On Friday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “The Weeknight,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that Democrats are “going to hold firm” on the DHS shutdown “and Republicans will be held accountable.”
Co-host Michael Steele asked, “[A]re you going to hold the line and keep this administration on the point that ICE is out of control, you’re prepared to give you everything else, you’re — you want to talk TSA, here’s the bill and the money, you want to talk about other national security interests because we’re right now at war, here’s the bill and the money. But ICE, on our streets, terrorizing our citizens, until you clean that up with masks off and weapons down, no cash for them? Is that the message, or how do you guys see this weekend playing out?”
Blumenthal answered, “Well, first, let me just say, I have no objection to working through the weekend. Normally, I’d be working through the weekend in Connecticut. But, yes, we’re going to hold firm, because we have seen the videos, so has America, and the people of America are absolutely appalled, they’re demanding reforms. And, tomorrow, we’re going to have a vote on a measure to fund TSA, and Republicans will be held accountable. We want to fund TSA, the Coast Guard, and FEMA, and Republicans have been objecting to a unanimous consent resolution that would pay them.”
Blumenthal added, “What we have left is simply — as you’ve put it so well — the question of whether we fund an agency that is out of control, needs to be reined in, lawless and reckless, dragging people out of their cars and their homes without judicial warrants, putting them in unmarked cars, masked agents with no identification, that’s not America. And we need to impose this discipline.”
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