In his weekly press briefing Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville answered a question about the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I want to know what we knew,” Tuberville said. “Hopefully, they get Nancy Pelosi and put her on the stand and ask her, ‘Did you know? Were you warned by the FBI?’ Because you, Nancy Pelosi, are in charge of the Capitol. You’re in charge of the security of the Capitol. We never hear anything like that.”
Tuberville said the House panel investigating Jan. 6 is partisan and invalid.
“The first thing I want to say is that if you want to have a commission, that’s fine,” Tuberville said. “The Republicans in the House put up three members that they wanted on the commission, but Nancy Pelosi would not allow them to be on it. She pretty much picked her people from the left and from the right. That makes, to me, this commission invalid. If they want to do a commission, do it the right way. Do it bi-partisan. But this is how Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer do things. They do it all partisan. They want to get the result that they want to get out of it.”
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Pelosi vetoed two out of five Republicans nominated for the panel by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy: Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana. McCarthy then pulled back all five of his nominees, including Troy Nehls of Texas. Jordan, Banks and Nehls were among 139 House Republicans who voted against certifying presidential election results from Pennsylvania and Arizona.
“So, it’s like everything up here in D.C.,” said Tuberville, one of the senators who voted against certifying the election results. “It’s all partisan. Everything is towards making people look bad. And we need to move on. We need to help the American people. We need to get out of this pandemic. We need to get away from this recession that we’re in and (that’s) getting ready to get worse. We need to do things for the American people instead - quit worrying about the past.”
During the riot at the Capitol, Tuberville spoke on the phone with President Donald Trump, who tried to call him but got U.S. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah by mistake. Lee handed his phone to Tuberville. In a profile of Tuberville published in The Washington Post this week, Tuberville summarized what Trump told him: “I know we’ve got problems,” Tuberville said Trump told him. “Protect yourself.”
Congress certified Biden’s election early on Jan. 7, the morning after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, disrupted the certification of Electoral College votes and forced lawmakers into hiding.
After the riots ended, Tuberville was one of six senators who voted to overturn the election results in Arizona. Tuberville was also one of seven senators who voted to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania. “I have no regrets,” Tuberville told The Post for their story.
Vaccine mandates
In the press call Tuesday, Tuberville criticized rising inflation and attacked vaccine mandates by the federal government, although he urged people to talk to their doctors and consider being vaccinated before going to indoor gatherings at Thanksgiving that could spread the virus.
“It’s one of the biggest government overreaches in my lifetime,” Tuberville said of mandates. “This is a free country. You have a right to pretty much do what you want to within the law. Forcing you to take a vaccine is wrong. I’ve taken a vaccine. My family’s taken it. I did all the research on it. I’ve talked to doctors. I felt like it was the right thing to do. But to tell people they’ve got to take a vaccine even if they’ve had the virus, which is 20 times stronger if you’ve overcome the virus to have the antibodies in your system, 20 times more powerful than the vaccine, to keep you from getting it or giving it to somebody else is astounding. People are losing their jobs. It’s going against some people’s religions. I have friends that have underlying conditions that the doctor tells them do not take the vaccine. But they’re still being told by Joe Biden and the federal government to take it. It is wrong. It is wrong what this administration is doing. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. There has to be some underlying condition. I’m on the health committee. We’re doing research on this. We’ll have some things to say about this in the very near future. It’s wrong. People should not be told whether you have to take it or lose your job. That’s just wrong, as an American.”
Supply chain
Tuberville also said that the federal government paying out money in stimulus payments may be to blame for supply chain problems.
“We’ve all seen this coming, I think everybody but the Biden administration,” Tuberville said. “As of today, there’s 100 ships outside the port of California waiting to unload. Normally there’s six or seven waiting in line. What has happened is that all the money we threw at workers over the last nine months through this CARES Act, the $1.9 trillion. People took the money and they stayed at home and they’re not going back to work.”
People need to return to jobs to keep the economy moving, he said.
“We need people to drive trucks,” Tuberville said. “We’re tens of thousands of people short of driving trucks, working at the ports. It’s not just a supply chain problem. It’s a worker problem. We’ve got to get away from pumping money into the economy and get people back to work. Get them out there, understanding that this country is ran by hard work and effort. The supply chain is going to be very tough this Thanksgiving. You’re going to have a lot of things that’s not going to show up. The shelves are going to start emptying out.”
The supply chain problems amount to a national security risk, he said.
“We’ve got to get people back to work and we’ve got to find some way to get the goods from these ports to the stores across the country,” Tuberville said. “We can’t snap our fingers and do it. I’ve heard the Biden administration say we’re not going to work this problem out probably for another six or seven months. The citizens of this country deserve better than they’re getting when it comes to this. We should have seen this coming.”
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