The home front
[DT] “If I were elected I would probably look at the White House, and maybe touch it up a little bit. But the White House is a special place, you don’t want to do too much touching.”—interview with People magazine, October 1, 2015
[HRC] “I am probably still going to pick the flowers and the china for state dinners and stuff like that. But I will certainly turn to [Bill Clinton] as prior presidents have for special missions, for advice, and in particular, how we’re going to get the economy working again for everybody, which he knows a little bit about.”—Democratic presidential debate, Manchester, New Hampshire, December 19, 2015
[DT] “Maybe she just wants him around the White House so she can keep her eye on him.”—interview on Fox & Friends, May 20, 2016
[DT] “I’m [for] traditional marriage.…I have a good wife now. My [first] two wives were very good. And I don’t blame them, but I was working…twenty-two hours a day.”—interview on CNN, June 28, 2015
[HRC] “First dude, first mate, first gentleman? [Bill Clinton’s title if she becomes president] I’m just not sure about it.”—interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, November 5, 2015
[DT] “Where’s my supermodel?”—town hall meeting, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1999 [referring to his wife, Melania]
[HRC] “[Bill Clinton would be] in charge of revitalizing the economy, because, you know, he knows how to do it [especially] in places like coal country and inner cities.”—speaking with voters in Kentucky, May 15, 2016
[DT] “Well, it’s [Bill Clinton’s sex scandals] an issue. Look, when they bring something up with me, where they say ’sexist,’ which I’m not, then I bring that up to them. I’d like to talk about policy more than anything else. I mean, I’d love to stay on policy and you know cut taxes, and do lots of great things, and get rid of crime, and knock out ISIS, and all of the things we have to be doing. That’s where I’d rather be focusing my energy.”—radio interview on KABC, Los Angeles, California, May 31, 2016
[HRC] “Well, he’s [Trump] not the first one, Anderson [Cooper]. I just can’t—I can’t say this often enough. If he wants to go back to the playbook of the 1990s, if he wants to follow in the footsteps of those who have tried to knock me down and take me out of the political arena, I’m more than happy to have him do that.”—interview on CNN, May 4, 2016
[DT] “Can you imagine how controversial I’d be [running for president]? You think about [Bill Clinton] with the women. How about me with the women? Can you imagine?”—interview on CNBC, August 1998
[HRC] “If I were going to run against [Bill Clinton], would I win? Yeah…you’ve got to have that kind of confidence if you’re going to be in this arena.”—interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, November 5, 2015
[DT] “Absolutely. I might not apologize.…I might not do that. But I would absolutely want him to come in.”—answer to Lesley Stahl as to whether, as vice president, Mike Pence would ever be able to go to his boss and say that he’d “crossed the line” and needed to apologize, 60 Minutes, July 17, 2016
[HRC] “I do have a fondness for wonks.…I love that [her running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, is boring] about him. He’s never lost an election.”—interview on PBS, July 18, 2016
[DT] “We’ll get the top people, the top everything. We’ll have the best ballroom, because I notice they always put tents up on the lawn. Number one, it’s not a good security thing. Number two, the guy that owns the tents is making a fortune.”—campaign rally, Sioux City, Iowa, January 31, 2016
[HRC] “Don’t just fly that big jet in and land it and go give a big speech and insult everybody you can think of and then get on the big jet and go back to your country club house in Florida or your penthouse in New York. I somehow don’t think that puts you in touch with what is going on.”—campaign rally, Wilmington, Delaware, April 16, 2016
[DT] “It’s [flying by private jet] like living in a beautiful home. The advantage is that I’m able to fly nicely, quickly and on time.…It gives me privacy. If I was going commercial and signing autographs and taking pictures, it would be tougher for making a great speech.”—interview with The Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2015
[DT] “The best social program has always been a job—and taking care of our economy will go a long way towards reducing our dependence on public health programs.”—Donald Trump health care plan
[HRC] “If you do your part, then you ought to be able to get ahead. You ought to be able to reap the rewards of your work. And when everybody does his or her part, then America gets ahead.”—closing remarks, Democratic presidential debate, Las Vegas, Nevada, October 13, 2015
[DT] “We’re going to have great relationships with the Hispanics. The Hispanics have been so incredible to me. They want jobs. Everybody wants jobs. The African-Americans want jobs. If you look at what’s going on, they want jobs.”—victory speech following Indiana presidential primary, Trump Tower, New York City, May 3, 2016
