think he should; I think that’s his job.

I do not believe any president can bind a successor president to give up his fundamental role as protector of the country.

We learned that President-elect [Donald] Trump intends to keep his executive producer title on Celebrity Apprentice. We know he's going to come out later this week and talk about how he's going to handle the overall conflicts of interests, perhaps, with his businesses in the White House.

One of the penalties of being president of the United States is that you must subsist for four years without drinking anything except Californian wine.

There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States.

It’s hard for a President to make case for more powers when he has not used the powers he already has.

That the president of the United States may be subpoenaed, and examined as a witness, and required to produce any paper in his possession, is not controverted.

No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government of holding that a President can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role.

The Emoluments section shares with the Constitution. That's not a law that Congress could change or the president could ignore.