Quotes of the Week

Plus links to some of the best articles and essays.

MSNBC’s Elie Mystal appeared on The View, Tuesday, April 1, 2025.

Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best longform essays and articles that I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by clicking “manage subscription” on the top right.

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• “There are trans Americans right now looking out at this world and wondering if anyone is going to stand up for them and for their simple right to exist. Well, I am. We are. We will.” — Illinois Governor JB Pritzker

• “I applied for one school. I kind of had my heart set on it. I am not going to name the institution, but given recent events I am not going to give my money, go into debt for, or support institutions that do not support students and the right to protest and speak out for their communities. Students deserve to be protected. I am not worried about if I were to be protected or not at said institution; I am, you know, a privileged white woman.” — Hope Walz, daughter of Tim Walz, on why she won’t be attending grad school this fall

• “While it may be an uncomfortable truth for this president and for many people in this country, this country was founded on slavery. It was founded on free labor, it was founded on the backs of black people.” — The View’s Sunny Hostin

• “There is an instinct, an authoritarian instinct, that is true in all authoritarian times in history: Take control of the culture, take control of the arts early on.” — Ben Folds, who resigned as artistic advisor of the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center

• “Look, in seventh grade, if I had known that I could have said the word ‘they’ and got in the girls’ bathroom, I would have done it.” — Former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is gearing up for a presidential run

• “No leading officials were fired over the Iraq/W.M.D. debacle. There were no notable resignations when Barack Obama’s Libya intervention turned that country into a war-torn terrorist haven. No heads rolled when the Afghanistan papers revealed official dishonesty, and Biden’s foreign policy team did not quit after the Afghanistan withdrawal became a bloody rout. Given that record, you can argue that Hegseth or Waltz should resign over operational security failures even if those failures didn’t have tragic consequences — but it’s silly to act shocked when they do not.” — NYT’s Ross Douthat

• “The fact that you’re sitting around talking about ‘life was better under Jim Crow,’ like, is this because you don’t understand history? Or literally it’s because you married a White woman and so you think that whitewashed you?” — Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett, regarding Republican Rep. Byron Donalds¹

• “When I first became a public defender I had no criminal defense experience. And I walked in and I told my boss Charlie, I said, ‘Listen, you should hire me.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because I’m black.’” — Also Jasmine Crockett

• “It’s a great honor and a great responsibility. Somebody has to go first.” — Sandy Stone, the founder of the academic field of transgender studies and a biological male, who was elected into the National Women’s Hall of Fame this week

• “Every law passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be presumptively unconstitutional. Before the 1965 Voting Rights Act we were functionally an apartheid country. Not everybody who lived here could vote here. So, why should I give a fuck about some law that some old white man passed in the 1920s?” — MSNBC’s Elie Mystal, during an appearance on The View

• “Voter fraud does not exist. We shouldn’t make laws based on protecting us from things that don’t exist. The Republicans are the ones who claim that voter ID is necessary to secure our election because their goal is not to secure elections, because, again, voter fraud doesn’t exist. Their goal is to restrict people from voting.” — Also Elie Mystal

• “To cover up the physical signs of Biden’s aging, a makeup artist met with him in the morning when he traveled. The artist also covered up aging signs before Zoom calls with his aides. Biden consistently made these makeup appointments, but he sometimes canceled the briefings that were to follow. After the debate with Trump, Biden needed fluorescent tape to guide him through a fundraiser at New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D) house and needed a teleprompter to speak to just a small group of people. But he still frequently trailed off during his remarks.” — The Hill’s Jared Gans

• “No matter what we do, we’ve got to take this from Elon Musk. He’s part of an effort to go backwards.” — Democratic Senator Pat Fahy, who introduced a new bill that aims to effectively ban Tesla dealerships in the state of New York

• “If you think you can force your candidate down our throat, we will see you when you get out of jail. I’ve instructed all our security to just remove you and hand you over to the po-po, and I will sign the complaint myself.” — MSNBC’s Al Sharpton, who’s long been a critic of “over-policing,” in reference to protestors at the National Action Network nonprofit’s annual convention

• “A climate of fear and trepidation has descended upon the nation. The people of America are more afraid today for our democracy and for their personal safety than ever in our lifetimes.” — Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson

• “Mr. Taibbi said when he was first searching through the so-called Twitter Files, he didn’t know what he was looking at. Well, he still doesn’t. Everything looks like a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.” — Nina Jankowicz, former director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, speaking at Tuesday’s House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on the Censorship-Industrial Complex

• “Elon Musk’s Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather” — Headline in The Atlantic

• “We’ve got the right message. What we need to do is connect it back with the voters.” — Ken Martin, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee

• “The thing about watching a JD Vance speech is that everyone knows he’s a little pig man. Everyone knows he exists to squeal for Trump’s amusement. No one respects him and he clearly doesn’t respect himself.” — NYT’s Jamelle Bouie

• “President Obama absolutely did not think that Joe Biden should continue, according to our sources close to President Obama. And he also didn’t want Kamala Harris to be the replacement for Biden, he didn’t think that she was the best choice for Democrats, and he worked behind the scenes for a long time to try to have a mini-primary or an open convention, or a mini-primary leading to an open convention, did not have faith in her ability to win the election.” — NBC News senior political reporter Jonathan Allen, speaking on MSNBC

If you need to get past a paywall, try Archive Today, 12ft.io, or Wayback Machine.

• The New York Times: “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine”

• The New York Times: “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek”

• GQ: “The Eruption Of Instagram Island”

• ProPublica: “Fight the Ship: Death and valor on a warship doomed by its own Navy”

• The New Yorker: “The Voyeur’s Motel”

• New York: “The Bernard Madoff Tapes”

• The Globe and Mail: “After the Fire: Murder, Lies, and a Missing Deer Head”

1. Note that Byron Donalds never said that “life was better under Jim Crow.” He said that “during Jim Crow, the Black family was together.”