Senate Republicans voted to silence the Democrats’ Elizabeth Warren after she read from a letter by the widow of Martin Luther King that criticized the civil rights record of Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Jeff Sessions.The debate on the confirmation of Sen. Sessions came to a screeching but temporary halt Tuesday night when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, objected to a speech that the Massachusetts Democrat was giving.
By all appearances, Warren wasn’t trying to do anything especially provocative. The Massachusetts Democrat was quoting a letter Coretta Scott King sent to the Senate 30 years ago, speaking out against Sessions’ judicial nomination, which was ultimately defeated because of his record on civil rights. Had Warren been allowed to continue, it’s likely her remarks wouldn’t have been noticed by much of the public.But McConnell intervened, taking the very unusual step of shutting down a senator’s remarks and silencing her. Following a 49-43 vote, which fell along partisan lines, Warren was admonished and told she could no longer participate for the remainder of the debate of the Sessions nomination.Apparently, according to the GOP leader, reading the letter from Martin Luther King’s widow was, in effect, too mean. McConnell pointed to Rule XIX, which says senators cannot “directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator.”In other words, Coretta Scott King’s concerns about Sessions’ record 30 years ago might hurt Sessions’ feelings, so, in the interest of maintaining decorum in the chamber, Republicans felt compelled to shut Warren down. Of all the things McConnell could’ve chosen to pounce on, he chose concerns about Sessions, race, and civil rights from MLK’s widow.Of course, the Streisand Effect immediately kicked in, and by silencing the Democratic senator, Republicans inadvertently raised her profile and brought more attention to the remarks she intended to make.Indeed, Warren ultimately read the King letter anyway, not from the Senate floor, but from a Senate hallway where it was streamed online — for an audience of nearly 50,000 people.For more on this story, here’s the text of the letter itself and Rachel’s segment on its history. Here’s Warren discussing what transpired with Rachel on last night’s show, here’s Rachel reading from the letter that McConnell apparently doesn’t want people to hear, and here’s Rachel reflecting on the developments with MSNBC’s Ari Melber.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."