Last updated on January 24th, 2019 at 04:22 am
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) told Mitch McConnell to grow up, do his job, and end the government shutdown during an interview on The Rachel Maddow Show.
Sen. Brown said when asked about building a veto-proof Senate majority to reopen the government:
Before the shutdown every single senator voted for that actual language, the house will probably pass again tomorrow or Thursday, it will come back to us all of us voted for it again and we all just voted for it a month to five weeks ago before the shutdown, before Pence promised Republicans at a lunch that the president would sign it, then the president changed his mind when the right wing machine went into overdrive but if we do that, if the president vetoes it, maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t at that point, we could override it and I would think there is enough pressure, they go through airports and talk to TSA and stood in lines with their constituents unless they have a back entrance I don’t know about, they stood in line for an hour waiting to get through TSA because there are fewer agents now in many cases because they are overworked and not paid and got to arrange child care and take days off to arrange that. I think the pressure builds.
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It’s a democracy they should respond to. That’s our hope. Trump will continue to use this to speak to the base and divide the country to play into this phony populism that is real populism isn’t anti-Semitic or racist. You don’t push people down to lift others up, that’s the game Trump will continue to play and Mitch Mcconnell needs to act like a grownup and do this this week.
Video:
Sen. Sherrod Brown tells Mitch McConnell to grow up and do his job. https://t.co/47Zzmi4Mz4 pic.twitter.com/KRDRZrsadx
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) January 23, 2019
Mitch McConnell should be pressuring Trump to end the shutdown
McConnell can’t unilaterally end the shutdown, but what he can do is put all of the pressure on Donald Trump. If the Senate votes to reopen the government with a veto-proof majority, then if Trump wants to keep the shutdown going, it will be all on him. The Senate could override a Trump veto and reopen the government, but there is a battle of the jellyfish going on the Republican Party. Trump lacks the spine to stand up to his base, and McConnell lacks the spine to stand up to Trump.
A gutless party is being led by a gutless president, and Sherrod Brown was right to call out them both.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
