January 6

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it is hard to keep up with Donald Trump, particularly his Big Lie. Like the coronavirus, it is constantly mutating.

A couple days ago, I read that one of the most vocal competitors of that Big Lie, Mike Lindell, the MyPillow Guy, has pulled all his advertising from FOX News. Why? Because FOX refused to sell him airtime for a commercial repeating the dangerous, discredited lie that the Presidential election was stolen. It is hard to imagine what level of conspiracy craziness it takes for even FOX Network to say that goes too far, but we have reached that point when it comes to the MyPillow Guy.

I don't know how Mr. MyPillow is going to peddle his products now. Maybe he will stand on the street corner handing out flyers next to one of those blow-up, scarecrow balloons that gyrates wildly in the wind. At this point, it is hard to rule anything out.

But there is another development on the Big Lie that is far darker and more disturbing. According to recent published reports, former President Donald Trump is now denouncing the brave police officers who testified last week before the select committee in the House about the mob insurrection on January 6 in this Chamber, in this Capitol. He is disparaging them with a word which I will not repeat.

His attacks on these officers is reprehensible and inexcusable and totally predictable. These officers and hundreds more battled a murderous mob sent to the Capitol by President Donald Trump to overturn an election. He sent that mob to attack this Capitol and American democracy because he couldn't bear the shame of losing. He wanted to overturn the election and cling to power like a tin-pot dictator. The police officers he now denounces still bear the wounds from the insurrection he ordered. Some other Trump supporters have attacked at least one of the police officers who testified as a ``crisis actor.''

This morning's New York Times has an article by Maureen Dowd, which I would like to quote from. She is speaking of Laura Ingraham, one of the political pundits on FOX Network. It says:

Laura Ingraham even gave awards--``Best Exaggerated Performance,'' ``Best Political Performance'' . . . `'for the Performance in an Action Role''--to the police who recounted their terrifying battles with the mob. ``They came across as political actors,'' Ingraham said. ``That doesn't help anything. We want the police to be just police.''

Even as Ingraham was describing as ``actors'' those cops who faced danger, Erin Smith was trying to get the death of her husband, a veteran Washington patrolman--the second officer to take his life after the insurrection--reclassified from a suicide to a death in the line of duty.

After he was hit in the head with a metal pole during the rampage, he fell into a dark depression, his wife told The Times. On the way to his shift, he pulled his car off the George Washington Parkway and killed himself with his service weapon.

More than casting the police who told their stories as drama queens and fabulists, four House Republicans, representing the ``dregs of Congress''--

In Maureen Dowd's words--

turned up at a Washington jail on Thursday to shine a light on the plight of insurrection suspects. One of them, Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, hailed them as ``political prisoners.''

Since when do Republicans care more about criminals in jail than the cops who put them there? Since when do they coddle domestic terrorists?

Since Donald Trump.

There was a point decades ago where, in desperation to stop the ravings of a Senator from Wisconsin, a man named Joseph Welch said to the Senator: Have you no shame? At long last, have you no shame?

That is what Joseph Welch famously asked Senator Joseph McCarthy when McCarthy tried to turn his vicious smear campaign against members of the U.S. Army after his lies had already broken the lives of so many Americans.

Now an angry, embittered ex-President is turning his vicious smear tactics against a different group of democracy's defenders. It is pointless to ask if the former President feels shame or decency or empathy. We learned long ago that he is incapable of such feelings.

So I ask my Republican colleagues: What do you say? At long last, will you tell the former President ``enough''? ``no more''? ``you have gone too far''? ``this must stop''?

You were all here on January 6, as I was. You know those Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police risked their lives to defend you and me. Will you now defend them when they are being smeared so scandalously

We are here on a Sunday, working to pass a historic bipartisan plan to build the backbone of a strong 21st century economy that benefits all Americans. Can't we also have a bipartisan backbone to defend the men and women who defended the Capitol on January 6?

A few minutes ago, I walked into the building. They were there. You know they are going to be there to protect you, the men and women of the Capitol Police. Theirs is a dangerous job now, more dangerous because of January 6. We salute them for their bravery, and those who have questioned that bravery have really gone too far.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source