Video: Sen. Mark Warner Says Trump “has introduced chaos at a level that even makes the first term look organized”

See below for video and a few highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s press availability today. Obviously, there’s a LOT to cover, and almost none of it is good in any way. Very disturbing…

• “Welcome to day 10 of the Trump Administration. I think President Trump won this election because he was going to bring down grocery prices and he was going to try to lower costs. Instead, he has introduced chaos at a level that even makes the first term look organized. Since Monday, when he late at night, with no warning, put in effect a freeze on all federal spending, everywhere across Virginia there have been concerns…from the folks who work on roads and bridges …the domestic abuse center…Head Start organizations all across the state, Meals on Wheels…The idea that you’re going to freeze funding for 90 days means a lot of these operations are going to have to fire a lot of folks, they don’t have the ability to fund themselves.”
• “And it’s remarkable to me that we don’t hear more from, we’ve heard from a lot of the Democrats in state government, I would hope we’d hear from everybody else that all of the federal funds that pass through the state government into local programs those appear to be frozen as well.”
• “Then we had an hour ago, we got this tweet saying, hey, we screwed up, we got to rescind, we’re going to think about it some more. Then 30 minutes later, we got this tweet from the White House press secretary. I don’t have the foggiest idea, since this one says, no the freeze is still in place. This is chaos on steroids!”
• “I can tell you as somebody who ran a business, this is not a way to run the most important enterprise in the world – the American government.”
• “Then on top of that, if that wasn’t enough fodder for day eight, I guess day nine yesterday, late in the afternoon, the administration puts out this *supposed* offer to have everybody who wants to quit and get paid till September 30th. One, we don’t know if that’s legal. Two, there’s no money for that in the budget. Three, what would we do if at air traffic controllers, where we’re already 2,000 fokls short, have another couple thousand air traffic controllers all say, fine, I’m going to take the money and not work for the next six months. We’d have an air traffic emergency.”
• “You know, one of the things that’s hit a lot of Virginia and a lot of Americans, the price of eggs keeps going up. Well I can tell you, if everybody who works on trying to  contain the bird flu who are federal health inspectors in terms of animal safety, if they all quit, you think egg prices are high now, see what egg prices would be in two weeks? Or do we really think it’s good if all the federal employees who are doing salmonella inspection all quit at the same time?”
• “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. President Trump’s pick for the OMB that’s supposed to control all this or run this process, he was the author of Project 2025 that Trump said repeatedly, don’t believe any of that, not interested in that. Well, Russell Vought, who I questioned in committee about a week ago, said and I quote, he wants to ‘traumatize’ the federal workforce; he wants to make them wake up every day thinking they’re villains. Well, I can’t think of anything more traumatic than what our federal workforce has been going through. And again, it’s not some faceless bureaucrat; this is the person that keeps you safe in the air…who inspects your milk and your and your eggs…it’s a person who provides health care for somebody in a community health center.”
• “This is remarkable. So you’ve got this offer that you don’t know will be honored. You have the potential of a whole lot of folks quitting. And I would say to my federal workforce, if there’s ways to make it more efficient, count me in; wholesale bad management practices, offering people a buyout that we don’t know if it’s legal, if there’s any money. You talk about I’m afraid of is anybody that says, well, I’m going to take the offer, and then you end up the offer not being honored, you’ve got a big target on your back in terms of future RIFs. Let’s face it, this guy is trying to stiff the federal employees just as he stiffed all of the private contractors who he never paid in his private business. This is not what America voted for it’s not what we need to do if we’re going to maintain a more efficient government that provides services that are essential. And I just wish some of my Republican friends at the state level, the federal level everywhere would step up and say this doesn’t affect just red states or blue states, it affects the whole United States – and this will have draconian effects on people’s lives.”
•   “Listen, I don’t want immigration officials going into churches and schools without any constraints. I think it’s bad policy, I think it will will interrupt kids ability to learn or folks’ ability to worship….Making sure that people who have who have broken the law, there ought to be a path the deportation, even supported that piece of legislation recently. But this kind of wholesale effort to intimidate folks where they pray or where they learn is over the line…Undocumented folks who’ve broken major laws, that’s one category; going into people’s churches and schools I think is a beyond the line.”
