David Cay Johnston Quotes

Let's go to the student loan industry. ...What is the Trump administration doing? "We're going to address the student loan problem." So brings in... executives from the companies that made the student loans. ...This is building a new hen house designed by the fox!

The way that the Trump administration is cutting regulations... It's just "Go ahead and pollute. Take the toxic residue from burning coal, and instead of drying it out and putting it in a place where it's unlikely to cause harm, continue to put it into slurries and then toxic ponds next to rivers where we get drinking water." That's not benefiting us. That's simply jacking up the profits of these companies, which by the way, get paid rates under rate regulation, to pay for these costs of cleaning up their mess.

Wilbur Ross goes with Donald Trump to , where Donald Trump praises the Saudis for leading the fight against terrorism. You know who the biggest funders of terrorism in the world are? He attacks ... an ally of the US that allows us to have our most important military base there. ...Wilbur Ross comes back from this trip, he goes on CNBC and he says, "...The Saudi people love us. ...There wasn't a single demonstrator, anywhere..." and Becky Quick ...says "...It's against the law to protest there. They arrest people. They whip them"...

He appoints as his commerce secretary one of leading s in America, Wilbur Ross, whose specialty is seizing a company that's run out of cash, recapitalizing it. You don't pay the bills you owe... (something that Donald Trump never heard of). You borrow new money (something Donald Trump certainly has heard of) then you squeeze the borrowed money out and put it in your own pocket, and you turn the zombie [company] loose until it dies.

Donald has a degree on his office [wall] from Penn, an ivy league school in economics <nowiki>[</nowiki>]. He was given that degree, and I emphasize the verb "given" because he always said "Mexico is going to pay for the wall." ...[A]ll thinking people went "How are you going to make a sovereign nation pay for a wall they don't want?" "I have a plan!" Do you know what his plan was when he came into office? "I'm going to put a tariff on Mexican goods." It's a guy with an economics degree who doesn't know that a tariff... means we pay for the wall through higher prices? The man doesn't know anything.

What is Trump doing? Nothing. Japan signs a trade deal with the European Union last summer in Brussels. Donald Trump is 800 miles to the east in Poland. He's giving a speech where he talks about "Everyone adored me..." (That's because the right-wing government of Poland used police to make sure that only Trump supporters... got in, that protestors were kept blocks away...) So while this important trade deal is going down, where's Donald Trump? ...[Y]ou put Japan together with Europe, and the RCEP, and this is not good for our future. This is very, very bad for our future.

[O]ne of the purposes of the was to contain China. ...China is very expansionist. ...[T]hey're building in the Spratly Islands these artificial islands and saying "You can't fly airplanes over here or run ships through here, especially not military ships." China believes that it's the country of the future, and if you drive on their highways... they put the Autobahn to shame, which puts our Interstates to shame... They are... like the Catholic Church in terms of their thinking, "We're here forever."

We needed to fix the TPP, but Donald killed it, and did nothing to replace it. ...That creates a vacuum, and into that vacuum stepped president Xi. The RCEP is the led by Beijing. It's 15 countries (not us, just as TPP didn't include China)... plus India. ...[W]hen I was in Australia... I was astonished... They were all saying that Australia is going to have to reorient its trade policies towards Beijing, because there is no American leadership.

Donald Trump came into office and killed the . ...[T]hat partnership had serious flaws. It was written in secret, by corporate lobbyists and by lawyers involved in the trade business. It was so secretive that when my congresswoman, , having seen what I wrote, wanted to read what was in there... she said "Yea, it's all written... in language that doesn't mean anything to me," and Louise has a PhD in microbiology. ...It's written in the language of people in the trade, not to be understood by mere mortals.

This book tells you what has either not been in the news or [has] been in it glancingly, about what they're doing to our government; and that effects your safety, your income, your future.

[T]hese appointees that they put in place... are totally unqualified, and in many cases, enemies of the agencies they represent. Donald Trump's administration is turning America into what the ancient Greeks called a . ...[A] government of the worst people, the most venal, unqualified criminal elements around. The worst people. ...These are people who when they get called to testify, give answers that make it clear, they have no business being the manager of the little town I live in... much less running a cabinet agency.

That hotel... in Trump organization filings had predicted would lose money in its first year, is making money hand over fist. ...They're taking in at the bar, $68,000 a night. ...If you want something from the Trump administration, what he made clear, is "You will pay me tribute." You'll sign up to join , where he doubled the admission price.

When Donald Trump took the oath of office "to faithfully execute the laws" and to be "loyal to the United States of America", he then got in a motorcade to go to the White House. There's a TV camera... in the truck... that looks square down the middle ...The presidential limousine... stopped... the family got out... they spent two minutes walking around... in front of the Trump International Hotel, whose lease says "no federal employee can be involved in that lease" and... we have jointly an employee named Donald J. Trump. He's our employee. ...[T]he reason he did that was ...[I]f you are an emissary... seeking a favor from Donald Trump, if you're an oil baron, or a coal company, or anybody else who wants a favor from the Trump administration, you got the message.

I asked the federal government under an agency Trump just took control of, the (which has recovered multiples of its budget) for a copy of a receipt... evidence that a huge fine, supposedly paid by one of the banks was actually paid. ...[T]hey said... "You'll have to file a Freedom of Information Act request. This is the kind of administration we have.

[T]hey have stopped posting notices of worker deaths. About 4800 people a year die on the job, and some... are just accidents nobody could have predicted. ...But many of them are the result of the fact that... While... most employers try, or do a good job, there are some [that] just don't care. ...[T]ime after time, they have workers who are unnecessarily maimed or killed. The records of those aren't there any more. They're not putting them up. They're fighting giving away the statistical information that we need to understand what they're doing, and the Labor Department's actions in this area are far from unique.