[HRC] “I’m not interested in condemning whole categories of businesses or the entire private sector. But I do want to send a clear message to every boardroom and every executive suite [that] if you desert America, you’ll pay a price.”—campaign speech in Detroit, Michigan, March 4, 2016
[DT] “We don’t win anymore. [If our] wages are too high, we’re not going to be able to compete against the world. I hate to say it, but we have to leave [the minimum wage] it the way it is. People have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum. But we cannot do this if we are going to compete with the rest of the world. We just can’t do it.”—Fox Business/WSJ Republican Debate, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 10, 2015
[HRC] “I support a $12 national federal minimum wage. But I do believe that is a minimum. And places like Seattle, like Los Angeles, like New York City, they can go higher.…You would index it to the median wage, of course. Do the $12 and you would index it.”—CBS Democratic primary debate, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, November 14, 2015
[DT] “I am open to doing something with it [the $7.25 minimum wage], because I don’t like that.…I’m actually very different from most Republicans [on the issue].”—interview on CNN, May 4, 2016
[DT] “We’re going to bring back our jobs, and we’re going to save our jobs, and people are going to have great jobs again, and this country, which is very, very divided in so many different ways, is going to become one beautiful loving country, and we’re going to love each other, we’re going to cherish each other and take care of each other, and we’re going to have great economic development and we’re not going to let other countries take it away from us, because that’s what’s been happening for far too many years and we’re not going to do it anymore.”—victory speech following Indiana presidential primary, Trump Tower, New York City, May 3, 2016
[DT] “You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’ and they go nuts.”—speaking to New York Times editorial writers in January 2016
[HRC] “For me, you have to take him at his word on how he has behaved and what he has said.”—interview on CNN, March 21, 2016, faulting Trump for not sufficiently renouncing the Ku Klux Klan and recalling his derogatory remarks about Mexicans
[DT] “We’re going to build the wall; we’re going to create a border. We’re going to let people in, but they’re going to come in legally. They are going to come in legally. And it’s something that can be done. They built the Great Wall of China. That’s 13,000 miles. Here, we actually need 1,000, because we have natural barriers. We can do a wall. We’re going to have a big, fat beautiful door right in the middle of the wall. We are going to have people come in, but they are coming in legally. And Mexico is going to pay for the wall, because Mexico—I love the Mexican people, I respect the Mexican leaders, but the leaders are much sharper, smarter, and more cunning than our leaders. And people say, ‘Oh, how are you going to get Mexico to pay?’ A politician cannot get them to pay. I can.”—CNBC “Your Money, Your Vote” GOP first-tier debate, October 28, 2015
[HRC] “First of all, as I understand him, he’s talking about a very tall wall. [laughter] Right? A beautiful tall wall. The most beautiful tall wall, better than the Great Wall of China, that would run the entire border. That he would somehow magically get the Mexican government to pay for. And, you know, it’s just fantasy.”—Democratic presidential debate, Miami, Florida, March 9, 2016
[DT] “This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish.”—Republican two-tiered primary debate on CNN, September 16, 2015
[HRC] “I know that there are some on the other side who are seriously advocating to deport 11-12 million people who are working here. [It is] the height of irony that a party which espouses small government would want to unleash a massive law enforcement effort—including perhaps National Guard and others—to go and literally pull people out of their homes and their workplaces, round them up, put them, I don’t know, in buses, boxcars, in order to take them across our border.”—press conference, August 28, 2015
[DT] “Now here’s one I don’t like. Syrian refugees are now being resettled in Rhode Island. Lock your doors, folks.”—campaign rally, Warwick, Rhode Island, April 25, 2016
[HRC] “As you know, he believes Muslims should be banned from entering this country because of their faith. What would that mean for a nation founded on religious freedom? He wants to round up 11 million immigrants and kick them out. What would that mean for a nation built by immigrants?”—campaign event, University of Wisconsin at Madison, March 28, 2016
[DT] “I want every American to succeed, including Muslims. But the Muslims have to work with us. They have to work with us. They know that he [Omar Mateen, Orlando nightclub shooter] was bad. They knew the people in San Bernardino were bad. But you know what, they did not turn them in. And we had death and destruction.”—speech on US immigration policy, Goffstown, New Hampshire, June 13, 2016
