[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1280-1281]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, THE PRESS, AND RUSSIA

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, Trump's Executive order banning Muslims 
from seven countries, none of which was a source of terrorists who have 
carried out attacks in this country, was un-American, arbitrary, 
inhumane, and it will likely spur an increase in violence targeting 
Americans. I will have plenty more to say about it and other reckless 
actions by this White House in the days and weeks ahead.
  In the meantime, I want to say a few words about the bizarre back and 
forth between the Trump administration and the news media regarding 
attendance at the inauguration and who is telling the truth and who is 
not.
  One might think that with all that is happening in the country and 
the world and the rush by the President to sign Executive orders that 
would dramatically affect the rights, and the priorities, of millions 
of Americans, the question of how many people were at the inauguration 
would not generate such controversy. But it turns out that this is 
about much more than that, as it goes to the heart of the role of a 
free press in this country and whether the American people can have 
confidence that the President is telling the truth.
  We already knew that candidate and now President Trump is prone to 
bragging and making wildly unrealistic promises and inaccurate claims, 
many of which he later disavows. He frequently ignores or misstates 
basic facts and refuses to correct those falsehoods. So it was no 
surprise when he predicted that the crowd at his inauguration would be 
``an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout.''
  It was also no surprise, as usually happens at inaugurations and 
large public demonstrations, that high-elevation photographs were used 
to estimate the number of participants. To anyone who attended both the 
Obama and Trump inaugurations, it was obvious that the number of people 
at President Obama's inauguration was far larger than at President 
Trump's inauguration, as photographs clearly showed.
  President Trump, however, insisted the photographs were fabricated. 
The morning after the inauguration, he said he could see from the stage 
on the West Front of the Capitol that there were ``a million'' or ``a 
million and a half'' people on the Mall.
  When reports clearly showed only a fraction of that, he accused news 
organizations of lying, calling them ``among the most dishonest human 
beings on Earth,'' and warned that they would regret it.
  Later that day, the President's spokesman, Sean Spicer, also accused 
the press of lying. He said the photographs were deceptive, and he 
insisted that President Trump's inauguration was ``the most watched 
ever.'' That, of course, was a clever distortion of what the President 
actually said.
  President Trump was unmistakably talking about the number of people 
who were actually present on the Mall when he was sworn in, which seems 
to matter more to him than it does to anyone else.
  Mr. Spicer expanded that number by an indeterminable amount to 
include

[[Page 1281]]

