See below for video and a few highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability. By the way, note that the “mainstream” media barely covers these things, even though a lot of times Sen. Warner says information, interesting, newsworthy stuff. It really shows you how pathetic the “mainstream” media is…
- “…you know the tragic news of Lindsey Graham’s passing...Lindsey and I disagreed on a lot of things. But you knew where he stood. He was passionate about advocating particularly for America’s role in the world and and he will be greatly missed.” (My comment: actually, Graham went from standing for things pre-Trump, even if one disagreed with him, to completely selling his soul to Trump after 2016, when Graham mostly just praised the “dear leader,” did what he was told, etc. There’s nothing to be “greatly missed” about that, and there’s nothing admirable about it; quite the contrary!)
- “One of the reasons this has been such a disturbing week to me is that tonight Donald Trump is going to address the nation on a question of election security which I have huge concerns about. This president has never been willing to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election. This president is obsessed with trying to relitigate the 2020 election, particularly his loss in Georgia. And as I’ve said repeatedly, my fear is he could use not intelligence analysis, but a single factoid, true or not, as an excuse to try to weaponize this year’s election, bring in ICE agents, shut down polling, try to resuscitate his SAVE act, which the American people don’t want, that frankly, eliminates voting rights. And every indication is is that’s where he’s headed tonight. And we need to hold them accountable. I would point out in intel 101 is that the intelligence community literally gets hundreds if not thousands of incoming bits of pieces of information every day and uh, their job is to analyze that and try to come up with conclusions. They often will represent a minority view. But one thing is true. While there may have been nations in 2020 that tried to influence using social media – Russia, Iran, China – elections, the full consensus was those influence activities had no overall effect. And then on the question of interference, where you actually try to get in and manipulate votes or you know actually change the results. there was no successful interference in the 2020 election. Now Donald Trump remember was in charge and his administration was in charge of the 2020 elections. And in the immediate aftermath the then head of the cyber security agency Chris Krebs said it was the safest elections in American history. That truthful statement earned his almost immediate firing. But I am very concerned about where Trump with his obsessiveness about refusing to acknowledge that he lost in 2020 and then trying to use executive orders or other things to undermine our nation’s democracy. And I appeal to Democrats, Republicans, independents alike. If you care about fair elections and free elections in our country this year, then I would expect you to take most of what President Trump say says tonight with a grain of salt, until it is proven or disproven otherwise. I never thought I’d have to make a comment like that about a president of the United States, but we have a long series of examples of his own words this year that that raises my concern level so high.”
- “The other issue that is obviously back on the front burner is the ongoing war, the forever war in Iran. Remember this is Donald Trump was going to end these forever wars. This is a war of choice. So, as gas prices tick up, as diesel fuel, which is already back up to $5 a gallon, and remember diesel fuels most of our trucks, trucks deliver most of our goods to the grocery store or other stores, that’s all going to be passed on to the consumer. So, with inflation rising, with the war restarted, even under President Trump’s own assumptions, he tried to start restart the 60-day clock on a war powers act, this is a war of choice. The American people don’t want it to take place. It’s what happens when you start a war of choice without a plan on how you finish. And you know, I’m going to continue to press this administration, one to end the war, but two, to come out with a plan on how we get ourselves out of this intractable situation with Iran. Remember again, none of the original goals, regime change, getting a hold of the nuclear enriched uranium, getting rid of Iran’s ballistic missiles or drones, or you know, making sure the Straight of Hormuz is reopened. None of those have been accomplished. And yet, we’ve spent literally close to $60 billion on military hardware. We’ve had 13 American soldiers lose their lives. Hundreds wounded. Ore standing in the world; pone of the things that struck me this was there was international polling coming out showing that now China is much more admired around the world than the United States. That is a travesty and in many ways I think it is brought about by this president’s foreign policy approach not only against our adversaries but candidly against our allies as well.”
