David Brooks Quotes

The Democrats are still not being honest with themselves about what happened to them. You know, a lot of people voted for Donald Trump knowing full well what the baggage was. They didn't care. The Trump election was, in fact, about issues. It was dead-set on issues, and this is what the media refuses to understand. They know it; they just don't want to believe it, and they don't want to acknowledge it. They think that it was an election about Hillary Clinton being a rotten candidate.

Donald Trump is going to be an unconventional president. I really think we have a great opportunity in front of us to fix problems, produce results, and improve people's lives.

I think that Donald Trump, how many times during the campaign did he tell us that his plan for dealing with foreign policy was to be unpredictable? Well, there we have it.

Donald Trump loves America. He wants it to be the greatest place on earth. He thinks political people have made it the mess that it is. And he's been very open and up front about how he goes about accomplishing things, and that's totally ignored.

I think a lot of people, not all of them, but a bunch of TV people put Donald Trump on television thinking he's making a fool of himself and thinking that he's making a fool of the GOP. I think early on that's what the Republican establishment thought. "Oh, let's hear more of this guy. He's just helping us left and right. He's digging his own grave here."

Yet Donald Trump gets off the plane in Saudi Arabia, gets off the plane in Israel, and is overwhelmingly respected and welcomed and appreciated. I have to think that it's not all just because he has the title of president. I think it's a stunning contrast. How can these two completely different characters exist: The Donald Trump of Washington and the Donald Trump of this trip?

The only way you can be comfortable about Donald Trump's foreign policy, is to think he doesn't really mean anything he says.

If Margaret Thatcher were running for president today we wouldn't have focus groups and we wouldn't have one day focusing on 'change' and the next day focusing on likability. If Margaret Thatcher were campaigning, we would be treated to a smorgasbord of great ideas, proposals for the future of the country. Nobody would even be thinking about that.

Never in my lifetime have I been called boring. But I think I was a boring candidate for president because I tried to be responsible. And one of the greatest problems I had is that I was governor.

I don't know what Donal Trump motive is but I know what he's preaching is a very, very dangerous brew for America. Is this just a guy doing Celebrity Apprentice for himself? Is this just a guy who's an entertainer? It may have started there but I now think he wants to be president. Also, I don't think there's much chance of that.

When you do a computerized poll, where people are comfortable, Donald Trump vote goes up very dramatically. And I think people don't realize the effort by the elite media, the totally dishonest effort to submerge him, has had an effect.

I think we're in store for a presidency [of Donald Trump] even more unlike any that people have been imagining. I think it's gonna be tough to predict this and to analyze it, certainly in contemporary, traditional terms.

It's a funny thing, I think people meet us and they assume that we know a lot more about politics than we actually do. People will really get into it. I'm like, I don't really know a lot about tariff reform or export trade reform. That's really not something I know about.

There are a number of things that came out of Donald Trump so-called policy speech at Gettysburg that most of the reporters were saying were real positive things.

I don't think you need to be so result-oriented when you're trying to define the success of an art work. I think we can allow some unpredictability.

I know Donald Trump quite well. We've never shared values, he and I. But I respected his ability to turn it around. So I respect somebody who can turn things around and be successful. I think the president's communication style is the most difficult thing because he actually does care, people who know him know he cares. But his style of communication, his combative approach, the elements of ego that are obviously there in all of us but seem to be more easy to see in the president sometimes than other people, get in the way of his capacity to lead, unfortunately.

I think people do expect something a little weird to happen. Maybe they've seen something I did once on the Internet and expect that I'm gonna do that every night.

Maybe [Donald Trump] is just never dealt with somebody who's not particularly impressed by his carrying on, but I'm not. So I'm going to stay focused on what's at stake in this election.

I think Donald Trump's going to quickly disappear from radar.

I think Donald Trump is obviously the more colorful, the more flamboyant, the more dominant personality.

No one doubts that Donald Trump is willing to walk away from a deal if it's a bad one. No one doubts that he's willing to punish our enemies if they transgress U.S. interests, whereas, with Hillary Clinton, she is very predictable.

We don't gaze into a crystal ball. I do not believe that we predict things. I think political science is bad at prediction. I think what we really do well is in a number of instances where politics matters, we can do a better job of tell you what is happening now, than other people. So, we can look at Syria today. We can look at the Eurozone today. And we can look at areas where politics is a driver and we can give you a pretty good sense in those areas of here is how to understand today.

I think Donald Trump needs to set a direction that allows people who are deeply opposed to Obamacare to realize it's gradually going to be reformed and rethought.

People are taking a closer look at Donald Trump. I think the best look they got was at the last debate. I think Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio prosecuted their case effectively. Donald doesn't have some great answers. When they talk, for instance, about immigration and releasing those tapes from The New York Times, we began talking about flexibility and immigration.

I think Donald Trump is going to try as best he can to make sure that he delivers not only to the people who voted for him but for the people at large and the good thing is that there are going to be elections coming up so there's a built-in incentive for him to try to do that.