Huffman Tears Into Majorie Taylor Greene For 'Currying Favor' With Trump By Introducing 'Gulf Of America' Bill

3 days ago

During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) spoke about Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene's (R-GA) bill to codify President Trump's executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the 'Gulf of America.'

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Transcript

00:00Chair now recognizes Mr. Huffman for five minutes of questioning. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate

00:05Chair Westerman's football metaphor, and to throw it back at him, you know, maybe we can agree we've

00:14got a good defense. Maybe the answer to having a better offense is to stop punting on first down

00:21because we keep firing the offensive coordinator. But we will continue that conversation, I'm sure,

00:27into the future. We've had it so many times here in this committee, and we have just,

00:33you know, picked through every aspect of why, from our perspective, you need good science,

00:38you need good personnel and wildlife managers, you need adequate budgets and staffing for the

00:43ESA to work, and we will keep making those points. But certainly, a bill to make the ESA weaker

00:51is not the answer and is nothing new. We've just seen it so many times before. What is new

00:56and I'm in my 13th year in Congress, I've never seen anything even remotely like the gentlelady

01:03from Georgia's bill to curry favor with Donald Trump by affirming his swaggering ignorance in

01:14trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico. This is just remarkable new stuff in this committee, just

01:22bootlicking sycophancy of the highest order. And the only point of this bill, and everybody knows

01:29it, is just to kiss up to Donald Trump. All of you know that this is not a serious bill.

01:35Surely, many of you are embarrassed by this naked tribute to the cult leader. But here we are.

01:44We're actually dedicating committee time to this joke of a bill. And of all of the

01:52unserious things that have been said about this deeply unserious bill, perhaps the biggest joke

01:58of all is the suggestion that it has something to do with national security. The sponsor of the bill

02:04mentioned national security. One of the witnesses talked about this as if somehow

02:09kissing up to Donald Trump and renaming the Gulf of Mexico will make us safer. I mean, come on.

02:17Anyone who wants to be taken seriously about national security should be talking about one

02:22thing and one thing only today. Reporting from the Atlantic yesterday revealed that senior Trump

02:28administration officials, including the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State,

02:33Director of National Intelligence, U.S. National Security Advisor, and White House Chief of Staff

02:39debated and coordinated an airstrike on a foreign adversary in the Middle East using

02:44the messaging app Signal. The conversation, which included an exchange of classified information

02:50over a non-secure platform on non-secure devices, was complete with craven political justification

02:57for the strike middle school style celebration of an attack that actually killed people.

03:04And yes, even emojis. And the reason we know all this is they accidentally included the editor of

03:10the Atlantic in the text chain. Unfortunately, unlike the Gulf of America legislation before us,

03:17this is not a joke. What it is is a breathtaking breach of national security and public trust

03:24that makes Americans less safe and makes our country the laughingstock of the world.

03:28Imagine if instead of fat figuring the signal handle of a reporter, one of these clowns had

03:35looped in a less responsible journalist or a reporter with Putin's RT or maybe a defense or

03:43an intelligence contact with opposing views of the conflict in Yemen. Maybe someone motivated

03:49to leak it. Kevin Carroll, a national security lawyer and former CIA officer, said it best in

03:55the Washington Post yesterday evening, if these people were junior uniformed personnel, they would

04:01be court-martialed. So where's the accountability? Where's the outrage from my friends across the

04:06aisle? I heard Speaker Johnson call this a mistake. Just sort of shrug it off and say that the

04:13administration would learn from it. This is not a mistake. This is a fireable offense. The president

04:18put these incompetent people in position to safeguard our country's sensitive defense and

04:24security information and instead they're treating it like they're in some kind of a March Madness

04:29chat group with their fraternity brothers. Anyone who wants to be taken seriously

04:35on national security should be focused on this today. Not trying to break the Endangered Species

04:42Act or kill wolves or rename bodies of water to appease a petulant president. I yield back.

Huffman Tears Into Majorie Taylor Greene For 'Currying Favor' With Trump By Introducing 'Gulf Of America' Bill

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