Kyrsten Sinema’s Condescending Lies About The Filibuster On The View

Kyrsten Sinema is making an unfortunate appearance on @TheView to discuss voting rights. First she tells viewers that there is no exception to a full filibuster (there is, it's called reconciliation for budgets, and there are others) and then says that we have to keep the filibuster in place for when Democrats are the minority. Mitch McConnell will immediately blow up the filibuster if Republicans are a majority in the Senate with a Republican president, so Rep. Kyrsten Sinema is talking straight-up nonsense, as per usual. Certain senators seem to be doing their best to obfuscate the fact that they simply are not willing to protect our voting rights right now.

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Sam Seder: Kyrsten Sinema showed up on "The View."

Joy Behar: I think that voting rights are too crucial to just say, well we need to keep it for when we need it. It's too important, because if we don't have it, if everyone in the country is not able to vote, you don't really have a country. Not only won't you have the filibuster, you won't have a country. So for me, it seems like it's an emergency right now that we get rid of the filibuster, even though we might pay down the road. But if we don't have voting rights, what do we have? Nothing.

KS: You know, Joy, I'm really glad that you followed up on this point. So I actually mentioned this in my op-ed in the "Washington Post." If we were to eliminate the filibuster or create a so-called exception, which actually doesn't exist, so you'd have to eliminate the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation — which, just as a quick reminder, I'm an original co-sponsor of that legislation and have voted to support...

Emma Vigeland: It doesn't exist? Create it. The condescension is... Oh, that makes me mad.

SS: Well, I mean, the fact is that we do have an exception that exists, it's called reconciliation. We make an exception for budgetary items; we have a different process, and...

EV: We made an exception for judges. And you could just create one.

Matt Lech: Well it's always a tell to get into this like procedural point like, "We can't do it, and also it would be a bad idea even if we could." It's the same thing with Pelosi talking about student loans. "We can't do it, and also we would be bad if we did it." That's a tell that the first part of your statement is just a lie.

SS: You know what we also can't do? Extend the eviction moratorium. Oops! Until we did.

EV: She's learning from the administration to hide behind procedure. Just getting real good at it, even though she's so smug.

SS: Let's continue.

KS: I'll co-sponsor that legislation and have voted to support it and advance it. Continue to do so. But if you eliminate the filibuster to pass that piece of legislation, then in four years or any time when the other party gains control, without the filibuster in place all of those voting rights protections could be easily wiped out with a simple majority vote. And you could have a nationwide ban on mail-in voting. You could have requirements for voter ID at every level of government for every election throughout the country. So the thing to remember, and I know this can be really hard to do when we're feeling really worried about what's coming right in front of us, is to think a couple years down the road on what it looks like if you remove this tool, this protection for the minority. What happens when you're the minority and that tool is no longer there to protect your rights?