Mark Warner is starting to get it, that go along to get along isn’t going to work with Trump 2.0, that his predilection for being thought of as a radical centrist is outdated when the other side thinks everybody else is the enemy, and isn’t willing to triangulate.
I get the idea that Warner doesn’t like that I’ve been referring to him as a Vichy Democrat, the term I’m using there being intentionally derogatory – Warner and the other Senate Democrat from Virginia, Tim Kaine, have been going out of their way to try to play politics in Trump 2.0 straight up, voting for abominable Trump Cabinet nominees, propping up bad legislation.
ICYMI
- Kaine among 24 Senate Dems voting to confirm election-denier to head the VA
- Tim Kaine, Mark Warner helped Elon Musk take over the federal treasury
- Kaine, Warner each own a piece of Trump’s Gitmo immigrant concentration camp
- Tim Kaine, quietly, voted to confirm Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary
- Mark Warner votes for Laken Riley Act: Must be gearing up for Senate re-election run
Warner, at least, has been coming around of late, voting “no” on Trump Cabinet picks the past few days, and today, in a conference call with news reporters, he came across very un-Mark Warner-like in stressing the importance of taking a hardline stand against the Trump/Musk dismantling of American democracy.
“This whole notion that I hear this a lot from the business community, and I think it is disgraceful, well, if we just keep our head low, just be quiet, maybe we can ride through this. That was the opinion people had before other great conflicts and across the world, and that never played out very well,” Warner said on the call.
Mark Warner just said there that businesspeople trying to keep their heads low to ride it out are disgraceful.
The gloves are off.
Them’s, indeed, fightin’ words!
Warner practically challenged Elon Musk, the neo-Nazi South African immigrant who is acting as Trump’s hatchet man, to a cagefight, which I wouldn’t mind seeing – my money would be on Warner, even with the age difference.
“Elon Musk and his gang should not be defunding or programs by name on a variety on the basis of a tweet,” said Warner, who wants to haul Musk and his army of incel programmers before the Senate Banking Committee to get them to “explain who they are, what clearances they have, what background they have, what appears to be in the press a 25-year-old with no experience potentially manipulating the Treasury payment files, and we can’t get an answer on that yet.”
ICYMI
Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the committee’s former chair, also wants Musk to appear before that committee to answer to his push to force out the entirety of the workforce at the CIA.
“I’m sure Elon Musk and his crowd don’t know that it takes a year and a half to get a CIA clearance to go into the agency,” said Warner, angrily observing that the reported buyout offer put in front of career CIA agents and employees “will weaken the United States of America in real time.”
With regard to Musk’s insistence that the United States Agency for International Development, created in 1961 by President Kennedy, be disemboweled, that’s another move, to Warner, that would weaken us in an instant, which is probably what Musk, a foreigner with close ties to Communist China and authoritarian Russia, wants.
“Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, is calling for eliminating these foreign aid programs, which, frankly, the whole foreign aid budget is a fraction of his personal net worth,” Warner said. “Elon Musk, who has ties to China, his largest Tesla factory is there, he gets most of the batteries from China, he’s never said a bad word about Chinese leadership, yet he’s criticized American and European leadership virtually on a daily basis.
“The people who most are supporting Musk and Trump in taking out foreign aid are Beijing and Moscow, because they know America is weaker if we’re not supporting friends and allies and countries in need,” Warner said. “And it’s, frankly, very cheap for, particularly, Beijing to go in and supplement humanitarian aid in some of these countries, they use it as a tool of statecraft. America has used it for decades for the same, and people who are totally ignorant of these programs are going about randomly cutting and trying to eliminate them.
“Where are the voices, both current and former, and particularly on my Republican side, who will stand up and say, this is making America weaker?” Warner said.
Alright, so, I’m done calling Warner a Vichy Democrat
My friend, the former radical centrist, is kicking ass and taking names now.
Kaine, though, buddy, you’ve got some work to still do; stop voting for Trump’s nominees, for one, and enough with telling us that we need to be sure to be peaceful when we’re trying to keep our country intact.
ICYMI
The next political test will be Russell Vought, the Trump/Musk pick to head up the Office of Management and Budget, who has said that he wants to “traumatize the federal workforce,” which he views as “villains.”
Warner pledged on Wednesday to fight Vought’s nomination “tooth and nail”; Kaine, in a separate conference call on Wednesday, confirmed that he will actively oppose the Vought nomination, and plans to deliver remarks on the nomination on the Senate floor Wednesday night.
So, good, from both there, though it sounds like they both assume there will be a confirmation vote in short order, which is, bluntly, disappointing – Republicans have long since perfected the playbook on obstruction, which includes stretching out debates and using the Senate’s arcane rules to play out seemingly endless procedural delays.
My definition of “tooth and nail” would include the full utilization of that approach, on the Vought nomination and every other nomination, and every other piece of legislation deemed important to the Trump/Musk agenda, going forward.
We’ll see on that. I was told by a Democratic staffer in a phone call on Tuesday that Democrats don’t use that obstructionist playbook because they stand for the rule of law and preservation of American democracy, which is a lofty ideal in a time of constitutional crisis.
Warner: Protest the Republicans, too
I told the staffer during that call that I was giving our guys Warner and Kaine a hard time and not putting energy into putting pressure on our Republican congressmen like Ben Cline and John McGuire because guys like Cline and McGuire, affable guys who nobody in their own party pays any attention to, aren’t going to do anything but rubber-stamp what their guy Trump/Musk wants to do, so they’re not worth the effort, times two.
Warner addressed my line of thought there on today’s call.
“We desperately need Republican officials at the local level, at the state level, at the federal level, to stand up for rule of law, and to say, you want to bring efficiency, count me in,” Warner said. “I was very proud of the fact when I was governor, Virginia named the best managed state. I’m all about efficiency and finding reasonable ways to cut costs, but this sledgehammer approach, which is unlawful and is going to chase away some of the best talent we have in the government, that’s going to weaken our security, that’s already weakened the FBI, in terms of its expertise, is treading on extraordinarily dangerous grounds.
“I appeal to folks across the state, if you are a community leader or other, people need to stand up and speak out,” Warner said.
I can endorse that.
We’ve already got Warner working on our side, we’re getting Kaine on our side more and more.
At the least, we’ve got to make it uncomfortable for the Ben Clines and John McGuires to continue being complicit in the dismantling of American democracy.
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Chris Graham
