"Trust me, there won't be long before they're listening to General Mattis on his advice."
"The timing was probably right, if they wanted to make a change, they clearly wanted to make a change in this regard, and so it came down that it was time they wanted to go in a different direction."
"Sometimes in politics, you know, in the palace intrigue, there are people who are in and people who are out."
"I think the next administration is going to need all hands on deck. I think the world is a dangerous place with lots and lots of challenges."
"You know, I think that plays into every candidate for office. Sometimes your best campaign strategist doesn't make a good governance person."
"No. I don't think so. This is one of the things that I think they're going to have to figure out."
"The chief of staff's job is to implement the president's directives and take all of that massive amount of information that gets thrown at the president every single day and make decisions."
"As we prepare for a war to extend into space, is it time we think of the NRO as a combat support agency?"
"You are never going to resolve these deferred maintenance issues at the pace we have been addressing them."
"It is my job to be realistic. And I am very frustrated."
"Don't you find it interesting that in the public-private partnerships we require them to set aside money for deferred maintenance but yet we don't do it in our own budgeted project items?"
"I think that we can't help but take note of--you said a lot of important things, but one particular statement, and that is that there is no greater risk to our nuclear enterprise than this deferred ma..."