See below for video and some highlights from today’s media availability by Sen. Mark Warner.
- “Yesterday morning, after taking way too much time, there was finally a deal reached to avert a government shutdown and also to make sure particularly for our fellow Virginians in southwest Virginia they would get the disaster relief that they’ve been patiently waiting for for months. And now you’ve got the most inept Keystone Cops Republican House leadership that couldn’t do a one-car funeral, as opposed to putting the bill up, basically saw that deal completely unravel when the richest man in the world started tweeting out just plain untruths about what’s in the deal. And I should remind you Elon Musk has more followers online than Donald Trump. And then you got Donald Trump, JD Vance coming in and killing it… I can’t think of a more cruel, heartless, stupid maneuver a few days before Christmas. And we are going to feel this in Virginia [at an] unprecedented level.”
- “As early as Monday of this week, we still thought the absolute stupidity of a shutdown was not going to happen. And listen, I had a career in business before I was in politics. I’ve done a lot of deals. I know Donald Trump says he’s a dealmaker. Well you don’t do a deal and then renege, which is what happened at the 11th and a half hour. You’re playing with people’s lives, you’re playing with a level of economic uncertainty. And to do this literally four or five days before Christmas and Hanukkah, is this what we’re going to see, kind of governing by chaos, for the next four years? And I go back again to the so-called House leadership, which may be an oxymoron in terms of leadership, for them to allow this to happen and then kowtow and walk away from something that was their deal, now leaves us all straining a little bit. And the remarkable thing again about the House…the fact that the so-called House leadership still listens to a whole group of Maga Freedom Caucus, way-out-there folks who are never going to vote for any budget, and yet they still dictate terms? I thought I’d seen it all… this is why Virginians and Americans lose faith in their governing institutions when people act so irresponsibly and have so little value that when you actually shake hands on a deal that you’re going to honor that. And I’ve been doing business a long time – you know, this kind of behavior in the business world, I wouldn’t do business with the people again in this framework of our government, though you can’t choose who you got to do business with. We’ve got to get government funding and keep the government open. But that path forward as of 12:35 on Thursday is very unknown, because you just can’t trust anything coming out of at least the House Republican leadership at this point.”
- “Mr. Musk is a very successful business person, I have great respect for that business skill. But some of the things he was tweeting yesterday just were not true. And is that the way he and Donald Trump are kind of co-governing now?…This was the Speaker’s deal. The rules of the Senate are that these funding deals have to start in the House. The Speaker is the leading figure, it is a Republican majority. How do you do any agreement if they’re going to renege five hours later?… I was with a lot of my Republican Senate colleagues last night, to say they were aghast would be an understatement. But we can’t even technically start the bill here, because it is a spending bill, you go back to the Constitution, it has to originate in the House.”
- “I’ve done this a long time, but it’s just cruel that anyone would think pulling the rug out from under the feet of people who worked in good faith to try to get a deal. And nobody liked the deal entirely, I got a lot of things that I didn’t like in the continuing resolution, but the art of governing is also the art of what’s possible and recognizing you’ve got to compromise.”
- “I’m confident that it is in the national security of the United States not to have TikTok ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. And the remarkable thing about that is 80% of Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate agreed. I’m confident as well that the appellate court that heard TikTok’s appeal unanimously said of COURSE Congress can pass a law – we don’t want to get rid of TikTok, we just want the ownership not to be in the hands of a nation that is an adversary. I wish I could say that with that overwhelming legislative backing, with the unanimity of the appellate court process, with the fact that actually the irony being Donald Trump was the first guy to acknowledge and educate Americans about this problem until he flipped his position, I would hope the Supreme Court and expect the Supreme Court to do the right thing. But I have been like now the vast majority of Americans, have seen our faith undermined in the ability of the Supreme Court not to be unduly influenced by political forces. And I pray they do the right thing because it’s in our national security [interest].”
- “I’d love to be able to sit here and tell you, you know, don’t worry, we’ve got it all explained. But part of it’s classified…I do believe the overwhelming majority – 90% plus, maybe 95% or 98% plus – of this are probably sightings of commercial aircraft or drones that have already been appropriately registered, but the slowness of the Defense Department to realize you’ve got, not going to call it a full panic but at least you’ve got folks understandably concerned, and not to kind of be more forward leaning is totally unacceptable.”
