This Week in Quotes

16 Jul, 2016 by John Hawkins

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Trump, to date, has shown little interest in traditional activities needed to win a general election, such as fundraising, infrastructure and party building. He seems to have no loyalty to the party beyond how it can serve his personal political interests. Therefore, party delegates are not obligated to be loyal to him. — Amanda Carpenter

You guys did it (banned guns) here in one fell swoop [in 1996] and I wish that could happen in my country, but it’s such a personal issue for people that we cannot talk about it sensibly. — Matt Damon

In short, the alleged decabillionaire’s campaign is broke. In May, which should have been a boffo fundraising month, the campaign raised $3.1 million (Mitt Romney during the same period had raised $78 million). The Trump Train went into the crucial month of June with just under $1.3 million cash on hand. That is a pretty good number — for a congressman. Only 78 representatives and 43 senators have more cash on hand than the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

Perhaps more tellingly, the failed steak and vitamin mogul spent nearly a fifth of the money he raised on his own businesses and salaries for himself and his family. One of his biggest outlays was renting out the Mar-a-Lago club — which he owns. Odd. — Jonah Golberg

Islam has a problem with terror committed in its name that no other major religion shares at the moment. Period. End of story. — Michael Graham

Poor whites’ despair may partly be a response to certain social and economic trends. Death rates for middle-age whites have been essentially flat over the past 20 years, while mortality rates for other ethnic groups plummeted. Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherlin has found that although working-class blacks are generally better-off economically today than their parents were, working-class whites are generally worse off. — Christopher Ingram

I hope I can get over this because I can’t vote for Hillary. I know there is no possibly of that. What I am saying is Donald Trump can still get a vote from a lot of conservatives like me, but I would like some assurances on where he stands. I would like some assurances that he is going to be a vigorous defender of the U.S. Constitution That he is not going to be an autocrat. That he is not going to be an authoritarian. That he is not somebody who is going to abuse a document that I have sworn an oath to uphold and protect and defend. I am sorry sir, but that is not an unreasonable demand. — Mike Lee

FiveThirtyEight is only forecasting the presidency so far, but their forecast matches the forecast of prediction markets, which also place the odds of Republicans losing the Senate at 60%, and losing the House at almost 20%. In other words, if you believe the betting market, the chances that Hillary Clinton gets to be president with solid majorities in House and Senate are on par with Trump’s chance of getting to be president at all. And I think the odds of losing the House are probably understated. — Megan McCardle

The New York Police Department released new data showing the vast majority of victims and perpetrators of violent crime in the city are black and Latino, in what experts said was likely part of a broader effort to defuse allegations of racial bias in the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy.

The statistics, which cover crime in 2012 through the end of June, show that 96 percent of all shooting victims and 97 percent of all shooting suspects in the city were black or Latino. The report also shows that more than 90 percent of New Yorkers stopped and frisked so far in 2012 were black and Latino. — John Rudolf

It’s not a social contract anymore – American society today is a suicide pact we never agreed to and yet we’re expected to go first. — Kurt Schlichter

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce again controlled totally by various groups of people that don’t care about you whatsoever. — Donald Trump

There is no such thing as a decent man who acts like a subhuman psychopath on Twitter. If he acts like a subhuman psycopath on Twitter, he is not a decent man anywhere. And this means – considering the overwhelming preponderance of people acting like subhuman psychopaths on Twitter – that we are living in a society dangerously bereft of decent humans. — Matt Walsh