'An Attack To Shut Him Up': Kaine Blasts Trump Administration After Padilla Forcibly Removed From Briefing

Forbes Breaking News

During remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) spoke about the removal of Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) from a DHS briefing.

Transcript

00:00President, two days from today, June 14, is Flag Day in the United States.

00:05It's the day every year where we celebrate the flag, but it's not the piece of cloth that we celebrate.

00:11We celebrate core American values, and the most core American value is the one that we take an oath of office to,

00:19the Constitution of the United States.

00:22The Constitution includes a Bill of Rights, and one of the most important pieces of the Bill of Rights is the First Amendment

00:29that was drafted by a Virginian, James Madison.

00:32And it talks about the fact that there can't be laws or legal restrictions

00:42against the right of the people to peacefully assemble and petition government for redress of grievances.

00:55That right is not something we're allowed.

00:57That right is something we're guaranteed.

01:01My colleague and our friend, Alex Padilla, born and raised in Los Angeles, loves his hometown,

01:09an MIT-educated baseball-playing engineer,

01:13who returned to his home, who served on the Los Angeles City Council,

01:19and now serves in this body, has some very legitimate questions about why in an unprecedented way

01:29the National Guard and the United States Marines have been deployed into his city

01:35over the objections of the mayor, over the objections of the governor,

01:40in a historically unprecedented way, and in a way such as to escalate tensions in his town, rather than to reduce him.

01:49So he decided to go to a peaceful public assembly.

01:55It was a press conference.

01:56It wasn't a private meeting to which he was not allowed entrance.

02:01A press conference's purpose is to share information with the public.

02:06My colleague, Alex Padilla, who goes to Wednesday prayer breakfast with me every week,

02:12with a bipartisan group of colleagues, attended a public event,

02:16so he could ask a question about why his hometown was being besieged by Marines and National Guard

02:25over the objection of the mayor and the objection of the governor.

02:31His question was a grievance.

02:33He doesn't agree with the policies of the administration.

02:38He is guaranteed, in this document, the right to petition government for redress of grievances.

02:46As an American, this is what we are supposed to do.

02:50The framers of the Constitution that put this in the First Amendment

02:53did it to protect the rights of Alex Padilla and all of us, but they did it for another reason.

02:59They did it because they believed it would help democracy work better.

03:04That democracy works better when people can speak freely.

03:08Democracy works better when people can profess their religion,

03:12when the press can operate freely, and democracy works better.

03:16When people can gather peacefully and share their dissenting points of view.

03:21It makes our democracy work better.

03:25Make no mistake, the effort to manhandle our colleague,

03:30to push him out of the room for asking an inconvenient question,

03:34to handcuff him, is an attempt to shut him up.

03:37It's an attempt to shut everybody up if you have a dissenting view from this administration.

03:45That's why the administration has deployed the military in an unprecedented way.

03:50They want to intimidate you.

03:52They want to make you decide that although you are granted this as a right,

03:57they want to make you afraid to exercise the right.

04:00And so, as I conclude, I would just say this, on Flag Day, I would encourage Americans of all kinds,

04:10find a peaceful assembly on June 14th, on Flag Day, and attend it,

04:18and show that you are a brave and patriotic American that embraces the First Amendment to the Constitution,

04:25and you will not allow anyone to intimidate you.

04:30I was a missionary in Honduras in 1980 and 81, and it was an authoritarian society,

04:37and no one was guaranteed the right to assemble or complain.

04:43You might do it and be okay one day, the next day you might be arrested,

04:46the next day you might be disappeared or even killed.

04:50That's not who we are.

04:52We need brave, patriotic Americans to stand up just as Senator Padilla has done

04:57and insist upon their right to peacefully assemble

05:00and present whatever critiques or complaints they have about policies that they find to be objectionable.

05:07With that, I yield the floor.

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