Lawrence’s Last Word: The Senate Is Not Democracy In Action | The Last Word | MSNBC

Lawrence O’Donnell explains how the Senate is now, always has been and always will be an anti-democratic institution. Aired on 01/31/20.
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Lawrence's Last Word: The Senate Is Not Democracy In Action | The Last Word | MSNBC

71 comments

    1. Well I am an independent that usually lean conservative but this time around they’ll have to put my head on a spike along with all the other Independence I know. I will not so out my country out of f e AR

  1. Republicans have dug thier own political grave thy nuke Bomb themselves all in the name of covering up a Traitor to laws and country, These Syndicates outfit don’t have a clue to what’s really going on in the Whitehouse closed doors drug deals, cause his head and lips is in trump’s A** hole .

  2. Paul Keating, a former Australian prime minister called the australian senate “unrepresentative swill” and I think “a conga line of arseholes” is also attributed to him. He hated them because they weren’t directly elected by the people.

    It looks like these names could also apply to the US senate.

  3. Great job Lawrence! Start hammering these senators that screwed the majority of Americans. Let’s do the right people, start voting these money hungry politicians out.

    1. I’ll be voting for Trump again in 2020. I’m making sure that all my friends and family vote for Trump as well. We got this covered. TRUMP 2020 MAGA

    2. @Mister Hat Too bad you’re an elitist jerk. I promise that I will never submit to an authoritarian leftist Democrat. That’s why I support the Second Amendment. You might want to stay out of Texas. Thanks. TRUMP 2020 MAGA – Democrats for Prison.

  4. Our nation’s dumbest senator, Ron Johnson, won’t be up until 2022. Wisconsin will not forget.

    1. @Anthony M really?!!!!! Well…as long as YOU got something out of this! You sold out the bees your family relays on, the clean air and water they need too. And the farmers that already went bankrupt thanks to his ill conceived trade war. You sold out the future of our democracy, because he and others like him, just got the green light to cheat on elections, and now, apparently, presidents have dictatorial power to do WHATEVER they want! But, hey, at least YOU got immediate gratification! Btw…when our allies tell us we’re on our own, because of how he keeps screwing them over, you’ll just be counting your 30 pieces of silver. Judas.

  5. Putin has to feel a sense of accomplishment as he watches Trump and republican systematically attacking and dismantling America’s democratic institutions.
    Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line,  our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country.

    Len Blavatnik, is a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik’s family emigrated to the U.S. in the late ’70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late ’80s.

    In 2015-16, Blavatnik’s political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey “Two-faced” Graham.

    Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Putin’s favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia’s Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner.

    Nearly 4% of Deripaska’s stake in Rusal is owned by Putin’s state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.

    We already know that Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin’s interests with Western governments. Deripaska’s name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller’s team by Manafort’s attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: “If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate.”

    Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle. 

    Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg’s cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova’s U.S. investment arm located in NY.  in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump’s Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as “an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,” 

    Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund. 

    In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg.

    Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch’s PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik’s AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik’s AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia’s interference in the election.

    1. Yes, yes, everyone is a Russian asset. Thst narrative is definitely not played out at this point….

    1. It’s been “on” for democrats since before POTUS was elected, They have and will continue to lose. KAG 2020

    2. And not just in the Senate or Congress. We need to get Republicans out of every office, starting from the bottom up. Get them out of town government, county government, state government, etc. Get them ALL out!

  6. Regardless of who you support, any real trial needs ALL available documents and witnesses present in order for real justice, everyone should remember who voted no and let your voice be heard by voting them out of the senate

    1. @Chris Hill Did the president’s team have the opportunity to cross examine the witnesses the Democrats managers called and used?

    1. His replacement? Then who’s going to be senator for his state? You know which one? (hurries off to google)

    2. yes, fruit case= EVERYONE works for Russia-Trump, McConnel, Tulsi Gabbard, Jill Stein EVERYONE who opposed queen Hilary and you parrot that stupidity in public !

    1. Ike Rivers Wrong? State your evidence of why I’m wrong. Just saying I’m wrong with no logical argument of how I’m wrong isn’t proof.

    2. @Rand Kocher ” The only thing the Conservatives have is the TRUTH!”
      Well, no. They’ve voter suppression, gerrymandered electorates and a biased electoral college going for them too. And now they’ve endorsed the right of their President to recruit foreign interference in elections as well.

    3. You will also need to rewrite the sections of the constitution that have been perverted by the current administration. The only candidate with the integrity to take the job on is Bernie Sanders.

  7. My biggest concern is will our election be fair? Will my vote even be counted. I have never had less faith in my government than I have since Trump took office and surrounded himself with Criminals. How can we secure this election? What’s the safest way to vote? I don’t trust my community to hold a fair election! Democratic advice welcome.

    1. Create a website with a counter, have everyone take a picture of their vote and upload a blacked out picture of that content to the website register it themselves, turn in the vote, and on election night if the amount of votes for a specific party of your state does not match the minimum of what is recorded on the website you know someone has rigged the election.

  8. When Otto Strasser, an early member of the Nazi Party in Germany, asked Hitler, What is the program of the NSDAP?
    Hitler: The program is not the question. The only question is power.
    Strasser: Power is only the means of accomplishing the program.

    Hitler: These are the opinions of the intellectuals. We need power.

    This is the Trump Republican Party of 2020.

  9. I totally agree! I live in Kentucky with 2 of the worst senators ever, McConnell and Paul, they are an embarrassment and totally controlled by their rich donors. I am supporting Amy McGrath because I want someone who is strong and has character and will represent the people of Kentucky. Even though I knew it would probably go this way with the “impeachment trial” so called because if they really wanted a fair trial they would not hesitate to hear all the testimony of witnesses and be able to read all the documents that Trump refused to release. I do not know what is going to happen, but we currently have a president so corrupt, such a liar and deceiver I do fear for our country. Spoiled rich man Trump as usual does not have to face the consequences of his actions.

  10. “The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.”
    Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Abbé Arnoux, July 19, 1789

    1. yes plz tell the democrats to stop getting in the way of investigating pretty obvious corruption by bidens

    2. @thaNorthStar.com How many investigations into the Bidens, showing you they did nothing wrong, do you need before your bird brain absorbs the proven facts?

  11. If we don’t have democracy, what do we have? Trump! I’m just glad, I got to experience, America, for a little while. When we defy God’s, laws, there’s repercausions. His name is Donald Trump, like the Locus.

  12. Nope.
    The GOP Senate is *autocracy* in action.

    Something neither the democrats or the *true* republicans voted for or dedire in the slightest.

    The MAGA-“Forever-Trumpers” are destroying America, people.

    1. Have destroyed! Autocratic rule is imminent now! Say you want a revolution. We have to defend the way we have lived protecting the Constitution. Let’s protest!

    2. Watch how trolls are dividing, speaking misinformation and fear. No longer foreign…they are HERE. Read FBI reports.

    1. Well it was a “deliberate” decision to not go after the boss-crow’s eye… birds of a feather and all that shebang…

    2. @Closeoutracer It was an attempt to save your elections from cheating… you know, so you can have a fairly elected president. Not the cheat called Trump, who could never have been where he is now without blowing Putin.

    3. @zhadoomzx 15 Democrat attys and 40 FBI agents found no collusion in 2 years of effort.The HRC paid for dossier has been similarly debunked. You should try and stay current.

  13. Will the senate ask Trump’s lead defender about his involvement and whether it was true that he was in the room when it happened

    1. u are watching corruption politicians going to extremely drastic measures to stop anyone from investigating corruption.
      1st it was joe biden stopping ukraine investigation by threatening to withhold $1,000,000,000 in aid
      2nd it was democrats stopping trump investigating by impeaching trump.
      i mean kmon, they wouldnt be so desperate to stop investgations into corruption if they werent corrupt

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