[HRC] “Every child deserves a good teacher and a good school.”—Democratic presidential debate, Miami, Florida, March 9, 2016
[DT] “You could cut that [Department of Education] way, way, way down.”—South Carolina Tea Party Convention, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, January 17, 2015
[DT] “I love the poorly educated!”—victory speech following the GOP Nevada caucuses, February 24, 2015
[HRC] “Let’s get back to what does work instead of this constant reinvention, and the sale of new products, and the latest fad to come down the road.”—roundtable with American Federation of Teachers, New Hampshire, November 9, 2015
[HRC] “When I think about the really unfortunate argument that’s been going on around Common Core, it’s very painful, because the Common Core started off as a bipartisan effort—it was actually nonpartisan. It wasn’t politicized, it was to try to come up with a core of learning that we might expect students to achieve across our country, no matter what kind of school district they were in, no matter how poor their family was, that there wouldn’t be two tiers of education. Everybody would be looking at what was to be learned and doing their best to try to achieve that.”—education roundtable, Kirkwood Community College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, April 14, 2015
[DT] “End Common Core. Common Core is a disaster.”—announcement speeches of 2016 presidential hopefuls, June 16, 2015
[DT] “Repeal [Obamacare] and replace with something terrific.”—interview on CNN, July 29, 2015
[HRC] “The last thing we need is to throw our country into a contentious debate about health care again.”—Democratic presidential debate, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, February 11, 2016
[DT] “I like the mandate. Here’s where I’m a little bit different. I don’t want people dying in the streets.”—interview on CNN, February 20, 2016
[HRC] “It has gotten to the point where people are being asked to pay not just hundreds but thousands of dollars for a single pill. That is not the way the market is supposed to work. That is bad actors making a fortune off of people’s misfortune.”—Presidential forum, Des Moines, Iowa, September 22, 2015
[DT] “There is panic and anger as healthcare costs explode!”—Twitter, June 2, 2016
[HRC] “They don’t mind having big government to interfere with a woman’s right to choose and to try to take down Planned Parenthood. They’re fine with big government when it comes to that. I’m sick of it.”—Democratic presidential debate, Las Vegas, Nevada, October 13, 2015
[DT] “Millions and millions of women—cervical cancer, breast cancer—are helped by Planned Parenthood.”—CNN Republican presidental debate, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, February 25, 2016
[DT] “There has to be some form of punishment [for women who have abortions].…You’ll go back to a position like they had where people will perhaps go to illegal places, but you have to ban it.”—interview on MSNBC, March 30, 2016
[HRC] “Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse. Horrific and telling.”—Twitter, March 30, 2016
[DT—three hours later] “The doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”—donaldjtrump.com, March 30, 2016
[DT] “This was not real life. This was a hypothetical, so I thought of it in terms of a hypothetical. So that’s where that answer came from, hypothetically.”—interview with Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, April 3, 2016
[HRC] “Donald Trump said, ‘Women should be punished for having an abortion.’ [boos] He then tried to distance himself, once that kind of reaction came out from his outrageous comments. But we all heard them.”—Hillary Clinton campaign ad, played on NBC’s Meet the Press, April 3, 2016
[HRC] “You know, I have traveled all over the world. I have seen what happens when governments make these decisions, whether it was forced sterilization, forced abortion in China, or forced childbearing in communist Romania. So I don’t think that we should be allowing the government to make decisions that really properly belong to the individual.”—interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, April 3, 2016
[DT] “I think cutting Social Security is a big mistake for the Republican Party. And I know it’s a big part of the budget. Cutting it the wrong way is a big mistake, and even cutting it [at all].”—interview with Bloomberg News, May 26, 2015
[HRC] “I won’t cut Social Security. As always, I’ll defend it, & I’ll expand it. Enough false innuendos.”—Twitter, February 5, 2016
[DT] “I want you to understand that the Democrats, and I’ve watched them very intensely, even though it’s a very, very boring thing to watch, that the Democrats are doing nothing with Social Security. They’re leaving it the way it is. In fact, they want to increase it. They want to actually give more. And that’s what we’re up against. And whether we like it or not, that is what we’re up against. I will do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is.”—GOP presidential debate, Miami, Florida, March 10, 2016
