Ossoff: Trump Has Cemented His Legacy In American History As A Failure And Disgrace, Vance Will Go Down As A Footnote
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2026/10/14/ossoff_trump_has_cemented_his_legacy_in_american_history_as_a_failure_and_disgrace_vance_will_go_down_as_a_footnote.html

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) told MS NOW host Chris Hayes on Wednesday that if Democrats win control of the Senate in November, their immediate priorities "include repeal of the tariffs and end to the war, repeal of the Medicaid cuts, restoration of Affordable Care Act benefits."

CHRIS HAYES, MS NOW HOST: We live in very strong, very strange times in the discourse and just in the time that I've covered politics, particularly on television the last 10 years in the age of Trump. And I'm just struck by the way that J.D. Vance and the President are sort of closing this race. So you've got the President of the United States calling Abdul El-Sayed a jihadist and just using the name Mohammed about him.

No, it's a middle name. But you got J.D. Vance, basically like his thing now is calling Talarico gay, I guess. He's said this multiple times. You're sort of in the mix in this world. What do you think about the level of rhetoric and the kind of rhetoric that has become as made so sort of commonplace by the president on down his party at this point?

SEN. JON OSSOFF (D-GA): Look, obviously, it is bigoted and offensive, but it's also so politically feeble and weak. Forty percent of Americans are going without food or health care to afford gas and they're throwing around schoolyard insults and taunts. And it's getting them nowhere with an American public that has decisively turned against this administration.

The Trump presidency has failed. Donald Trump has cemented his legacy in American history as a failure and a disgrace. J.D. Vance will go down as a footnote in that disgrace. And right now, the moment is at hand for the American people to use the power that we have as citizens to rebuke these abuses so decisively that no president will dare anything like this again for centuries.

HAYES: This is a question of rebuking the abuses. We had an MS NOW member who posted this question, which was very in line with what I've been thinking. You know, politics is at some level, it can be zero-sum insofar as you have to focus on one thing and not focus on another. And focusing is an act of attention in one place and not a place in another.

Prioritization, like what legislation do you move first? What do you move second? And one of the sort of paths before a possible Senate Democratic majority is meaningful legislation, reform, solution to everyday problems like the ones you outlined in that debate, but also accountability, abuses of power, threats to democracy. How do you think about those trade-offs and your own priorities were you to become the member of a Senate majority in January?

OSSOFF: Look, immediate policy priorities include repeal of the tariffs and end to the war, repeal of the Medicaid cuts, restoration of Affordable Care Act benefits. Those are things that can immediately relieve the American people's economic suffering. But there does have to be accountability.

And I want to be clear that when I say accountability, I don't mean vengeance. I don't mean something punitive and partisan. But we're a nation of laws in which our Constitution vests the Congress with vital oversight functions.

And when we face abuses of power and corruption of this magnitude, literally unprecedented in the history of the American presidency, as members of Congress, we have an obligation to investigate and to ensure that those facts become public and that there's accountability for misdeeds.