(Dobbs) Every President Is Remembered For Something He Said

But I can’t think of a single word Trump has uttered that I’d be proud to repeat.

Every president is remembered for something he said. In some cases, it was something inspiring, something great. In others, it was something embarrassing, something self-incriminating, something stupid. 

Then of course, there’s Donald Trump. We’ll get to him in a moment. But I thought back to every president in my lifetime— even Harry Truman, who was in the White House when I was born although I have no memory— and thought about the most famous quotes I can recall. If I remember them, you might too.

As it happens, Truman himself is best known for four words that didn’t issue from his mouth but that sat on a plaque on his desk: “The buck stops here.” It is a humble and accurate sentiment, inspiring him to say in his farewell address to the nation in 1953, “The president— whoever he is— has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody.”

His successor, Dwight Eisenhower, will forever be remembered for coining a phrase few had heard before: the military-industrial complex. He was the only general elected to the presidency in the 20th Century, and the supreme commander on D-Day, but in his farewell address, he had a warning for the nation: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

John F. Kennedy delivered probably his most memorable quote on the first day of his presidency. At his inauguration in 1961, he issued his famous call to action: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Lyndon Johnson inherited Vietnam from his predecessor, but it was Johnson who doubled the size of the draft and sent more than a hundred thousand troops to fight there. So while he might aptly be remembered for being the Texan president who championed civil rights, he might most commonly be remembered for his stunner in 1968 when, after speaking for 40 minutes on television about Vietnam, he ended by saying, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

Richard Nixon’s most famous quote is neither lengthy nor laudable. In a 1973 speech to journalists, addressing accusations about Watergate, he told his audience, “I am not a crook.” But of course, he was.

His vice president, Gerald Ford, ascended to the presidency when Nixon resigned. One month later, he pardoned the ex-president, and his pardon might be the most famous words he composed: “I, Gerald R. Ford, president of the United States… do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed, or may have committed.” Although Ford might have saved this nation from greater agony, he never completely lived it down.

Jimmy Carter, who might be known as our most moral president, may best be remembered rhetorically for what some called an immoral quote. Speaking to writers from Playboy Magazine, which peddled soft porn, Carter said that he had "looked on a lot of women with lust" and had "committed adultery in my heart many times.” To be fair, when his wife Rosalyn died last year, they’d become the longest-married couple in presidential history, married more than 77 years.

When it comes to Ronald Reagan, there is no doubt about his most famous words. Standing at the Berlin Wall in 1987, he said without hesitation or equivocation, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” There is a backstory to his famous and forceful line. When diplomats vetted his speech, they wanted to strike that part. But in the car while driving to give the speech, he told his deputy chief of staff, “The boys at State are going to kill me, but it's the right thing to do.”

The vice president who succeeded him, George H.W. Bush, also will be remembered, as Reagan was, for a single line, but it’s one he came to regret. He told his nominating convention in 1988, "Read my lips: no new taxes.” He couldn’t keep the promise, and lost four years later to Bill Clinton.

I don’t even have to tell you of Clinton’s most famous— or infamous— sentence. During the scandal over his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, he told reporters and the nation at the White House, “I did not have sex with that woman.” Which of course, he had.

George W. Bush’s most famous words were during what came to be called his “bullhorn moment.” It was three days after the attacks of September 11th, and he traveled to New York to the site of the World Trade Center. When he climbed atop a pile of rubble and put his arm on the shoulder of a firefighter who had rallied from retirement to help his colleagues, Bush captured everyone’s mood when he said, "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

Maybe Barack Obama’s most famous words came in song. When he went to one of the funerals in 2015 after the racist massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, during his eulogy he broke into Amazing Grace: 

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now am found,    

Was blind, but now can see.

He later told an interviewer, “I feel like I’ve used up all my words.”

Then came Trump.

His quotes were sinister from the day in 2015 that he announced his candidacy and denounced the immigrants crossing our southern border: “They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.”

His racist thinking came out again after white nationalists and neo-Nazis demonstrated to keep a statue standing of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia— a young woman, a counter-demonstrator, was killed during the melee— and he told reporters, “you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.”

And Covid? Who can forget when he told a briefing, "I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning?… It would be interesting to check that.” Based on his idiotic idea, a few people did. It didn’t go well.

Of course there’s his exhortation at his January 6th rally, the one that riled up the mob and sent them packing to the Capitol, "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.” They fought like hell to overturn the election.

So did he when he pleaded with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.” As late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel joked, “You’re supposed to do that before the election, not after.”

And how many times has he spoken, sometimes shouted, about “the rigged election?”

Even just the past few weeks have produced quotes that should embarrass the skin off Trump’s supporters. They should, but evidently they don’t.

Like after Vladimir Putin’s political foe Alexei Navalny inexplicably died during his 19 year term in a Siberian prison. Trump had the gall on his website to compare what he calls his persecution (four indictments, still 88 criminal counts) to Navalny’s: “Biden:Trump. Putin:Navalny.”

Or when he visited last week at Mar-a-Lago with Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban and enviously said afterwards of the authoritarian leader, “He says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it. Right? He’s the boss. No, he’s a great leader.” It’s in keeping with his praise for others of Orban’s ilk. On Russia’s Putin: “This is genius, Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine… as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.” On China’s Xi: “Smart, brilliant, everything perfect,” and he rules China with “an iron fist.” On North Korea’s Kim: “Very talented.”

Finally— as if there is a “finally” with this guy— he made mean fun of President Biden’s stutter after last week’s State of the Union, asking the crowd at a rally if Biden would “bring the country t-t-t-together,” then called him “a threat to d-d-democracy.” Of course when he made fun of Biden, he was making fun of millions of Americans who stutter just like Biden once did.

Columnist George Will summed up the nasty side of Donald Trump: “It is difficult to be transgressive when there are no remaining norms to transgress.”

I haven’t forgotten the 14th president in my lifetime, Biden himself. He is not a grand orator, but something he said in his State of the Union last year stands out: “It’s never, never, never been a good bet to bet against America.”

With only the odd exception, we can be proud of the words that came from our modern American presidents, even the ones whose most famous quotes were something short of admirable. Except Trump. I can’t think of a single word he has uttered that I’d be proud to repeat.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.