Barack Obama Quotes

Most presidents have been controlled by forces that control money and special interests. When Donald Trump refused their money, he refused their control. This made him dangerous.

Listen, Bernie Sanders talks about how Washington is corrupt, both parties are in bed with the lobbyists and special interests. I think he's exactly right.

The lobbyists, the special interests, the special pleaders, if you will, the super PACs the billionaires, these people are apoplectic about the rise of Trump. He can't be bought. He can bring sweeping conservative reform.

We will vote for the special interests and say lots of luck but, you're being voted out of power.

There are many special interests skilful at manipulating circumstances and communications in such a way as to benefit their own ends and not necessarily the public good.

On the one hand, the Republicans are telling industrial workers that the high cost of food in the cities is due to this government's farm policy. On the other hand, the Republicans are telling the farmers that the high cost of manufactured goods on the farm is due to this government's labor policy. That's plain hokum. It's an old political trick: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em." But this time it won't work.

Paralysis of leadership is due in part to the unseen grip of the special interests.

They're still a subject beholden to special interests, but at least they have a national constituency. At least they have to think about national majorities.

The money that is spent in elections is absolutely unconscionable - even if it's private money. It's true that one's not corrupted by the expenditure of one's own money, but to some extent the system is. We cannot have a system in which the only people you can count on for a vote that doesn't look as though it might be a vote for a special-interest group are people with enormous fortunes.

Obama has some manacles, and that might limit him. However, he's the first American president to raise $600 million for his campaign. That frees him from lobbyists; it frees him from special interests, and it could free him from those who would manipulate him. If he is going to solve the problem, he has to be free enough to solve the problem between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

People ask, quite legitimately, why [Betsy] DeVos and why not a lot of the others? But it's because it has to do with the special interest groups that run a lot of Washington.

In the Trump administration we will end decades of policies that enrich special interests and foreign countries at our expense.

The priority of leadership is what the lobbyists and giant corporations and special interests in Washington want. It's why we're bankrupting our kids and grandkids.

The problem is these politicians have very, very big interests in being re-elected, and the money that gets them there is provided by people who don't necessarily have the interest of the public in mind.

When a secretary of state rakes in millions and millions of dollars trading access and favors to special interests and foreign powers, I know the time for action has come.

In order to put it into perspective, as an actor, it's super hard to get on a TV show. If you get on one, it's super hard for that show to be reasonably successful. All of that, on paper, seems pretty special. It's the sum of the parts, really. To roll the dice and come up with this particular show is pretty fortunate. I'm very happy about Silicon Valley series. It's changed everything for me.

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.

What I always say with these things, when you're trying to do comprehensive things like tax reform, there will be 20,000 lobbyists in Washington trying to work their will on that piece of legislation so, you know, people think it's going to be a lot easier than it will end up being.

I felt that we had become a society ruled by sectors, by interest groups: Whoever's connected to the Israeli government gets more.

The lobby is the army of the plutocracy.

When we consider that labor is the producer of all wealth, is it not evident that the impoverishment and, dependence of labor are abnormal conditions resulting from restrictions and usurpations, and that instead of accepting protection, what labor should demand is freedom. That those who advocate any extension of freedom choose to go no further than suits their own special purpose is no reason why freedom itself should be distrusted.

We have weakened the parties and strengthened all the special interests.

The more people figure this [liberalism a special kind of stupid] out, the more people that see it and are turned off by it, the more people who find it objectionable, the more people who ask, "Gee, what kind of people," the better off we're gonna be.

I'm afraid that's in the nature of modern politics - it's as much conducted by abuse as argument.