ICYMI: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse Talks Fighting Trump’s Corruption and the Climate Crisis on the Democrats’ Daily Blueprint Arrow

In case you missed it, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island joined the Democrats' Daily Blueprint to discuss how the Trump administration's corruption is hurting working families - including by raising your energy costs, getting rid of good-paying jobs, and exacerbating the climate crisis - all while billionaires profit more and more.

WATCH

You can find highlights from the conversation below:

On why Americans should be concerned about the Trump administration's culture of corruption and Trump's protection of "creepy billionaires":

Senator Whitehouse: "The problem with the creepy billionaires, you know, is that they're actually still trying to rob us. And to control things. You know, there's a Springsteen song, 'Poor man want to be rich. Rich man want to be king.' So these billionaire, rich people want to be king. They don't want to be accountable. They want to run things and pull strings from behind the scenes. So, the capture of the Supreme Court by the creepy billionaires was a decades-long process, and now we have to deal with the Supreme Court that we have because of what they did. This rotten bill that the Republicans just passed was written to run up our debt as American citizens by $4.1 trillion. …

"The whole purpose is that they don't want their billionaires to pay taxes. I mean, do you want to have parks? Do you want to have schools? Do you want to have health care? Do you want to have the good things in life that people do together? The idea that the billionaires simply don't want to pay for that?

"Well, the reason people should be concerned is because when [billionaires] won't pay their share, that falls to everybody else. It's on your neck to make up that 4.1 trillion in lost services, higher taxes, or your kids having to deal with a massive national debt."

On Democratic attorneys general fighting back against the Trump administration's chaos in court and winning:

Senator Whitehouse: "I mean, these [federal court cases] are really important. They're probably what, north of 200 of these legal fights going on? And the press pays attention to what's going on in the Supreme Court, which is probably the most problematic area of the judiciary right now. But elsewhere are regular federal judges in regular federal courtrooms, over and over again, holding in favor of the people who are challenging Trump law breaking.

"And not only are they holding in favor of those people, they are using terms like 'obstruction,' 'malfeasance,' 'misleading.' I mean, it's rough, rough language from federal courts about a political administration. So there's a lot of winning happening among federal judges, and as the judges see these other cases, and, you know, hear each other describing what's going on, I think that bulwark is actually making itself stronger.

On how the Trump administration's attacks on renewable energy are raising energy costs for Americans:

Senator Whitehouse: "This whole operation is pure corrupt payback to the fossil fuel industry. [Trump] said, 'give me a billion dollars, and I'll give you everything you want.' He got hundreds of millions of dollars, and now he's just giving them everything that they want. And what they're trying to lie their way through is that this is going to increase people's utility bills, and we're going to be able to prove it. …

"And the Trump people don't care, because they think that we won't notice that they were behind raising the electric bill so that more money went to the fossil fuel polluters out of our pockets. They think we'll blame it on the electric utility, because that's who sent the bill. So it's our job to make sure that people see through why it happened, and I think we can do that readily."

On what Democrats should stand and fight for:

Senator Whitehouse: "I would say that the top thing right now is to get the corruption out of government. The Trump administration is neck deep in corruption for fossil fuel. The Trump family is neck deep in corruption with the crypto kids. They're making a lot of money. And a lot of people are getting screwed because of that corruption. …

"So I think we've got to stand really, really hard against corruption. I think their tax code is corrupted in favor of billionaires. I think our energy policy is corrupted in favor of fossil fuel. I think if people believe that the government is corrupt and that they're not getting listened to, they're going to be angry, and in their anger, they might turn to a fraud like Donald Trump.

"So it's really important, I think, for Democrats to cause people to have trust again in government, to bring down the temperature and to produce results - and a fair tax code, fair energy policy, health care for all, all of the things that we can offer, if we can rebalance the system away from the creepy billionaires."

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