Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid ripped into several of his Republican colleagues yesterday, calling Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “the poster boy” for “spinelessness” toward Donald Trump, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley “an extension of the Trump political campaign.”
Both Sens. McConnell and Grassley have attempted to distance themselves from Trump’s racist attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, but have so far refused to rescind their support for the Presidential nominee:
Donald Trump opined a federal judge should be disqualified from presiding on his case because of his Mexican heritage. He went even further in saying he would feel the same way if the judge were Muslim. And how did the Republican leader respond? Senator McConnell repeatedly refused to say Donald Trump’s attacks on Judge Curiel’s ethnicity are racist.
This is precisely the type of failure that gave rise to Donald Trump in the first place.
Senator McConnell and congressional Republican leaders have never taken a stand against Trump’s vile rhetoric. That’s because the hate emanating from Trump’s mouth reflects the Republican Party’s agenda here in the United States Senate for the past seven and a half years. The agenda that Senator McConnell himself promoted.
For years, Senator McConnell and other Republican leaders embraced the darkest elements within their party. The Republican Party made anti-woman, anti-Latino, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and anti-Obama policies the norm. Trump is the logical conclusion of what Republican leaders have been saying and doing for seven and a half years.
By refusing to denounce Trump’s attack on a federal judge for the racism it clearly connotes, it shows Senator McConnell is the poster boy for Republicans’ spinelessness that allowed Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee for president of the United States.
During an interview last weekend, Sen. McConnell commented he “couldn’t disagree more” with Trump’s attacks, but three times refused to call the remarks “racist.”
Sen. Reid similarly turned his sights on Sen. Grassley, who also supports Trump and has so far refused to hold hearings on President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court:
“The Republican nominee for president of our great country continues to attack a federal judge because of his Mexican heritage. This is not only wrong, it’s racist and un-American. It’s also a fundamental attack on the American judiciary system,” Reid said.
“When federal judges are under assault, we should expect the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to rise above politics and condemn racism,” Reid said. “But not this judiciary chairman that is now the chairman here in the United States Senate. Not the senior United States senator from Iowa. Instead of a bold feat of bipartisanship, we’re left with yet another example of how he has become the most partisan judiciary chairman in the history of America.”
“Does Sen. Grassley honestly have confidence that Donald Trump should pick the next Supreme Court justice?” he asked. “I don’t trust Trump to make that decision. The people of Iowa don’t and America doesn’t. Sen. Grassley must stop using his committee to do Trump’s bidding. He must stop using the once- proud judiciary committee as an extension of the Trump political campaign.”
Click below to watch video of Sen. Reid’s remarks regarding Sen. Grassley.
