WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) today joined guest host Dagen McDowell on Mornings with Maria to discuss U.S. Senators Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) standing up to President Biden and Democrat leadership in support of the filibuster, and his legislation to sanction Communist China for continued obstruction of an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
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Partial Transcript
Hagerty on Sinema, Manchin support for the filibuster: “I was on the floor of the Senate yesterday when Kyrsten Sinema made her statement. She said what she’s been saying, Joe Manchin has been saying the same thing. They’re not going to destroy the Senate, they’re not going to vote to remove the 60 vote minimum to pass legislation here. In fact, they invoked that last night when they blocked our Nord Stream 2 legislation that would’ve actually put America in a position of strength dealing with Russia. The Democrats are happy to use it on many other elements that Republicans would like to see, for example, to strengthen this against Russia. But when it comes to their abject power grab of our election laws, they’re willing to call us any name in the book and resort to destroying the Senate to do it. I applaud Senators Sinema and Manchin for standing up to this. I don’t think Joe Biden bringing it back up again and again is going to get a different result. Every Republican in the United States Senate is against this, and he’s not going to be able to get unity on the Democrat side either.”
Hagerty on Democrats’ past support for the filibuster: “If you go back to 2017, fully 32 Senate Democrats signed a letter saying that we should never abolish the filibuster. This was at a point in time when, of course, Republicans controlled the Oval Office and we controlled both branches of the legislature. At that point in time, the filibuster was absolutely critical to the sanctity of the Senate. You know, Senator [Dick] Durbin, the second ranking Democrat in the Senate, said it would be the end of democracy were we to do that. If you think about what all of these senators have said, only Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have been the ones to go vocal about this, but I must believe that even though only four or five years have passed, all 30 senators remaining couldn’t have changed their minds completely. So I do believe there’s a much larger number that wouldn’t be for this, were they not forced to walk the plank by [Democrat] Leader [Chuck] Schumer.”
Hagerty on introducing legislation to sanction Communist China on COVID-19 origins: “It will have teeth, because within 90 days of enactment, if a full blown international investigation into the origins of COVID-19 has not occurred, we’re going to sanction the Chinese Academy of Sciences and all of its affiliates, including the Wuhan Lab of Virology. This has got to stop. The Chinese [Communist Party] have covered this up. They did it from the very beginning. They destroyed samples, they silenced researchers. We have pushed and pushed. This Administration has not done enough. So what we’re going to do now is sanction those directly involved in this and any of these institutions that were involved in dangerous research, involved with bat viruses. We’re going to get to the bottom of this and we’re going to do this by use of sanctions.”