- Ask every elected official in America,
"How do you want to be remembered?
Do you want to be on the side of Dr King or George Wallace?"
- What do you say to Democrats who say that that went too far,
to compare somebody who opposes changing the filibuster
with a traitor who fought a war for slavery?
- I would ask those people,
"What do you think is going too far?"
When it comes to the Constitution
of the United States of America,
no one person sitting downtown in a spa
ought to be able to pick up the telephone and say,
"You are going to put a hold on my ability to vote."
And that's what's going on here.
So, I would wish they would stop that foolishness
because if we do not protect the vote
with everything that we've got,
we will not have a country to protect going forward.
- Well, first of all, I think that Manchin, Sinema,
and common-sense Democrats
that oppose this federalizing of elections
should be very offended by Joe Biden
comparing them to people that were racists.
Secondly, Michelle Obama can register
all the people she wants, Maria,
but what she's going to be doing is registering people
who are not going to be voting with the Democrats.
What she's going to be doing is registering people
who do not want a socialist takeover of this country.
- With respect to voting rights, look.
Whatever the pundits say makes political sense,
it is such an existential issue.
Those of us who survived the attack
on the Capitol January 6th
and are witnessing wholesale efforts around the country
to make it harder for people to vote
and to undermine the integrity of elections,
we have to do this.
We all have to be recorded at this moment in time.
- The group, about 12 senators, Republicans and Democrats,
that are working on the Electoral Count Act,
we'll continue to work together.
Sadly, this election-reform bill
that the president has been pushing,
I never got a call on that from the White House.
There was no negotiation,
bringing Republicans and Democrats
together to try and come up with something
that would meet bipartisan interest.
Sure, we can work together on almost every issue
where there's common ground.
I would note on this that on the bill
they put together that they want a real dramatic change,
which is they feel that instead of elections
being run at the state level,
they should really be managed and run at the federal level.
And recognize the Founders didn't have that vision in mind.
They didn't want an autocrat to be able to pull a lever
in one place and change all the election laws.
- The Supreme Court decided that the conditions in 1965
are different than they are now.
Imagine that.
We've had an African-American elected president
of the United States,
an African-American elected to the vice presidency,
an African-American elected to the Senate in South Carolina.
Now, if anyone can't see that circumstances have changed,
they're just not believing their lying eyes.
- Remember, King was sitting in jail.
He received a letter from eight white clergymen,
who wrote him about their concern.
They asked him to leave Birmingham.
And they said that they thought his cause was right
but his timing was wrong.
And King said to them, "Time is neutral.
Time can either be used
destructively or constructively."
And that's when he said that he was coming to the conclusion
that the people of ill will in our society
were making a much better use of time
than the people of goodwill.
And so, I would say that to my friends in the Senate now.
People of ill will demonstrated on January 6th
how effective they can use their time.
Are we going to step up, the people of goodwill,
and use our time more effectively?