STEVE SCHMIDT

I think it's important to understand the history of the Republican Party. It was founded in 1854 because of the moral collapse of the Whig Party, specifically around the question of race and the expansion of slavery into the western territories.

My role in Palin is something that there's not a day that has gone by that I don't have regret about.

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

One of the things that is for sure unique, we have never seen in this country a billion dollar propaganda industry in full service and in absolute control of an administration in the way that FOX News is.

I've spent my life in the Republican party, it gives me no pleasure to say this. This party has demonstrated a complete incapacity to govern. Period.

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.

The government is corrupted. It's corrupted. It is not about regular people.

Howard Schultz is a hell of a man, a hell of a leader.

Elections are about the voters who vote in them.

To see the Republican Party break up the way it has to lose its moral compass it is tragic, it's tragic for me personally, but I won't be part of it. I won't share a party label with people who think it's all right to put babies in internment camps.

Trump was legitimized by birtherism, and he was abetted by a billion-dollar incitement industry.

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.'

I think that more and more Americans are insistent that, at a minimum, gay couples should be treated with respect and when they see a political party trying to stigmatize a group of people who are hardworking, who play by the rules, who raise decent families, they're troubled by it.

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.

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.

Politicians have an acutely honed instinct for self-preservation.

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.

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.

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

Mitch McConnell has, as much as anyone, done great damage to the United States Senate as an institution that was once known as the world's greatest deliberative body.

I've been involved in a lot of victories and I've been involved in defeats.

What destroyed the Republican Party isn't Trump. It's the obedience to Trump from servile leaders like McConnell and Ryan who could have put a check on him. They have gotten their place in political history. They'll be remembered as vile.

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

I love little kids, I hate little kids being used by cynical politicians, though.

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