Video: Referring to Gov. Youngkin’s Record Number of Vetoes, Sen. Mark Warner Says “When I was governor I had a 2:1 Republican legislature, but I found ways to work together…obviously other Governors take a different approach.”

See below for video and highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability, with continued heavy emphasis on “the onslaught from Trump, Musk and the chaos of this new Administration.” Along those lines, here are Sen. Warner’s opening lines:

“My understanding is President Trump is going to have his first full Cabinet meeting, with Elon Musk attending. It’s kind of interesting – one day, Elon Musk is virtually in control of the government with his DOGE efforts; the next day, they’re denying he’s even part of the government. Yet he’ll be sitting in on the Cabinet meeting today.”

Craziness. Not to mention completely corrupt. With that, check out the video, as well as additional highlights below the video…

• “I’ve partnered with my friend Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia on a piece of legislation called the historic rural tax credit program, which would allow us in a lot of rural communities to convert old schools, pre-existing buildings, using historic tax credits, into residences. The housing shortage is not just an urban or suburban phenomena, it is also the case in a lot of rural America, and trying to give that extra incentive using the historic tax credit is one tool for rural communities that I think is extremely important.”
• “We also have a piece of legislation that also is bipartisan as well that will allow for fill-in development. Many times we’ve got decaying housing and again, rural, suburban and urban, it may not pencil out to rehabilitate that housing on its own, but when you build in the fact that you’ve already got existing transportation infrastructure, when you’ve already got broadband, when you’ve already got water and sewer, this will incent some of that rebuilding of existing housing stock.”
•   “Back to…the efforts with DOGE. And listen, I’m all for government efficiency. And if the Elon Musk effort had come in and gone with any kind of strategy rather than wholesale cutting of the government workforce, I would be very supportive… One area where Musk is right but he’s going about it the wrong way is on improper payment to individuals who who’ve died. The truth is, years ago I passed a bill that became law that had the Social Security…master death file, that file be shared with the Treasury Do Not Pay file. That bill became law; it saved, I think, first few months about $30 million…”
• “I wanted to raise that we heard just yesterday from a V.A. family, somebody laid off in Salem outside of Roanoke. This was a younger V.A. employee, I believe that was on the probationary 2-year period, was about to start a family – his life is in total chaos at this point. And this is going to affect our veterans, I mean obviously not only in terms of V.A. personnel themselves being laid off, which will mean less services…”
• “I’d also quickly want to remind folks that as we lay off federal workers and fire federal workers literally with no cause, about 30% of our federal workforce are veterans. So once again, this is having a disproportionate impact on our veterans community. And this comes from an Administration that says it wants to support our veterans. So far they’ve done absolutely the opposite.”
• “And then finally, sitting in my position on the Intelligence Committee, it was I thought an embarrassing day for America earlier this week, when on the third anniversary of Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, the United States – along with Russia, North Korea, Iran, Nicaragua, a host of Russian allies around the world, it was literally about 12 or 13 – the United States voted with this cabal of evil to say Putin didn’t really invade Ukraine. It was an embarrassment in front of the literally 70 plus other members of the UN that told the truth and said no, we want to stand by Ukraine. This administration’s willingness to walk away from long-term alliances and think about the situation in Ukraine only as another real estate deal or a quick transaction I think will pay enormous challenges for years to come. I know it was at the Munich security conference a few weeks back I think I’ve briefed on that, but long-term alliances when you destroy those alliances or when you side with Russia in the UN against democracies, you can’t rebuild that overnight. And I believe that is making America less safe.”
• “So we’re, what, 40 some odd days into this new Administration. I said I expected a flood, I didn’t expect necessarily a tsunami. But we are fighting on a variety of fronts some of the illegal actions of the Trump Administration, trying to stand up for our workforce, at the same time trying to make sure housing..these traditional issues get addressed. And this is even before we grapple with the the bill that got through the House last night, a version got through the Senate, where the overall budget plan of the Republicans is coming out where they will cut government services, and particularly Medicaid, and frankly to provide tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. That’s just not fair, it’s just not right. And we’ll stand in the breach, but we need our Republican local elected officials state legislators and others to stand up for Virginia and stand up for the country as well.”
