Hoyer Discusses President Trump's Joint Address to Congress, Tariffs, President Zelenskyy and Ukraine on WJLA
WASHINGTON, DC - Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) spoke to WJLA's Victoria Sanchez today prior to President Donald J. Trump's Joint Address to Congress. Below is a link to the video and excerpts of his remarks:
To watch the full interview, click here.
On the Tariffs in Place for Mexico and Canada and the United States' Economy
"Donald Trump promised he was going to fix the economy on the first day he was president of the United States. Not only has he not fixed the economy, he hasn't focused on the economy for all the time he's been president of the United States. And this tariff suggestion, or implementation that he's put into effect is going to raise prices for consumers: for food, for hard goods, for cars, for all the things they buy. Their prices are going to be inflated when he promised to bring inflation down. And inflation was coming down, now it's going back up. Unemployment was down. Now it's going back up. So, that this president has not done any of the things he said he would do on the economy.
"What he has done is create crisis, chaos, and capitulation to Russia. That is not good for the United States. It's not good for the people of this country. It's not helping them in the services they receive from the federal government, or for bringing their prices down so they can more afford a life that they were promised by Donald Trump. So, I think that he's done some things. As I said, he's created crisis and chaos, he's fired a lot of federal employees - probably illegally, as the courts have found, because they've stopped much of what he's done, or what the richest man on earth has done, Mr. Musk."
On President Trump's Joint Address to Congress
"I hope to hear - and what I'd like to hear but I don't expect to hear - is some plan to move ahead positively on the economy and creating jobs and removing the fear and tension that he has created with our federal government. I represent a large number of federal employees. What we want to do is right size our government, whatever size that is, to do the job that the Congress expects them to do. We also want to make sure that our employees, contrary to what the Trump Administration [has] said, don't fear coming to work. That's what Russell [Vought] has said about federal employees. He wants them to fear coming to work because they are seen as villains. And I don't know an employer in America that would want his employees to feel like villains in their job because then they wouldn't be efficient, they wouldn't be effective, and yes, they may not want to work for you. And you need people to do the work for the policies that we set forth in the Congress of the United States and that the president executes. That's an important distinction: we make the policies under Article One, the president carries them out. He's now doing things that are inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States and inconsistent with the laws of the United States. And the courts are largely holding that to be the case.”
“But I hope tonight he will say that he wants to move in a positive direction. I hope he'll say he doesn't want to shut down [the] government so he's prepared to keep the deal that Mr. McCarthy made - that we made to move forward. Frankly, we're at March 14th pretty soon, next week, and we will not have funded [the] government.”
On Zelenskyy's Meeting with Trump in the Oval Office
"The message I want to send to the president is the overwhelming, the majority, the unanimous votes and 13 different bills in support of Ukraine - the unanimous vote of the Democratic Party, in the neighborhood of 212-213 votes, was to support Ukraine. But it's not perceived by anybody except Donald Trump as the aggressor in this war. It's clearly perceived by all the world. The truth is perceived that Russia, unprovoked, has committed war crimes, breaking international law by invading a sovereign country. They have shown - the Ukrainians - extraordinary courage. Zelenskyy has shown extraordinary leadership and courage in leading his people. And what he asked for is the continuing help of the West, of the freedom loving democracies of the world against a dictator and war criminal, Putin, who Mr. Trump apparently seems to like for inexplicable reasons.
"And I think what happened on Friday was a despicable treatment of a man with great courage under great pressure, and what Mr. Trump had to say was not true. He said we had given over $300 billion. That's not true at all. We’ve given less than half of that. That's a very substantial sum of money. And Mr. Zelenskyy came before and spoke to a joint session of Congress - and to all America - through TV and said, ‘I thank the American people from the bottom of my heart and all the Ukrainian people thank America and Americans for helping us to thwart this aggression on our country and on our sovereign land.’
“So that, as I thought it was, as I described, despicable. Vance baited and accused President Zelenskyy of things he did not do. And matter of fact, he accused him of coming to America and thanking America in Pennsylvania. But then he accused him of being a political ploy, because at that point in time, Joe Biden was President of the United States and who had proposed helping Ukraine in April of 2023. And we took five months to deliver that help. The Republicans were in charge of the House, they would not put a bill on the Floor, and by the way, they wouldn't put a bill on the Floor to help Israel either. The world is doubting our reliability.”