Republican Party
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, on a final topic, I am not in the habit of commenting on the House Republican minority, but today they have reached a new and very dangerous low point. Earlier this morning, the House GOP ousted Liz Cheney from the party's leadership. Her crime? Telling the truth--telling the truth that Joe Biden is the legitimate President of the United States and Donald Trump is lying when he says the election is stolen.
Congresswoman Cheney spoke truth to power, and for that she has been fired. Make no mistake, the Congresswoman and I disagree on so many policy issues, but we both agree that truth matters. And she, like so many characters in history--I am just thinking now of Sir Thomas More-- had the courage to tell the truth and paid a big price for it.
So this is sad--a very dark moment for the Republican Party. Republicans are seeking to perpetuate and act upon the big lie that the election was stolen, simply to placate the most dishonest President in American history. This President lies at will. He doesn't care of the consequences for the future of grand, great, and wonderful democracy. He only cares about himself and feeding his ego, and truth has nothing do with that. It mattered--what happened matters a great deal, and what the former President is trying to do hurts our country dramatically. The former President's lies, right now, are poisoning our democracy, eroding our faith in government, and exciting a plague--often nasty, sometimes racist--of voter suppression laws.
I had thought that January 6 revealed the devastating consequences of the big lie. I thought that the invasion of our Capitol by an armed mob--a mob that sought to delay the peaceful transfer of power; a mob that I was within 15, 20 feet of at one moment--would demonstrate to all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, both ends of the Capitol, the awful price of Donald Trump's lies. But after a brief and all-too-short period of introspection, it appears that the big lie is no longer on the retreat among Republicans but, instead, is spreading like a cancer.
Far be it for me to tell House Republicans who should lead them, but it is truly a dangerous--dangerous--sign of our times that the price of admission in today's Republican Party is silence in the face of provable lies.
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