• “No…[Trump voters] didn’t vote for this. They voted because they thought Donald Trump was going to slow inflation and bring down grocery prices. He’s done absolutely nothing on those issues. Matter of fact, he’s spent more time trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America than he’s talked about the price of eggs. And I think people are starting to have buyer’s remorse. I think there was a Roanoke College poll yesterday that had the president’s approval rating at about 37% in Virginia. We’re seeing for example community health centers in rural Virginia shutting down because the illegal freeze of federal funding…the disaster relief money that was due to come into Virginia, we had about $3.7 billion, $660 million of that was to go to rebuild the Creeper Trail; we don’t know if that money is coming or not. I think not for the first time, Donald Trump sold a bill of goods to people that he’s not acting on. Instead, he is without rhyme or reason has empowered Elon Musk and these DOGE boys to come in and indiscriminately fire people without any review of their quality of their work. And communities across Virginia are going to feel it; I think we are kind of like Ground Zero, because we’ve got a lot of federal employees, we’ve got a lot of Defense contractors…So this is not what they voted for. What I’m hoping for, waiting for is when for Republican local elected officials state legislators, hopefully then members of Congress, will step up…So I think there’ll be blowback, I think the honeymoon is basically over…If there was a real willingness to partner to bring about efficiencies, count me in. But to come in and empower 22 year olds who have no idea what they’re doing to simply slash government workers…America is less safe and I think people who voted for Mr Trump are having second thoughts.”
• “There are huge concerns amongst our contractor community…They are particularly concerned that their contracts may be just cut uh without warning…People need to stand up and and speak out; I think there’s a number of our contractors who believe if they simply keep quiet and keep their head low, they can kind of get through this – I don’t think anyone is going to be spared…”
• “Listen, we want to see a ceasefire in peace in Ukraine. Mr. Trump claims he’s master of the deal. Well, if you’re going into a negotiation with someone as brutal as Vladimir Putin, what you don’t do is give into a lot of his demands before you start the negotiation. So the idea that the Trump officials are saying of course Ukraine’s going to have to give up territory, of course Ukraine is not going to be able to join NATO, Ukraine needs some security guarantees. And it’s been an embarrassment how he has undermined our long-standing alliance with our NATO allies and with Ukraine. Remember, Ukraine has lost 400,000 people killed by this brutal Russian invasion. And for Trump to simply undercut Ukraine is bad for American security. It means that our NATO allies are not going to trust us anymore. It’s good that they need to step up and pay more, I’m all for that. But if they don’t trust that we will stand by them, and so far it feels like Vladimir Putin has given up nothing, yet won from the Trump Administration a whole series of concessions with him giving nothing. So far Vladimir Putin has outdealt Donald Trump and made him look weak. And we look weak to the rest of the world when we join Russia, North Korea, Iran, Nicaragua, countries that are constantly opposed to us in voting in the UN to say that Russia didn’t invade Ukraine. That’s ridiculous and it was an embarrassment, particularly coming on the third anniversary of Putin’s brutal invasion. So we want to get to a peace agreement, we want to see Ukraine preserved, but I’m not sure we’re headed on that path… So far again I would give the Trump Administration a failing grade in giving concession after concession to Putin without getting anything in return.”
•  “…Until we can say to the DOGE boys, enough already, you’re doing irreparable damage…You know, the nature of government is the Democrats are in the minority and we can force amendment votes, but when everyone walks in lock step being afraid of Donald Trump and being afraid of Elon Musk, you’ll see these kind of job losses.”
•  “What we’re also hearing…is huge concerns from our military community about the purge of senior office officers that took place last Friday night, when the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs and other senior military officials were purged by the Trump Administration, where he’s now trying to put in Trump loyalists rather than people with with the, candidly, with the qualifications to serve in these major jobs…This is not business as usual, this is not just some traditional partisan food fight, this is literally undermining the security of our nation.”
• “It starts by not going about and firing FAA employees without any rhyme or reason. It starts with saying to our air traffic controllers where we’re already 3,000 short that we’re not going to put you under this probationary firing attempt that I think has been pulled back, but we can’t get straight answers. And remember, the tragedy that took place at DCA, there was a near miss yesterday…we saw the images yesterday at Chicago O’Hare where there was a near miss. You know, if the public loses faith in the safety of air travel, that will have huge ramifications to our economy. And there does not seem to be any transparency on how they are choosing which FAA employees to fire. And we are here hearing concerns about that. And again, these are things that once folks lose confidence in air traffic, you can’t flick a switch and bring it back; once you lose some of this expertise, you cannot bring it back overnight, these are not interchangeable jobs the way a coder would be coming out of Silicon Valley. The DOGE boys may say well, I can fire this coder and bring in another, have similar skills. You know, managing our our air safety is something that takes years of work and years of experience, and I think the administration is playing with fire. And I hope the transportation secretary answers our letter and becomes more transparent…”
• [Asked about Gov. Youngkin’s record number of vetoes] “When I was governor I had a 2:1 Republican legislature, but I found ways to work together. And that paid off for Virginians – we fixed our budget shortfall, we got named the best managed state in the country, we got named the best state for business in the country, Virginia’s schools from preschool to graduate school got named the best in the nation. And that came because I actually found ways to work with the Republican legislature. We didn’t always agree by no means. I was thinking back to some of the members of Congress who were Republicans who I think their job was to almost bash me every day. But that was part of their job. But we still found ways to work together I think that is what Virginians want, that is what Americans want. And I will stand on the bipartisan record I created as governor of Virginia, I think it put us an economic good standing. And obviously other Governors take a different approach.”