Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) delivered a blistering denunciation of Republican Trump-coddling and COVID irresponsibility at Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) on Monday night. The speech came after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called the body back into session so he could further pack the courts with Trump-nominated conservative judges before the end of the term.
Brown requested that Sullivan “please wear a mask as he speaks,” which elicited an angry response from the senator from Alaska: “I don’t wear a mask when I’m speaking, like most senators. I don’t need your instruction!”
Brown was then unleashed: “I know you don’t need my instruction. But there clearly isn’t much interest in this body in public health. We have a president who hasn’t shown up at a coronavirus task force meeting in months. We have a majority leader that calls us back here to vote on an unqualified nominee and at the same time to vote for judge after judge after judge, exposing all of the people who can’t say anything. I understand. The people in front of you and the presiding officer. And exposing all the staff here. And the majority leader just doesn’t seem to care.”
Brown went on to denounce Republicans for humoring Trump and making excuses for him: “You don’t have to play along with the tweets and the chaos. He threatened the Republican Governor of Ohio today, for instance. … The last thing we should be doing is granting Trump one last wish, one more opportunity to salt the Earth on his way out.”
“You know that Joe Biden won, and you won, Brown added, “most of you won your elections.”
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) defended his Republican colleague in a tweet: “This is idiotic. @SherrodBrown is being a complete ass. He wears a mask to speak—when nobody is remotely near him—as an ostentatious sign of fake virtue. @DanSullivan_AK was over 50 feet away, presiding. Last I checked 50 feet is more than 6 feet.”
