Quotes from Richard Cohen

Trump was always a poster boy of the selfish, egomaniacal, ignorant, bragging, cruel rich kid, whose mirror was the sleazy pages of Rupert Murdoch's 'New York Post.' Trump's oxygen was the leaked item, without which he would die the suffocating death of being shown to a bad table.

You have to admit that Trump is endlessly creative. He has insulted the disabled, the dead, the parents of the dead, women, Mexicans, Muslims, Asians, African Americans, former POWs, the media and, to get just a bit more specific, 'The Post.'

I have come to the conclusion that Ben Carson is a bit nuts. I say that not because I disagree with him politically, but because he doesn't seem to know what the truth is.

Opposition to social change is but one pillar of contemporary Republicanism.

Trump is a menace, both ignorant and chaotic. His saving grace is his incompetence.

I am glad to see the Confederate battle flag gone from a place of honor at the South Carolina state capitol.

Something about the Clintons sets the GOP to howling at the moon.

How is it possible to defame Trump? When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president a 'moron,' was that defamatory or merely the prosaic truth?

The ultimate question is whether the name Donald Trump will be attached to an era - whether he will so change America that it will never be the same afterward.

Much worse than the unavoidable inefficiencies of large government is the failure to fund the government we need.

Pence is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He's got his eye on 2020.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, he cares. He cares about things I don't, and he has some awful ideas, and he is an amoral man in so many ways. But, in contrast to Obama, his emotions are no mystery.

Trump lies when confronted with the truth, since any crack in his narcissism might spread like an Ebola of the soul, and he would deflate like one of Macy's balloons on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

I don't like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize.

Trump's juvenilia stands in stark contrast to Obama's measured words.

I value my education, but I cannot put a value on it. I know it has been worth some money to me - I don't think 'The Post' would have hired me if I had lacked a degree - but I probably could have earned about the same if I had stayed in the insurance business, where I worked while going to college at night.

Trump is unloved in his own house. A figure of ridicule, a theatrical creation, he is almost sympathetic. He was told by the greedy and the outright stupid that he would make a swell president. The Liar's Paradox has spun out of control, with liars lying to a liar who believed the lie. What would that be called? Fox News, I think.

To anyone other than an adamant social conservative, Pence is shockingly unreasonable. But he is also shockingly hypocritical.

We need a national service that throws us all together, the urban with the rural, the Fox News types with the MSNBC crowd. That way, Americans can get to know Americans and learn - as previous generations did - that we are all Americans.

Trump is a dust storm of lies and diversions with the bellows of a bully and the greasy ethics of a street-corner hustler.

There was a time when an ordinary American could close the door and keep the world at bay. Now the world comes elbowing in every time you go online.

I reveled in political science and history of all kinds, and I felt for a long time that I had discovered all the secrets of life in psychology, although its Freudian variety left me cold. The id never made much sense to me.

When I was a kid, I went door to door in my neighborhood asking for donations to the Jewish National Fund, best known then for its Israel forestation program. At the age of 11 or so, I imagined myself a regular Johnny Appleseed, responsible for vast forests.

Private enterprise cannot rebuild the nation's infrastructure or keep our research institutions vibrant. Government must do what only it can do.