Video: At Glen Allen Town Hall Sen. Mark Warner Says Virginia’s 2025 Elections Will Be “Trump’s First Report Card”; If Dems Win Big, “That Message Will Be Received!”

See below for video (thanks to Aljanette Hall for taking it and sharing it publicly on Facebook!) and a few highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s town hall today in Henrico County (at Glen Allen High School). Lots of interesting things to say (bolding added by me for emphasis)…

• “‘Okay, we got a new president and we’ve got a new foreign policy. And here’s the plan on the new foreign policy – Russia is our friend and Canada is our enemy’. That wouldn’t make a Saturday Night Live skit! But in fact that is our policy.”
• “God knows the world does need strong American leadership – it needs American leadership that’s moral, that is economically strong, militarily strong. And one of the things that has always made us strong is the fact that our military is well respected, it is also non-political. Donald Trump is increasingly using our military as a political prop…”
• “How many of you either know somebody or are personally been affected by DOGE? obviously everybody in Northern Virginia, it was about the same 90% plus in Charlottesville…”
• “I will give you odds…that at least during the tenure that Elon Musk was there, that effort will end up *costing* the American taxpayer money.”
• “I saw this morning, this crowd wants to basically go in and sell all the electric vehicles the post office bought, at a deep discount by the way. If this god-awful mean-spirited cruel bill gets through, Virginia alone loses 21,000 jobs…I am going to do everything in my power to kill it.”
• “It is outrageous what has happened to our immigrant community…You can be for a secure border and still say it is absolutely wrong for ICE officials to grab people off the streets…”
• “As a former business guy, there is no business – American or foreign – that’s going to invest in America with this uncertainty about what the tariffs are going to be today, tomorrow, next week.”
• “Please keep your faith – we will find a way to get through this.”
• (Question: “Do you believe Senator that there is value in the Democrats and other opponents of fascism and ignorance of the rule of law in fundamentally re-engineering and redefining how the Democrats and others can get the message out and to get the understanding to the American people that this all has to change? We can’t continue down the road…it’s great to fundraise, it’s great to do these other things, but do you think there’s a value in just another way of getting the American people to take action to not end up in in the horrible mess that we seem to be going after?”) “Fair question, I knew it was coming, I’m sure it’s going to be the first one – when are you Democrats going to get your act together?…the short answer is of course, but the idea that we’re suddenly going to fix this with a three-word slogan; you know, I’ve been doing Democratic politics for a long time, I can remember Clinton’s first term and Obama’s first term, it’s the economy stupid and hope, but I can’t think of another Democratic time where there’s a three-word stuff frankly the Republicans do better with three-word slogans – make America great, no car tax…One of the things I want to try to do is make sure that I can help sort out and promote younger folks who can be part of this…I think we have to be more than just simply anti-Trump, particularly when it comes to [?] young people. I think we need a Democratic Party that is pro growth, it’s pro innovation, that recognizes that technology is here whether we like it or not and how do we grapple with it but not let it control us, and also acknowledge – and I say this with trepidation in this kind of crowd – where sometimes when we were in charge we became too regulatory…”
• “This is a great turnout. I just wish it was half filled with people under 35.”
• “I’ve just got to say, end of the day, I still think it’s important to…try to work with the folks that we don’t agree with. There’s not been anything done in the last seven or eight years under either the end of Trump or everything under Biden that I wasn’t intimately involved in, and they all started with bipartisan groups…I do think the way our system works, I’m going to just keep trying like hell to make sure those people find their voice so that we can turn back and not simply have to have all the bad things happening and then recreate after the fact.”
• “I’ve been doing this long, but I remember when the idea that you would go serve in government or as a contractor as a noble endeavor, and instead this administration basically treats everybody who does that somewhat like they’re chumps. I think that is wrong, I think we have to push back against it extraordinarily aggressively.”
• “…how we get our voices out; in the old days, 10 years ago, people still read the newspaper and watched TV news. They don’t anymore. So we have to reinvent ourselves through how we use social media; I’m doing as much social media as anybody in politics right now to try to meet people where they are. And frankly a lot of folks I found you’ve got to meet them not starting with politics but starting on another issue. I’d love to say that my biggest social media hit was some brilliant exposition…it was not, it was a really gross tuna melt I made…I’m trying to leverage that into getting on food blogs. Because I think again this is something that the other side did brilliantly and caught us asleep.”
• “We are behind on how we communicate. We need to be more forward leaning…with all the technology and other tools. And the idea, and this you got to give Trump credit, how this man who was born on third base with a silver spoon has turned himself into a victim, and somebody says I can relate. But we can either curse the darkness or get out and fight it…And part of what I’m trying to do is making sure particularly young people…have a totally different way to communicate, they’re not going to read the newspaper.”
