Dem senators charge: Trump not draining the swamp
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The Hill
Jordain Carney6 hrs ago
© Provided by The Hill Warren, Whitehouse: Trump not draining the swamp
Democrat Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) took to the Senate floor Thursday to charge that President-elect Donald Trump is already walking back his pledge to "drain the swamp."
Warren said that roughly a week after the presidential election,
Trump is "inviting the biggest, ugliest swamp monsters in the front door."
"We've heard reports that Vice President-elect Mike Pence has now decided to remove all the lobbyist from the transition team," she said from the Senate floor. "
Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. ...Trump promised to drain the swamp, and after one week we've seen what Donald Trump's promise means. Nothing."
NBC News reported Wednesday that Pence has ordered that all lobbyists be removed from the transition team.
Trump, during a CBS News interview earlier in the week, acknowledged his team contains lobbyists but argued that Washington is all "one big lobbyist" and promised his administration would "phase that out."
Whitehouse said Trump's campaign pledge to "drain the swamp" could be an area where Democrats are able to work with his administration.
"There are a lot of very powerful creatures in the swamp," he said. "It's one thing to say you're going to drain it. It's another thing to actually take them on."
Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) both questioned Trump's transition team on Tuesday.
Apart from the issue of lobbyists on the team, Democrats have also honed in on Trump's decision to make Breitbart News' Stephen Bannon his chief strategist and senior counselor.
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) spoke from the Senate floor on Thursday next to a sign of headlines from the conservative website, including one from 2015 that read: "Gabby Giffords: The gun control movement's human shield."
"This is nasty stuff. This is vile, and it comes all the way from the top, from Mr. Bannon himself," Franken said. "We have no reason to believe that Mr. Bannon would not seek to deploy such tactics from the White House."...
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...-not-draining-the-swamp/ar-AAkqvTD?li=BBnb7Kz