Lawrence: Sinema's Filibuster Speech Was Contemptuous And Dishonest

well i've been listening to senate speeches for decades now most of them while i was sitting in the senate chamber as a democratic senate staff member and i have never never heard a more contemptuous speech by a democratic senator than the one written by kirsten cinema's senate staff and read by senator cinema on the senate floor today the speech was filled with contempt for senator cinema's democratic colleagues for her constituents and for all of you senator cinema expressed that contempt by delivering a non-stop insult to the intelligence of everyone who was listening she filled her 20 minutes on the senate floor with a string of hallmark greeting card-like platitudes about how the united states senate should work and not a single word about the reality of why the united states senate no longer works in announcing her opposition to changing senate rules in any way in order to pass voting rights legislation by a simple majority vote senator cinema said this eliminating the 60-vote threshold will simply guarantee that we lose a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy from threats in the years to come it is hard to think of a stupider thing that could be said about the 60-vote threshold that was senator cinema claiming that the 60-vote rule in the senate is quote a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy it is in fact the single most anti-democracy rule that exists in american government if senator cinema said a single true thing about the 60 vote rule today i would press the play button for that right now and let you hear it she didn't not one true word about the 60 vote rule so here is something untrue that senator senator cinema said about her own history with the 60-vote threshold there's no need for me to restate my long-standing support for the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation there's no need for me to restate its role protecting our country from wild reversals and federal policy my long-standing support for the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation here is kirsten cinema in 2010 discussing the 60-vote threshold while she mocks a democratic senator for being insufficiently loyal to the democratic party well in the senate we no longer have 60 votes someone argued that we never had 60 because one of those was joseph lieberman but that's whatever um yeah and nelson too but really um so so now there's um i think as a president so eloquently said on wednesday there's none of this pressure this false pressure to get to 60. so what that means is that um the democrats can stop kowtowing to joe lieberman and instead seek other avenues to move forward with health reform and so it's likely that the senate will move forward with a process called reconciliation which takes only 51 votes and by the way it's not unusual you may recall that before the democrats took the senate in 2008 that the republicans controlled the senate for quite some time in fact since around 1994 they never had 60 votes and they managed to do a lot of really bad things during that time so the reconciliation process is still quite available and we will use it for good rather than for evil so [Applause] one of the differences about that speech is that no one wrote that for her she wasn't reading that so maybe maybe that means that's what she actually thought that version of kirsten cinema before she came to washington wanted to use the simple majority vote in the united states senate for good instead of evil she said the republicans never got 60 votes she didn't say that as a complaint she said that admiring the republican tactical ability to pass legislation without having to get 60 votes we cannot know what kirsten cinema actually believes or if she actually believes anything at all but we do know that she did not support her position today with logic intelligence or truth senator cinema did tell us how she feels about the unanimous opposition to voting rights legislation by every republican in the united states senate i share the disappointment of many that we've not found more support on the other side of the aisle for legislative responses to state-level voting restrictions i wish that were not the case disappointed she's disappointed in republicans when kirsten cinema ran for the united states senate she did not say that she would bring all of her legislative and policy goals in the united states senate to the republican leader of the senate and try to get republican approval of her agenda that's not what she told arizona voters but that is her position now republicans have to approve everything kirsten cinema wants to do or she won't even try to do it she will just stand at her desk in the united states senate and be disappointed and she will give up if republicans don't want to do what she wants to do she will give up that's what she's saying today president joe biden said today he is not giving up president biden attended the democratic senator's luncheon today where it is reported that kirsten cinema sat looking at her phone for most of the time senator cinema's speech on the senate floor before the luncheon did not dissuade senator john assaf from delivering a passionate talk during that lunch about changing the senate rules and that speech received a standing ovation in that room after the meeting with the democratic senators president biden said this i hope we can get this done the honest-to-god answer is i don't know whether we can get this done like every other major civil rights bill that came along if we missed the first time we could come back and try it a second time we miss this time as long as i have a breath in me as long as i'm in the white house as long as i'm engaged at all i'm going to be fighting to change the way these legislatures have moving [Music] you

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 203,523

Keywords: Lawrence O'Donnell, kyrsten sinema, voting rights, joe manchin, filibuster, filibuster speech, sinema, democrats, msnbc, us news, news

Id: SphWuM-DZHg

Length: 7min 45sec (465 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 13 2022