- “This is important…attempts to influence elections is different than attempts to interfere with elections. Influence is, as you mentioned, social media. We saw a lot of that, for example, in 2016 with all of the Russian bot farms and troll farms, sending out false information. That level got more sophisticated as we got to 2020. And the intelligence community, that’s 18 different agencies, looks at all of this. They came to a conclusion around influence…And remember, many of these conclusions were were reached while President Trump was still president. A lot of this analysis was done from leading up to election day through the beginning of the year. President Trump didn’t leave office until January 20th of 202[1]. So these conclusions were drawn about by when he was still in charge. And the conclusions were one, Russia was the biggest attempt to in influence elections and they were trying to influence elections to [help] Trump in their efforts…Iran was the second biggest set of influence and that was to undermine Trump. And you may recall there was a hastily called press conference of the whole intelligence community a week or so before the 2020 election where there was indications that you was going to try to send out information somehow linking the Proud Boys, a far right-wing group with President Trump. The intelligence community’s conclusion on China was they were they had the capacity, but they didn’t choose to influence that much. And if there they didn’t have a candidate of choice, they were mostly just there to try to undermine confidence in our country’s elections. there was a dissenting opinion of the 18 different agencies that said no, China maybe did try to influence but even the dissenting opinion didn’t say it had any meaningful effect on the elections and I would point out that elections in 2022 and 2024 these same national powers international adversaries of America, and I include North Korea in that category as well, continue to try to influence this is something governments on the question of interference, you know, being able to interfere with election software, being able to change votes, being able, and there’s a theory that somehow China was able to bring in thousands, hundreds of thousands of undocumented Chinese to secretly vote, I guess mostly in Georgia. There was no indication of that, no indication of election interference. Same thing in 2022 and 2024 where Trump won with the exact same system. So this is a loser who can’t acknowledge that he lost in 2020. He’s obsessed about Georgia. And I would point out from Trump’s comments this year from saying he thinks we ought to federalize elections to his comments saying we ought to take over some Democratic cities, they must be rigged there, and interfere there, to his comments about saying he might bring ICE agents to the polls and this constant effort to undermine confidence in our elections. It’s baffling to me. The one thing that has been the hallmark of our democracy, this goes to your second point, is Americans trust in our free and fair elections and the traditional Republican point of view has been one of the reasons and I agree with this point of view that our elections are safe is that they are decentralized. They’re run by the states. They’re administered at the local level. We don’t have any central repository that could be interfered with. President Trump may make the claim tonight, well, China bought the voter file in Georgia. Well, every state you can get the voter file. I mean, every candidate in Virginia that runs statewide buys the voter file to try to send out information to influence voters. So this constant effort to undermine faith in our system, I believe it’s because he’s afraid that his policies this year are going to be soundly rejected by Americans of all political persuasions and he’s trying to set up and trying to get his hardest core supporters to not trust in the election when he gets his tail whooped come November. And that scares the dickens out of me because if he is successful at interfering in our elections and we have a corrupted election in [2026] in America, I don’t know how we ever put the pieces back together again. So I come back to where I started. I don’t care if you’re President Trump supporter, opponent, independent, please take whatever he says tonight with a grain of salt and let’s get it fact checked and verified. This is critically important.”
- “It takes years to equip a totally American jet to be Air Force One. You don’t put all the security precautions into these planes overnight. And this was rushed to meet this arbitrary timeline that the president said that he wanted to fly I guess before July 4th. Beyond the fact that why would you take a jet from a country that is at best a frienemy. So it’s outrageous. It’s unprecedented. On the question of somehow expanding the fence to cut off the public’s right to protest in Lafayette Square on the Ellipse under the guise of security. Do we really believe our nation is less
safe now from outside threats than through the midst of the Cold War or from the challenges we faced when terrorism was an all-time high after Afghanistan or Iraq? Or even when we’ve been involved in other wars in the Middle East? What’s different now? I think this is purely a
president that doesn’t want the American people to have their First Amendment right to protest. He doesn’t want to see it. He doesn’t want it at Lafayette Square. You saw that when he inappropriately brought troops into Lafayette Square and frankly somewhat disgraceful and the military acknowledged it was disgraceful. So he doesn’t want to hear or see anyone that that disagrees with him. And as we all know, for those of us as a Alexandria and DMV resident, this guy wants to make remake the nation’s capital in a way in his own image from ballrooms to changing the helipad to the reflecting pool to this outrageous effort to put a triumphal arch at the end of Memorial Bridge. It’s outrageous. And he is one by one eliminating all opposition. This is why again this is appeal is not on a partisan basis. This is an appeal to all of my Republican friends who’ve supported the president in his past and even if they support him still – limiting the public’s right to protest against this president and doubling or tripling the security perimeter around the White House without any proof or rationale is outrageous. And I just pray that my my Republican Senate friends, who I know love our country, will have the courage to stand up and push back.” - “What the president called the big beautiful bill, which I called the big ugly bill, cut SNAP benefits. It cut benefits for individuals that got the Obamacare tax credits. And in the most cynical way possible, will cut about 300,000 Virginiaians who receive Medicaid assistance after the election. So, we’ll look in to see if there is a a any emergency funding, but this is directly related to the bill that Tim Kaine and I and every Democrat opposed. This was all predictable and this president’s willingness to have any kind of compassion. The idea that in the richest country in the world, people aren’t going to be able to put food on the table or you’re getting rid of school breakfast, school lunches, and the ability to feed your family is outrageous. But that is part of the law that was passed and advocated by this president. We’ll see if there’s any emergency funding, but this is, and this is the irony, you know, Southside Virginia supported Donald Trump in overwhelming numbers, but they are going to bear the disproportionate burden of these cuts. And it’s it’s frightening and chilling.”
