Video: Sen. Mark Warner Says “I believe things will get better, but boy oh boy it has been a rough first quarter for America”

See below for video and highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability (bolding by me for emphasis of key points):

• “…the alternative realities that are taking place literally playing out on your screens. This was on full display yesterday…There was a cabinet meeting… bizarre would be an understatement. It was a cabinet meeting that would have been more appropriate coming out of North Korea than out of Washington DC….literally every cabinet member went around and had to pay accolades to the Great Leader and say how wonderful Donald Trump has been and will be.”
• “Well that’s one world. But in the real world where Americans and Virginiaians live, the results are absolutely counter. There’s never been an American president that at least in the last 50 plus years that has lost more popularity quicker than Donald Trump. We saw yesterday the economy for the first time in I believe four years literally shrunk in size. Awful economic news… the stock market for the first quarter has performed the worst since 1974. And that’s before we see the full effects of this completely misguided tariff policy where I hear from Virginia small businesses in particular how their businesses will be disrupted…And remember, these tariffs are taxes on American families. And in a rare moment of truthfulness yesterday Donald Trump said ‘Well maybe Americans won’t be able to buy toys for Christmas and only have two dolls and they may cost a few dollars more.’ It may have been the first honest comment by Donald Trump about what his policies are doing to the economy. Remember, the vast majority of Americans who voted for Mr Trump did so because they thought he was going to bring prices down. The opposite has taken place. Prices have gone up. He has literally burnt bridges with friends and allies around the world…”
• “And strangely enough the one country that didn’t get tariffed at all was Russia. This strange relationship between Trump and Putin frankly defies any kind of policy that any American president has had since the end of the Second World War.”
• “As I was walking in, I received news that a couple of reports have confirmed we’ll see that the National Security Adviser and his top deputy…are being either fired or resigning. This is something I’ve called for since the egregious misuse of classified information on the Signal chat that were information about American military efforts in the Middle East, were put on this unsecured commercial channel that frankly if it had gotten out and been captured by our adversaries, we very well probably would have lost flyers…Now it’s appropriate that Waltz is leaving, but what we really need to see is Pete Hegseth the Secretary of Defense resign as well. This is a guy who’s so incompetent and so unprepared for this job that literally he has the whole Pentagon in chaos and I believe is undermining the faith in that institution and undermining the morale of our troops all across the world. And I would remind folks as well this is a secretary of defense that strangely enough has his wife, his brother and his lawyer all on DoD payroll. How this is not kind of nepotism beyond belief…Hegseth needs to go. I believe…the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, needs to go as well. She repeatedly attacks and undermines the credibility of the intelligence community workforce, usually on right-wing media and almost on a regular basis. I’ve never seen a director of
  national intelligence appear on media as many times as she has literally in the first 100 days. And again these comments not only in many places are unfounded, but they are undermining the credibility and the morale of the intelligence workforce.”
• “As the former chair and now vice chair of the intelligence committee, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t hear from the men and women who help defend our nation as members of the intelligence community that aren’t feeling that they are under attack, that their credibility and work product is being questioned on a regular basis. And we’re seeing our country become frankly less safe because of this…If we really want to make America safer we need a defense secretary and a director of national intelligence that can actually earn the respect of the men and women who serve to protect our country. So Waltz has gone if these press reports are correct. Hegesth should go and should have been fired or resigned earlier…”
• “So I think the American public is seeing what’s happening,  the fact that in the polling yesterday, literally half of Americans gave Trump a failing grade already. Again, no president has seen their popularity slide as quickly as Mr. Trump.“
• “…there’s also been reports and we’re trying to investigate
  this, that some of the countries who have been trying to seek tariff relief have been directed as they come to Washington to go visit Elon Musk and his DOGE efforts. Why you would have to go see Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, to see if you can get tariff relief? What what does his DOGE effort have to do with tariffs? Well, it appears there have been reports that these countries are basically being almost extorted to be required to sign up for Mr. Musk’s satellite services if they want to get any kind of tariff relief and that some of these activities are literally taking place from Mr. Musk’s office in the White House. We need to run this to ground. But if if this is true will this finally be the kind of gross corruption in plain sight that you might expect from some third world country but you would not come to expect from the United States of America.”
