I rise today to honor a departing member of my team. This is the first time in 7 years that I am delivering a farewell speech regarding one of my team members that wasn't written by my speechwriter, Mike McKiernan, because Mike is the departing team member we are honoring today. In June of 2016, he left a glamorous job at the Motion Picture Association of America to join my office. He was excited to return to Congress ahead of what many anticipated would be the incoming Hillary Clinton administration. Well, as we all know, history doesn't always work out along the path that one anticipates. It worked out a little differently. Six months later, President Trump was sworn into office, and Mike found himself in the middle of many intensive issues, writing speech after speech regarding the new administration's policies--often opposing those policies--and the administration's nominees--often nominees who didn't seem to have the qualifications necessary for the roles they were nominated to. Then not far into 2017, we arrived at a watershed moment of Trump's first year in office: Trump's determination to complete the theft of a Supreme Court seat through his nomination of Neil Gorsuch.…
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