At a Senate Democratic press briefing on Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) called out Republicans for their handling of the Trump Administration’s actions.
00:00Let me start off by congratulating Donald Trump for being such a powerful, unifying force.
00:11In only 100 days, he took a divided nation and tipped the balance decisively.
00:18With his embarrassing, insulting, petty, and outrageous attack, Donald Trump has given Canada a new national resolve.
00:27He single-handedly revived the Liberal Party in Canada and spurred them to an historic victory yesterday.
00:34Now, if he could just be a positive, unifying force in the United States.
00:39Instead, for 100 days, Trump and his administration of billionaire buddies have caused chaos, wreaked havoc, and sowed division.
00:48He's undermined the Constitution, our system of checks and balances, and the rule of law.
00:53And through it all, my Republican colleagues have remained silent.
01:00Take Donald Trump's ill-conceived mindless tariff tax war, which caused global markets to plunge,
01:07wiped trillions of dollars of wealth from the stock market, and will cause Americans to suffer from higher prices and smaller exports.
01:14While their constituents saw their retirement funds drain and grocery bills skyrocket, Republicans remained silent.
01:24Rinse and repeat this cycle.
01:26Donald Trump threatens to withhold federal funds from higher education institutions, to coerce them to give up their constitutional rights.
01:34Republicans remain silent.
01:37The Secretary of Defense violates national security protocol and shares classified war plans in signal chat that mistakenly includes a journalist.
01:47Republicans remain silent.
01:50Unelected billionaire Elon Musk and his Doge brothers gut the federal government, leading to cuts to life-saving medical research.
01:59Americans unable to get their Social Security benefits and threats to Medicaid.
02:02You guessed it.
02:04Republicans remain silent.
02:07Never in our nation's history has a co-equal branch of government so willfully rolled over and ceded their power.
02:15It is the silence of the lambs.
02:18The President is testing and violating the bounds of our Constitution, amassing power for himself as he tanks our economy,
02:25violating the rights of Americans and destroying our image abroad.
02:29My congressional Republican colleagues have the power to stop it.
02:33They have majorities in both chambers, and in private moments, many of them express to us similar outrage and horror at what Trump is doing.
02:42But as the constituents suffer, out of fear of retaliation, Republicans remain silent.
02:50When we're elected members of Congress, our oath is to the Constitution, not to the President.
