Video: Sen. Mark Warner Says He’s “horribly disappointed with the VA Supreme Court decision”; “there’s one set of rules for Democrats, another set of rules for Republicans”

After several weeks of not holding his weekly press availability – understandably – following the tragic death of his daughter Madison, Sen. Mark Warner talked to reporters for nearly 40 minutes this week. See below for video and a few highlights (bolding added by me for emphasis).

• “First let me start with a a piece of good news: tomorrow, after days at sea, the aircraft carrier Ford and carrier strike group is going to finally return to Hampton Roads. Our military is the best in the world. They have been extraordinarily professional. But this deployment of the Ford, it’s the longest deployment in modern Navy history. And why?  You know, the carrier was in the Middle East, then it was over in Venezuela, then it was brought to the Middle East, back again on the Iran war. We’ve seen a fire break out on the Ford that eliminated…literally the beds for the sailors. We saw plumbing problems. You don’t put out a carrier in their strike crew for this long a time when you plan for much shorter deployment. So I want to welcome the sailors back to their families. I do want to note this. I’m looking forward after they’ve had a bit of time with their families to sit down with those sailors and their families and hear how it was what was – the strain,  you know the notion that they were deployed for a long time the Middle East to waiting on the president to feel when it’s in his ‘bones’ to declare victory over Iran, that is not treating our military with the respect they deserve. And I’m going to be very curious to see how many of these professionals we lose because the extended time on this deployment.”
• “This is the kind of of lack of transparency, lack of plan that has been run rampant through President Trump’s  term, not just in the V.A. but across a whole host of domains. So  we expect to get answers. Our veterans deserve better and I again tend to be sitting down with them and getting the answers on what was the mode of determining what positions are getting eliminated and what is that going to do to level of care.”
• “We’ve asked the GAO, and their study confirmed that these [black lung] benefits don’t go far enough don’t provide the level of care, and increasingly with the silica that is that these miners are exposed to this becomes a death sentence and a death sentence that literally in some cases takes years, as black lung penetrates into younger and younger miners. This is not fair or right.  And again this comes from the president who said he was going to bring back mining and protect miners.  Literally his administration was one the one that stopped some of the extensiveness of making sure that silica was was actually covered. We now have the data that’s showing these miners and their families are not being treated fairly. I’m going to continue to work on advancing my legislation to make sure these miners get the benefits they’ve earned and they’ve deserved.”
•  “…couldn’t do this without the without commenting about the president’s completely ill-advised plan of spending a billion dollars on his vanity project in the ballroom. You’ve got to wonder if Americans are scratching their heads when they see gas at $4.50 a gallon, and the president wants to take a billion dollars of taxpayer money to build out his ballroom that was supposed to be paid for entirely with private donations. This is morally wrong. It is policy-wise wrong. And so I did a little bit of analysis and you know what would a billion dollars buy you  here in Virginia? Well, it would take care of about 2/3 of the people who lost their health care out of the affordable tax care tax credits. We could pay for those tax benefits tax credits for two thirds of the people who lost their healthcare for a full year. That would be extraordinarily significant. We could pay for I believe up to five years for folks who lost their SNAP benefits, food benefits for the folks coming out of the president’s big ugly bill. And…that billion dollars, some of this is being said could be used for security and so forth. Well, that billion dollars could pay for five years of the COPS act benefits that go to police departments all over the country to actually make sure law enforcement is equipped with the tools that they need to enforce the law. No, we didn’t spend those public monies or they’ve not asked to spend those public monies on cops or on health care or on food benefits. They want to spend it on the president’s ballroom. It is morally wrong. It is policy-wise wrong and I’m going to do everything I can to stop it in its tracks.”
• “I’m now part of a a group that  nobody wants to be part of a club where a parent buries a daughter. And  the only thing I’ll say is that my daughter was a fighter and you know in the last few years she really came to appreciate my job and urged me on, she always say dad you got the power try to try to make things better. And whatever’s left of my public service career, and I’m obviously in the midst of asking Virginia to hire me one last time, I’m going to stay true to that admonition.”
• “…we are on that precipice of an absolute energy crisis. And you know, even if the Strait opens tomorrow, we’re talking months, if not years, before we bring back stability. And the oil markets, all of the reserves have run down. And what makes matters even worse is if there was a reopening of hostilities, you could then have coming out of Yemen the Houthis literally close the passage that goes up through the Suez Canal. There’s another strait similar to the Strait of Hormuz, and you could shut down total oil supply from the Middle East. And that would affect, you would wish then for $4.50 cent gasoline. You could see $6, $7, $8, $9 gasoline. You would see all of our costs across all consumer goods go up because 80% of the goods that go to our stores are delivered by trucks and that runs on diesel fuel with the prices are already at record highs. You’d see aluminum prices which have already skyrocketed. And while America still would have some production, many of our partner countries around the world, their economies would potentially crumble because they wouldn’t have the fuel to operate. So this is what happens when you start a war of choice and you don’t have a full plan. And the irony here is going to be, you know, as the president determines what’s next and he’s not accomplished any of his goals. Obviously, the Iranian leadership is still horrible. There’s not any plan on the enriched uranium. They still have plenty of missiles left and the strait is closed. You could see him try to, you know, declare victory and move out and end up, the great irony would be end up back with the similar arrangements that we had during the JCPOA when there was at least some ability to observe Iran’s nuclear capabilities…which got taken away when he ripped up that agreement. But I’ve I’ve heard rumors that they’re they’re talking about bringing that version back and calling it a different name.  So we’ll see. But this crisis is already partially baked in.  But as the reporting is correct,  we go a few more – I’m not going to specify the period of time – but it’s it’s not months and months.  We go a bit longer and you’re going to see these reserves run out and you could have not only record-high energy prices, but you could see a a meltdown in the financial markets.”
