Sherrod Brown Melts Down: McConnell ‘Dictator,’ GOP ‘Gravedigger of Democracy’

Ohio Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown accused Mitch McConnell of colluding with the White House to protect President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

Speaking ahead of the Senate impeachment vote on Wednesday, Brown accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of colluding with the White House and manipulating the impeachment process to protect President Donald Trump.

“The great journalist Bill Moyers summed up the past three weeks,” Brown began, quoting the 85-year-old former White House press secretary. “What we’ve just seen is the dictator of the Senate manipulating the impeachment process to save the demagogue in the White House, whose political party has become the gravedigger of democracy.”

Brown paused to repeat the statement before continuing. “Even before this trial began,” Brown continued, “leader McConnell admitted out loud that he was coordinating the trial process with the White House.” The senator’s tone grew more and more incredulous as he continued his indictment of the Senate Majority Leader, saying:

Every other impeachment procedure in the senate for 250 years has witnesses. Some of them had dozens. We had zero. Leader McConnell rushed this trial through. He turned off cameras in this body so the American public couldn’t see the whole process. He restricted reporter access.

We know reporters roamed the halls to talk to member of the House and Senate. He restricted access there. He twisted arms to make sure every Republican voted with him to block witnesses. He didn’t get a couple of them, but he had enough to protect himself.

“The leader of the Senate was coordinating with the White House on impeachment,” Brown claimed, issuing a challenge for McConnell to show “one trial in my state of Ohio, or his state of Kentucky, where the jury coordinated with the defense lawyers.”

“In a fair trial, the defense and prosecution would have been able to introduce evidence, to call witnesses, to listen to testimony,” Brown said.

The Ohio senator is known for his aggressive pursuit of impeachment and fiery criticisms of both Republicans and the Trump administration. He has claimed that “white supremacists feel empowered” by Trump, characterized the impeachment process as a “sham trial” without witnesses, said that unnamed Republicans have confided that Trump is a bigot, and predicted voters “sick of the spectacle” will elect a Democrat in 2020.