* “I’ve enforced the laws and now I write the laws, and I know that nobody is above the law. But the law means nothing if the accused, whether the man who breaks into your house or the president, can destroy evidence, stop witnesses from testifying and blatantly refuse to cooperate in the investigation.”–U.S. Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., former chief of the Orlando Police Department and now one of the seven impeachment managers appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
* “What is the president hiding? … The gravity of these charges is self-evident. The House of Representatives has accused the president of trying to shake down a foreign leader for personal gain.”–Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.
* “This is an example of all the president’s henchmen, and I hope that the senators do not become part of the president’s henchmen.”–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
* “This isn’t really about Ukraine policy or military money. This has been naked partisanship all along.”–Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
* “It’s all hearsay.”–Florida Sen. Rick Scott.
* “Our Founders left the Senate in charge of creating a fair and transparent impeachment process that is acceptable to the nation as a whole. Our current senators would do well to follow their lead.”–Stetson constitutional law professor Louis J. Virelli III.
* “Class-war progressivism always loses to culture-war conservatism because swing voters in the Midwest care more about their values–guns, patriotism, ending abortion, masculinity, whatever–than they do about proletarian class consciousness.”–David Brooks, New York Times.
* “No country that is permanently at war, that sends soldiers to blockade immigration, that dismisses war crimes and pardons those who commit them, that makes the assassination of leaders of other nations a proudly proclaimed public strategy, can foster a civic society that truly values peace and harmony.”–Donald Eastman, president of Eckerd College.
* “Do not come to this fight believing that the Trump team views any action, including outright criminality, as off limits.”–Rick Wilson, Republican operative and author of “Running Against the Devil.”
* “Name a single Democrat accomplishment.”–Donald Trump Jr.
* “Like Trump too, Bernie Sanders isn’t so much campaigning for office as he is leading a movement. People who join movements aren’t persuaded. They’re converted. Their depth of belief is motivating and infectious.”–Bret Stephens, New York Times.
* “The one sport where the unthinkable can become the inevitable in a matter of weeks or even days is national politics, not the National Football League.”–Bill Weld, former Massachusetts governor and current long-shot candidate for the GOP’s presidential nomination.
* “Today is the oldest you’ve ever been; yet the youngest you’ll ever be.”–Eleanor Roosevelt.
* “I would rather face a player that was taking steroids than face a player that knew every pitch that was coming.”–Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Alex Wood.
* “As a human being, I am a creature of implicit biases. So I can’t trust my own good intentions. Please don’t ask me to trust yours.”–Miami Herald African-American columnist Leonard Pitts.
* “I’m super fired up. It’s just going to be wonderful to get astronauts back into orbit from American soil after almost a decade of not being able to do so.”–Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX, as the countdown continues for the launching of astronauts from Cape Canaveral in the next few months. NASA astronauts have not launched from the U.S. since the space shuttle program ended in 2011.
* “We’ve always outpaced enrollment in other states, and I think it really shows that the marketplace coverage is extremely popular in Florida.”–Anne Swerlick of the Florida Policy Institute, in noting that Florida once again leads the nation in health insurance enrollment under the Affordable Care Act. More than 1.9 million consumers signed up for 2020.
* “We’re going to have to think really critically about the way our population centers have developed.”–Julia Nesheiwat, Florida’s new chief resiliency officer.
* “I don’t get the sense that Tampa and St. Pete are kissing cousins. … More like hissing cousins.”–Orlando Magic co-founder Pat Williams, who leads the campaign to bring a major league baseball team to Orlando.
* “(Trump) says a lot of things that people agree with …that people are embarrassed to admit. Because otherwise, he wouldn’t have carried Pinellas County.”–Clearwater Mayor George Cretekos.
* “Artificial intelligence is one of the great frontiers in the innovation economy. … Tampa is growing to become a promising center of diverse skills and new perspectives that will shape AI’s future.”–USF College of Engineering professor Sudeep Sarkar, chairman of the computer science department and co-chair of the USF Institute for AI+X.
* “If construction crews are an indicator of economic outlook, then things are looking pretty nice in the ‘burg. I have the hard-hat hair to prove it. I haven’t had a good hair day in two years because I spend all my time on construction sites.”–St. Petersburg Deputy Mayor Kanika Tomalin.
* “(St. Petersburg has) gone from God’s waiting room to God’s craft beer tap room.”–St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman.