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Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Listen, come on, this resolution is not about violence or domestic terrorism. It just isn't.

This is a resolution that says one thing and one thing only: Elon Musk is in charge. He matters more than anybody else. Musk is subject to a different set of rules than everybody else. The Trump administration serves him, not us. The Republican Party serves him, not us.

Elon Musk, right now, is effectively stealing from the American people. He is combing through our government, awarding himself contracts and canceling contracts for his competitors. He is shutting down Agencies that stand in the way of his business, its growth.

He is giving himself access to secret information about government enforcement actions against his competitors. He is also, at the same time, currently the largest funder of Republican politics in the Nation.

He spent a quarter of a billion dollars backing President Trump's campaign. He recently told the President that he would contribute another $100 million to the President's political arm.

And guess what? At that same time, the President stood on the White House lawn to give a taxpayer-funded commercial for Elon Musk's cars. That is corruption at a scale that we have not seen before in this country: the integration of the Trump White House and the Republican Party and the business interests of the richest man in the world. It is wrong.

Now, this resolution claims to say something about domestic terrorism, but the only terrorism, the only violence it mentions is violence carried out against--you guessed it--Elon Musk.

On an annual basis, there are 11,000 reported incidents of domestic terrorism--11,000. Only a handful of them impact Tesla dealerships, but they are the only acts of violence mentioned in this resolution. And 52 percent of the reported attacks were based on racial or ethnic targeting by radicalized attackers, but they aren't mentioned in this resolution.

Only Elon Musk is mentioned in this resolution because a different set of rules applies to him, because he is in charge and he deserves protection that no one else gets. He deserves a White House TV commercial for his cars. He deserves to give himself contracts and steal from his competitors. He deserves to have his own resolution.

And people are asking why? Why does the richest man in the country get this special treatment? To most people, it feels pretty fishy. It definitely feels wrong.

Now, I hate violence of any kind, whether it is perpetrated against right, left, or center. I have spent my life on this floor fighting violence, but I also hate inconsistency.

So I am going to make my colleague a pretty reasonable offer here. At the same time that President Trump is saying that he is going to vigorously pursue people that attack Tesla dealerships, he is giving pardons to the people who beat the hell out of Capitol Police officers. So I don't think that we should consent to a resolution that says we care about violence but only when it is committed against the business interests of the richest man in the world.

And I have a way to solve that problem. Senator Murray has a really simple resolution, a resolution that expresses our disapproval of the pardons that were issued for the very specific set of individuals who on January 6 brutally attacked Capitol Police officers. Now, I understand that many of my Republican colleagues think the people who trespassed here shouldn't have been prosecuted. Let's set aside that disagreement.

This resolution just says that the specific set of people who viciously attacked police officers--the ones that hit the police officers over the head with metal poles--that those people shouldn't have been given a ``Get Out of Jail Free'' card. And so why don't we just be consistent? Why don't we say that violence matters when it is committed against Elon Musk's dealerships, and it matters when it is committed against the people that protect us?

And so my offer is to just pass both resolutions, right now, right now. We could just agree by unanimous consent to your resolution, and we could agree as a body that you shouldn't pardon the people who brutally beat the people who show up every day to protect us. They matter too. Elon Musk isn't the only person that matters. Capitol Police officers matter too.

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