anyone who had watched anywhere in the world on a cell phone, 
television, or other electronic device.
  A day later, Mr. Spicer berated the press for being unfair by 
reporting on this. Perhaps he had forgotten that it was President Trump 
who initiated the whole thing by publicly promising something that did 
not happen and then falsely accusing the press of lying, as did Mr. 
Spicer, after being proven wrong.
  Mr. Spicer also may have forgotten that, shortly after President 
Obama was inaugurated, the Senate majority leader announced that the 
Republicans' No. 1 priority was to prevent him from being elected to a 
second term. Failing that, they spent 8 years trying to obstruct, 
sabotage, and discredit everything President Obama tried to do.
  During much of that time, Donald Trump carried on an utterly false 
campaign accusing President Obama of lying about his birthplace.
  Two days later and without citing any evidence--because no evidence 
exists--President Trump resurrected his false claim that that he lost 
the popular vote because 3 to 5 million ``illegal immigrants'' voted. 
Mr. Spicer echoed this same claim, citing unnamed ``studies.''
  This, of course, is patently false and absurd, but one can assume 
that it will be repeated by Republicans to justify more onerous, 
discriminatory voter suppression voting requirements which have been a 
crusade of theirs, particularly in areas with large minority 
populations that traditionally vote Democratic.
  To add insult to injury, Kellyanne Conway, the President's counselor, 
announced that President Trump will not be releasing his tax returns. 
This after candidate Trump repeatedly promised to do so once a routine 
audit is completed, and he even said he looked forward to doing that. 
Ms. Conway--who also came up with the phrase ``alternative facts''--
claimed that the fact that Mr. Trump won the election is proof that no 
one cared about his tax returns.
  There are at least two problems with that. First, it is the only way 
the American people can know what President Trump's assets are, what 
conflicts of interest may exist, whether he has been telling the truth 
about what he owns, and whether he is working for the American people 
or to enrich himself and his family. The polls indicate that today 
between 60 and 74 percent of the American people want President Trump 
to release his tax returns, including 49 percent of his own supporters.
  A few days later, Stephen Bannon, the White House strategist, said 
the media should ``keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.'' 
Ignoring that democracy is impossible without a free press, Bannon 
called the media the ``opposition party . . . that [does not] 
understand this country.''
  There is an even more disturbing aspect to this. Besides denigrating 
the press, candidate and now President Trump has attacked Muslims, the 
CIA, Mexico, Meryl Streep, the cast of ``Hamilton,'' Congressman John 
Lewis, politicians, undocumented migrants, or whoever else he thinks of 
at any particular moment, for meddling in the election or for any other 
reason, with one glaring exception: Vladimir Putin, one of the world's 
worst gangsters.
  Despite credible evidence that the Russian Government, at Putin's 
direction, actively sought to sway the outcome of the U.S. election in 
favor of Donald Trump, candidate and now President Trump has repeatedly 
expressed admiration for Mr. Putin.
  Think about what this means. The unanimous conclusion of U.S. 
intelligence agencies is that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, 
ordered a cyber attack on our electoral system in favor of one 
candidate over another. Russia's goals ``were to undermine public faith 
in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm 
her electability and potential presidency.''
  Can you imagine what the response would be from the Republican 
leadership if the tables were turned? They would have threatened to 
shut down the government until a new election was held. And if that 
failed they would have demanded that an independent commission be 
established to investigate Russia's cyber attacks. Such a commission 
is, in fact, what Senator Durbin, I and others have called for and what 
the Republican leaders, who should care no less about the integrity of 
our democracy, have summarily rejected.
  What was candidate and President Trump's response to Russia's acts to 
undermine our democracy? He continued to praise Vladimir Putin.
  This should concern every American because, for years, Vladimir Putin 
has engaged in a systematic campaign to weaken the alliances and norms 
that the United States and our democratic allies have painstakingly 
built over the course of more than seven decades, for our national 
security and for global stability.
  Putin would like nothing more than to discredit our democracy, weaken 
NATO, fracture the European Union, and in doing so deflect criticism at 
home and abroad of the repression and rampant corruption that have 
become the hallmarks of his iron-fisted rule.
  While Mr. Spicer blithely spoke of the United States and Russia 
teaming up against ISIS, Russia has used its military power in Syria 
for one overriding purpose: to ensure the survival of Bashar al Assad's 
government, one of Russia's staunchest and most brutal allies.
  We have learned that President Trump is also an admirer of Egyptian 
President al-Sisi and Philippine President Duterte, two populist 
leaders who have abused their authority to silence their critics and 
trample on the rights of their citizens.
  If allying ourselves with the likes of Presidents Putin, al Sisi, and 
Duterte, bringing back black CIA detention sites and so-called 
``enhanced interrogation''--commonly known as torture--and declaring 
entire nationalities of men, women, and children fleeing war and 
devastation as ineligible for resettlement in this country is what the 
future looks like, we should think long and hard about what it will 
mean for our reputation as the oldest democracy and leader of the free 
world.
  I have made a career of working across the aisle and with Republican 
and Democratic Presidents on legislation to help solve the country's 
problems. I hope to be able to continue doing so, as I learned early on 
that bipartisanship is the only way the Congress can succeed. I have 
voted to confirm several of President Trump's Cabinet nominees. I 
expect to vote for others, and there are several I expect to vote 
against.
  I have never believed that we should keep doing things a certain way 
just because it is the way we have always done them or that the 
government cannot be made more efficient and more accountable to the 
people. Of course it can be.
  But in times like this, each of us should rededicate ourselves to 
defending the things that made this country great in the first place 
because ours is a great country and a good country. I believe that 
above all it was, and must continue to be, the integrity of our 
democratic system, our free, fair, and transparent elections and the 
checks and balances of our three equal branches of government bolstered 
by a free press, and our commitment to uphold the fundamental rights of 
all Americans.
  Donald Trump was not elected President to weaken any of that, and we 
in Congress have a responsibility to do our best to prevent it from 
happening.

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