A Perilous Moment

Floor Speech

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Madam Speaker, our country is facing a perilous moment. In my district, parents are reassuring frightened children that everything will be all right. That is what parents do. Our job as Members of Congress is to do the best we can to make sure that those reassurances come true. Madam Speaker, I was born and raised in Chicago. In 2000, I voted for the first time in my life. I voted for Barack Obama to serve in this Chamber. While he did not win that election, I was inspired by his message of reform, change, and hope. Throughout his life and career, Barack Obama has always tried to bring people together.

Even in a highly polarized and tumultuous time, he has always tried to rise above and bridge those divisions and to be a unifying force for good. This is who Barack Obama is. This is who he was at Harvard Law School. This is who he was as a community organizer in Chicago. This is who he was as a State senator, and as our President. Right now, President Obama is discharging his constitutional obligation to orchestrate an orderly transition of power to a new President. I understand and I respect why, under those circumstances, he has chosen to emphasize a message of national unity. I understand and respect why Hillary Clinton, who, despite the painful knowledge that she received more votes than her opponent, is doing the same.
But I feel that I have an obligation at this moment, as do many of my
colleagues in this House--I have a duty--to tell the truth about Donald Trump. We cannot treat him like any other politician or like any other Republican because he is not. Trump represents something much more dangerous; and while none of us want this to be the case, we have a duty to treat him like the threat that he is--a threat to our values, a threat to our people, and a threat to our national identity.

Donald Trump is 70 years old, and it is unrealistic to expect him to change at this moment in time. Donald Trump is a sexual predator who brags about grabbing women without their consent. To date, he has been accused of sexual assault by nearly a dozen women. Donald Trump is a demagogue. His political mentor was Roy Cohn, Senator Joseph McCarthy's right-hand man. No surprise that Donald Trump burst onto the national conservative scene by peddling a racist birther conspiracy, questioning whether President Obama was even an American.

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Next month, Donald Trump is going on trial for fraud related to the fake university that bore his name. A series of exposes in The Washington Post have revealed the systematic misuse of funds at the fake charity he established. In Atlantic City, he enriched himself at the expense of creditors, investors, workers, and suppliers while running multiple casinos into bankruptcy. Every one of us in Congress--every single one of us in Congress-- knows who Donald Trump is. It does not matter what he says today or what he does tomorrow. His whole life and his whole campaign speak to who he is and to what kind of President he will be for our country. We should be horrified because it is horrifying. The man who boasted, I alone will fix this, will fix nothing. He has broken us apart. Millions of Americans are living in fear because he has threatened them--Muslims, Latinos, African Americans, women, the disabled, the LGBT community, and more.
Donald Trump will be our next President. We here in Congress must oppose his agenda. We must oppose his efforts to increase his power.

Anything that makes Donald Trump more powerful makes him more dangerous. Look at who Donald Trump is. Look at the life he has led. Look at the campaign he ran. No one should be under any illusions. Never more in my lifetime have we needed strong, aggressive, innovative, strategic leadership from the Democratic Party and the progressive movement that fuels it. Donald Trump will not be an ordinary President. Rather than helping him protect the country, we must protect the country from the new President. Madam Speaker, this is unchartered territory.

In the days since his election, Trump has attacked the right to protest. He has attacked The New York Times for its critical coverage. He announced that Steve Bannon, a White nationalist racist, will serve as his senior adviser in his White House. He has committed to deporting 2 to 3 million immigrants immediately. His team has threatened legal action against a Senator who criticized him; and on the campaign trail, he threatened to use the regulatory powers of the Federal Government to retaliate against his critics.
Despite his promise to drain the swamp of corruption in Washington, he is stacking his transition team with corporate lobbyists. Trump is preparing to install foxes to watch the people's henhouse.
Last but by no means least, he has refused to engage in any meaningful financial disclosures or to take any steps to effectively mitigate the conflicts of interest inherent in the President of the United States and also being the head of an opaque network of privately held companies. We don't know who he owes money to, and we don't know who is paying him. He has installed his children and heirs to manage his company even while they serve as top advisers to his transition. Given everything we know about Donald Trump and everything we don't know, I was alarmed by the words of senior leaders from both the progressive and centrist wings of the Democratic Party regarding their openness to working with Donald Trump on infrastructure. Under ordinary circumstances, we would welcome a plan to invest in America's infrastructure even if that plan came from the other side of the aisle--especially if it came from the other side of the aisle. But Donald Trump is not an ordinary politician. He is a con artist. He has refused to give the American people reason to believe that he is not in this to enrich himself. In fact, he has bucked tradition by maintaining his family's interest in a private corporation. Unfortunately, his infrastructure plan is really a privatization scheme.

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