Drawing forceful distinctions and being civil are not mutually exclusive.

Mr. Trump’s tie symbolizes one of the central questions of his candidacy, and now his presidency. Is his seeming ineptness genuine? Or is it part of a contrived performance, designed to deploy the symbols of power while rejecting the conventions of civility that have traditionally defined and constrained them?

As a guy who has done damage, I don’t want to do any more damage. I know what I did. I helped divide. Please don’t make the mistakes I made.

You people were vicious, violent, screaming, 'Where's the wall? We want the wall!' Screaming, 'Prison! Prison! Lock her up!' I mean you are going crazy. I mean, you were nasty and mean and vicious and you wanted to win, right? But now, you're mellow and you're cool and you're not nearly as vicious or violent, right? Because we won, right?

You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well. Your success is now our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.

Oftentimes when we think we're engaged in reasoned policy discussion we're actually engaged in complex efforts to rationalize the direction in which our tribal affiliations are pushing us.

You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.

The son of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural-born citizen. The internet has all sorts of fevered swamp theories.

Let me be very clear: the single most offensive name that you can call an American Indian is ‘Redskin.’