[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 3 (Wednesday, January 5, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S47-S48]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               January 6

  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, why January 6? Why were thousands of 
Trump supporters here in Washington on that specific date, January 6? 
They were here on January 6 because that was the last possible day that 
Donald Trump and his followers could overturn the election in which Joe 
Biden had just beaten the sitting President soundly--81 million votes 
to 74 million votes. The gap in the electoral college was much bigger 
on a percentage basis, 306 to 232.
  But Trump and his followers decided that they were not going to just 
give up power just because their candidate lost an election. And their 
decision to put power ahead of the rule of law is, frankly, totally 
understandable.
  Over the course of human existence, thousands of second-place 
finishers, either through election or by the dynamics of power 
succession, have refused to bend to the rules.
  Most recently, Russia briefly flirted with democracy until Vladimir 
Putin and his cronies rigged the rules to set him up in power 
permanently. And throughout history, many slighted Princes or Generals 
have just chosen to seize power, through force or coercion, if they 
couldn't get it through the standing rules. Wanting power and willing 
to do anything to get power is as old as civilization. And that is why 
all those people broke into the Capitol a year ago tomorrow. They were 
called to Washington by President Trump to pressure Congress and State 
legislators and Vice President Pence to suspend the rules of 
succession, void the election, and install Donald Trump as President, 
even though he lost. Let's not pretend that anything else happened that 
day.

  Senators Cruz and Hawley and many, many other Republicans were, on 
January 6, trying to get Congress to delay the certification of 
electors to give Trump more time to overturn the will of the voters. 
The rioters came to the Capitol to use violence as a last resort to try 
to pressure Congress to adopt the Cruz-Hawley plan. They stormed the 
building, and many of them were explicit when they were here that day, 
that they were inside the building to support President Trump, to 
support Senator Cruz. By the end of the day, dozens were killed or 
badly injured.
  It wasn't a spontaneous random act of mass violence. It was a 
coordinated attempt to use violence, or at least the threat of violence 
for many, to void the 2020 election and install Donald Trump as an 
unelected leader of the United States of America.
  History has seen this play a million times before.
  But I think here in the Senate, we often get lulled into a little bit 
of a sense of complacency because the last vestiges of the pre-Trump 
era of the Republican Party still exist here in the Senate. In the 
Senate, only seven Republicans voted for Senators Cruz and Hawley's 
attempt to void Joe Biden's victory. And Senator McConnell and some 
others here said the right thing that day and the days afterward.
  Behind closed doors, many of our veteran Republican colleagues often 
whispered to us how awful and vulgar the Trump rioters are and how 
dearly they support the rule of law. But almost never do those 
Republican colleagues say those things out loud because the new 
mainstream of the Republican Party--the Trump Republican Party--does 
not believe that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Pick your conspiracy 
theory, but 7 out of 10 Republicans--literally, tens of thousands of 
Americans--believe that somehow Pakistani intelligence operatives or 
Italian satellites or Venezuelan communists were involved in secretly 
switching millions of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
  But maybe more importantly, what leads these Republicans to believe 
these wild conspiracy theories is a more insidious belief, a belief 
that if a Democrat wins an election, it must be, by definition, 
illegitimate. That is why this many Republicans believed Joe Biden 
didn't win, even though they have zero evidence to back up this claim. 
They don't need evidence because they just believe the Democrats are 
evil, that Democrats are illegitimate in governance. And if Democrats 
win, it just cannot be allowed to stand. Defeating Democrats is, to the 
Trump Republican Party, more important than maintaining democracy.
  We know this because some of the most popular and revered national 
Republicans are calling openly for the suspension of democracy if 
democracy

[[Page S48]]

