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One of the questions I often get asked is, Were you surprised that Trump won? I always answer the same way: I was surprised, I am surprised and I will never stop being surprised.

David Frum

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David Frum
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: June 30
Blogger
Journalist
Lawyer
Novelist
Speechwriter
City of Toronto
David Jeffrey Frum
Never
Surprised
Questions
Answer
Asked
Trump
Stop
Often
Always

More quotes by David Frum

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We're not free because other people are nice, maybe other people aren't nice that day. We're free because we expect the institutions of government to work impersonally. That we expect people in government to understand they don't work for the president or the prime minister, they work for the government. And the government is always there.
David Frum
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An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein - and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans.
David Frum
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Democracy requires you to learn how to lose as well as how to exercise power when you win. And that requires restraint all around. One of the reasons it works is because when you win you don't do things that are so upsetting to the losers that they feel like they have less, they have more to gain by turning over the system.
David Frum
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Events don't happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen.
David Frum
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So long as Donald Trump is powerful and popular, Fox News is going to achieve an advertising bonanza unheard of in the era of modern cable, because people will pay them to talk to the president.
David Frum
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I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything.
David Frum
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The Canadian middle class is under less pressure than any other middle class in any developed country on the planet. So they feel good. They feel optimistic. They feel secure.
David Frum
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Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex.
David Frum
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Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.
David Frum
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The great power the president has is that he is the most prominent person in the biggest media event on the planet. He has the attention of the nation and the world. When he speaks, everybody listens.
David Frum
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As thrilling as it was, speechwriting is ultimately frustrating for someone who wants to be a writer.
David Frum
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Civil unrest, civil turmoil is not a challenge to President Trump. It's a resource for him. He needs to create an image of a polarized country in which the people who are against him are somehow alien or anti-system.
David Frum
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And that is how we intend to destroy the enemy! The superior shakes his head wearily. Young man, the Soviets are our adversary. The Navy is the enemy.
David Frum
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What I say is I am somebody who cares about conservative ideas. I want to see them implemented in governance.
David Frum
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[In politics,] when there is no reason to speak, there is a reason not to speak.
David Frum
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I think the single most important question is how do you maximize the number of children who grow up in stable two-parent households. We know in all kinds of ways it makes a huge difference to how kids come out and we are hardening into a caste society where some kids do better in all kinds of ways because they have two parents and others don't.
David Frum
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Donald Trump doesn't believe in much, doesn't want to do much.
David Frum
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So if I have two pieces of cake, do I have twice as good an experience as the first piece of cake? One of the things I've found in life is that the first piece of cake is the best.
David Frum
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The Iraq fight itself is probably going to go very, very fast. The shooting should be over within just a very few days from when it starts.
David Frum
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By abrogating all moral standards in their war against Israel, Arab and Muslim leaders initiated a process of moral collapse that has ended by soaking their own societies in blood. The terror they intended to inflict only upon others has rebounded with a hundred times greater horror upon their own lands.
David Frum