New Congressman Asks: What Freedoms, Exactly, Has Trump “Undermined”?

Two soon-to-be U.S. congressmen appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” show on Sunday, and their views on what’s best for the country going forward couldn’t be more divergent. When Colorado Democrat Joe Neguse suggested that it was up to the House of Representatives to “save our democracy” from President Donald Trump, his Republican colleague – Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw of Texas – politely asked Neguse to come up with a single example of the president undermining American freedoms.

“I think that right now it’s important for this majority in the House to engage in some really critical oversight of an administration that is undermining a lot of critical freedoms for folks in our country. When I say save our democracy, I mean precisely that,” Neguse said. “I think some of our democratic freedoms and the principles that we live by have been under attack for the better part of the last two years.”

“What is he undermining exactly? You know, what democratic freedoms have been undermined?” Crenshaw asked, reasonably. “We just had an election where we switched power in the House. Democracy is at work. People are voting in record numbers.”

Neguse could not obviously argue that point, so he and the other Democrats on the panel began discussing the White House feud with CNN clown Jim Acosta. Chrissy Houlahan, a new Democrat from Pennsylvania, said that when Trump is “disruptive” in White House press conferences, it is “literally an attack on the press.”

Crenshaw, who was severely wounded in Afghanistan, asked that his colleagues tone down the idiotic rhetoric.

“I’ve literally been attacked,” he said. “So I, don’t — let’s choose our words carefully.”

Later, Crenshaw expanded on that thought, urging politicians and members of Congress to be more careful about their political rants.

“I want to caution us, because those are very bold words,” he said. “If we have policy disagreements, let’s focus on those policy disagreements and I’ll be happy to discuss those at any point. But this is what I’ve been getting at kind of all week, which is we tend to go right at the jugular, right? We say, ‘You’re undermining democracy, you’re a bad person fundamentally.’ That’s not always true. We have policy disagreements on a lot of these things.”

From all we can tell, Crenshaw is well on his way to becoming the next young GOP superstar. He handled the Pete Davidson/Saturday Night Live thing with more class than we’ve seen from a politician in years, and his simple question on CBS – name a way in which Trump is undermining our freedoms – points to a strain of common sense all-too-lacking in Washington these days. We’ll be watching his career closely from here on out, and we’re expecting great things.