Mr. President, after hours and hours of arguments by my Democratic colleagues--not that I woke up this morning with the desire to hear my own voice on the Senate floor--I am here because decades before I ever considered a career in politics, when I was just starting out in the Army, I raised my right hand and took an oath. I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I vowed to protect our Nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In this moment, at this precipice in our country, I need to make good on that promise, because in the just 18 days since Donald Trump was inaugurated, we have witnessed an all-out assault on the system of checks and balances that our government was founded upon. We have seen the President both overreach and underdeliver, proving through Executive orders and Twitter marching orders that he cares more about the billionaires who belong to Mar-a-Lago than the middle-class folks he pretended to care about on the campaign trail. Look, 250 years ago this April, a few brave patriots grabbed their muskets and risked their lives at Lexington and Concord, sacrificing for a country that was still more of an idea, more of an ideal than actual reality. They did so because they could no longer stand living under a tyrannical leader. They did so because they had dreamt up the notion of a government of, by, and for the people.…
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