Trump is not somebody who`s fit to be president in any circumstances. I would feel deeply frustrated, not because anything he said about me, but because I would fear for the future of our country.
Number one, it is important that we fix the legal immigration system, because right now we've got a backlog that means years for people to apply legally. And what's worse is, we keep on increasing the fees, so that if you've got a hard working immigrant family, they've got to hire a lawyer; they've got to pay thousands of dollars in fees. They just can't afford it. And it's discriminatory against people who have good character, we should want in this country, but don't have the money. So we've got to fix that.
I have always had extraordinarily good relations with very conservative colleagues. And that's not because I agree with any of them or fudge on my positions, but people feel I listen to them and give them the benefit of the doubt. I assume the best of people. And that, I think, is an attitude that is maybe rare in politics.
This is American leadership at its best: We stand with people who fight for their own freedom, and we rally other nations on behalf of our common security and common humanity.
[ William Ayers] is an example of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
I reiterated our hope that negotiations over the United Kingdom's exit from the E.U. will be conducted in a smooth and orderly and transparent fashion and preserve as closely as possible the economic and political and security relationships between the U.K. and E.U.
I'm going to insist on making sure that we've got decent funding, that we've got enough teachers, that we've got computers in the classroom, but unless you turn off the television set and get over a certain anti-intellectualism that I think pervades some low-income communities, our children are not going to achieve.
I have no interest in increasing the size of government. I just want to make sure we have got a smart government that is regulating, for example, the financial institutions smartly, so I don't have to engage in any kind of bank bailouts.
The number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it's less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it's in the tens of thousands. And for us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing.
Sometimes it may seem as if progress is stalled but what history of post-war Germany shows is that strength and determination and focus and adherence to the values that we care about will result in a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
I think that there have been a number of public figures where you start hearing commentary that is dangerous because what it starts doing is it starts dividing us up as Americans.
We all want the Greek people to prosper, to be able to provide a good life for their families and their children. That would be good for Greece, that would be good for the European Union, good for the United States, and ultimately, good for the world.