Election season is heating up. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) unveiled his party’s pitch for the midterm elections. Former president Donald Trump continues to say he could declassify what he wants when he wants. New York Attorney General Letitia James meanwhile has Trump in her sights, and abortion continues to be a talking point, in particular for Stacey Abrams. Here are the quotes of the week.
“No one gets to keep classified information outside of a place classified information should be. That is certainly true. But for the Department of Justice to behave the way they did by raiding the home of a former president is absolutely outrageous. And it is politicizing a Department of Justice that I fear is headed in a way that is not consistent with the understandings that we all have of the rule of law here in the United States.”
- Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks on the Mar-a-Lago raid.
“I will never ever say that it is OK to claim fraudulent outcomes as a way to give yourself power. That is wrong. I reject it and will never engage in it. But I do believe that it is imperative, especially those who have the platform and the microphone, to talk about the access.”
- Stacey Abrams rejects efforts to compare her refusal to concede the Georgia governor’s race in 2018 to Trump’s claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
“In Real Estate, like in Politics and in Life, LOCATION IS EVERYTHING!!!”
- Former President Donald Trump slams President JoeBiden’s seating location at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.
“If you watched our hearings closely, you know that Mike Pence was essentially the president for most of that day.”
- Sen. Liz Cheney (R-WY) on the events that transpired on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The behavior of individuals like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott is radical, reckless, regressive, and reprehensible.”
- Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on the sending of immigrants by DeSantis and Abbott to New York, Washington, D.C., and Martha’s Vineyard.
“[They ran] effectively one of the worst presidential campaigns in modern history with stark contrast to his 2016 campaign. The president himself, I think, did a wonderful job leading this country. He had the vision, but he frankly was let down by bad personnel that got inside the West Wing and never should have.”
- Former White House adviser Peter Navarro has choice words for the team that ran Trump’s reelection campaign.
“Russia is scraping for personnel to throw into this fight.”
- White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan suggests Vladimir Putin is about to turn to conscripts to help his Ukraine war effort.
“He should come visit. We have a beautiful shoreline.”
- Biden responds to DeSantis’s threats about sending immigrants to Delaware.
“Russia’s unfair war of aggression on Ukraine, a nation to which we declare our solidarity, pushed up fuel prices and led to shortages of grain.”
- President Gabriel Boric of Chile at the United Nations General Assembly on Russia’s war with Ukraine.
“For separate components and more modern than those of NATO countries and when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal. It’s not a bluff.”
- Putin threatens the use of nuclear weapons as things go from bad to worse in Ukraine.
“Today, I filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump for engaging in years of financial fraud to enrich himself, his family, and the Trump Organization.
“There aren’t two sets of laws for people in this nation: Former presidents must be held to the same standards as everyday Americans.”
- New York Attorney General Letitia James announces a massive fraud lawsuit against Trump.
“If Commander Spock was given one of these, he would install it and use it correctly. But unfortunately, most households are like Homer Simpson.”
- John List, an economist at the University of Chicago and one of the lead authors of a study on smart thermostats and how they may not be the money and energy saver they’re billed to be.
“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified,’ even by thinking about it.”
- Trump tells Sean Hannity what his declassification process was.
“There is no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks. It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman’s body.”
- Abrams spurns assertions that a fetal heartbeat can be detected around six weeks of gestation.
“I’m not going to criticize Ginni Thomas, whom I like. I’m not going to criticize Clarence, whom I like. And there we are.”
- Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer refuses to be drawn on criticism of his former colleague’s wife.
“Was I happy about it? Not for an instant. Did I do everything I could to persuade people? Of course, of course.”
- Breyer admits he hated the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
“We have spent the last year and a half, all of our members in Congress, going throughout the country and listening, listening to challenges, fighting what the Democrats have been doing, and we want to roll it out to you, to the entire country, for you to know exactly what we would do. If you trust us, give us the ability. We will take a new direction for this country. The commitment is a plan, a plan for a new direction.”
- House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) rolls out the House GOP’s “Commitment to America.”
“The orders and the military records that I’ve been able to obtain from my personal files show that all of my deployments are listed as classified. This was a strategic and strategically placed [report] to crush me and defame me.”
- Ohio Republican congressional hopeful J.R. Majewski delivers a fiery rebuke of claims he misrepresented his military service.