- “First of all, this is not an add-on – we *have to* do disaster relief. It’s nobody’s fault in Southwest Virginia that there was a storm of the century…so anybody would call that an add-on doesn’t understand the political process. Anybody that says it’s an add-on if you’ve had your SBA disaster loan approved, the Congress hasn’t filled up the bucket, it would be the height of irresponsibility not to do that…If the Speaker had rational heads, they should have gone ahead and finished the federal spending for the whole year, we’re already three months late. They say no we want to kick the can until President Trump comes in. And then you’ve got people saying, particularly on our Republican side, well gosh, we want to make sure there’s money to take care of farmers who will get hit by Trump tariffs. Remember Trump said tariffs are going…to be beautiful and perfect and it’s the most perfect word in the language, I think his words – this is a tax! It’s going to raise prices! So if you want to say, well let’s pre-position for this tax that will hit farmers, if you want to open up that add-on then yeah… This was happening because the House leadership wanted all these additional goodies and they want certain things, there’s a give and take, that’s called governing and the art of compromise. And the ineptness of the House leadership that then you know had the rug pulled out from under them and leave Americans if this goes to Friday night and the government shuts down five days before Christmas, just remember who brought this piece of coal under your Christmas tree.”
- “I would welcome a review of the last few years – there was the very famous Trump shutdown that lasted 35 days, find me any Republican that didn’t say that was the Trump shutdown. God forbid we go into a shutdown Friday night, find me any Republican at least privately that this is being caused by changing what had been agreed to by the Democratic and Republican leadership – find me anybody who will say rationally that’s not the cause of this… I would be happy to go through any of the tweets, many of the tweets that came out from Mr. Musk yesterday that are just factually not true…”
- “I think Hampton Roads would be Ground Zero for a government shutdown. I think it would be probably worse than not only any place in the state, but I’m not sure there’s any place in the country of a market size of two and a half million plus and if you go up the peninsula closer to three million people that are going to get…a kick in the gut. You’re going to have all of the private sector government contractors not being paid, you’ll have even our military will get paid but the civilian workforce will not – they will get back pay once the shutdown ends….Again I go respectfully go back to some of the earlier questions, let’s acknowledge there was a bipartisan deal that was made. Was it perfect? No. It would have passed until other forces intervened. And again, Hampton Roads is Ground Zero for government shutdowns…I know some people were saying let’s leave it shut down until Trump is inaugurated on January 20. That kind of comment shows a remarkable lack of fiscal understanding of how government works and is, again, it just comes down almost just cruel. Ground Zero. Hampton Roads.”
- “…there’s a lot of creativity on TikTok, I think that’s great, I love the fact that people can make a living as social influencers. But the absolute irony of the fact that it was Donald Trump who first said this was a national security concern. And you know his treasury secretary who worked very closely with had to convince ME...seeing how changing the algorithm can manipulate what what videos you see and when young people increasingly get all their news from TikTok, if anyone thinks that the Chinese Communist party is not willing and able to put out propaganda through that tool you wouldn’t get 80% of Congress to agree on anything like this unless there was solid evidence. And I think TikTok’s great as well, let’s make sure it’s not used as a way to collect information on Americans or as a propaganda tool. And again, President Trump, I’m looking forward to working with him where I can, but our competition with China in technology domain after technology domain is the issue of our time, and none of the national security concerns I have about TikTok have changed – if anything they have been increased.”
- “...like any responsible organization you don’t just turn off the switch at 12:00 on Friday night, particularly when you’ve got the safety of our country at stake in terms of air traffic controllers, the safety of our food in terms of inspectors, the ability to have our ships repaired and serviced, in terms of again our defense...The one thing I kept hearing from my Republican Senators, friends, said don’t worry Mark you know we’ll get through this one way or the other. I had dinner with a bunch of bipartisan Senators last night, everybody’s heads were spinning…And somebody said, well, this is political theater: this is NOT political theater, this is people’s lives! And let’s be clear, this was not the House Democrats, it was not the Senate Republicans, it wasn’t the Senate Democrats – three out of the four groups up here. We’re ready to adhere to the deal. Would people have voted no? Absolutely, some. But we would have still passed it and we could have gone through the holidays…”
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