During Thursday's town hall in Pittsburgh, PA, Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) discussed President Trump's joint address to Congress.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you for being a fighter, we need a hundred more like you in Congress, exclamation point.
00:19Most enterprises in Congress are not meeting the moment of this crisis.
00:26What do they need to be doing differently? And how can we, the people, help them?
00:56Constitutional knowledge is typically very, very important. But the reality is, is that the things that worked for us, even two years ago, cannot work in a failing democracy.
01:07And we're in a failing democracy right now. I've said a lot that, I've said a lot that if you, however you are reacting to this moment, you are likely underreacting.
01:20And I don't take that lightly because I also don't want to, I don't want to cause fear. I want to spur people to action, to feeling empowered, but not feeling so crippled by just the weight of what's happening that we step back.
01:32And I think that that's what's happening in Congress too. I will use this as an example, for me myself, as somebody who is largely very local.
01:41When I was in the state house, shout out to my sister rep, Sarah, who was there at the time, Latasha, you weren't there yet.
01:47And we were trying to get police accountability across the finish line after Antoine Rose.
01:52And we knew it wasn't going to go anywhere because we were in a minority, of course.
01:56We were then in the minority of both the House and the Senate at the time, and we couldn't get these bills across the finish line.
02:01And then we had the crazy idea to just take the rostrum and stage an action.
02:06So I called all of my colleagues and I said, get to work on time because we're not going to session, we're just going to go and take the house.
02:14Which, maybe that was well thought out, maybe it wasn't, but we did it.
02:19And we got there, and we were able to take it, and we were able to hold it until the Speaker of the House said, we said we will not move until you move something on this.
02:28Now, we had a different incentive base there because we did have a per diem then, so they couldn't get paid until we clocked in.
02:34So they didn't like that.
02:35But anyways, needless to say, we were able to get some bills across.
02:39Not all the bills that we wanted, but some bills.
02:41And then the State of the Union happened, and I was paralyzed.
02:43Even I was paralyzed.
02:45As active as I am, as vocal as I am.
02:48And I sat in that room, and I'm not going to lie, and I looked across at the other side, and it looked like a lynch mob.
02:53And it felt like a lynch mob.
02:55And when people talk about what would you have done in the 60s, in the 50s, in the 40s, and we all say that we would do the best and we'd all do the most.
03:02And when you're actually confronted with it, and when you actually think about what are the implications, we're not talking about right now are they just going to take a member of Congress out.
03:09We're talking about right now they might send American citizens to El Salvador.
03:14And it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be willing to stay in and go, but it does mean that I had to get my bearings.
03:20And there are a lot of people who have to get their bearings, and there are a lot of people who don't want to get their bearings.
03:24They don't want to, and they can't.
03:27There are a lot of people right now who don't want to disrupt because we have, as a Democratic Party, valued decorum so much.
03:34So what I'm going to ask is, is that we as Democrats here, before we even get to them ones, we have to redefine the type of leadership that we want.
03:43We do.
03:45Because when I talk about, as a progressive Democrat, how I think Democrats need to be stronger, let's be real.
03:50I got multimillion-dollar campaigns run against me.
03:53And they still run them against me.
03:55Every time I don't take a vote with the leadership, they say, why didn't you vote?
03:59But I think that Biden appreciated it.
04:01Well, because sometimes we actually have to stand up to ourselves, and it's harder to stand up to your friends than it is to your enemies sometimes.
04:08So we have to help the Democratic Party to be stronger.
04:11But also we have to call on some people to go home.
04:14Listen, listen, some people got to go home.
04:16If you are uncomfortable in this moment, then this moment is not for you, and there is no shame in that.
04:20There's no shame in that.
04:22If you serve for 40 years, you served your time, and this isn't the moment where you're ready to stand up, fight back, scream, shout, hold the floor,
04:30and you're not willing to shut down sessions, then maybe it's okay to step aside.
04:35But we want to have those type of conversations about what it looks like to be voter.
04:40I know that people right now, you know, y'all know that we can't necessarily lead like an insurrection.
04:45That's what's in the media.
04:46I'm not saying we should do an insurrection.
04:48The media.
04:49To the feds.
04:50But what I am saying is that we know, I do know, that people want to hear us.
04:54They don't want to see us sitting on the House floor and kiki'ing with our Republican friends.
04:59They don't want to see us going on trips with them and having fun with them or playing in bipartisan sports with them when our democracy is at risk.
05:06And we still got folks who are playing bipartisan sports while our democracy is at risk.
05:10So those are some of the things that I would like to see.
05:13Those are some of the things that I'm asking for, and those are some of the things that I think the people are calling for.
05:17And because of that, I promise you, leadership is hearing it.
05:20And they don't have to decide if they're going to ignore, if they're going to ignore that from people.
05:25But I agree.
05:26I also want to see us all.
05:28I know that we don't have the House.
05:30We don't have the Senate.
05:31We don't have the White House.
05:33We don't have the Supreme Court.
05:35And that can all be very true.
05:37But we are not disempowered.
05:39We are not powerless.
05:41So right now, I would say a couple things that we should do, just really quickly.
05:44I'm so sorry.
05:45We need to communicate.
05:46We need to be communicating every single day.
05:48The reason why Republicans are able to get into your house is because they have access to media.
05:54They are killing us in the media.
05:56So they're killing us on legacy media, and they're also killing us on social media.
05:59So they are overwhelming us.
06:00That's why you're getting their messaging more.
06:02So it makes it seem like there is no counterargument.
06:05So we need the counterargument.
06:06We need the bills that are going to evidence that even though they're not going to get a vote or even though they're not going to get to Trump, that we still have them because that's our Project 2026.
06:16We need to have that crafted.
06:18We need to be very loud in communicating it.
06:20And that's how we give people the last thing that I would say is the organizing.
06:24We all need to be organizers right now, and we need to do organizing both on the inside, and we need to support organizing on the outside.
06:30They have to go hand in hand.
06:32The biggest thing that I was afraid of with Democrats is this idea that we say sometimes that organizing is a lesser version, that sometimes we shun activism and organizing.
06:40But the reality is when you can't legislate, what do you have left?
06:44Activism and organizing.
06:45We need to welcome that.
06:46We need to encourage that, and we need to support it, and we need to lift it up, and we need to amplify it.
06:51We need to be in those spaces doing that.
06:53Every time we have a mic, we need to lift up the good works of Americans who are standing with us, standing in the gap where we can't.
07:00And I think that when we demonstrate that, more people will feel like we're moving, where people will feel like something is actually happening, and that will help to get us out of this moment where we feel like everything is lost.
07:12All hope ain't lost, y'all.
07:13We're in the first quarter.
07:14There are more.