The senate minority leader accused Republicans on Wednesday of applying a “shocking double standard” when they silenced Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for reading a letter from the late Coretta Scott King about attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL).
“In my view, it was totally, totally uncalled for,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s invocation of Rule XIX to silence Warren. “Sen. Warren wasn’t hurling wild accusations. She was reading a thoughtful and considered letter from a leading civil rights figure. Mr. President, anyone who watches the Senate floor on a daily basis could tell you that what happened last night was the most selective enforcement of Rule XIX.”
Schumer compared the incident to when one Republican senator called then-Majority Leader Harry Reid’s leadership “cancerous” and said Reid “doesn’t care about the safety of our troops.” Schumer also emphasized that he did not “run to the floor to involve Rule XIX” when Republicans accused him of crying “fake tears” during a press conference after the issuance of President Donald Trump’s immigration executive order.
“Mr. President, there is a shocking double standard here when it comes to speech,” Schumer said. “And unfortunately it is not constrained by the four walls of this chamber.”
“While the senator from Massachusetts has my Republican colleagues up in arms by simply reciting the words of a civil rights leader, my Republican colleagues can hardly summon a note of disapproval for an administration that insults a federal judge, tells the news media to shut up, off-handedly threatens a legislator’s career and seems to invent new dimensions of falsehood each and every day,” he continued. “I certainly hope that this anti-free speech attitude is not traveling down Pennsylvania Avenue to our great chamber.”
