White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Wednesday that he “will leave it to” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to discuss Senate rules used to to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Tuesday night.
“Last night, Elizabeth Warren, any reaction from the White House on whether you believe what Mitch McConnell did was the correct thing?” a reporter asked Spicer during his daily press briefing. “Critics say she was silenced on the Senate floor.”
“I would refer you back to Senate rules. I mean, this is not something that we tend to discuss here,” Spicer said. “I will leave it to Sen. McConnell and the Senate to discuss Senate rules.”
Senate Republicans voted to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Tuesday night as she spoke out against attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and noted his record on civil rights.
Warren was reading aloud from a letter written by Coretta Scott King, the late widow of Martin Luther King Jr., in which Coretta Scott King accused Sessions of promoting racist policies.
McConnell objected to Warren’s speech and interrupted, citing a seldom-used rule barring senators from “directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator.”
Senate Democrats banded together following the vote, sharing Scott’s letter on Twitter and speaking out against the decision to silence Warren with the hashtag #LetLizSpeak.
