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You know, I wish the world well. I want Iraq to have democracy and the Haitians to have democracy. I want the people of Afghanistan to thrive. Lord knows, we spend enough money there to help them. What about people at home? Isn't that our first responsibility?
We know no document is perfect, but when we amend the Constitution, it would be to expand rights, not to take away rights from decent, loyal Americans. This great Constitution of ours should never be used to make a group of Americans permanent second-class citizens.
The Violence Against Women Act protects the lives of tens of thousands of domestic violence victims. But the U.S. must also support gender equality around the world, and that means acknowledging that some nations we consider to be our friends are no friends to women.
The American people are beginning to see the Republicans' willingness to trample over 200 years of history, to step on the minority, to push everybody out of the way because they want 100 percent. It's rubbing the American people the wrong way. One-party rule is not good.
If we turn our back on the people of this country who need to work for a living, we shouldn't be here, to be honest, because that has to be an essential part of what we do to protect the country, from the standpoint of defense, protect workers and make sure they have jobs.
In the early stages of a pregnancy, the Government cannot intervene with a woman's right to choose. That is it, plain and simple. Guess what. We are not going to be big brother or sister, as the case may be. We are going to allow a woman, her doctor, and her God to make that decision.
I know from my constituency what is going on. Doctors that are told, begged, by mothers, 'Please don't write down that my child as asthma. Please lie and say it's bronchitis, because if you write down asthma, when my child turns 18 or 20 and has to get his or her own insurance, it will be a pre-existing condition.'
It's very important to face the grief, face the anger, and then get into a place where you are ready to fight because if you go back to the history of the United States of America, our Founders said we're giving you a Republic if you can keep it, and they also said we have a Constitution and we're going to form a more perfect union.
I believe in truth-telling. So let's call it what it is. It's very troubling to see people like Bannon who make anti-Semitic remarks, who has a very checkered past be sitting next to the president of the United States. It puts an absolute responsibility on all of us to call it the way we see it and not use expressions like "alt-right."
I can't predict if I will see a woman president, but I think I may well because, again, Hillary Clinton got more votes probably than any other Democratic candidate ever, except for Obama. But she got more votes than Trump and she got more votes than Richard Nixon got when he won the election, more votes than John Kennedy got when he won.
I take great solace in the fact that Donald Trump lost the popular vote. Hillary Clinton got over 2.5 million more votes than Donald Trump got. So I can't say in any way that the people think that harassing women is appropriate. So I don't think we should read into his victory the fact that, you know, women's rights are going to be diminished.
Every American at some point has got to make the connection between their own hopes and dreams and who is elected to office. It's essential. It's very easy to pull the covers up over your head and say, "I can't handle it. Too much." But we just have to handle it and we have to accept that it's our job. Each of us. Nobody is going to take care of it.
Even though the press at times made me completely crazy as they followed me around the hall, and asked tough questions over and over again - now believe me, every politician feels this way - it is a necessary part of our life, and we must have a press that isn't cowed and won't be afraid of ratings if they get put to the back of the room at a press conference.
Unfortunately, Trump has showed hateful inclinations toward many, many groups. Many groups. The most obvious: undocumented immigrants and Muslims. His comments that I've seen that he's made about Jewish people, about black people - they're all very troubling to me - even though he sort of said, "Oh, I distance myself from hate and don't do any of this hating stuff."
The Democratic Party has awakened. We've not been awake since 9/11, in many ways. We had moments, sporadically, where we woke up. But I think we were so hit by 9/11, as the whole country was, that we didn't get our legs back. It took a while. Now the Democratic Party is back. I've never seen it as united. Sure, we have a ways to go. We have a lot of ground to cover.
I am saying there are women in the Senate, there are women in governorships, there are women in statewide office, there are women in the House, and I do think we can't ignore the fact that we have had the first woman ever win a nomination of a major party and the first woman ever winning the popular vote. So I think the table is set for a woman in the near future. I really do.
There's an effort on the part of many people to attack women's rights, women's health, and the ability to control our own lives. No doubt about it. And it is not a majority of the country, in any way, shape, or form. I know on the contraceptive issue, 70 percent of the country agrees with me. Will that stop my opponents? No. Because they are so radical. They chip away and chip away.
When John Kennedy was assassinated I was twenty-three, a stockbroker on Wall Street and married, and I never ever thought that politics would be anything that I would be a part of. But I realized that I had to get involved. Then, when Martin Luther King was assassinated and the Vietnam War was raging, I felt that my world was falling apart. I had these two beautiful children - three and one - and I just said, "I have to make it better."