Daniel Pfeiffer

“We're so obsessed with, 'Is Michael Cohen going to jail or not? Is Rod Rosenstein going to be fired? What did Trump tweet today? Did he call the press an enemy of the state?' We're so focused on that, we're missing just the tremendous damage Trump is doing to the decency and moral character of this country.”

“It's - I can't imagine a world - the idea that every day Sarah Huckabee Sanders briefs, Donald Trump stops what he's doing and turns on the TV and watches it while eating a Taco Bell or whatever he eats. And then she has to go into his office afterwards and get critiqued on it.”

“I do worry about not just the policy consequences of Trump's terrible policies - and they are devastating - but also just in the idea that the president is to some extent also the head of state.”

“The greatest danger zone a president can be in is when he is being attacked on the left and the right.”

“I've always believed that the fundamental, driving strategic ethos of the Republican House leadership has been, 'What do we do to get through the next caucus or conference without getting yelled at?' We should never assume they have a long game.”

“We always say in the Obama world, in the toughest times, you can laugh or you can cry, so you might as well laugh.”

“We absolutely look at larger trends and reactions on Twitter here at the White House.”

“I think politics is an incredibly noble and fulfilling enterprise, and it's the best way to do the most good for the most people.”

“What I learned from Barack Obama the person is that you can be a great leader and a good person at the same time and that the way to be the best kind of leader is to be decent to the people around you.”

“The most famous Obama precept is, 'No drama.'”

“Every legislative meeting on how to pass health care, the communications director or someone from the communications team would be a part of because we did a lot of press interviews when we were trying to pass the Affordable Care Act specifically designed to help pass the bill.”

“Health reform is, in some ways, a microcosm to everything that's right about Washington and everything that's wrong about it.”

“From the day he took office, President Obama has been open to any good idea when it comes to the budget, as long as supporting middle-class families remains our North Star. Republicans won't extract concessions over the full faith and credit of the United States.”

“I do think the strategy of Trump, and now the Republican Party, is to eviscerate the idea of objective truth.”

“I worry that, given the way the 2016 election went, how cynical and how terrible politics seems, that young people will be less likely to get involved.”

“The White House New Media team circulates multiple highlights each day of what people are looking for online - Twitter trending topics, popular Google searches, etc. - and it gives us a sense of what's breaking through, what isn't, and a sanity check for what the larger online population cares about at any given time.”

“I think on a whole host of issues Washington tends to be a lagging indicator on public opinion.”

“Tom Daschle is one of the smartest guys in Washington.”

“There's a lot of work you have to do before you ever fire the starting gun on a health reform bill - doing the scut work with members of Congress, talking to your allies - to figure out the best plan.”

“I knew Trump was gonna be a very bad president.”