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Senate Democrats / Flickr (CC-BY)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has put President-elect Donald Trump on notice about his transition team.
Warren, who had made a gesture of good faith immediately following the confirmation of Trump’s victory in last week’s election, had clearly changed her mind by Tuesday, when she passed a forceful memo to Trump’s camp. The Massachusetts senator also alerted the press that she’d sent the letter, as The Boston Globe received a tip-off about its contents in a statement from her office:
“You made numerous promises to the American people in your election campaign, none bigger than the promise to ‘drain the swamp’ of Washington D.C. special interests rigged against the middle class,” Warren said she wrote to Trump. “The decisions you make with your transition team will shape the next four years of this nation. They will also reflect the strength of your character and your ability to truly lead — not just follow the marching orders of the special interests and Wall Street bankers you purportedly oppose.”
Warren said she has asked Trump to remove the lobbyists and Wall Street insiders from his team and turn instead to “advisors who will fight for the interests of the American people.”
“Should you refuse, I will oppose you, every step of the way, for the next four years,” Warren said she wrote to Trump. “I will champion the millions of Americans you will fail to protect. I will track your every move, and I will remind Americans, every day, of the actions you take that fail them. And I will not be the only one watching. The millions of Americans who voted for you — and the millions who didn’t — will all be watching you.”
Warren posted the full text of her letter online after sending it.
The Globe also noted that Warren on Tuesday at a Wall Street Journal event also hit out against Trump’s move to install Breitbart’s executive chairman Stephen Bannon high in the ranks of his White House advisory team. “This is a man who has white supremacist ties,” she said. “This is a man who says, by his very presence, that this is a White House that will embrace bigotry.”
Warren’s words drew fire from the head of the Massachusetts Republican Party, Kristen Hughes, who called Warren’s letter a “silly move,” “the height of hypocrisy” because Warren had accepted campaign funding from Wall Street, and an attempt to undermine “efforts to unify the country,” the paper reported.
All the same, the senator stuck to her script in a series of tweets she fired off that afternoon:
Keeping these lobbyists & insiders on your team sends a clear message, @realDonaldTrump: your campaign was a giant con.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 15, 2016
You already broke your promise, @realDonaldTrump. You stacked your transition team with Wall Street elites, insiders & lobbyists.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 15, 2016
.@realDonaldTrump, you promised the American people you’d #draintheswamp of lobbyists & insiders rigging the system for the rich & powerful.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 15, 2016
—Posted by Kasia Anderson
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