If you were looking for a Democrat to say no, it is too dangerous to try to work with Donald Trump, even on infrastructure—meet Rep. Ruben Gallego. Gallego spoke on the House floor Wednesday night, and while he opened by expressing his understanding of President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s efforts to make the transition of power run smoothly, “I feel that I have a different obligation at this moment, as do my colleagues in this House.”
I have a duty to tell the truth about Donald Trump. We cannot treat him like any other politician, or even like any other Republican, because he is not. He represents something much more dangerous. And while none of us want this to be the case, we have a duty to treat him like the threat he is – a threat to our values, a threat to our people, and a threat to our national identity.
And tell the truth Gallego did—leading to repeated interruptions from the chair warning him not to say such things about Trump on the House floor. But Gallego didn’t just call Trump out as a sexual predator, as a demagogue, as a bigot, as a liar. He didn’t just highlight Trump’s upcoming Trump University fraud trial, his lack of financial disclosure, his hiring of a white nationalist as a top adviser, his plan to deport millions of immigrants. All that is why, Gallego said, “I was alarmed by the words of senior leaders from both the progressive and centrist wings of the party regarding their openness to working with Donald Trump on infrastructure.”
Under ordinary circumstances, we would welcome a plan to invest in infrastructure -- even if that plan came from the other side of the aisle. Especially if it came from the other side of the aisle!
But Donald Trump is not an ordinary politician. He is a con-artist. He has refused to give the American people reason to believe that he is not in this to enrich himself. In fact, he has bucked tradition by maintaining his family's interest in a private corporation.
And, unfortunately, his infrastructure plan is really a privatization scheme, rife with graft and corruption, whose real purpose is to enrich the Trump family and his supporters. He is not reaching out. He is reaching his hand into America's pockets, just as he has his whole career. And we must not let him do it.
Watch the video below.