WASHINGTON—On the eve of the January 6th insurrection at the United States Capitol, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Wednesday took to the U.S. Senate floor to highlight the ongoing efforts across the country to subvert future elections. Murphy specifically argued the new Republican mainstream cares more about preserving power over democracy, and sounded the alarm that the future of our democracy is at stake if the Senate does not act to protect the right to vote.

“[H]ere 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 Republican Party still exist here in the Senate. In the Senate, only seven Republicans voted for Senator[s] Cruz and Hawley’s attempt to void Joe Biden’s victory. And Senator McConnell, and some others here, said the right things that day and in the days after January 6. Behind closed doors, many of our veteran Republican colleagues often whisper to us how awful and vulgar the Trump rioters are and how dearly they support the rule of law,” said Murphy. “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.”

Murphy continued: “Defeating Democrats is, for 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 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. 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 that whisper the sensible things quietly to us here on the floor of the Senate chamber – they’ll claim that Marjorie Taylor Greene is an outlier, that she’s a fringe character. But she’s exactly the opposite. She is the mainstream. She doesn’t believe Joe Biden won the 2020 election, just like seven out of ten Republican voters. The fact that she’s willing to say the quiet things out loud 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,” Murphy continued.

Murphy concluded: “At the heart of their plan is an attempt to just make it 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 back up plan, if on election night, their attempts to depress Democratic turnout don’t work out and a Democratic candidate for Governor or Senate or for President still wins. And this back up plan is all about changing who counts the votes.”

A full transcript of his remarks can be found below:

MURPHY: “Why January 6th? Why were thousands of Trump supporters here in Washington on that specific date, January 6th? They were here on January 6th 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 give up power just because their candidate lost the 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 being willing to do anything to get power, it’s as old as human civilization.

“And that’s 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.

“Senator[s] Cruz and Hawley and many, many other Republicans were, on January 6th, 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 Donald 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 Republican Party still exist here in the Senate. In the Senate, only seven Republicans voted for Senator[s] Cruz and Hawley’s attempt to void Joe Biden’s victory. And Senator McConnell, and some others here, said the right things that day and in the days after January 6. Behind closed doors, many of our veteran Republican colleagues often whisper 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 seven out of ten 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’s why this many Republicans believe Joe Biden didn’t win, even though they have zero evidence to back this claim.

“They don’t need evidence because they just believe Democrats are evil. That Democrats are illegitimate in governance. And if Democrats win, it cannot be allowed to stand. Defeating Democrats is, for 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 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 that whisper the sensible things quietly to us here on the floor of the Senate chamber – they’ll claim that Marjorie Taylor Greene is an outlier, that she’s a fringe character. But she’s exactly the opposite. She is the mainstream. She doesn’t believe Joe Biden won the 2020 election, just like seven out of ten Republican voters.

“The fact that she’s willing to say the quiet things out loud 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’s 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 6th. That was what January 6th was about, an attempt to postpone the certification of electors so that they could get ready. Well, in 2022 and 2024 they are going to be ready.

“At the heart of their plan is an attempt to just make it 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 back up plan, if on election night, their attempts to depress Democratic turnout don’t work out and a Democratic candidate for Governor or Senate or for President still wins. And this back up 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 had Republicans in charge of counting votes.

“This has been a longstanding foundation of our democracy – making sure that no one party has a monopoly on vote counting. If both parties are engaged in the process, then there’s just 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. And Trump and his followers are making sure that only Republicans that are 100% loyal to Trump will be the chosen few Republicans in charge of vote counting.

“Everybody’s 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. And during the 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 a few Democratic Senators, think this scenario that I just outlined is hyperbolic. They think it’s 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’re 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 he lost.

“Since then, he has cheerled all these changes in state laws. Do any of you really think that he’s doing this because he believes in good governance or clean elections? Of course not. He’s told you, in words and deeds, over and over, what his goal is and his goal is to achieve power, whether or not he actually wins the election. He’s 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 right in front of our eyes. Out in the open. Right now.

“And only we – the 100 of us – have the ability to stop this. January 6th was just a preview. It was what happened 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 install to power regardless of whether they win or lost the election.

“None of us are helpless here in the United States 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’re saving the Senate by preserving Republicans right to stop these reforms. They’re wrong. If we don’t take steps, right now, to stop Trump’s plan, there won’t be a Senate left to protect.

“That’s not hyperbole. If the loser of an election for the United States Senate gets seated as a member of this body in 2023, then our democracy is effectively dead.

“It’s 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’ve made their choice – and they’ve chosen power over democracy.

“I get it. It’s 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 United States Senate. We are the ones put on the watch. We are the ones that are supposed to meet the threat – head on – and stop it. I yield the floor.”

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