Quotes from Steve Schmidt

I think the notion of Sarah Palin being president of the United States is something that frightens me, frankly.

Trump makes no pretense about being the commander in chief of all of the country, being president of all of the people, including the people who voted against him. He is, in effect, a tribal chieftain who has declared war on half of the country.

Elections are about the voters who vote in them.

I don't want to sit here and disparage Paul Ryan the man, because he's a good guy. He's a moral person. He's a decent person.

Your average Republican member of Congress, if you played a word association game with them and said, 'Latino,' they're going to respond 'illegal immigrant,' as opposed to 'sergeant major' or 'surgeon' or 'professor.'

Even as people take pride in their national independence, we know we are becoming more and more interdependent." Bill Clinton "The price for independence is often isolation and solitude.

The price for independence is often isolation and solitude.

When Trump was elected, there were three parties in Washington: the Trump party, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Conservatism accomplished a lot of its goals in the latter part of the 20th century. What does 21st-century conservatism look like?

As a conservative myself that, you know, generally I would have a point of view that less regulation is better than more regulation, but less regulation shouldn't supersede a tax on the fundamentally important institutions that sustain a democratic republic.

My fidelity is to my country, not my political party. Country first.

The reality is that our Founders always predicted that one day there would be a president like Trump, and that's why they designed the system of government the way they designed it.

Whether you're Democrat or Republican... you want everybody who's eligible to vote to vote, and that's how you want to win elections.

We have 57 choices of ketchup and 500 TV channels. Very nearly everything has been disrupted in the country, from how we buy groceries to how we consume news, except for the system that produces the political leadership of the country.

If you hang around politics long enough, you tend to get disappointed by people.

I think there are really serious problems in this country and I think politics in a lot of ways is failing the country.

I've certainly done more than my fair share of pouncing on a stupid issue to win the news cycle of the day, to distract from what are real and important issues.

So the Republican party of Teddy Roosevelt and John McCain and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is dead. It's over. It doesn't exist anymore.

It's part of the mythology now in the Republican Party that there's widespread voter fraud all across the country. In fact, there's not.

It's gratifying to work for somebody who doesn't measure accomplishment by the temporary state of public-opinion polls.

Politics always fascinated me. In my 20s, I was involved in politics and, as I look in the mirror, not for the noblest of purposes. It was for sport.

Birtherism is a fringe issue that's way out of the mainstream, and it's disturbing when you see people you... have some level of respect for, whether it's members of Congress or even Donald Trump, falling into that category.

I would find it difficult to be involved in an effort that I think disenfranchises people from a fundamental right. How do you work with people who are opposed to marriage equality? I don't want to do it.

If you want to oppose Trump, the first thing you should do is say, 'I'm not going to do one thing that makes it worse.' Because making it worse helps Trump. Part of the damage of this era is his debasement and his purposeful divisions. That's unique in all of history.