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Paul LePage's Greatest Hits
A collection of quotes and comments from Maine’s outspoken governor.

2018

March 28, 2018
"I didn’t realize I could buy the president so cheap, a night in his hotel and he’s in my back pocket. That’s all I’m gonna say. The judge that did that is an imbecile! He’s a complete imbecile. That’s all I can tell you. Any District Court judge, whether it’s state or federal, puts that in the paper because I stayed in the hotel is an absolute imbecile. I hope it goes national. I hope he hears it because he’s an absolute imbecile."

– LePage in an interview with WGME-TV. He was reacting to a decision by a federal judge in Maryland in a case involving the Trump International Hotel, where LePage stayed while doing state business in Washington, D.C. LePage will be deposed in the case, which accuses President Trump of improperly mixing his business interests with his work as president.

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2017

July 6, 2017
"I just love to sit in my office and make up ways so they’ll write these stupid stories,they are just so stupid it’s awful. I tell you, the sooner the print press goes away, the better society will be."

– LePage during an appearance on the radio station WGAN-AM. The governor seemed to suggest that he makes up stories to deliberately mislead the media.

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July 3, 2017
"No, my pen was on vacation until tonight. People don’t listen. I said, ‘My pen’s on vacation, I have nothing to do.’ And that meant that I was on vacation."

– LePage denying he ever told anyone that he was planning on taking a vacation during the recent government shutdown. A voicemail message was released shortly afterward where the governor was heard to say he was leaving town for 10 days.

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January 26, 2017
"The blacks, the NAACP flashes one brush makes all white people with one brush. To say that every white American is a racist is an insult. The NAACP should apologize to the white people, to the people from the north for fighting their battle. In 1964 when we were desegregating schools there were a lot of people from the North who went down to the South were killed for trying to help the blacks. And now they paint one brush and say all whites are racists, I'm sorry, we're not. Some of us are abolitionists, I'm a strong abolitionist, I'm a strong Lincoln supporter, I'm a strong Grant supporter, I'm a strong Dwight D. Eisenhower supporter, I think LBJ did the right thing – I'm all in."

– LePage, defending comments he had made about civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John Lewis. D-Georgia.

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January 17, 2017
"I will just say this: John Lewis ought to look at history, it was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, it was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant who fought against Jim Crow laws. A simple thank you would suffice."

– LePage during a his weekly appearance on the George Hale and Ric Tyler Show, on Bangor-based radio station WVOM. LePage was asked about President-elect Donald Trump’s Twitter fight with U.S. Rep. and civil rights leader John Lewis (D-Georgia), after Lewis called Trump an "illegitimate president."

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2016

August 26, 2016
"You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy and the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin."

– LePage at a press conference defending comments he made about the race of drug dealers in Maine at a town hall in North Berwick.

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August 26, 2016
"Look, the bad guy is the bad guy; I don’t care what color he is. When you go to war, if you know the enemy and the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, then you shoot at red."

– LePage at a press conference defending comments he made about the race of drug dealers in Maine at a town hall in North Berwick.

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August 25, 2016
"When a snot-nosed little guy from Westbrook calls me a racist, now I’d like him to come up here because, tell you right now, I wish it were 1825. And we would have a duel, that’s how angry I am, and I would not put my gun in the air, I guarantee you, I would not be (Alexander) Hamilton. I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt and he has not done a damn thing since he’s been in this Legislature to help move the state forward."

– LePage, in an interview with Press Herald reporter Scott Thistle, shortly after leaving an obscene voicemail for Rep. Drew Gattine, D-Westbrook.

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August 25, 2016
"Mr. Gattine, this is Gov. Paul Richard LePage. I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you (expletive). I want to talk to you. I want you to prove that I’m a racist. I’ve spent my life helping black people and you little son-of-a-bitch, socialist (expletive). You … I need you to, just friggin’. I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you. Thank you."

– LePage, leaving a voice mail for state Rep. Drew Gattine, D-Westbrook.

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August 25, 2016
"Let me tell you something: Black people come up the highway and they kill Mainers. You ought to look into that! You make me so sick!"

– LePage, in a tense exchange with reporters outside his office.

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August 24, 2016
"Ever since I said that comment I’ve been collecting every single drug dealer who has been arrested in our state. I don’t ask them to come to Maine and sell their poison, but they come and I will tell you that 90-plus percent of those pictures in my book, and it’s a three-ringed binder, are black and Hispanic people from Waterbury, Connecticut, the Bronx and Brooklyn."

– LePage at a town hall meeting in North Berwick.