- “…President Trump tonight, remember, he has an obsession as well about the Dominion voting systems…Outrageous claims were made. You know, crazy claims about satellite interference or people breaking in. The claims were so outrageous and often repeated by Fox News that Fox News paid something like over $700 million in penalties for publishing slanderous comments. I fear tonight he may come back to his efforts to go after the Dominion voting machines. They’re now called, I think, Liberty Voting. And by executive order potentially, I don’t know this for a fact, try to prohibit them. They are in both blue and red states, but disproportionately in blue states. There are a variety of election vendors. For him to try to do this at the same time that you get rid of all of the election EAC, election administration coordinators, bipartisan, would completely throw chaos into this election. You cannot suddenly get rid of all of the voting machines in Virginia that we’re using right now as we go through the primary season and we start voting in Virginia in September with a completely defanged election administration…And the president by executive order can’t do this, but I wouldn’t put it beyond him that he would try. And that’s why if these things happen tonight, Americans need to take a deep breath and please don’t believe anything until it’s fact checked and verified.”
- “I think back in the 1970s a law was passed that maintained daylight savings time year round. It started being popular like 80% – that’s great more light at night especially during the summer. By the winter, the following winter when kids had to get up and go to school in the dark that support moved from 80% way down and the Congress at that point switched it back. I hate changing clocks myself but I do worry even though I would err on the side of more sunshine, the fact of what happens if kids have to go to school in the dark. So I’ve not taken a position I’m not sure it’s going to even get to the Senate. I know it passed the House. So we will see.”
- “…when I was governor, we had an even more extreme drought. We’ve got right now voluntary conservation efforts. When I was governor, we had mandatory conservation efforts and it made a heck of a lot of Virginians mad. Especially people who had individual wells. They thought you’re somehow taking their water. Well, no. If you got a well, it goes into the groundwater. And that is not just your water. That’s the whole community’s water. And I got probably more criticism, but we came out of the drought. What the federal government can do at at this point. What we could have done years ago is recognize that we’ve got rising temperatures and climate change and it’s getting hotter all the time and that is leading to more droughtlike conditions. And this is the effect when you change mother nature to the degree we have and we’re on record to have the hottest year on record in the last I think the five hottest years., three or four of them, in the last five years. The climate changes, the effects hurt the farmers, it hurts our ability to continue in past practices but it’s not like you know the federal government can suddenly command it to rain. In some strange way, and I’m not sure this is what we at all want, these massive wildfires that are taking place in Canada and now in in in Minnesota and elsewhere, the smoke and haze is going to come through to the east coast – that may lower the heat for a few days, but it’ll also make it probably so unhealthy you can’t get out go out. And with that lower heat, will that create some more short-term rain? This is not something you can turn on and off with a dime. And I know Governor Spanberger will ultimately have to make the decision. But whatever criticism she’s got right now on voluntary restrictions will get much worse if she goes mandatory. But I tell you, I had to do it back when I was governor. And by having mandatory, you preserve more of your water supply and people can’t wash their car as much or water their grass as much. And we get through it. But the big overarching issue is just the fact the climate is changing. It’s a heck of a lot hotter today all across Virginia than it was 20 or 30 years ago on a more regular basis.”
