On Wednesday, reporters spoke with U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville about his decision to miss a Senate confirmation vote on Tuesday to spend time showing support for former President Donald Trump, who has been indicted for allegations of mishandling classified documents. Tuberville defended the decision because he had counted votes, and President Joe Biden’s nominee to chair the Council of Economic Advisers – Jared Bernstein – would have been confirmed anyway.
“We have dozens and dozens of votes a week, and yesterday there was a bad nomination that the Democrats and the Biden Administration put up in the financial realm, but I did my due diligence,” Tuberville told reporters in his weekly press call. “I went around, and we counted votes, and my vote wouldn’t have counted. It was going to pass anyway. It was pretty much going to be a pass.”
Tuberville said it was a more beneficial use of his time to show his support for President Trump.
“I thought it was much more beneficial for me, for the citizens of this country, the citizens of Alabama that like and support Donald Trump,” said Tuberville. “We need a strong person in the White House because this country is in trouble not just abroad, but within our country, especially financially, our economy. We need somebody who can stand up.”
Tuberville admitted that he felt that Bernstein was a flawed nominee.
“This nominee is not going to be very good,” Tuberville told reporters. “He is going to push the Biden policies that are not very good. I thought it was a lot more important to miss that vote out of very, very many and go support Donald Trump on a day in which he was indicted, a President for the first time in the history of our country, which is embarrassing.”
Tuberville argued that if Trump is indicted for having classified documents at his home, then Biden should also be indicted for having classified documents from when he was a U.S. Senator at his home as well.
“Joe Biden had thousands of documents that he got when he was a Senator, which if I had that in my house right now, I would be under the jail,” Tuberville said. “And they pretty much search you when you leave. I don’t know how in the world they got that many out of the Senate skiff. It’s really embarrassing to what this is, so number one, that is a huge, huge federal penalty. President Trump’s is not even close to that.”
Tuberville insisted that President Trump is being treated differently from other ex-presidents.
“President Trump, again, he is covered by the Presidential records act,” Tuberville continued. “As you look and see how this worked out. There are three or four Presidents that are still alive that have done much worse, much worse.”
Tuberville said that other people should also be indicted under the precedent set by the DOJ’s indictment of Trump.
“Whether President Trump did anything right or wrong, we will find out through this indictment, but there needs to be other people that get indictments very quickly since this one got handed out.”
Tuberville voiced his view that there is a political agenda here and warned of possible payback.
“We know there is a two-tier justice system,” Tuberville said. “We know what this is about. They don’t want President Trump to run. They don’t want him to win because when he runs, he wins, and when he wins, people are going to go to jail, and so they are fighting him tooth and nail, like they have done for the past six years.”
Tuberville has already endorsed President Trump’s bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Current polling, despite the indictments, have Trump either dead, even with Joe Biden, or leading. One recent Harvard CAPS-Harris poll has Trump leading Biden by as much as six percentage points – and as Trump showed in the 2016 election, he can lose the popular vote and still win an electoral college victory.
Only time will tell if these indictments will make a dent in President Trump’s growing popularity.
Bernstein was confirmed Tuesday night while Tuberville dined with President Trump in a 50 to 49 vote. U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) voted with the Republicans against the nomination. Had Tuberville attended and voted no, then it would have ended in a 50 to 50 tie, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie to confirm Bernstein.
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