[HRC] “I want to enhance the benefits for the poorest recipients of Social Security. We have a lot of women on Social Security, particularly widowed and single women who didn’t make a lot of money during their careers, and they are impoverished, and they need more help from the Social Security system.”—CNN Democratic presidential debate, Las Vegas, Nevada, October 13, 2015
[DT] “I am going to save Social Security without any cuts. I know where to get the money from. Nobody else does.”—Twitter, May 21, 2015
[HRC] “It’s outrageous that America is the only country in the developed world that doesn’t guarantee paid leave.”—Mother’s Day campaign video, May 10, 2015
[DT] “Well, it’s [paid family leave] something that’s being discussed. I think we have to keep our country very competitive so you have to be careful of it, but certainly there are a lot of people discussing it.”—interview on Fox Business, November 18, 2015
[DT] “Environmental Protection, what they do is a disgrace. Every week they come out with new regulations.”—interview on Fox News Sunday, October 18, 2015
[DT] “But it’s [his apartment] sealed, it’s beautiful. I don’t think anything gets out. And I’m not supposed to be using hair spray.…But think of it. So Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the—a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, okay? It’s a hoax, a lot of it. And look, I want clean air, and I want clean water. That’s my global—I want clean, clean crystal water, and I want clean air. And we can do that, but we don’t have to destroy our businesses.…And by the way, China isn’t abiding by anything. They’re buying all of our coal; we can’t use coal anymore essentially. They’re buying our coal, and they’re using it. Now when you talk about the planet, it’s so big out there—we’re here, they’re there, it’s like they’re our next-door neighbor, right, in terms of the universe. Miss Universe, by the way, I made a great deal when I sold—oh, did I get rich.”—campaign rally, South Carolina, December 30, 2015
[DT] “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”—Twitter, November 6, 2012
[HRC] “Republican candidates deny climate change because they’re ‘not scientists.’”—Twitter, March 10, 2016
[DT] “I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons.”—meeting with the Washington Post editorial board, Washington, DC, March 22, 2016
[HRC] “I’m just a grandmother with two eyes and a brain.…It’s hard to believe there are people running for President who still refuse to accept the settled science of climate change.”—campaign ad, “Stand for Reality”
[DT] “There is no drought.…We’re going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous where they’re [California state officials] taking the water and shoving it out to sea.”—campaign rally, Fresno, California, May 27, 2016
[HRC] “I believe in science. I believe that climate change is real and that we can save our planet while creating millions of good-paying clean energy jobs.”—speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 28, 2016
[HRC] “I have said repeatedly that we are going to move from fossil fuels to clean energy. We’re going to have to do it in a quick, but thoughtful way.…What the government does have the authority to do is to impose very strict regulations on the chemicals being used; closing the Halliburton loophole; on the methane release. There’s a lot we can do.…I want to have half a billion more solar panels deployed in the first four years. I want to have enough clean energy to power every home in the next four years.”—League of Conservation Voters event, February 4, 2016
[DT] “Wind is destroying the environment in many, many places. People are going crazy over the horrible, noisy, disgusting windmills. And they are horrible and a horrible intrusion, ruining communities, and solar is weak and has not been effective and is very, very expensive. And there are just lots of other problems with many forms of energy. But we have—under our wonderful feet—we have natural gas the likes of which no other place has.”—interview on Fox News, March 16, 2012
[HRC] “I care passionately about climate change. And I have been working to try to move us away from fossil fuels for many years. When I was in the Senate, I introduced legislation to take away the subsidies. I voted against Dick Cheney’s energy bill in 2005. And I could go on and on. When I got to be secretary of state, I was at the original meeting in 2009 with President Obama, where we were trying to convince China and India and others to come on board with accepting some restrictions that would lead to what finally occurred with the Paris agreement. So when people make these kinds of claims, which now I think I have been debunked; actually The Washington Post said three Pinocchios, The New York Times also analyzed it, and other independent analysts have said that they are misrepresenting my record. I’m just not going to, I feel sorry sometimes for the young people who, you know, believe this. They don’t do their own research. And I’m glad that we now can point to reliable, independent analysis to say, ‘No, it’s just not true.’”—interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, April 3, 2016
