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.
I think a better analogy is that they are paddling in the direction that we all want to go but are denying that the ship they are paddling is sinking. We need them to be directing people to life boats and fighting back against the fascist boarding our ship. But they seem to just want to paddle forward when the water is already above their chest. There is no honor in “going down with the ship” if all you did that whole time was useless. Captains “go down with the ship” to make sure they did everything in their power to save people. That is not what the Democrats are doing at all.