Quotes of the Week

Plus links to some of the best articles and essays.

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who many believe is the “future of the Democratic Party,” said so many asinine things this week that it was difficult to choose what to include.

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

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• “America First means America Alone. America First means America Amoral. America First means America Weaker. Abroad, America First means America aligned with dictators. At home, America First means government by plutocrats, crooks, and foreign stooges.” — David Frum

• “A sad cavalcade of self owns and unhinged petulance. It only makes Trump look more presidential and restrained. We’re becoming the metaphorical car alarms that nobody pays attention to—and it may not be the winning message.” — Democratic Senator John Fetterman, regarding how his fellow party members acted during Trump’s joint address

• “Vance’s rise from the Appalachian underclass is somewhat less impressive when you consider what a wretched person it produced.” — John Harwood

• “What happens when irresponsible media personalities hype a conspiracy theory, only to see it unravel before their eyes? We’re finding out right now...” — Russiagate extraordinare Brian Stelter, regarding the “Epstein Files”

• “MAYBE THE WORLD DOES NEED MORE WOMEN LEADERS.” — MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, following the Trump-Vance-Zelensky meeting

• “I know people talk about [Musk] as a genius, but to me, I think he’s probably one of the dumbest, luckiest people to exist on this earth.” — Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar

• “The people who start the wars don’t fight them, the people who spend the taxes don’t pay them, and the people who forgive the criminals don’t live next to them. Of course we’re going to have too many wars, too much spending, and too much crime.” — Naval Ravikant

• “If the US had continued to support Ukraine, we may have been months away from the end of the war. The Russians would not have been able to continue to fight for much longer. They were making almost no progress, taking huge casualties.” — The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum

• “I really wish media commentators would point out that Trump calling Warren Pocahontas is unambiguously racist.” — MSNBC’s Michael A. Cohen

• “The idea of a president standing at that rostrum and throwing a slur at a US senator in the middle because you disagree on policy is absolutely ridiculous.” — Tim Walz

• “This is how progressives see the federal bureaucracy, public schools and more -- as distant check-writing institutions given to the US Left by divine design and must never be touched or questioned by those who are paying the bills.” — National Review’s Charles Cooke

• “So, unfortunately, we have someone that is occupying the White House. And as far as I’m concerned, he is an enemy to the United States.” — Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett, during an appearance on MSNBC

• “As it relates to X, [Musk] has never made a profit since he bought X. In fact, the value of X is 75% lower than it has ever been. So, if I am gonna go look for somebody to run a business, I’m gonna look for someone who is going to run one successfully. And before people start screaming and yelling about ‘well, he’s a billionaire,’ yeah, when you know the right people and they’ll just give you money, then you can become a billionaire too.” — Also Jasmine Crockett, speaking during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Hearing (it was reported last month in the WSJ that X is now more profitable under Musk than before he purchased it and has doubled in value)

• “We had an opportunity to have a woman lead this country and I promise you, she would have led us to the promised land. But instead we got somebody that seems like he wants to take to us to hell.” — Also Jasmine Crockett

• “I hope he’s alive for another 95 years and I hope he lives the life he wants to live. I hope he never has to defend the United States Capitol against Donald Trump’s supporters, and if he does, I hope he isn’t one of the six who loses his life to suicide.” — MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, regarding 13-year-old cancer survivor Devarjaye Daniel, whose dream is to become a police officer, and whom Trump made an honorary Secret Service agent during his joint address to Congress

• “For the record — and this is disgusting — the President made a spectacle out of praising a young man who thus far survived pediatric cancer, as if the President had something to do with that.” — Rachel Maddow

• “My question to Elon Musk: What the hell are you doing here in America? Go back to South Africa.” — Democratic Rep. Nydia Velazquez

• “But discussion of Mr. Musk, especially in the United States, often misses something: He is a white South African, part of a demographic that for centuries sat atop a racial hierarchy maintained by violent colonial rule. That history matters. For all the attempts to describe Mr. Musk as a self-made genius or a dispassionate technocrat, he is in fact a distinctly ideological figure, one whose worldview is inseparable from his rearing in apartheid South Africa. More than just an eccentric billionaire, Mr. Musk represents an unresolved question: What happens when settler rule fails but settlers remain? That’s what is playing out in America today.” — NYT’s William Shoki

• “I’m not sure I can think of a single person in public life I’ve ever found less appealing than JD Vance.” — The Bulwark’s Tim Miller

• “When Biden was in we had the envy of the world, the world admired our economy.” — The View’s Joy Behar

• “This maga regime is clearly pushing to resegregate American society in favor of aggrieved conservative, straight white Christian men regardless of, or maybe even because of lower qualifications. It’s like they’re deliberately elevating unqualified men and pushing out more qualified women and POC.” — Joy Reid

• “There are people who are charged with trying to find savings. So yes, it’s an attack on government, but it’s also an attack on this government. What I mean by that is it’s an attack on this government that used to be headed by a black man. It’s an attack on this government that almost elected a black woman to the highest office in the land.” — Columbia University Professor Basil Smikle, speaking about DOGE during an appearance on MSNBC

• “If you look around the world, our biggest economic enemy is China, our biggest geopolitical enemy is Russia. In a matter of three years, without losing a single US soldier, we have decimated their military and their economy. It’s been the greatest return on investment for any military expenditure ever.” — Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell

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

• The Atlantic: “The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything”

• Bloomberg: “The Master Thief”

• GQ: “The Legend of Elden Kidd, America’s Most Dedicated, Most Creative People Smuggler”

• Texas Monthly: “The Positively True Adventures of the Kilgore Rangerette–Kidnapping Mom”

• The New Yorker: “Has an Old Soviet Mystery at Last Been Solved?”

• Esquire: “Everest at the Bottom of the Sea”

• Vanity Fair: “The Pirate Latitudes”

• Truly Adventurous: “Lost on Sullivan’s Island”