WASHINGTON — With Congress set to flee town until after the November elections, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took to the Senate floor Thursday to mark a milestone of sorts: eight years of obstructing and insulting the nation’s first black president.
“As this Republican Congress heads for yet another un-earned recess, I feel compelled to comment on how Republicans have treated the president of the United States,” Reid said.
“History will look back and note that Republicans in Congress treated President Obama with unprecedented disrespect,” Reid said, arguing that soon after Obama was elected, the GOP set out to make him a one-term president and obstruct anything he did.
Reid checked off a list that included Obama also being the first president to be denied a hearing on a Supreme Court nominee, the first to be denied a hearing on his budget, and the first to be asked to show his birth certificate. Obama faced more than 500 filibusters in the Senate, Reid added.
“No one expected them to agree with everything he did ― but America deserved better than the way Republicans behaved toward President Obama,” Reid said.
The soon-to-retire Democratic leader also argued that the shabby treatment of Obama is part of why the GOP is saddled with Donald Trump as its presidential nominee.
“The only thing Republicans have truly done this year was to prove that they are the party of Trump,” Reid said. “Republicans would have us all believe that Trump just fell out of the sky, and somehow mysteriously became the nominee of their party.
“But that is not how it is,” Reid said. “Trump is no anomaly. He is the monster that Republicans built. He is their Frankenstein’s monster. They own him.”
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