INTRODUCTION

“Our president’s crazy,” that astute political scientist (and Talking Heads frontman) David Byrne once remarked. “Did you hear what he said?” He was talking about Ronald Reagan, but he could have made the same observation about any of the forty-five chief executives of the United States.

Presidents are the most quoted people on the planet and every utterance is recorded for posterity—by the press, historians, or, in Richard Nixon’s case, by a secret White House taping system. George W. Bush’s myriad malaprops even inspired a series of bestselling books—not to mention a talking action figure. The current occupant of the Oval Office, Donald Trump, prefers to issue his proclamations via Twitter, a platform that will be a godsend to future scholars sifting through the rubble of our civilization for clues about where it might have all started to go wrong. Covfefe, anyone?

With so much to say, and so many channels through which to say it, it’s no surprise that some real head-scratchers start to slip out of the presidential pie hole from time to time. Crazy Sh*t Presidents Said collects the most amusing, most shocking, most inane observations made by commanders-in-chief from the founding of the republic to the age of social media. Some are puzzling, some are profane, some are, shall we say, problematic. But all are well substantiated in the historical record and tell us at least a little about the mindset and worldview of the speaker, his times, and the wider American culture.

A few housekeeping notes: quotations in this book are organized alphabetically by topic, except for the sections Presidents on Other Presidents, Presidents on Other Historical Figures, and Last Words. Hopefully, this facilitates easy browsing and allows readers to compare and contrast presidential utterances on the same subject. In the interest of readability I have standardized and modernized spelling, capitalization, and punctuation throughout. However, I have made no attempt to expurgate presidential language; if any of these quotations offend or appall, I apologize on behalf of all the presidents involved. But hey, you voted for these guys! We have no one to blame but ourselves.