[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 192 (Tuesday, November 10, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6631-S6632]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             2020 ELECTIONS

  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, a Republican candidate in California by 
the name of Errol Webber lost his race for Congress by 72 points, and 
yet he is not conceding that he has lost. He says:

       I'm going to the Los Angeles County Registrar's Office to 
     audit the vote counting procedures. I will NOT concede. Every 
     LEGAL vote needs to be counted!

  Just up the road in Maryland, a Republican candidate by the name of 
Kim Klacik lost by 40 points, and she is refusing to concede. She 
retweeted a post from President Trump in which she claimed that the 
election was stolen, and she wrote:

       I beat my opponent on day of & in-person early voting, 
     along with absentee. However, 97k mail in ballots were found 
     in his favor?

  My colleagues, there is an epidemic of delusion that is spreading out 
from the White House and infecting the entire Republican Party in the 
wake of this election, and it presents a real threat to this country.
  President Trump didn't win the election. Every single one of my 
colleagues knows this. And he didn't just lose. He lost by a pretty 
substantial margin. He lost by 4.3 percent of the popular vote, likely 
around 70 electoral votes when all the counting is done.
  And while the results haven't been certified yet, this isn't the 
election in 2000. There aren't any hanging chads. We are not arguing 
about 500 votes here or there. In Michigan, the margin today is 
148,000. In Nevada, the margin is 36,000. In Pennsylvania, it is 
47,000. In Wisconsin, it is 20,000. In Georgia, it is 12,000. In 
Arizona, it is 14,000. Thousands and thousands of votes are these 
margins.
  Hillary Clinton, in 2016, lost by less than the President did in 
Pennsylvania and Michigan and by about the same amount in Wisconsin, 
and she conceded the day after the election. Now, this is important, 
and I think we need to talk about it here because it has real 
consequences for democracy and for national security.
  Why hasn't the President conceded? Now, it is not because there was 
voter fraud or because the election was stolen from him. We are a week 
out, and the President is still desperately searching for evidence of 
fraud. He won't find it because it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist in 
Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin or Georgia.
  The President has empowered the Department of Justice to now go out 
and launch investigations of voter fraud despite a longstanding 
precedent for the DOJ to stay out of elections if their actions could 
be determinative. But the President is so desperate now to fill in his 
mythology, his narrative, with facts that he doesn't have, that he is 
sending the DOJ on this massive national fishing expedition.
  He hasn't conceded--not because there is fraud. There hasn't been. He 
is not conceding because he believes that there is a chance he could 
remain as President without having won the election, so long as 
congressional Republicans are willing to stick with him step by step by 
step, and, so far, there is no evidence that congressional Republicans 
are ever going to step away from President Trump's delusional assault 
on democracy.
  Senator McConnell said this week that the President is ``within his 
rights'' to fight the election. That is of course true. The President 
can keep filing frivolous legal challenges if he wants. We are not 
going to stop him from doing that. But just because he has the right to 
mount these legal challenges, that doesn't mean that Republicans here 
have to support him in those efforts if they contravene the interests 
of democracy and the interests of a smooth transition of power.
  Today, Republicans support the President's refusal to concede. They 
support his lawsuits. They call on election officials--most recently, 
in Georgia--who refuse to bend their knee to Trump to resign, and they 
endorsed the President's decision to refuse to begin the transition.
  This may sort of seem like a sideshow now to the inevitability of a 
transfer of power, but what is next? What if President Trump asks 
Republicans here to contest the selection of electors? What if he gets 
the message from Republicans in Congress that if you are willing to 
support all the steps he has taken since Tuesday, that you will 
continue to support his efforts to try to remain in office despite 
losing both the popular vote and the electoral college? That is within 
his rights, to ask you to support a contest of electors. But will you 
do it? What so far have we seen to suggest that there is an end to your 
decision to put your allegiance to this President above an allegiance 
to the country?
  The Secretary of State was asked today if he thought there would be a 
smooth transition of power from President Trump to the winner of the 
election, Vice President and President-Elect Biden. And Secretary 
Pompeo said: ``There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump 
administration.''
  Listen, these guys aren't playing. This isn't just for show. They are 
going to keep pushing the bounds of democracy until somebody stops 
them. It is logical to ask: If Republicans have been willing to support 
every conspiracy that the President has engaged in over the last week, 
then why wouldn't they support the next set of attacks on democracy 
that this President engages in?
  How far are Republicans willing to go in their attacks against the 
decision of voters?
  Now, for the President, there is really no downside to what he is 
doing right now. Either he steals the election or he grows his 
political power, because we have learned in the last 24 hours that the 
President is raising money today online from his supporters, not for a 
fund that is designed to strictly finance a recount effort but for a 
new political action committee that he has established that will fund 
his political efforts over the next 4 years. The button you click may 
give you the idea that you are supporting the President's recount but, 
in fact, you are helping him to amass resources that will allow him to 
be a major political presence for the next 4 years. So either the 
President is successful in continuing this assault on the transition of 
power or he is able to amass resources that help him into the future.
  There is no downside for the President. There is a big downside for 
the rest of us. There is a big downside for this country.
  In the short run, the country's national security is threatened by a 
messy transition. This has been covered, I think, well today, but, 
traditionally, the President-elect would be able to start getting 
briefings on national security threats, would start to get access to 
classified information, and would begin to be able to do background 
checks on individuals that he would like to be part of his national 
security cabinet. Traditionally, those are among the first 
confirmations that move through this body, the President's national 
security team. All of that is being delayed by a President who refuses 
to begin a transition and a Republican Senate that refuses to put 
pressure on the President to change his mind.
  But, also, and in some ways more insidious, is the attack on the rule 
of law and the idea of peaceful transition of power itself. The 
narrative that President Trump is spreading and that congressional 
Republicans are facilitating right now that the election was stolen or 
rigged, it isn't being written on a white board that is going to be 
neatly and tidily erased as soon as 2021 shows up. No, the work that is 
being done right now by the Republican Party to undermine faith in our 
elections will have a very long, very long tale. And when the American 
people or a large

