BOSTON — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is continuing to ramp up her efforts to discredit a pending Donald Trump presidency, telling reporters after Friday’s New England Women’s Policy Conference that his victory last week “is not just a stain on the election,” but rather a development that Americans should view with fear.
“When Donald Trump brings Steve Bannon into the White House, a man who is embraced by the KKK, a man who is a white supremacist, then Donald Trump is doubling-down on racism,” Warren said, referencing Trump’s naming of Breitbart News’s executive chairman. “That’s not what the rest of America is and we’ll fight back.”
Warren also dismissed any notion that Democrats were handed a big defeat on Election Day.
“Can we start with the fact that Hillary Clinton got at least a million votes more than Donald Trump, and that they picked up seats in the United States Senate and in the House of Representatives?” Warren said. “Anyone who thinks that the Republicans got a mandate coming out of this election is just not paying attention.”
Democrats needed to secure wins in at least 30 races to reclaim control of the U.S. House of Representatives. The party wound up winning just six seats. On the Senate side, Democrats picked up two new seats but Republicans still maintain a 52-48 majority.
Warren later blasted the makeup of Trump’s White House transition team, picking up where she left off earlier this week when she penned a letter ripping the lobbying and big industry credentials of Trump’s picks.
“It is so hard to know what Donald Trump plans to do other than his direct indication to bring a racist white supremacist, directly into the White House advisory group, and then to pack his transition team with lobbyists and corporate executives who are just trying to make sure that their industries and their corporations come out of this government with even more money,” she said, again referencing Bannon, who Trump named as a top advisor.
Warren said Trump’s decisions are proof that his campaign promises to support Americans “was nothing more than a con.”
“Donald Trump said he’s going to be out there for the working people, and yet he’s been president-elect for less than two weeks, and already he has filled his transition team with lobbyists, with corporate executives, with people who want to enrich themselves and their industries,” Warren said.
Warren also ripped Trump over his selection of Alabama U.S. Sen. Jeff Session as his pick to serve as attorney general, referencing the decision in 1986 by the U.S. Senate to bounce the then-Alabama district attorney’s nomination to a federal judgeship, citing allegations of racism.
Warren released an audible gasp when asked which of Session’s policy stances concerns her most.
“Well Sen. Sessions was vetted for a federal judgeship several years ago, and at that time it became quite public that he’d made jokes about the KKK, that he made racial slurs, that he said things that caused not just Democrats but people in his own party — Republicans — to say this is a man who is not fit to be a federal judge,” Warren noted. “I think that’s disqualifying, across the board, and to be the attorney general of the United States?
“He would be in charge of the civil rights division, the one who enforces the laws around voting rights, housing discrimination — I strongly urge Donald Trump to withdraw any consideration of Sen. Sessions.”
The conservative National Review magazine named Sessions as “amnesty’s worst enemy” in 2014.
Warren was also asked about former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is rumored to be in consideration for the position of secretary of state. Romney was one of the Trump’s most outspoken Republican critics during his campaign.
“I just don’t know what Trump is trying to do here,” Warren said. “I don’t know what the speculation is, but I find it very difficult for a man who said the things on videotape that MItt Romney said and then to turn around and support him, I just don’t understand it.”
Asked whether there are potential policy projects that Democrats may be able to work on with a Trump administration, Warren changed her tone from a week ago, when she promised to attendees at an AFL-CIO conference that she would work with Trump if he backs policies supporting the middle class.
“Look, when we’re talking about issues like racism, no compromise, ever,” Warren said. “You don’t get to believe in 70 percent dignity — we believe in dignity for every human being in this country.
“We have to be willing to fight back, all of us — all I know to do is just stand up and fight.”
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) 
