Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/Senate/Counting of Electoral Ballots/Arizona Objection Debate/Van Hollen Speech
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. President. The mob violence and attack we saw on our Capitol today should be a wake-up call to each and every one of us of what happens when we fail to come together, not as Democrats and Republicans but each of us as Americans, to stand up to a President who time and again has shown contempt for our democracy, contempt for our Constitution.
Today, here on the Capitol, we witnessed people taking down an American flag and putting up a Trump flag. That is not democracy in the United States of America.
As every Senator who has spoken has mentioned, we have for hundreds of years had a peaceful transfer of power. Nobody likes to lose, and supporters of the losing candidate are always disappointed. What is different this time?
We all know what is different this time. We have a President who, as the Senator from New Jersey said, even before a vote was cast, that if he didn’t win the election, it was going to be a fraud and every day since then has perpetrated that lie.
We have a President who just today criticized the very loyal Vice President, who is presiding right now, urging him to disregard his responsibilities under the Constitution of the United States in order to reinstall Donald Trump as President; the same person who got on the phone to the secretary of state in Georgia and threatened him to change the results of the election.
Mr. President, I read something this week I never thought I would read in a newspaper in the United States of America. It was an op-ed by all the living former Secretaries of Defense, including Secretaries Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Mattis, warning—warning—the country about our tradition of peaceful transfer of power and that it would be inappropriate for the military to take sides in the United States of America. We talk to the world about how we want to promote democracy and our values, and right here at home too many are undermining those values.
Mr. President, Donald Trump could not do this alone. He could only do it if he is aided and abetted by individuals who are willing to perpetrate those lies and those conspiracies, and that is why it is so important that we as Democrats and Republicans and Senators stand up together—stand up together and tell the truth. You know when you go into a court of law, like those 60 cases, you are testifying under penalty of perjury. That is very different than here in the House and the Senate, and in all those 60 cases, under penalty of perjury, there was no evidence of widespread fraud. So it should be easy for us all together to tell the truth.
On January 20, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the next President of the United States. He has said he wants to bring the country together. He has said he wants to bring Democrats and Republicans together to do some of the pressing business of this country, to defeat this pandemic, to get the economy going again, to face challenging issues of racial and social justice. I hope we will learn from what happened today—the mob attack on this Capitol—the price we pay when we don’t stand up for the truth and for democracy.
James McHenry, Maryland’s delegate to the Constitutional Convention, wrote about a famous exchange in his diaries between Elizabeth Willing Powel and Benjamin Franklin. A lady asked Dr. Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a Republic or a monarchy?” “A republic,” replied Dr. Franklin, “if you can keep it.”
My colleagues, this is a test of whether we unite to keep our Republic. I hope we will pass the test together. Thank you.