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April 19, 2016
"I'm sorry, I’m done... Thank you, you idiots out back there with the signs."

– LePage while exiting a building dedication at the University of Maine at Farmington after two student protestors held signs critical of the governor's environmental policies.

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April 23, 2016
"Lovely people, but you've got to have an interpreter."

– LePage discussing the accents of Indian immigrants while criticizing a referendum proposal to raise Maine's minimum wage to $12.

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January 26, 2016
"The death penalty should be appropriate for people who kill Mainers. In my opinion, we should give them an injection of the stuff they sell. What we ought to do is bring the guillotine back. We could have public executions"

– LePage during a radio interview, explaining his support for tougher penalties for drug crimes.

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January 6, 2016
"The traffickers... these are guys by the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty. These type of guys that come from Connecticut, New York. They come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave."

– LePage during a weekly radio interview commenting on how legislative proposals to increase sentences for drug traffickers don’t go far enough.

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2015

May 2015
"I think the Speaker of the House should go back home to where he was born, and I think that Mr. Alfond should be put in a playpen."

– LePage mocking state Democratic leaders, specifically naming House Speaker Mark Eves (who is from California) and Senate Minority Leader Justin Alfond.

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2014

October 31, 2014
"I have been trying to get the President to pay attention to illegals in our country ... because there is a spike in hepatitis C, tuberculosis, HIV, and it is going on deaf ears."

– LePage speaking with reporters in an impromptu press conference that began with questions about Kaci Hickox, a nurse in Fort Kent who worked with ebola patients in Sierra Leone, but veered into immigration and other topics.

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2013

June 20, 2013
"Sen. Jackson claims to be for the people, but he's the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline."

— LePage's comments about Troy Jackson after the senator from Aroostook County gave the Democratic response to LePage’s budget veto.

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May 29, 2013
"Next year I would like you to create a Legislature that doesn't speak back."

— LePage speaking to students with his second annual Governor’s Promising STEM Youth Awards, who brought robots they had built to the State House for the recognition ceremony.

May 29, 2013
"The minute we start stifling our speech, we might as well go home, roll up our sleeves and get our guns out."

— LePage commenting about censorship by Democrats, related to the television screen outside his office.

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May 19, 2013
"The people of the state of Maine are being played for patsies."

— LePage after being denied the opportunity to speak to the Appropriations Committee at the conclusion of a rare Sunday meeting.

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March 1, 2013
"I don't care if it's my bills. I'll veto my own bills."

— LePage promises to veto any bill that comes across his desk until the Legislature passes his plan to repay $484 million owed to the state’s hospitals.

January 2013
"You guys, you’re idiots and you’re just as bad if not worse than those other guys."

— LePage comparing independent lawmakers to Democrats during a meeting with three independent legislators on alternate approaches to balancing the state budget.

2012

November 9, 2012
"If you want a good education in Maine, and I get criticized by my opponents because I’m hard on education, but if you want a good education, go to an academy. If you want a good education go to private schools. If you can’t afford it, tough luck. You can go to the public school."

— LePage discusses school choice during an "Eggs 'n Issues" talk at York County Community College.

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July 12, 2012
"The Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and, frankly, I would never want to see that repeated. Maybe the IRS is not quite as bad — yet."

— LePage compares the IRS to the Gestapo during an interview with Seven Days, an alternative weekly newspaper in Burlington, Vt. He later apologized for his remarks.

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March 15, 2012
"The press. Reading newspapers in the state of Maine is like paying somebody to tell you lies."

— LePage to a student who asked him what he didn’t like about his job during his appearance as keynote speaker at a Career Conversations event at Waterville Junior High School.

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2011

March 25, 2011
"I’d laugh at them, the idiots. That’s what I would do. Come on! Get over yourselves!"

— LePage, when asked what he would do if people formed a human chain to block removal of a mural depicting moments in the history of the labor movement from the state Department of Labor.

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February 2011
“The only thing that I’ve heard is if you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards.”

— LePage saying he has yet to see enough science to support a ban on BPA, a common additive to plastics that some research suggests may interfere with hormone levels and could cause long-term problems.

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January 14, 2011
“Tell them to kiss my butt.”

— LePage to reporters in response to suggestions from NAACP members and others that his decision not to attend ceremonies honoring Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was part of a negative pattern.

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2010

September 2010
“As your governor, you’re going to be seeing a lot of me on the front page, saying ‘Governor LePage tells Obama to go to hell.”

— LePage telling a crowd of fishermen that, if elected, they could expect to see him stand up to the Obama administration.

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