WASHINGTON ― Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who traded insults with President-elect Donald Trump during the presidential campaign, said on Thursday that many Americans had a right to be worried about a Trump presidency.
“He won ― and now Latino and Muslim-American children are worried about what will happen to their families. LGBT couples are worried that their marriages could be dissolved by a Trump-Pence Supreme Court,” Warren said in a speech to the AFL-CIO, according to prepared remarks. “Women are worried that their access to desperately needed health services will disappear. Millions of people in this country are worried, deeply worried. And they are right to be worried.”
Describing a “new era” for Democrats, Warren said that her party “will stand up to bigotry.”
“In all its forms, we will fight back against attacks on Latinos, African Americans, women, Muslims, immigrants, disabled Americans ― on anyone,” she said. “Whether Donald Trump sits in a glass tower or sits in the White House, we will not give an inch on this, not now, not ever.”
“We do not control the tools of government, but make no mistake, we know what we stand for, the sun will keep rising, and we will keep fighting ― each day, every day, we will fight for the people of this country,” she said.
Warren and Trump bitterly feuded on the campaign trail, with Trump calling Warren “Pocahontas” and Warren calling him a “racist bully and a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud” and a “small, insecure money-grubber.”
Nonetheless, Warren noted that she and Trump had some similar policy interests, including reining in Wall Street, opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, preserving Social Security benefits and getting the influence of money out of politics.
“Let me be 100 percent clear about this,” she went on. “When President-Elect Trump wants to take on these issues, when his goal is to increase the economic security of middle class families, then count me in. I will put aside our differences and I will work with him to accomplish that goal,” she said. “If Trump is ready to go on rebuilding economic security for millions of Americans, so am I and so are a lot of other people ― Democrats and Republicans.”
Warren also addressed the wide appeal that Trump’s populist message had.
“The deep worry that people feel over an America that does not work for them is not liberal or conservative worry,” she said. “It is not Democratic or Republican worry. It is the deep worry that led even Americans with very deep reservations about Donald Trump’s temperament and fitness to vote for him anyway.”
But it’s unclear how much Trump and Warren could actually agree on. Trump is expected to push for a major rollback of banking and other regulations. He has pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Warren made it clear that those actions would not improve the American economy.
“The time for ignoring the American people is over. It’s time for us to come together to work on America’s agenda. Democracy demands that we do so, and we are ready,” she said.
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