Mrs. Gillibrand. No. Mr. Graham. No. Mr. Grassley. No. Mr. Haggerty. No. Ms. Harris. No. Miss hassan. No. Mr. Hawley. Aye. Mr. Hinrich. No. Mr. Hickenlooper. No. Miss hirono. No. No. Mr. Hoeven. No. Mrs. Hide smith. Aye. Mr. Inhofe. No. Mr. Johnson. No. Mr. Kane. No. Mr. Kelly. No. Mr. Kennedy. Aye. Mr. King. No. Ms. Klobuchar. No. Mr. Lankford. [ inaudible ]. Mr. Leahy. No. Mr. Lee. No. Mrs. Loeffler. No. Mr. Lujan. No. Ms. Lumus. [ inaudible ]. Mr. Manchin. No. Mr. Markey. No. Mr. Marshall. Aye. Mr. Mcconnell. No. Mr. Menendez. No. Mr. Merkley. No. Mr. Moran. No. Ms. Murkowski. No. Mr. Murphy. No. Mrs. Murray. No. Mr. Paul. No. Mr. Peters. No. Mr. Portman. No. Mr. Reed. No. Mr. Risch. No. Mr. Romney. No. Ms. Rosen. No. Mr. Rounds. No. Mr. Rubio. No. Mr. Sanders. No. Mr. Sasse. No. Mr. Shotz. No. Mr. Schumer. No. Mr. Scott of florida. No. Mr. Scott of south carolina. No. Mrs. Shaheen. No. Mr. Shelby. [ inaudible ]. Miss sinema. No. Miss smith. No. Miss stabenow. No. Mr. Sullivan. No. Mr. Tester. No. Mr. Thune. No. Mr. Tillis. No. Mr. Toomey. No. Mr. Tuberville. Aye. Mr. Van hollen. No. Mr. Warner. No. Ms. Warren. No. Mr. Whitehouse. No. Mr. Ricker. No. Mr. Wyden. No. Mr. Young. No. Whats happening is they are just tallying the votes that were just voted by the u. S. Senators. You saw all of the senators, we believe are in the chamber. They voted orally. Its being tabulated by the clerks there. They are discussing with parliamentary staff there and ultimately we will here, i believe, from Vice President mike pence as the presiding officer here. Again, no votes were votes to vote down the objection. Aye votes, i hear at least three from senator cruz, hawley, and tuckerville. Those would be votes to sub stain the objection to the Arizona Electoral College votes. But i want to let this breathe a little bit so we can watch whats happening. When there isnt sound, its because their mics arent on. But when they are on, youll hear it. It may be that they are looking for one senator who was missing when the roll call happened. Again, we are trying to discern. There is an explanation here. You see one of the parliamentary staff speaking with the republican leader Mitch Mcconnell. As they gave the roll call you could hear almost all the answers from the senators, but not all of them. Some we couldnt hear might have been a senator who wasnt physically in place. Its about seven minutes past 10 00 p. M. On the east coast right now. We are watching this as it continues to unfold. We dont know how many other states objections will be heard. My colleague lawrence douodonn joins us now. With your experience in the senate, can you explain what it looks like is happening here . Obviously, this is an unusual format for the vote. The Typical Senate vote clock is about 15 minutes. Sometimes an agreement between the leaders that they will count the votes as soon as the vote is completed. This vote is probably complete as you said, except for the possibility that one senator was missing. But that senator should be certainly within minutes of the senate floor. So we may just be waiting for the clock to expire because they dont have an agreement on going straight to a tally of the vote. But they know the tally right now on the senate floor. They know if there is one vote missing, they know which way that vote is going to go when they get it. They are not sitting in any suspen suspense at this point. But they may be sitting for mother, as long as another ten minutes at most for this. But this is its unusual, first of all, for all senators to be physically present and at their desks and voting. That only happens in the most momentous votes in the senate, like impeachment votes, for example. So this is one of those moments in the senate. What im struck by, rachel, as we look at this imagery is that there was no damage done to that chamber when we look at whats happening there right now. Those 200yearold mahogany desks are all in place. There was no one ripped up the carpet. No one ripped up the upholstery on any of those leather chairs and that Chamber Looks as if Nothing Happened in there today when, in fact, the most stunning thing in the existence of that chamber happened in there today. Yeah. And its, you know, to have had this breach, to have had this violence in the capitol, weapons inside the capitol, to have had a woman shot and killed inside the capitol today, to have had Police Officers injured today, to have had this stunning act of Political Violence and intimidation carried out hoirs before, i was talking earlier. There is something heartening about seeing them get right back to work. I think the Vice President s comments about lets get back to work were well received on both sides of the aisle. But the idea that there wont be an answer to that incitement of violence other than, you know, resignation of the white house social secretary is it feels otherworldly. Yeah, it is. I think that washington doesnt really know where it is at this moment, and the only thing that the institution of the senate knew how to do tonight was rise up in defiance of the invaders by simply going back to business as usual, as much as they possibly can, which is what they have done here. And it will be Vice President pence who does announce this vote tally when we finally have it. It will be handed up to him on a tally sheet. He will read those numbers when he has them. Not sustained. The secretary will notify the house of the action of the informing that body that the senate is ready to proceed to joint session with further counting of the electoral vote for president and Vice President. Majority leader. Mr. President. So, colleagues, heres where we are. We have a few more speakers now as we wait for the house to finish their debate and vote. Expect the house to finish voting on arizona between 11 30 and midnight. I