* “We are committed to the security of Japan and all areas under its administrative control and to further strengthening our very crucial alliance.”– President Donald Trump’s pledge during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
* “We stand with Japan and we stand with our allies in the region to address the North Korean menace.”–Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief policy adviser.
* “Trumpism is a posture that leads to the now familiar cycle of threat perception, insult, enemy-making, aggrievement, self-pity, assault and counterassault.”–David Brooks, New York Times.
* “The news media’s spectacular failure to get the election right has made it only easier for many conservatives to ignore anything that happens outside the right’s bubble and for the Trump White House to fabricate facts with little fear of alienating its base.”–Charles J. Sykes, author of “How the Right Lost Its Mind.”
* “In Trump we trust.”–Ann Coulter.
* “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate the truth.”–Garry Kasparov, Russian dissident and chess grandmaster.
* “I would like to say by the end of the year, at least the rudiments, but we should have something within the year and the following year.”–Donald Trump, on plans to enact a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.
* “(MacDill AFB) is quite a place. We will be loading it up with beautiful new planes and new equipment. You’ve been lacking equipment, and we will load it up.”–Donald Trump during his recent visit to MacDill to meet with CentCom and SOCom.
* “Trump’s analysis of people and situations hinges on whether they exalt him. A news organization that challenges him is inevitably “failing.” A politician who pushes back at him is invariably a loser. Middle school cliques have more moral discernment.”–Frank Bruni, New York Times.
* “Given the foreign policy damage and widespread protest Trump’s travel ban is creating and the negligible impact of walls on stopping migration, why is he so fixated on walls and bans? U.S. immigration history suggests one answer. Walls and anti-immigrant decrees succeed as symbolic acts, as forms of theater.”–Gunther Peck, associate professor of American history at Duke University.
* “America has learned difficult lessons in the past that fear and emotion alone should not drive policy. … Instead, facts and evidence should drive decision-making, consistent with the U.S. Constitution. America’s national security deserves no less.”–U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa.
* “These raids have struck fear in the hearts of the immigrant community as many fear that President Trump’s promised ‘deportation force’ is now in full-swing.”–Excerpt from statement by members of the Congressional Hispanic Congress after a series of actions by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
* “ICE does not use checkpoints, nor do we use sweeping raids. We use target enforcement actions against specific individuals to make these arrests.”–ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez.
* “If you’re a really smart person and you want to immigrate to a great country that will welcome you, come to Canada! And if you’re Muslim, you’re very, very welcome here, as are people of every faith–and atheists too.”–Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.
* “A carbon tax is the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions. … A sensibly priced, gradually rising tax would send a powerful market signal to businesses that want certainty when planning for the future.”–Former Secretary of State and Treasury Secretary George Shultz and former Secretary of State and Treasury Secretary James Baker.
* “It feels like what investors had signed up to was fiscal stimulus and downplaying of protectionism, and what we’ve got is a playing up of protectionism.”–Paul Ashworth, chief United States economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.
* “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff.”–Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
* “There’s a lot of interest regarding airport infrastructure and generating funding to modernize U.S. airports. Our president is very supportive of this.”–TIA CEO Joe Lopano.
* “The reality is, that this is not corporate welfare. It is corporate competition.”–Craig Richard, CEO of the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp., on the use of state incentives to recruit corporations and jobs.
* “Parental leave, child care and the like are not women’s issues–they are economic issues. The progress we make on this front will directly impact our competitiveness on the global stage.”–Mayor Bob Buckhorn.
* “The West Shore area has become much more than a business district over the last few years and is now a vibrant, live-work-play community.”–Jay Curran, senior vice president of Nashville-based developer Crescent Communities.
* “This is what success looks like. Today, Hillsborough is safer.”–State Attorney Andrew Warren, on a recent undercover operation by the Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office that netted 51 arrests, 66 seized guns and nearly four pounds of drugs.
* “Tech is alive and well in the Tampa Bay area, and we’re doing what we can to help jump-start the tech ecosystem here. It’s companies like ReliaQuest that are bringing high-paying jobs to Tampa.”–Jeff Vinik, reacting to the announcement that Tampa data security company ReliaQuest will create at least 150 jobs at its new headquarters on Harbour Island this year.
* “We used to be a donor city where young people would leave to find jobs in Austin or Raleigh or Boston. But now we’re a city that’s growing every day and becoming that place in America that we always thought we could be.”–Mayor Bob Buckhorn.
* “Byrne loved Tampa, and he left it better than he found it.”–Former Mayor Dick Greco, reflecting on the life of the late Byrne Litschgi.