U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) detailed her work in the U.S. Senate this week during an exclusive interview on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Blackburn began by discussing Tuesday’s hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the July 13 attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, where the Tennessee senator questioned U.S. Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate.
As previously reported by The Tennessee Star, during Tuesday’s hearing, Blackburn pressed Rowe on the Secret Service’s “culture” after Secret Service officials reportedly deleted an email from a countersniper criticizing leadership at the agency.
Blackburn said Tuesday’s hearing left lawmakers with “more questions and fewer answers” in regard to the failure of the Secret Service on the day of the attempted assassination of the former president.
“We got more questions and fewer answers. We still do not know what the advance planning was. We still do not know who was in charge that day. We do not know who cleared President Donald Trump to walk on that stage at 6 p.m. when an hour prior, they knew they had a suspicious person and at 5:51, they knew they had a potential threat, and at 5:53 they had even alerted the sharpshooters. We don’t know what kind of follow up investigation is being done, what kind of communication there was between [the] local and federal law enforcement. So it’s a lot of questions,” Blackburn explained.
Regarding her questioning of Rowe, Blackburn said she wanted to make “certain” that whistleblowers within his agency will be “given protection” moving forward.
“I asked the Secret Service director about the whistleblower that came out at the beginning of our hearing and I talked about the culture at the Secret Service and the politicizing of the agency and how the mission set over at the Secret Service was now playing a game of CYA. I wanted to be certain that whistleblowers, as they step up and tell their story as to what is actually happening at the Secret Service, that they are going to be given protection,” Blackburn said.
Blackburn also discussed the U.S. Senate’s passage of her and U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal’s (D-CT) Kids Online Safety Act by a vote of 91-3 on Tuesday.
According to a fact sheet from Blumenthal’s office, the Kids Online Safety Act “provides kids and parents with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect against threats to children’s health and wellbeing online.”
Blackburn applauded the bipartisan effort that went into crafting the bill, which had 72 Senate cosponsors.
“The Kids Online Safety Act is broadly bipartisan. It is a piece of legislation Senator Blumenthal and I have worked on for three and a half years and what this would do is put the responsibility on social media to do safety by design. It’s basically a product design bill, and they would have to have a duty of care, open these algorithms, submit to annual audits, do a toolbox for kids and parents so they can more closely tweak their settings and have a portal where parents and kids can report bad actors – pedophiles, drug dealers, sex traffickers, people pushing suicidal ideation, people that are pushing eating disorders – and get this off the virtual space,” Blackburn explained.
“The bill has moved forward. It came out of the Senate on a 91-3 vote. It has 72 Senate cosponsors. Those are numbers that you don’t hear a lot,” Blackburn added.
In concluding Friday’s interview, Blackburn, who is up for reelection this year on the November 5 general election ballot, said her goal in the Senate is to bring “good, solid Tennessee values” to Washington D.C.
“We are going to continue to work to represent the people of this state. I say all the time, we need more Tennessee in D.C. – those good, solid Tennessee values,” Blackburn said.
“We’re going to work to secure the border, to get inflation under control, to be certain that our allies know they’re an ally and our enemies fear us. We’re continuing our work to keep boys out of girls sports, and we’re continuing to work to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution. We’re going to make certain that every single Tennessean – everybody – has the ability to live their version of the American dream,” Blackburn added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Marsha Blackburn” by Marsha Blackburn.
