Headlines have been dominated by reports of DC scandals. Most recently, the story has been about how President Trump reportedly asked then-FBI Director James Comey to drop an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and any ties he may have had with Russia. The New York Times reported on a relevant memo written by then-FBI Director James Comey, which followed a Washington Post report earlier this week that Trump leaked classified information to Russia’s top diplomat.
In an interview Tuesday morning, Yahoo Finance asked Senator Elizabeth Warren to quantify the amount of time senators are spending responding to these headlines versus working on policy issues.
“People are spending 110% of their time working through what it is that Donald Trump has done,” she said. “And it’s not just reports. Donald Trump himself says ‘Yeah, I fired Comey,’ and ‘Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about was this Russian investigation’ … and then he admitted that he handed over classified information to the Russians.”
“This is one of those moments in history—one of those turning-point moments,” Warren said.
Warren said she is calling for an independent special prosecutor to run a transparent investigation. She says she wants someone who has the authority and resources to get to the bottom of the story—and can’t be fired.
Warren added that Trump must face consequences for his actions.
“I think that’s what people around here are struggling with: What to do with a president who really sets himself above the law and say,s ‘I get to do what I want cause I’m president of the United States,'” she said. “The answer in America is, ‘Actually, no Buddy, you don’t.’ In America, the way we run it is that everyone is subject to the law. So if there’s an ongoing investigation, we don’t believe our elected officials ought to be able to fire the person investigating it … In the United States, everyone is subject to the law, even the president of the United States.”
It’s not just Warren’s side of the aisle that’s found this distracting. Trump’s economic agenda has gotten bogged down too. The administration originally promised tax reform by August, a date that was later pushed back to the end of 2017. Now, Wall Street seems to have given up entirely on any push this year. Meanwhile, repealing and replacing Obamacare, something Trump said he would do on the first day of his presidency, still is a long way off with the bill having narrowly passed in the House (after initially being shot down), and faces a long road ahead in the Senate, even to just get a simple majority. Meanwhile, a reform to roll back regulatory reform may also be put on the back-burner given distractions.
Nicole Sinclair is markets correspondent at Yahoo Finance.
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