• “Listen, I’ve voted so far for four of President Trump’s nominees. I’m trying to give everybody a fair look. I believe these hearings are a job interview. I’m not going to vote to  confirm Robert Kennedy – because one, he didn’t have a basic understanding of even how the funds that flow into our health care system work…didn’t understand anything about community health centers, didn’t understand how many state health care programs will be affected by this federal dollar freeze, I think that’s disqualifying. I think the fact that he is a constant critic on Medicaid when literally hundreds of thousands of Virginians, most vulnerable, receive Medicaid, and candidly a lot of our seniors who are in nursing homes of middle class parents are on Medicaid as well. You freeze that or go against Medicaid, you’re going to have real problems…in terms of over half of Virginia abortions are performed with the abortion pill mefipristone; the fact that he wants to go against 42 studies proving its safety and efficacy and that he’s just going to follow whatever Trump says is disqualifying. And again, when when I asked him, he had said publicly he wants to get rid of 600 people at NIH, he told me in my office I asked him,  I think it was 2,200 folks – he had no idea where he was going to cut. Is he going to cut people, the researchers at NIH just because they work on vaccines that he doesn’t like? Are they going to cut the folks who work on our community health centers, federally sponsored community health centers? Where are those folks going to turn? So I’ll be voting against Mr. Kennedy. And again, I think anyone who observed that hearing. I like what Mr Kennedy has said about trying to end chronic health [problems], if he’d stayed in that lane. But all of these other issues around vaccines, around how we would cut back some of our researchers and how we would choose which vaccines, that he would fire folks not on or not, his lack of understanding about how the federal government actually delivers health care outside of Medicare and Social Security means that I’ll be a no.”
•  “I’ve said going in to my meeting with Tulsi Gabbard, I had questions. I have questions coming out. And the amount of press reports, much of which I’m aware of that have come out just in the last 48 hours, is overwhelming. And it is remarkable that even the Wall Street Journal, who’s very conservative, questioned her ability to oversee the 18 different intelligence agencies that make up our intelligence community. And remember, we have the best intelligence forces in the world, but we also are supplemented by our allies all over the world. And the notion – and I’m going to raise some of these questions tomorrow – the notion that we would put somebody in charge of those agencies that thought Edward Snowden is a hero, I’m not sure…how would our allies trust to share information with us going forward. So I’ve got an awful lot of questions, I’ve got an awful lot of concerns, there are a whole host of issues, and I think those issues will be raised fully and broadly tomorrow in the committee.”
• “Listen, we’ve not been able to get the answers as the United States Senator; Tim Kaine and I are working very closely together on this. If we can’t get answers, how can that air traffic controller, how can that individual who works at the Department of Education or how can that individual who is a  park ranger in the Shenandoah Valley make a decision? There’s a question whether you can even legally the president can do this across the whole workforce; it’s never been done before. The question of where the money is going to come from. And this trying to rush people, scare people, intimidate them into making a choice. I said it before, I’ll say it again – I think he’s trying to stiff the federal workforce the same way he stiffed contractors who worked for him on all the failed Trump properties around the country. And our federal workforce deserves better. I mean, there are laws in place in terms of severance packages and healthcare benefits have been negotiated. Is all that out the window? Is rule of law really going to be just dispensed with when it comes to our federal workforce?…The only thing I can think this is is back to Russell Vought, Project 2025, let’s traumatize the federal workforce let’s villainize them…It’s stunning, both the breadth and the audaciousness of this, particularly when there’s nowhere in the the budget that would even approximate where these dollars are coming. And you think the American people are going to want to pay folks to not work for the next six months? You know, maybe this works in the tech world, but it’s not like the tech world – and I say this is a former technology guy – it’s not like the tech world employees are the ones making sure that you climb on an airplane it’s going to be safe or making sure  the eggs you eat or the or or the chicken you eat  are going to be safe. Again – not legal, no money and unfortunately Mr. Trump has a record of stiffing anybody in business transaction after business transaction.”
• “Which piece of paper you want to believe? The one that says we’re rescinding it?…or this one, two or three lines, no guidance, or the one that says no never mind?…I’m sorry just you know as a business guy…this would never be the way to operate. When I was governor of Virginia was named best managed state. If I’d pulled these antics when I was governor, Virginia would be in the bottom five…Obviously, there is the  court hold, but that only goes to Monday. My fear is that Mr. Vought, who I’m definitely going to vote against, who is the architect of most of this activity, who thinks we ought to traumatize our federal workforce…they’re hitting everybody, they’re going after kids, they’re going after old folks, they’re going after folks in domestic violence centers. We’re going to rally, but I’ve got to tell you, we’ve got to have our Republican friends and colleagues step up – I know some are saying, well we want to be quiet in terms of pushing back. I don’t think this is an Administration that’s going to respond to quiet activity. And the thing about these orders are they didn’t just hit blue states, they hit all states; they didn’t just pick some programs, they hit all programs…”
• “Again folks, you like me…people all over the country are wondering what’s the plan – which of these do you believe or what do you believe? The fact is, for a lot of folks, the one thing they didn’t like about the first Trump term was chaos. It feels to me like this level of chaos at day 10 of this new administration maybe even exceeds some of the worst weeks of the first term. We’re going to stay at it, and I just appeal again to Republican members across the country – your folks are going to get hurt as well, those folks are concerned about air traffic safety, what happens if all the air traffic controllers or group takes these buyouts...This ought to be something that should not be partisan or regional; we ought to say, yeah, find efficiency, fine; create chaos or traumatize the workforce, that’s not a good business practice.”