• “Listen, I was horribly disappointed with the Virginia Supreme Court decision,  particularly in light of the fact that people in Virginia voted. And to see at the same time, states like Louisiana, where they literally started the voting and then stopped it, states like Tennessee, Florida, where their state constitutions prohibit this kind of mid-district mid-decade redistricting and their state supreme courts frankly just lying down and letting the legislature and the effort to kind of tip the balance in Congress run rampant? And to have all this come on top of a Supreme Court decision that kind of knocked part of the legs out of the Voting Rights Act. You know, there is clearly in my mind there is one set of rules for Democrats and a different set of rules for folks who support President Trump. And you know, remember Virginia…we’ve got a very challenged history  on race in Virginia. We’re one of the last states to have ‘massive resistance’ well into the 1960s where schools stayed closed. For Virginians of color, frankly, for Virginians who care about a fair and equal society, it’s been kind of a gut punch. I’ll be anxious to see whether the NAACP’s lawsuit is heard by the Supreme Court. I hope the Supreme Court would would hear it. But I will comment on this…if they don’t,  I’m going to turn try to turn out as many voters as possible. If you want to express your disapproval,  we’ll have a chance to do that come November.”
• “Did you also hear the president recently said he might make Venezuela the 51st state? It’s like, on the one hand he tries to cut back on Latino immigrants everywhere and now he’s suggesting Venezuela as the 51st state. Where’s the plan? Obviously, we see what’s happened with the Iran war when there was no plan and he’s gone oh for four on any of his goals and we’re looking at a record energy crisis. In Cuba, we were told that the CIA director, Radcliffe, was going there. I’ve not had a briefing yet. That falls into my purview on the intelligence committee. I wish we would have been briefed ahead of time. I expect to get a briefing and update next week. But we keep sending mixed messages. You know, on one day we want regime change, on the next day we’re sending top officials. It would be ironic, as I mentioned earlier, if we end up with Iran back to where we were under President Obama with JCPOA, and we end up with reopening some relations with Cuba and we’re back to where we were with President Obama. Now, he’ll have to call it all different  but that could be the outcome. And I will add one other comment. The crisis with the Cuban people is extraordinary.  Cuba’s going through what quite honestly the rest of the world may go through if we run out of oil reserves…So you know, the United States has offered to bring humanitarian aid and distribute through the Catholic Church. I wonder whether that was discussed with these meetings. But when you start these paths, you’ve got to have a plan. You’ve got to have a plan. And so far, , and as the vice chair of the intelligence committee, I sure as heck would have hoped that I would have had some idea of what this administration’s plan is for Cuba, and I don’t.”
• “Well, there is from many of our Republicans kind of a burn-down-the-house approach. And let’s again remind everyone this only started because Donald Trump demanded that Texas change its laws and rules. And in every state that has been redistricted towards the Republicans, the voters didn’t have a single say. It was done by a legislature, oftentimes violating their own state constitutions, with no state court appearing to have the gumption to stand up for their own laws.  And it has been a bitter taste that it feels like coming out of from the Supreme Court to how many states are addressing this, there’s one set of rules for Democrats, another set of rules for Republicans.”
• “I continue to be concerned about the president or people in his administration trying to  interfere with the elections this fall. I continue to reach out for example to retired intelligence professionals, retired law enforcement, retired military to ask them whether they will stand up if we see illegal actions or where I’m particularly concerned somebody like Director Gabbard coming out with a nonvalidated piece of intelligence and claiming some foreign interference and that being used as a justification to bring  troops or ICE or other to the polls. I can tell you that the regular suspects, we finally did get a briefing – Russia, China, Iran – have misinformation and disinformation campaigns planned for federal elections this year. You will see these come out, I believe, later in the campaign season. And with the powers of AI, this will make what happened in 2016 look like child’s play. And we have seen literally at the FBI and the ODNI a complete dismantling of all the election protection efforts that were set up. And remarkably, most of them were set up during Trump’s first term. And you know, Chris Krebs, then director of CISA, said safest election in American history, and he got fired for that. But there were good provisions set up. We did get a piece of good news that the NSA the General Rudd, who’s a new appointee, is going to stand up the election security unit there. And again, remember NSA is only looking at foreign interference – they do not do anything domestic…The balance, the ODNI and the FBI, they’re going the opposite direction. It does appear the NSA, we’re going to monitor this, you know, is moving in the right direction. But we need to be on guard. And again, you don’t have to, as I you you and I have talked about this before…reporters don’t have to take my word for it. Look at what the president has said about the fact that Republicans should take over the counting in different locations, and he he’ll do everything possible to make sure it’s a safe election by his terms. This is an administration that has shown, you know, the irony is I almost fear more from activities and individuals in the administration then in certain ways I fear from the foreign adversaries.”
• “I’m a strong supporter of of animal rights. I mean, I’ve got a 100% rating, I believe, from the Humane Society. And I was very proud of the fact that we saved those 5,000 beagles and that some of those beagles ended up on the Puppy Bowl on Super Bowl Sunday. And I’ve recently introduced additional legislation to try to guarantee safety of dogs, puppies in some of these testing regimes….I don’t have an official line of what should just be state versus local versus federal, but I think if there are, the case with the Envigo, they actually crossed state lines because they were doing testing that went beyond, they’re a national company that had a branch in Virginia, so clearly there was a federal role. I don’t know enough about specifically about the case you’ve got in Southside. But I think people expect elected officials to step up when they hear stories of cruelty or hear stories that seem to go against our basic values and morals as Americans. Now, I know that’s a a line that is different for various folks. So, I’m not going to weigh in on the Southside case, but I’m very proud of what we did for the beagles in the Envigo situation.”