• “I’ll probably ask you to hire me one more time, but…that will be my last time. And my goal will be to try to make sure there is that next generation. And I do feel like there are a lot of things… I didn’t know when I started, and there are a lot of ways I think I can help Virginia now.”
• Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA04): “I love being a legislator, I love Congress. Maybe one day I’ll seek a promotion, but I think I want to stay in Congress. I’ll serve where you all think I can best help you.”
• “…We completely screwed up on social media; if we’d put some guardrails on social media 10 years ago, our kids would be a hell of a lot better.”
• “…what is happening in Gaza, what is happening to the Palestinians is wrong. And the thing that is so disturbing to me, which leads me we go back to what I started talking about with Iran, there was a moment in time here if we could get to a ceasefire in Gaza, you could have actually had Saudi Arabia and other states in that region be actually aligned against Iran. Because let’s not also pretend that the Iranian regime is not horrible. What they do to their people – remember when there was a young woman in Iran who got killed by the religious police? So I don’t want to whitewash what is happening with Iran.”
• “…as a former governor, the idea that someone would call out my National Guard and put them in a circumstance where law enforcement wasn’t even looking for that is outrageous.”
• “I think at times that Democrats have not felt comfortable going to those communities. And I remember when I ran for governor, I got a lot of grief from the Democratic elites that I had a bluegrass band, because I sponsored a NASCAR team. No, I didn’t change my views, but I said I am not going to disrespect the culture. And the truth is there have been times when the charge against Democrats that…[?] elitists has had some truth to it. And until we can break that and say we want to meet Americans where they are, Virginians where they are, we’re never going to start being competitive in Mississippi and Alabama and Texas…Too many politicians don’t want to go someplace where it’s not simply an amen crowd…”
• “I don’t want to sound Pollyanish, but I do see there is a difference today than even three months ago, when law firms and businesses and universities are seeing that if you actually push back…”
• “Here’s the remarkable thing – if you’d asked that question [about whether we’re going to have free-and-fair elections going forward], January 25th of this year, I said “Oh come on, that’s way over the top. I don’t think it’s way over the top [now]. And we do need poll observers, we need people who work the polls in a nonpartisan way. I go back again in our community we’ve got to have folks who who will step up when it comes to the basic tenets of our democracy. So far the courts have held. So far the military…has held. But I think we got… do everything… to reinforce those institutions.”
• “Virginia is going to be viewed as Trump’s first report card. If Abigail, Ghazala and Jay win by a big margin, if we pick up additional seats in the House of Delegates, that message will be received. I know two Republican senators that literally, this was worse when Musk was still around, they had to hire personal security because they were going to vote against what Trump wanted; they didn’t have the money to do that. If some of this action doesn’t leave people off their butts to find their voice, then the scenario you talked about is much more likely. I’m not giving up. You shouldn’t give up. But we got to show up at the polls…”
• “I think the Tim Kaine war powers resolution is a much stronger and better tool…But in the interim what we’ve also got to do is demand…that this guy before he puts our people in harm’s way, because I can assure you the intelligence has not changed about Iran.. they have not moved towards bomb…so what is the the fact that would suddenly put us in that conflict? He has not given us that…but I do think the War Powers Act is the right way to go.”
• “I think the worm is turning…This gives me energy is because you’re here. You know, we live in the greatest country in the world. We should acknowledge that. Democrats should take back the flag, take back patriotism, take back the sense that we are a compassionate country that is about giving people their fair shot. I think we have for way too many times been reluctant to be patriotic in a traditional sense. And the flag is not something that Donald Trump gets to possess…Still, we are the only country in the world where people will literally put their lives on the line to break IN to America, to touch a little bit of what we take for granted every day. So I’m not going to give up or stop fighting, I’m not going to give up on trying to convince in their own freaking self-interest or their state self-interest some of the senators who I’m dealing with on a daily basis to to find that courage….”
• “And we have a chance… a more unique chance than virtually anywhere else in the country. Because the only state that’s going to be viewed as a report card on Donald Trump this year is the Commonwealth of Virginia…I can tell you, if we get a big margin, suddenly a lot of my Republican friends are going to get find religion.”
• “The thing that haunts me as much as anything – I know this country isn’t Trump’s image. I know this country we are a more decent people. But how much structural damage is going to get done before Trump implodes? How many countries in the world are never going to view America the same way? How much of that moral leadership that frankly the rest of the world…Some of those things even when you change policy, you can’t put back in the box. And I got to believe and this is where I’m saying yes it is important for elected officials to do their part, but it’s equally important that you all do your part. And part of that means having those conversations with people that don’t agree with us.”
• “I am not going to lose hope. I am not going to lose faith. Your presence here reconfirms that.”