The soft bigotry of low expectations

It's hard when the worst people in the country are cheering, the people with the confederate flag, the people that do anti-Semitism on Twitter, that's difficult for a lot of people in this country. But, you know, I do think an inaugural, for example, is almost always an act of national healing.

The NSA is not looking through people's address books and Visa bills and violating the rights of average citizens. That's not what the NSA does.

The Republican Party has become more conservative. The Democratic Party has become marginally more liberal. There's almost no overlap in the middle, ideological overlap, in either house of Congress. That leaves moderates homeless. We have had a hollowing out of the middle in the U.S. Congress. There's less opportunity for compromise.

When you analyze it, Mike Pence could only defend Donald Trump in some circumstances by projecting an image of himself, as though he were - that Trump held his views on Russia or his views on Syria. And that's really not true. So, it was a weird way to defend the person at the top of your ticket.