ask unanimous consent that the senate be in the period of business. Senator toomey, senator rubio, senator collins. On our side, senators widen, core rone owe and kuhn. Following their remarks the senate stand in recess to the call of the chair. We will figure it out. The following senators permitted to speak for five minutes each. Toomey, rubio, collins, wyden, korono and kuhns. Without objection. What you are seeing here is a parliamentary maneuver that allows senators to continue to speak outside of the rules that normally govern the consideration of objections to Electoral College votes. The law that provides for those objections provides for senators to speak only for five minutes each, either in support or opposition to that objection, and does not provide for any other form of speaking. What Mitch Mcconnell is creating an environment here on the senate floor, he is doing it by unanimous consent, that will allow senators to speak while the house is still debating this issue because, what it appears to me, is that Mitch Mcconnell probably has an agreement from all republican senators, including ted cruz and senator hawley, to not object to any other electoral votes presented in the house of representatives. And if no senator joins any future possible objection to any of the vote counts, electoral vote counts presented to the joint session, that means there will be no more votes on these objections. That seems to be the mission for Mitch Mcconnell tonight. He is with the agreement and support of Chuck Schumer to try to eliminate this vote process going forward. We are joined now by former senator Claire Mccaskill, who has been watching these proceedings all day and has watched her former workplace invaded as it has never been before. Claire, its my sense that Mitch Mcconnell has this wrapped up and he is giving the opponents their chance to talk now. And the people he just listed, by the way, are all going to be speaking in opposition to any objections on the republican side. Well, i tell you, lawrence, as of 8 08 tonight i was told by more than one republican senator that they had not gotten hawley to back off his pennsylvania objection. That they thought they had everybody else wrapped up and thats why everyone spoke on arizona. You saw a lot of speakers speaking on arizona that had been slated to speak on georgia and pennsylvania. And i think what they are trying to do, its a classic Mitch Mcconnell move, is to build the pressure around the one holdout so that maybe he will relent and not object on pennsylvania. As you explained the house cant go any further if the senate doesnt go along. Now, with that vote, the 14 or 15 people who, when they got up this morning, they were willing to go through this political stunt, thats now down to six. After the insurrection in a building that all of us who have been honored to serve there love. So thats where we stand now. I am waiting, i keep looking down at my phone to see if i am getting an answer to my text to see if hawley has agreed. Right. I was struck by Mitch Mcconnells certainty, his absolute certainty that this would be wrapped up tonight. He made that very, very clear. Now, by tonight, we know in senate terms that could mean 4 00 in the morning. And so it is possible that they could entertain and debate one more of these objections if hawley insists on doing a pennsylvania objection. But when you listen to what senator hawley said when he did take the senate floor for his five minutes, he didnt say anything. He didnt say im absolutely going to stand here again and offer my pennsylvania objections. He spoke a little bit, made references to pennsylvania in his remarks, but he gave a general statement that seems to have at least a halfstep back from the kind of aggressiveness he has brought to this subject in the past, and he sounded like someone who was on the verge of giving up if he had not already given up. Yeah, and you may be right. And certainly, if he does object, i think they will not use the time. As you also know, its not uncommon in the senate to have a set amount of time for certain procedures and then people give back their time. And so this two hours that they have under the statute to debate this in fiveminute increments, they could voluntarily relinquish th relinquish that time and just vote on the pennsylvania objection. Then it would be a matter of they could potentially go home and it would just be up to the house to finish their lengthy employees process of voting because of covid. It takes them about 75 minutes to vote now. They didnt use every minute of the two hours in the senate this time around. I think you are absolutely right, senator. If they come back, they will use very little of the two hours. And thats part of what we are seeing now with senator toomey up there on the senate floor in what we call morning business, which is kind of a free form of being able to speak without the r restrictions of that fiveminute rule that is imposed on speaking about these specific objections to Electoral College votes. Senator toomey i expect is speaking now so he wont have to speak later, even if pennsylvania is brought up, or he is speaking now knowing that there will be no other opportunity to speak in the senate tonight because this is going to be closed down. I think thats right. I think thats right. And i do think that what im hearing from my former colleagues, there is a little bit of shock that everyone is still feeling. I dont know if you noticed, but at one point during one of the speeches there was a loud bang, and everyone, you know, i mean, hearing noises in the senate, people dropping things is not unusual, or a door slamming, but in this instance you just felt the tension in the room when there was some kind of bang. I think all of them are on edge. I dont know how you felt when you looked at