A biography for Rick Wilsonhasn’t been written yet.
“Barack Obama basically ran as a liberal suburban Republican.”
“Lord knows I'm all for lowering rates and simplifying the tax code.”
“Con artists specialize in finding what people need, and Trump knows the media craves variety, scandal, secrets, and he-said-she-said stories, even of the most dubious provenance.”
“Democrats are holistically bad at politics. They don't know how to fight in the way Republicans do.”
“Trump is a masterful con man, he's always trying to squeeze a little more juice out of his marks.”
“Free-market capitalism doesn't pick economic winners and losers based on the president's economic nostalgia, and limited-government conservatism isn't marked a top-down ideological conformity strictly enforced by state media organs.”
“I think that Republicans are going to deeply, fundamentally, and profoundly regret the way that they have - the way Trump has - framed the party with Hispanics.”
“I'm going to keep correcting people, sometimes harshly, on the disparity between conservativism and Trumpism.”
“Only a fool would believe Trump would draw a sharp, bright line between his personal and family financial interests and the interests of the nation.”
“Part of the sales pitch for the Trump campaign is their unique, esoteric secret sauce based on a rabid cult following motivated by Facebook, Twitter, and other social media manipulation.”
“As consequential and as deadly as the coronavirus pandemic has been, and will continue to be, the Trump media machine can't stop and won't stop its relentless propagandizing and historical revision. Trump is the hero.”
“If there's one thing no one will ever mistake Ted Cruz for, it's a charismatic cult leader. Cruz scans more as the accountant for the charismatic cult leader than the guy ladling out the Kool Aid.”
“Kasich does two fundamentals in presidential politics wrong; he talks, and he keeps talking.”
“Trump 'accomplishments' are ephemeral, coincidental and accidental.”
“FISA targets those who are 'agents of a foreign power.'”
“Every man who has sat in the Oval Office has felt the short, sharp shock when an ordinary day in the highest office in the land shifts from pomp and ceremony to urgent briefings, immediate choices, crucial decisions where lives are on the line. It's not something that may happen to a president. It's something that will happen.”
“The purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter. The mission of deterrence to make all parties in possession of nuclear weapons never, ever use them.”
“Trump's 2016 effort could afford to be a shambolic circus; nothing was on the line. He never expected to win and so the rotating cast of campaign managers didn't really matter.”
“I said Donald Trump could never be elected, confidently fueled by the empirical data of professional polling, a certainty in the vital necessity of field operations, and the knowledge his own campaign team (even on the night of the election) was ratting out the shambolic train wreck his campaign had been. I was wrong.”