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One of the first things every press secretary assures you is, the boss has a wonderful sense of humor, because not to have a sense of humor is considered flagrantly un-American.

Mark Shields

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Mark Shields
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: May 25
Columnist
Writer
Weymouth
Massachusetts
Mark Stephen Shields
Sense
Secretary
Firsts
Boss
First
Presses
Every
Press
Things
Considered
Humor
Wonderful
Flagrantly
American
Assures

More quotes by Mark Shields

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It's not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own, living their entire lives in the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of the parents every single day.
Mark Shields
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Donald Trump is writing a different theme, which is it's midnight in America and that things are bad, and they're bleak, and they're gloomy and they're doomy, and the only thing that is going to save you is someone with the authority and power of somebody like me.
Mark Shields
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I think this was as good a Democratic Convention [ this was my 24th convention] as I have seen since the 1976 convention, which nominated Jimmy Carter.I just thought it was a spectacularly successful convention. I don't think Hillary Clinton's speech was spectacular, but I don't think she's a spectacular speaker.
Mark Shields
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I thought Mike Pence, upon reflection to me, came across a little bit like your favorite aunt who refuses, in spite of first-person evidence that grandpa has been drunk and disorderly in public, that, says, no, no, grandpa would never do that, even though grandpa is being taken off in handcuffs.
Mark Shields
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The Democrats have tried the war against women in the past. It didn't really have that much traction.
Mark Shields
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The advantage that hospitals have over other institutions is that hospitals are community-based. You can't outsource your work you can't move your emergency department to Pakistan.
Mark Shields
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It's both strategic, to get people's minds off other things, and to pick an internal enemy. It's part of [Donald Trump's] psychodynamics to always care about his press coverage intensely. He's more interested in that than anything else.
Mark Shields
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The Democrats have to do what he did when [Rahm Emanuel] was chairman of the Democratic House Campaign Committee, recruit veterans, recruit football players, recruit business people. And I think that's what the job of the new party chair has to be.
Mark Shields
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The argument of those who are being criticized at any time, the civil rights movement forward, the anti-war movement forward, is, it's always outside agitators doing it.
Mark Shields
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[Donald Trump] stood up and he said, you finally have a president, you finally have a president. I am the future.And what did he get? Hosannas and huzzahs and genuflection. It was a total takeover of the conservative movement.
Mark Shields
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As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve there was a chance not to serve.
Mark Shields
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Donald Trump is not an unintelligent man.
Mark Shields
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[The Republicans] looked at basically the failed wars and they said, oh, this, us being the policeman of the world, that is not working.
Mark Shields
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In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.
Mark Shields
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Dan Coats, retiring senator from Indiana, a mild-mannered man, a former United States ambassador to Germany, former congressman, said of Ted Cruz he's the most self-centered, narcissistic, pathological liar I have ever seen.And he said, you can quote me on that.
Mark Shields
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The president has to have the trust, earn the trust, maintain the trust of people in order to lead. And there's nothing that will lose it quicker than a sense that he's in it for a quick buck.
Mark Shields
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I do look upon the secretary of education's primary responsibility as the quality of education that - and improving the education that every child in American public schools receives.
Mark Shields
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The stated objective and the mission of Vladimir Putin's Russia is to destabilize the North Atlantic Alliance.
Mark Shields
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When you think of pristine preservation of America, you immediately think of Tulsa and Oklahoma.
Mark Shields
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I thought what Steve Bannon said was probably more chilling or more threatening than anything the president [Donald Trump]says, I mean, because he said, it's a constant day. We have to defeat the press.
Mark Shields