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Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I wish it were the case that everyone agrees that what happened here on January 6 was an abomination, but that is simply not true. That is simply not true. Many of my Republican colleagues will say the right things on the Senate floor--occasionally will whisper the right things to us when the cameras aren't watching. But a recent poll--a nonpartisan Monmouth University poll--asked Republican voters whether or not they thought January 6 was a legitimate protest. And guess what. Half of Republican voters in this country say that the invasion of this Capitol that involved chants for the death of the Vice President, a gallows outside the U.S. Capitol-- half of Republicans believe that that was a legitimate protest. Seven out of ten Republicans today don't believe that Joe Biden is the legitimate President. They believe that Donald Trump won the election, despite the fact that he lost by 7 million votes.

And the reason for that is mostly that the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, has been legitimizing violence, urged those protests and that insurrection attempt, cheered them at the end of the day on January 6, and also because we have seen mostly silence from mainstream Republicans who know better but don't want to pick a fight with President Trump.

So, yes, we are worried about the future of our Republic. We are worried about the future of our Republic because a mainstream political party has gotten behind the idea that power matters more than elections; that violence is a legitimate means of protest.

So this idea that everybody agrees that January 6 was an abomination just isn't true. It is not true, and that is, in part, why we are so worried.

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