• “…the chaos and in some places just plain cruelty that is coming out of this administration is is breathtaking in its scope.“
• “I spent a week in Southwest Virginia during the break and  that part of the Commonwealth supported Mr Trump at record levels, and I heard from virtually every community huge concerns about some of these Trump policies.”
• “The only way Trump has been able to put these tariffs in place in the first place because it is literally Congress’s responsibility in the Constitution to do trade policy and to impose tariffs. Trump has declared these national emergencies, and in the case for example of Canada, the Senate agreed by majority vote that there was not that
  kind of emergency with Canada. I think the same will play out on the overall emergencies that are being used to declare these tariffs, particularly on our allies around the world. It was
  unfortunate that two senators were not present yesterday…so when they return, we’re going to try to find a way to bring this back up on the floor of the Senate. And this is one of the areas I can tell you, I probably spoke to a half a dozen Senate Republicans yesterday who voted against the resolution but were hoping it would pass. Time and again from my Republican colleagues, whether it’s tariffs, whether it’s this gross mishandling of classified information or the firing of the NSA general where my Republican friends particularly those who serve on the intelligence committee have said ‘Gosh this is awful what Trump is doing and what this administration is doing.’ And they they privately privately commend me virtually every day to say ‘Mark keep making this case.’ Well I hope and pray for the sake of our country that they will stop giving me private reassurances or private assurances to Tim that he’s doing the right thing and find their voice, find their courage. If they really believe these things, don’t tell me privately, stand up on the floor of the Senate and vote your conscience. I believe that will come as the president’s numbers continue to decline. But it’s been pretty disheartening for this first 100 days that many of them have been fearful because not only the retribution that Trump tries to extract on anyone that goes against him but also candidly the ability of Elon Musk with his 200 million followers to literally threaten people. I’ve had a couple Republican senators who’ve had to hire personal security for their families because they have been attacked by Elon Musk on his Twitter account. That leads the crazies to take action threatening families. And again this is not a hypothetical; think about what happened just a couple
  weeks ago during the first night of Passover, when an individual in Pennsylvania firebombed the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion. And I believe these actions are incented by oftentimes some of the commentary that takes place on social media and a lot of this generated by Elon Musk.”
• “…China feels they have the upper hand at this point; China believes that they can withstain the pain of tariffs longer than America. And by the virtue of what Trump has done, by putting these tariffs on so many of our allies…what Trump’s actions are doing are literally pushing countries that had moved away from China to go ahead and actually do more trade with China because they believe that China is a more stable and reliable partner than the United States of America. Just let that sink in for a moment – that China is a more reliable partner and a more stable partner than the United States of America. And some of this damage can’t be undone even if we see, as I expect we will, reversals by Trump as he realizes that these tariffs are cutting into America’s purchasing power and going to raise prices…”
• “I’ve had conversations with the new prime minister of Canada. His view about America has changed dramatically…who could imagine Canada as an enemy? But it’ll be a long long time before our neighbors to the north, the Canadians, will buy American products the way they used to. So some of this damage can’t be reversed…So there’s a reason that basically half of the Americans gave Trump an F, a total failing grade, for his first 3 months in office.”
• “…These federal workers in many areas, if you are an air traffic controller or an FAA expert, there’s not a lot of similar jobs in local government or state government…It’s cruel, it doesn’t save money and we are getting more data out alread that that so far even if you look at Musk’s claims that about $150 billion in savings, now a lot of that data has been  rebutted, but it’s already been documented as well that his actions have cost the American taxpayers about $135
  billion in shutting down programs and then having to rehire people in terms of the kind of chaos and disruption of services….This chainsaw approach to cuts and Trump and Musk’s complete lack of empathy towards our federal workers um has really been a disaster.”
• “When you are so in such economic duress that you’re not willing or not able to send your kid to college, that shows the kind of effect particularly that we’re seeing in Northern Virginia… If some of the cuts continue as stupidly as they’ve been laid out, we’re going to see these same kind of effects across Virginia and across our nation… Hampton Roads will feel this effect as well.”
• “I’m also spending an awful lot of time trying to convince and urge my Republican friends, there are many Republican senators I know care deeply about national security or concerned in their own states about the effects of these tariffs. They just have to find the courage to speak and vote the way they talk to me and others privately. I believe this will change, I believe things will get better, but boy oh boy it has been a rough first quarter for America, not only on the economic front but literally on the global front as again countries around the world reassess us.”