Producer

I would like to be able to write in my own voice.

More and more people support equality for their gay friends and neighbors, and that is not because the 'Duck Dynasty' guy almost lost his show.

The Internet didn't cause Donald Trump, and it certainly can't solve Donald Trump.

Humor connects us, especially in politics. It's a way of surprising one another with shared context and experience.

'The West Wing' was an incredible, inspiring show - and one of the reasons I wanted to be a speechwriter.

It's certainly true that presidents have confidantes who rise above what you would call just staff.

I personally believe that Donald Trump being elected president is a national emergency and a crisis that stems from a great cascade of failures.

The great thing about writing jokes for President Obama is that he is not afraid to tell jokes that are actually funny - and not just funny for a politician.

I am a deeply awkward person; I am not cool.

Little things had to go wrong for Donald Trump to become president: Comey, emails, all that stuff. Big things did make Trump possible. Big, cultural, political, economic forces opened the door to someone like Trump.

They're the last human beings susceptible to human shame. Politicians are the only people left for whom, occasionally, shame hurts them. Everyone else, we've sort of done away with it as a concept, and we're hurtling through space like animals, basically.

So often on CNN, there's a world-class journalist interviewing campaign rejects and ideologues and silly, craven people who do not care about informing people, that aren't there to help people understand what's going on in the news.

Part of my job as a presidential speechwriter (along with great writers like Jon Favreau and David Axelrod) was finding that sliver where 'presidential' and 'actually funny' overlap.

We don't want people to be afraid of saying something interesting on the off chance it's taken the wrong way.

We have a lot of really boring, silly, stupid politics. We need people to point that out.

Trump is a raptor testing the fences, and he found weaknesses to escape and try things that would work, every single day.

I had never really planned on being a speechwriter.

A great speech can make you remember something about what you believe, about who you are, about who you want to be. It's rare when that kind of thing happens. But it is important, and it is real.

A boring speech can be just a boring speech. But a speech with a joke that falls flat is awful. I hate it. That's why I think it's easier to hate a comedy. If a drama doesn't land, it's boring; if a joke doesn't land - you hate that.

I spent three years working at the White House and wanted to do something that wasn't about passing bills and resolutions.