[DT] “Are people in favor of that [offshore drilling fifty miles from the coast]? [An expansion of offshore drilling would be] a little bit of a shame because there’s so much fracking, and there’s so much oil that we have now that we never thought possible.…That’s an issue I’d absolutely study and do the right thing.”—interview with the Tampa Bay Times, February 12, 2016
[DT] “Boy, would I surprise somebody if they hit Trump.”—speech at the National Rifle Association, Fairfax, Virginia, May 20, 2016
[HRC] “I refuse to accept this as normal. We must take action to stop gun violence now.”—Twitter, December 2, 2015
[DT] “Hillary said that guns don’t keep you safe. If she really believes that, she should demand that her heavily armed bodyguards quickly disarm!”—Twitter, January 3, 2016
[DT] “You know what? If I’m in that room and let’s say we have two or five or forty people with guns, we’re going to do a lot better because there’s going to be a shootout.”—town hall, Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, November 18, 2015
[HRC] “When the NRA says things like, ‘Well, you just need more people with guns so the good people with guns can take out the bad people with guns,’ well, you’re a 92- and an 83-year-old brother and sister and you’re walking to the grocery store. That makes no sense.…We’ve got to get guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.”—campaign event, Kingstree, South Carolina, February 25, 2016
[DT] “I’m a big Second Amendment person. I believe in it so strongly, and if you take the guns away from the good people, and the bad ones are going to have target practice.”—CNN State of the Union interview series: 2016 presidential hopefuls, July 26, 2015
[DT] “I’m the most militaristic person on your show. I want to have a much stronger military. I want it to be so strong that nobody is going to mess with us. I want to take care of our vets, who are treated terribly, like third-class citizens.”—interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, October 11, 2015
[DT] “We’re going to do a bit of a free market thing so that veterans can get immediate service and good treatment.”—CNN State of the Union interview series: 2016 presidential hopefuls, September 20, 2015
[HRC] “I don’t understand why we have such a problem, because there have been a number of surveys of veterans, and, overall, veterans who do get treated are satisfied with their treatment.”—interview on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, October 21, 2015
[DT] “Iraq. Crooked as hell. How about bringing baskets of money, millions and millions of dollars, and handing it out? I want to know who are the soldiers that had that job because I think they’re living very well right now, whoever they may be.”—campaign rally, Greensboro, North Carolina, June 14, 2016
[DT] “While under no obligation to do so, I have raised between 5 & 6 million dollars, including 1 million dollars from me, for our VETERANS. Nice!”—Twitter, May 23, 2016
[HRC] “The problem here is the difference between what Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does. It took a reporter to shame him into actually making his contribution and getting the money to veterans. I’m glad he finally did, but I don’t know if he should get much credit for that.”—interview on CNN, May 31, 2016
[DT] “I wrote this out, and it’s very close to my heart. Because I was down there and I watched our police and our firemen down at 7/11 [sic], down at the World Trade Center right after it came down. And I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action.”—campaign rally, Syracuse, New York, April 18, 2016
[HRC] “So I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.”—Democratic presidential debate, Des Moines, Iowa, November 14, 2015
[DT] “The only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here. That is a fact, and that is a fact we need to talk about.”—speech on US immigration policy, Goffstown, New Hampshire, June 13, 2016
[HRC] “This was an act of terror.…This was also an act of hate. The gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month. To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country. I am one of them. We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly, and without fear. Hate has absolutely no place in America. Finally, we need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals. This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets.”—statement to the press, Cleveland, Ohio, June 12, 2016
[DT] “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!”—Twitter, June 12, 2016
[DT] “An attack on our country.…We must stand in solidarity with law enforcement, which we must remember is the force between civilization and total chaos.”—video statement, released to TV networks July 8, 2016
[HRC] “There is too much violence, too much hate, too much senseless killing, too many people dead who shouldn’t be.…All these things [calling for an overhaul of the criminal justice system while praising law enforcement officials] can be true at once.”—conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 8, 2016