[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 12 (Monday, January 23, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S368]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I would like to discuss five topics this 
afternoon: the President's remarks this weekend and the lack of 
Republican reaction to them, his Executive order on Friday about 
mortgage rates, the continuing nominations process here, the 
President's withdrawal from TPP, and the Republican alternative to the 
Affordable Care Act that was announced this morning.
  First, the need for Republicans to speak out when President Trump 
engages in the kind of rhetoric he engaged in this weekend. The first 
few days of the new administration are traditionally a time for an 
incoming President to call for unity and to try and bring the country 
together. Instead, President Trump kicked off a bizarre first weekend 
in office that alternated between braggadocio and furor. The President 
quarreled over the size of inaugural crowds, bragged about his election 
victory in a speech at CIA headquarters, with a wall commemorating 
fallen American intelligence officers behind him, and then sent his 
Press Secretary out to hold an emergency briefing to present 
``alternative facts,'' as one of President Trump's advisers described 
them yesterday, about the size of the crowds again.
  Whatever your politics, in order to debate, argue, compromise, and 
get things done for the American people, we have to be able to agree on 
a base line of facts. Facts aren't partisan. They don't have 
alternatives. The alternative to fact is fiction. If this Presidency is 
going to be based on ignoring the facts on the ground, we are going to 
have huge problems. It is not that important when you are talking about 
the number of people who attended an inauguration, but what about the 
facts if Russia is doing something that is very bad or something 
terrible is happening to our economy or something else? If the 
Presidency looks away from the real facts, we have trouble. You cannot 
govern a country like that.
  So if the White House is ignoring the facts on the ground and is 
willing to make up ``alternative facts'' about crowd size, what else 
are they willing to stretch the truth about? National security? What 
Vladimir Putin is up to? The implications are terrifying.
  A White House that presents alternative facts needs to be called out 
for doing so by both parties. The folks who can really help rein in the 
President are the members of his own party who have a special 
responsibility to do so, but they have been silent, totally silent when 
President Trump has been saying and doing things they know are wrong. 
They should be speaking out for the good of the country.
  I urge my friends on the other side of the aisle to help us hold the 
President and his White House accountable for the truth; otherwise this 
country is going to have a lot of trouble. Whether you are a Democrat, 
Republican, liberal or conservative, you cannot ignore the facts and 
govern and move the country forward.

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