Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday from the Senate floor that President Donald Trump was bringing America “closer and closer to a banana republic.”
Schumer said, “Emboldened by the refusal of Senate Republicans to hold him accountable in his impeachment trial, President Trump has been interfering with the Justice Department and retaliating against officials in his administration who dared to testify truthfully before Congress. In the short week that we have spent in recess, the president has managed to plunge our country even deeper into chaos and certainly, certainly has shown the need for having a trial enduring with impeachment with witness and documents for getting the truth and not rubber-stamping President Trump’s behavior. The president continued to purge his administration firing officials who refuse to pledge allegiance to the president over their allegiance to the Constitution. The president classified Bolton’s book in another blatant attempt to cover up the facts. This is what dictatorships do. Dictatorships they say something as classified to hide the truth. It’s a disgrace.”
He continued, “The president continues to abuse the pardon power. In one instance, commuting the sentence of a notoriously corrupt former official without rhyme or reason. Maybe most egregious of all, the president angered that the director of National Intelligence has the gall, the gall, to conduct a bipartisan briefing for the House Intelligence Committee on foreign interference in our elections. And replaced him with a political lackey—a yes-man—as the head of DNI, where truth must be spoken probably more than in any other place in the government. He has no experience in the intelligence community and is simply known as an acolyte to President Trump.”
He added, “With each of these actions—I hate to say it, but it is true—any objective person will know President Trump brings our nation closer and closer and closer to a banana republic. A government not of laws, but of one man.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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