Jeff Merkley of Oregon gave address to make case that president is ‘violating the law’ through authoritarianism
Oregon’s Jeff Merkley gave a marathon, nearly 23-hour speech on the Senate floor that began on Tuesday and ended late Wednesday, pressing the case that Donald Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.
The 68-year-old senator began speaking around 6.20pm on Tuesday evening and continued until just after 5pm on Wednesday. Standing continuously on the Senate floor alongside placards that read “authoritarianism is here now!” and “Trump is violating the law”, Merkley paused only to take questions from fellow Democratic senators who joined him in the chamber to make their own points about the president’s conduct.
“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the civil war. President Trump is shredding our constitution,” Merkley said as he began his speech.
At the very least, we’re talking about what was said and that it happened. The message got to a wider audience than it would have if the statements were just inserted into the record.
Also, on the plus side, this was a senator saying this stuff in public for the entire world to hear, so others may be emboldened to speak these things in other places as established fact as well, instead of continuing to whisper it only behind closed doors.
Not sure why the original question was so heavily downvoted though, unless people thought the answer was painfully obvious. To me, the public record bit is important, but that could have been done elsewhere as well.