Mikulski on Warren flap: Different rules apply to women

Former Sen. Barbara Mikulski criticized the GOP on Thursday for silencing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) during the confirmation debate over President Trump’s nominee for attorney general.

The Maryland Democrat, who served the longest tenure of any woman in Congress, said women in the upper chamber are subject to different rules than men are.

“When a woman stands up, she is told to shut up and sit down. Now this is going to have a long-lasting effect, because the people who marched watched this. But I will tell you that the women are tired that different rules are applied to us in a different way,” Mikulski told CNN 

Warren was barred from speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday evening after she read a 1986 letter by Coretta Scott King that was critical of Jeff Sessions, a member of the Senate at the time who was later confirmed as attorney general. He was sworn in on Thursday morning.

“Senator Warren was reading from a historic record, from quoting a historic person, it was relevant, it was reasonable, and I think whenever women stand up — and particularly reading now a letter from a woman of color — they are told to shut up and sit down,” Mikulski said. 

Some of Warren’s male colleagues in the Senate Democratic caucus later read the same letter from the Senate floor without punishment.

“When the men of the Senate, the Democratic men, read their Coretta Scott King letter … they were standing up for the Senate, and they were also standing up for Coretta Scott King,” Mikulski said.