Scott McClellan Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

This relationship is built on trust, and you know very well that I have worked hard to earn the trust of the people in this room, and I think I've earned it — and I think I've earned it with the American people.

Scott McClellan
I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be.

Scott McClellan
Jeff Gannon: In your denunciations of the Abu Ghraib photos, you've used words like "sickening," "disgusting" and "reprehensible." Will you have any adjectives left to adequately describe the pictures from Saddam's rape rooms and torture chambers? And will Americans ever see those images?
Scott McClellan: I'm glad you brought that up, Jeff, because the President talks about that often.

Scott McClellan
As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room.

Scott McClellan
No, you don't want the American people to hear what the facts are, Helen, and I'm going to tell them the facts.

Scott McClellan
Jeff Gannon: Since there have been so many questions about what the President was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting? What was he doing after he was honorably discharged?
Scott McClellan: We've already commented on some of his views relating back to that period the other day.

Scott McClellan
In this case, the 'liberal media' didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.

Scott McClellan
I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself.

Scott McClellan
The President is a very straightforward and plainspoken person, and I'm someone who believes in dealing in a very straightforward way with you all, as well, and that's what I've worked to do.

Scott McClellan
I heard Bush say, "You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember." I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense.

Scott McClellan
Q: But if you stand out strongly trying to let the Arab world know that this is wrong and then you have the proverbial spokesperson for the conservative party saying this, doesn't that send a mixed message?
Scott McClellan: The President's views have been very — have been made very clear. Go ahead.

Scott McClellan
I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood. It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the President effectively. I didn't learn that what I'd said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later. … Neither, I believe, did President Bush. he too had been deceived, and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who know the truth — including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.

Scott McClellan
I think I previously indicated that he attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House. It is actually only two Hanukkah receptions that he attended. [...] I don't get into discussing staff-level meetings.

Scott McClellan
As a Texas loyalist who followed Bush to Washington with great hope and personal affection and as a proud member of his administration, I was all too ready to give him and his highly experienced foreign policy advisers the benefit of the doubt on Iraq. Unfortunately, subsequent events have showed that our willingness to trust the judgment of Bush and his team was misplaced.

Scott McClellan
If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.

Scott McClellan
I do not believe that the President was in any way directly involved in the leaking of her identity, but that was a very disillusioning moment for me when I found out when it initially hit the press, and I was in North Carolina, if I remember correctly, and a reporter shouted out to the President, "Is it true that you authorized the secret leaking of this classified information?" We walked onto Air Force One, and the Presidents asks, "What was the reporter asking?", and I said, "He asserted that you were the one who authorized Scooty Libby leaking this information," and he said, "Yeah, I did."
On illegal leaking of counter-terrorist CIA agent identity

Scott McClellan
Well, I indicated yesterday that I think there were some — a few staff-level meetings. But, no, I'm making sure that I have a thorough report back to you on that. And I'll get that to you, hopefully very soon.

Scott McClellan
Jeff Gannon: Last Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that shows that Ambassador Joe Wilson lied when he said his wife didn't put him up for the mission to Niger. The British inquiry into their own prewar intelligence yesterday concluded that the President's 16 words were "well-founded." Doesn't Joe Wilson owe the President and America an apology for his deception and his own intelligence failure?
Scott McClellan: Well, one, let me point out that I think those reports speak for themselves on that issue. And I think if you have questions about that, you can direct that to Mr. Wilson.

Scott McClellan
... I could not say honestly today that this administration does not believe in torture, does not engage in torture.

Scott McClellan
As I have heard Bush say, only a wartime president is likely to achieve greatness, in part because the epochal upheavals of war provide the opportunity for transformative change of the kind Bush hoped to achieve. In Iraq, Bush saw his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness.

Scott McClellan