Quotes from Rick Wilson

As consequential and as deadly as the coronavirus pandemic has been, and will continue to be, the Trump media machine can't stop and won't stop its relentless propagandizing and historical revision. Trump is the hero.

Like all alchemists, Trump seeks to convert dross into gold, to toss a broth of his incompetence, denial, delay, deception, and failure into some supernatural alembic and extract political advantage.

Be it China, the World Health Organization, the Bavarian Illuminati, or lizard shapeshifters, it's never Trump's responsibility. It's never Trump's fault.

The delta between who I am on Twitter and in real life is zero.

Even as a Southerner, there's only so much corn-pone shucking and jiving about mama-and-gravy talk I can take.

In a depressing twist, many members of my party and ideological persuasion have become advocates for Donald Trump on a scale that ranges from grudging to toadying, for a simple reason that seems to overwhelm all other factors: He attacks the media. Many are willing to forgive almost any sin because of it.

The first two weeks of Donald Trump's Presidency made it clear: Trump's Gonna Trump. No newfound dignity for him.

I believed that the numbers and processes of modern campaigning that revolve around the meticulous use of data would matter in 2016. I believed Trump was merely a spectacle, a political sideshow who would be dispatched by the well-funded and the well-staffed major campaigns.

Donald Trump, like many cult leaders, understands the power his words will have over the minds and actions of his followers... but few cult leaders have a pet media infrastructure.

It's not that I mind fighting with Trump's cheer squad... it's that it's so rarely a fair fight.

Even as an empiricist, I have to say that I believe in luck. I've seen it too many times in politics to let it pass by unnoticed.

There's an unspoken rule post-Cold War American Presidents have used when describing the awesome power of our nuclear arsenal; the more devastating the ability to destroy the enemy, the more restrained the language should be.

Trump would have us revise and edit our historical memory of 9/11, turning it from a unifying narrative of heroism, tragedy, and war and recast it to serve the political ends of a man unworthy of the presidency.

Donald Trump's racism is of course an ongoing feature, not a bug.

Every man who has sat in the Oval Office has felt the short, sharp shock when an ordinary day in the highest office in the land shifts from pomp and ceremony to urgent briefings, immediate choices, crucial decisions where lives are on the line. It's not something that may happen to a president. It's something that will happen.

Trump's inability to relate actions to consequences, his profound intellectual ambivalence about history, strategy and facts, in addition to his notoriously delicate ego, combine to create a risk we've never seen in a President during a nuclear crisis.

Trump will never, ever do the right or decent thing, and his consultants certainly won't. He will make outrageous, unsupported claims.

Con artists specialize in finding what people need, and Trump knows the media craves variety, scandal, secrets, and he-said-she-said stories, even of the most dubious provenance.

I believed that the donor class would cringe at the vast threat Donald Trump poses to the entire Republican Party, its brand, its prospects for expansion, and the nation.

All the fantasies of Trump-Bannon nationalism require a vastly expanded state, with greater powers over the economy and society.

With every product, the delta between the brand and the reality determines its power over the minds of consumers, and with Trump, that delta is always broad. If Trump said it was the best, it was average. If he said something was the finest, it typically included a spray-painted gold veneer.

Barack Obama basically ran as a liberal suburban Republican.

In politics, Victory Disease comes when a majority believes their position is so secure and immune from challenge that they forget the lessons of the past and can't imagine an outcome that isn't in their favor. Neither party is inoculated against it.

Trump 'accomplishments' are ephemeral, coincidental and accidental.