[[Page S6632]]

percentage of them lose faith in elections, when they are told by 
leaders they trust that elections that were actually held legitimately 
are illegitimate, then, those individuals, of course, will naturally 
lose faith in public institutions themselves. If all the people who got 
elected were illegitimately chosen, then, so must be the actions they 
take once they are in office.

  Now, maybe that is consistent with the general Republican project 
over the last several decades. I have watched as Republicans have 
engaged in a withering assault on the public sector. The whole idea 
from Republicans has been that government is illegitimate by its very 
nature and can't do anything to help you or to solve your problems. But 
that idea, if it is, in fact, the goal of my Republican colleagues to 
delegitimize public institutions by delegitimizing elections, is really 
dangerous for two reasons. One, don't assume that democracy can survive 
this. If the 45 percent of the country that supports Donald Trump 
doesn't really believe that elections are legitimate, I am not sure 
that democracy hangs around for another 100 years. But, second, we are 
living in a moment where it is really important for people to have 
faith in public institutions. There is no way for us to turn the corner 
on this pandemic unless people believe what leaders are telling them 
about how to conduct themselves or about how we are going to administer 
a vaccine or about why the business around the corner from you is 
limiting the number of people who can enter it. In the middle of a 
pandemic that has killed going on 250,000 Americans, losing faith in 
public institutions is deadly.
  The President is delusional. There was no voter fraud. He lost. The 
American people, by a large margin, chose Joe Biden as President of the 
United States, and this delusion is not a quaint sideshow. It is an 
assault on our democracy that will have consequences for the future 
viability of democracy but also for the viability of public 
institutions to meet crises like the one that we stand in the middle of 
today.
  The President's behavior and the behavior of Republicans in Congress 
who support him is dangerously unpatriotic. When we arrive in the 
Senate we swear an oath to our country, not to our party, and right now 
our President and congressional Republicans are not living up to that 
oath.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________