Craig Unger

“The standard of proof when writing about the president of the United States... needs to be higher... Unger... [cites] dozens of books and journalistic accounts... He's weak, however, on the primary sources needed to sway a skeptical reader, much less a jury. ...[T]here is a volcano's worth of smoke in House of Trump, House of Putin, which ...has obscured the fire.”

“This is how Unger thinks. His previous two books tried to cement the idea that Donald Trump is an asset of Vladimir Putin. Unger’s {{w|modus operandi}} is to point to many different dots and then wonder at how they might connect, even when he can’t connect them himself or when those dots are being served up by deeply unreliable sources, such as a former {{w|KGB}} agent. Suspicion is what matters. He traffics in doubt.”

“In doing all these interviews, people ask me... "Can Europe trust America in terms of sharing intelligence?" and I say, "Absolutely not!" ...To say that my country thinks of Europe as an enemy. ...[I]t is ...horrifying. The Western Alliance helped build democratic institutions in 30 countries ...in Europe, strong market economies and strong military allies. Why are we turning against it? It doesn't make any sense... The only one it makes sense to is Vladimir Putin, and I think that's why Trump is moving in that direction.”

“It's the old access game. If you want access to Donald Trump, you don't ask him the tough questions. That's true of most politicians, but Trump... plays it to a tee, and people go along with it. ...[I]t's good for ratings to get him on your show. ...[L]ook at Fox News. It's still around. ...[I]t's unbelievable to me.”

“House Of Trump, House of Putin came out... 7 years ago, and back then you could say that Trump was a Russian asset. ...But gradually it's been supressed, and we've heard again and again that Trump Russia is a hoax... The Mueller Report didn't have anything in it, and people don't have the attention span... to do the deep dives, and it's very sad... I think Fox News has been part of the problem, and social media, it's been dreadful for the most part.”

“In 1987, the lie that Trump had met with Gorbachev appeared in The New York Times and... I strongly suspect... Trump fed it to the reporter on background and said, "You can't use me as a source, but I met with Gorbachev." That's the way it appears to have been written. It was a lie, and that's the way Trump works, but he is aided and abetted by a media that is complicit in that regard, and it's still going on...”

“Trump is sending Witkoff as an envoy to the two hottest spots in the world diplomatically, the Middle East and Moscow. He's had zero diplomatic experience. ...But he's friendly with the Russian mafia, or... friendly enough to give a recommendation for them. ...Witkoff has also been a golfing buddy of Trump for decades and that's all you need to know, is that he's going to be doing whatever Trump wants him to do, and Trump, in turn, is doing what Vladimir Putin wants him to do.”

“Donald Trump is carrying out Putin's policies. It's... as simple as that.”

“[N]ow you can't say... that Donald Trump is a Russian asset, and I've done two books that... tell... step by step... how that happened... Overseas people started paying attention to it the minute Zelenskyy was in the {{w|Whitehouse}} with Trump... clearing siding with Vladimir Putin, and you could see in real time what it meant for him to be a Russian asset. So suddenly... I had enormous credibility, but now in the United States I don't think you can... say that in the main stream media... You could 5 years ago...”

“I'm not sure I've been discovered in this country. ...[T]he last few weeks, I have gotten a lot of attention from media overseas, in the UK... France... Austria, Poland, Germany, but... not so much in the United States. ...I wrote House Of Trump, House of Putin... seven years ago, and I got a fair amount of attention then, but now you can't say what I was saying back then.”

“He's is a wonderful character... He was dazzling brilliant but he mumbled when he talked... His nickname was "mumbles." It was often said that of all the people in the CIA, most people needed scramblers on their phone, but not Bill Casey. ...[P]eople often ask... what did Ronald Reagan know about the October surprise, and Ronald Reagan's response is... "You know, I couldn't understand a work Bill Casey said... you can't ask three times. You just sound rude, so I would just nod."”

“[I]magine how difficult this is to be running a winning presidential campaign... and secretly doing a covert op to get millions of dollars worth of weapons to a hostile foreign power against which there's an embargo. So it's blatently illegal, and... you have to avoid being detected by opposing intelligence... [etc.]”

“When things happen, that's news. When things don't happen, that's not news, and you don't keep reporting that it didn't happen.”

“[T]his is a very dark chapter in American history and... we don't like coming to terms with the dark, dirty parts of our American history.”

“My book... is not just about trying to uncover this conspiracy.... it's about the national conversation, about how the news we consume is shaped and what is repressed.”

“In 1980 you have the October surprise... In 2000 you have the Brooks Brothers riots. In 2016 you have Trump-Russia. So you've had it again and again, and what the Republicans have done, is that they will stop at nothing. They will do {{w|covert operation}}s, align with hostile foreign powers, whether it's with Russia or Iran, and it's played a role in changing the outcome of quite a few elections.”

“Nixon... believed all those conversations he had with LBJ were taped, and he was worried about what documents the democrats had, so he dispatched a group of burglars... to break into the Brookings Institute and Watergate Hotel, and... in 1972 you have Watergate.”

“[I]n 1968... Richard Nixon got... {{w|Anna Chennault}} to intervene with the Paris Peace Talks. Lyndon Johnson was trying to end the Vietnam War with Peace Talks in Paris and Richard Nixon's gofer got the South Vietnamese to back out at the last minute and made the Democrats look ridiculous, and Nixon won in a squeaker.”

“[W]hen Lyndon Johnson was president and signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in '64 and '65, the very next election was Nixon's, and it was known as the {{w|Southern strategy}}... [I]f you look at the electoral map, the red and blue map... of almost every election (there are a couple of anomolies)... since 1968, the red states... sure look a lot like the Confederate States of America... After the Voting Rights Act, all the racist right wing Democrats joined the Republican party and that gave birth to what we have today.”

“[W]ith Trump you have a candidate who is very close to Vladimir Putin. He's close to Bibi Netanyahu, and he's close to MBS who gave $2 billion to his nephew... These are serious relationships and they're all players on the world stage, so... will it happen again? ...I don't know ...but ...does anyone think there will be an election with no malfeasance?”