Jesse Jackson slams Senate Republicans for hushing Sen. Warren
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, speaking in San Francisco on Wednesday, blasted Republican leaders for silencing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on the Senate floor when she tried to use the words of Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife to oppose President Trump’s pick for U.S. Attorney General.
Jackson — appearing at a Black History Month forum at the University of San Francisco with the Rev. King’s former lawyer and adviser, Clarence B. Jones Sr. — accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., of exercising a “crude act of raw power” to hush Warren Tuesday night.
After Warren finished the letter and continued her speech against Sessions’ confirmation, McConnell interrupted her to claim that she had violated Senate rules by repeating King’s criticism of Sessions.
McConnell said Warren had “impugned the motives and conduct” of Sessions by quoting King’s letter, and the Republican-controlled chamber then voted to affirm that she had violated Senate rules, forbidding her from speaking again on the Sessions nomination.
Jackson, whose establishment-challenging bids for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 were viewed by some as something of a spiritual predecessor to the Bernie Sanders campaign, also championed the importance of nonviolent protest Wednesday.
More than once, Jackson returned to the importance of voting, arguing that recent strict voter ID laws in states like North Carolina amounted to “a form of voter hacking, not by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin but by Republicans.”