people wandering through the senate floor and sitting on the senate dias, but i know that it was a sinking sensation in my gut that there was that kind of defilement going on in our capitol, our beautiful capitol. And i think all of them are feeling the aftereffects of this kind of violation. And, you know, i dont know what will come of this, but i d know politically, i do know for sure whats going to come of it in terms of security. There will be a real look at what happened today and why, and the capitol will become even more secure than it ever has been in the coming weeks. Yeah, there will definitely be increased security after this. Lets listen to senator toomey on the senate floor now if he is still speaking about the pennsylvania vote. The Trump Campaign took their case of election irregularities into the courtroom. Judge brand is a conservative Republican Federalist society member. Heres what he said about the Trump Campaign case. I quote, this court has been presented with strange legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations unsupported by evidence. In the United States of america, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of the sixth most populated state. End quote. So the campaign then appealed judge brands decision to the Third Circuit and they drew a threejudge panel, all republicanappointed judges, one appointed by President Trump. The panel concurred with judge brand. Mr. President , certainly there were irregularities in this election. There always are. But there is no evidence of significant fraud, conspiracies, or even significant anomalies that cast any serious doubt on who actually won the election. And you know one of the ways you can tell is look at the big picture in pennsylvania. Look what happened. In 2016, President Trump won pennsylvania by eighttenths of one percent. In 2020, he lost pennsylvania by a little over 1 . Is there anything at all that is implausible or surprising about a 2 change in the election outcome . Relative to 2016, in pennsylvania the president lost a little ground in most of the Rural Counties he had carried, lost a lot of ground in the big suburban counties and slightly narrowed his loss in foothills. There is no surprises here. This reflects a pattern that occurred all across the country. My colleagues, as i said, it is not our responsibility to sit in judgment of state election procedures in the first place. But if it were, there would not be nearly sufficient reason to deny my constituents their right to participate in this president ial election. Mr. President , joe biden won the election. Thats not what i hoped for, but thats what happened. It was an honest victory. With the usual minor irregularities that occur in most elections. We witnessed today the damage that can result when men in power and responsibility refuse to acknowledge the truth. We saw bloodshed because a demagogue chose to spread falsehoods and sow the distrust of his own fellow americans. Lets not abet such emotion. Lets reject this motion. We are joined now by congresswoman val demings, democrat of florida. I guess we dont have congresswoman demings. Is that senator ron wyden getting up to speak against any of these objections to the Electoral College count. This was a day like no other in the capitol, but it was not the worst or most deadly day of violence in the capitol. During the lifetimes of some of the members of this congress. In 1954, there were four supporters of puerto rican independence who got into the house gallery, waved a puerto rico flag, and then shot and wounded five members of the house of representatives in 1954. Those shooters were sentenced to 75 years in prison. They were released from prison in 1978. In 1998, there were two capitol Police Officers shot and killed on the job guarding that building by a man who rushed through the metal detector with a gun. Officer Jacob Chestnut and officer john gibson were shot and killed. Officer chestnut became then the first black man to lie in state in the capitol rotunda. First one in history killed on the job as a Capitol Police officer trying to protect that building, and actually detective gibson, john gibson, shot the shooter four times after he, himself, was wounded. And so the Capitol Police live in the shadow of that tragedy every day, but the Capitol Police are not the kind of fullfledged police force that you see working in the major cities of this country. They function much more in the nature of Campus Police at major universities. Their jurisdiction is the protection of people within their campus and the security only at doorways that are not fortified in any particular way. People working in the capitol know that the Capitol Police could not possibly, could not possibly, with their resources, resist dozens of people rushing in every entrance at exactly the same time, backed up by even just a couple of thousand, which is all it was. Just a couple of thousand of people standing out there on the capitol steps. Capitol police were not prepared for this today. There surely will be an investigation about what they fled need to do to be prepared in the future. But its very clear they were not prepared to handle what was a fairly predictable, at least protest approach to the capitol, that then became an envision. We are joined now by stuart stephens, the chief strategist for mitt romneys two 2012 president ial campaign, a Senior Advisor for the lincoln project, the author of it was all a lie, how the Republican Party became donald trump. Before we get your comments, i want to take a look at what senator romney had to say on the senate floor tonight. For any who remain insistent on an you hudit in order to sate people who believe the election was stolen, id offer this perspective. No congressional audit is ever going to convince these voters, particularly when the