Sen. Whitehouse and Lawrence Trash Trump's Trashy Ballroom

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse posted this on social media.

This land is your land and this land is my land. From California to the New York island, from the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me.

Joining us now is Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Senator, thank you very much for joining us tonight. As the week began last week, I was out of the country, but I know at first it wasn't easy to even see imagery of what was going on at the White House. That's how much Donald Trump was trying to hide it. Apparently that plan didn't work,

hiding what was happening there.

No, it sure didn't. And I think the reason that they wanted to hide it is not because it was the worst thing Trump was doing, but because it was so symbolic of his arrogance. We've always said that presidents are the occupants of the White House. Nobody ever said that presidents own the White House

and get to destroy it on their whim. And then of course, the notion that this is gonna be a big rebuild and all of the big plutocrats, CEOs and wheeler dealers are going to come with their big fat checks. And that's how this new president's structure, this home for the American presidency is going

to be rebuilt. I mean, it's got everything but the damn skyboxes.

Yeah.

And Senator, about the corporate greed and cowardice here. It's not that long ago that when American corporate giants wanted to merge, if there was a democratic administration, they might very well run into some resistance. And they knew exactly what to do. It's why they have the highest priced corporate lawyers in the world. They would just go to court and they

would fight and often win, and win within a matter of months. Under the law, because they had a winning case and could convince the judge decided to go ahead and convict him of the case. He was a good man. He was a good man. He was a good man who was a good man who was a good man who was a good

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man who was a good man who was a good man who was a people who are paying for this new spectacular palace that they're building, the guilty party palace. They, you know, it's people who are in litigation with the government. It's people who have merger approvals pending. It's the crypto boys who are having the Trump administration basically set up the guidelines

for their whole industry. And then, of course, the usual fossil fuel polluters and inauguration tech billionaires. They even went back to big tobacco for Pete's sake. It's really quite the roster.

Yeah, the idea that you have to do this in order to conduct your business, it reminds me a bit about the law firms that all, the ones that capitulated to Trump at the very beginning when he threatened them. If these corporations had all just said, no, we've got our corporate lawyers, we're ready to go, we will fight Trump's obviously fraudulent attempts to block our mergers, and we'll go ahead and do it.

That was open to them all along. And ditto the big corporate leaders of the big American corporations. They could easily have said no. There's some boundaries here that we're going to honor because we respect that our country the one that lets our company succeed so well, is a country that runs on rule of law. And instead, it's now a question of coming in and seeing how obsequious you can be to Trump and to his cronies and minions. And that, you know, I grew up in the Foreign Service and that was always the biggest distinction between us and most of the countries where diplomats serve. We operate under rule of law. Doesn't matter how big, rich, and powerful

you are, you still have to play by the rules. And in these other countries, it's all who can get closer to El Jefe and get favors. So one thing that we now have evidence of Donald Trump fearing is Ronald Reagan. He does seem to fear what could be Ronald Reagan's possible continued grip on the views of some Republicans, although I don't see any Republicans following very many Reagan principles these days. I want to run this ad that Canadian TV ran that angered Donald Trump so much

because every word of it was true and Ronald Reagan was saying it and this is what provoked Donald Trump to suddenly reopen a trade war with Canada.

Let's listen to this. When someone says, let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works, but only for a short time.

But over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer.

Senator, that was Ronald Reagan's view. And when Canada started airing Ronald Reagan's view, that's when Donald Trump said, you know, we're going back into a trade war because you quoted Ronald Reagan. That was their crime against Donald Trump.

Yeah.

As I recall, that was by a Canadian province. So that would be like a state running an ad that President Trump didn't like, and him punishing the entire country because he didn't like the ad. And then, of course, the spillover of trade wars with Canada is trade damage to America, and particularly to the border states, where they've seen enormous drop-off in tourism, they've seen enormous drop-off in business. Many businesses are unable to get the raw materials for their

manufacturing across the border any longer. So you're seeing a great number of Americans hit very, very hard in their real lives because of this extraordinarily petulant response by the President of the United States to an advertisement, which if this were America, everybody would have a First Amendment right

to run that ad. So Senator, I'm not hearing any criticism among elected Republicans in Washington about what Donald Trump has done and his destruction of the White House. But one, one mentioned that maybe it was bad timing because there's a government shutdown. And oh, by the way, people's health care premiums are going to skyrocket because of Donald Trump

and the Republicans.

Yeah, well, when they're willfully cutting off food benefits for poor kids, when they're willfully exposing millions of Americans to multi-hundred dollar monthly premium increases for their health care, while they've got Medicare cuts of half a trillion dollars looming and Medicaid cuts of a trillion dollars looming behind that, it's not necessarily a great look

to be building a gilded new ballroom for the White House, to be buying the Secretary of Homeland Security hundreds of millions, 175 million, I think it is, in new luxury jets to be taking this enormously expensive free new Air Force One from the Qataris and having to spend fortunes to try to make it safe and bug free and all of that. So you're seeing these, what would be in an ordinary administration,

preposterous luxuries, indulgences that are all being done in plain view as regular American families, the ones that Trump promised to protect and lower the costs of are taking it on the chin, from Canadian tariffs,

from health care costs, from home insurance rates, all of it.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

Thank you.