keeps electing Democrats. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called 
for States with Republican Governors to disallow people from voting if 
they showed an inclination to support Democrats. Our colleague, Senator 
Rand Paul, said efforts to convince people to vote--if those votes 
resulted in Democrats winning--should be illegal.
  Sensible Senate Republicans--the ones who whisper the sensible things 
quietly to us here on the floor of the Senate Chamber--will claim that 
Marjorie Taylor Greene is an outlier, a fringe character, but she is 
exactly the opposite. She is the mainstream. She doesn't believe Joe 
Biden won the 2020 election, just like 7 out of 10 Republican voters. 
The fact that she is willing to say the quiet things out loud, it 
doesn't make her fringe; it makes her royalty. The best attended 
Republican event in my State since the 2020 election was an event 
headlined by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
  She and Rand Paul and their ilk are the Republican Party right now. 
They are the healthy trunk of the tree. Sensible Senate Republicans who 
believe Joe Biden is a legitimate President are the dead limbs, bound 
to fall off soon in a slight wind.
  The mainstream of today's Republican Party believes that beating Joe 
Biden and other Democrats is just more important than preserving 
democracy. So that is why they are methodically working to clean up 
their mistakes from 2020. They couldn't declare Joe Biden's win 
illegitimate because they just weren't ready on January 6. That is what 
January 6 was about, an attempt to postpone the certification of 
electors so they could get ready.
  Well, in 2022 and 2024, they are going to be ready. At the heart of 
this plan is an attempt to just make it a whole lot harder for 
Democrats to vote by eliminating voting sites in Democratic 
neighborhoods or eliminating days to vote--days that typically 
Democrats vote on.
  But Republicans are also preparing a secret weapon--a backup plan--if 
on election night, their attempts to depress Democratic turnout don't 
work out and a Democratic candidate for Governor or Senate or President 
still wins. And this backup plan is all about changing who counts the 
votes. It used to be that even in Republican-majority States, Democrats 
had a role in counting the votes, either through bipartisan panels or 
through the ability for cities and counties to choose their own 
election officials, which often meant that in Democratic counties you 
had Democrats in charge of counting votes and in Republican counties 
you had Republicans in charge of counting votes. This has been a 
longstanding foundation of our democracy, making sure that no one party 
had the monopoly on vote counting.
  If both parties are engaged in the process, there is a lot more 
incentive for both sides to play it safe and play it straight--but no 
more. In Republican-controlled State after State, the rules are being 
changed to put Republicans and only Republicans in charge of counting 
the votes and, more consequently, deciding which votes count.
  Trump and his followers are making sure that only Republicans who are 
100 percent loyal to Trump will be the chosen few Republicans in charge 
of vote counting.
  Everybody has heard that phone call from 2020 in which President 
Trump personally lobbies the Georgia secretary of state to disqualify 
just enough Democratic votes in order to shift the State's electors to 
Trump. ``I just want to find 11,780 votes,'' Trump pleads in that phone 
call. During that hour-long call, he makes it exactly clear what he 
wants. He wants 11,780 or more Democratic votes to be disqualified 
through vague made-up claims of fraud in order to flip the election. He 
tells you exactly what he wants on that phone call: votes to be 
disqualified on zero basis of fraud in order to flip the election to 
him.
  The new State laws and the purge of straight shooters like the 
Georgia secretary of state from the party will make sure that in 2022 
or 2024, if an election is close enough to flip to Republicans, the 
obstacles that were in place in 2020 will be gone.
  Now, I know that every Republican Senator, and even a few Democratic 
Senators, think this scenario that I just outlined is hyperbolic. They 
think it is a scare tactic. But why would you think that? Trump and his 
allies aren't even trying to hide what they did or what they are doing. 
Trump lost the election. He lost the election by 7 million votes, and 
he didn't care. He did everything in his power, including using 
violence, to try to stay in power, despite the fact that he lost. Since 
then, he has cheerled all these changes in State laws.
  Do any of you really think that he is doing this because he believes 
in good governance or clean elections? Of course, not. He has told you 
in words, in deeds, over and over, what his goal is, and his goal is to 
achieve power, whether or not he actually wins the election. He is not 
hiding it. His supporters, leaders of the Republican Party, are now 
openly calling for States to strip from Democrats, and Democrats only, 
the right to vote or the right to campaign for election.
  This is all happening in front of your eyes, out in the open, right 
now. And only we--the 100 of us--have the ability to stop this. January 
6 was just a preview. It was what happens because Trump and his minions 
hadn't done the necessary planning ahead to steal the election. They 
panicked, and they brought violence upon this building.
  They may not need a physical rebellion in 2022 or 2024 because they 
will have changed the rules to make sure that Republicans loyal to 
Trump are installed in power, regardless of whether they win or lose 
the election.
  None of us are helpless here in the U.S. Senate. We can pass laws 
that take away from States the power to disenfranchise any voters or 
the ability to put only one party in charge of vote counting.
  A few of my Democratic Senate colleagues think that they are saving 
the Senate by preserving Republicans' right to stop these reforms. They 
are wrong. If we don't take steps right now to stop Trump's plan, there 
won't be a Senate left to protect. That is not hyperbole. If the loser 
of an election for the U.S. Senate gets seated as a Member of this body 
in 2023, then our democracy is effectively dead.
  It is time we started actually listening to what Trump Republicans 
are telling us over and over again, out loud, that they are getting 
ready to do. They have made their choice, and they have chosen power 
over democracy.
  I get it. It is always easier to do nothing and hope that the threat 
will just go away--just shut the door, box your ears, cover your eyes, 
and hope for the best. But we are the U.S. Senate. We are the ones that 
are put on the watch. We are the ones that are supposed to meet the 
threat head-on and stop it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

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