This week, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville spoke to the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce to give essential updates from Washington D.C.
Tuberville was the only speaker to present before the packed crowd at the RSA Activity Center in Montgomery. Tuberville took to the podium to reflect on his first year in office and give an update on Russia, Ukraine, China, and other pressing topics.
“I’m proud to be one of your United States Senators,” Tuberville said. “It’s been an honor this first year to go to Washington D.C, into the circus –I call it– because every day there is something different. And it’s not three rings. It’s about four or five rings of a circus. Hopefully, we can get more done this coming year than we did last year.”
Tuberville discussed the invaluable relationship he developed with Sen. Richard Shelby, who will not be seeking reelection. Tuberville opined on Shelby’s effect on his career, stating that the two of them have become “very close friends.
“I didn’t know how bad [D.C] was till I got up there a year ago,” Tuberville said. “One thing I wanted to do when I got there and needed to do, it was imperative, is follow in the footsteps of Richard Shelby.
“He has been an icon in Washington D.C, and he has done more, probably, for the state of Alabama than any senator has done in his lifetime for any state, and we are going to miss him.”
Tuberville discussed the effect he believes he had on the COVID-19 pandemic. Tuberville claimed that his orchestration of daily, real-time hospital reporting was instrumental in keeping Alabama ahead of the pandemic.
“We hope that we can get this behind us soon, but it’s going to be here a while; I’ll tell you that right now,” Tuberville said. “I was at a WHO meeting in Munich this past weekend. We’ve got another strain coming; it’s called BA-1. It’s kind of like Omicron, but less than that, you get sick, but it’s not as lethal. It’s going to be here a while. We’ve just got to continue to fight it, but we’ve got to get back to work. We’ve got to get back to school. We’ve got to get back to church. We’ve got to get the federal government out of our lives and let the people of this country run their own lives.”
Tuberville spoke on the supply chain breakdown, claiming the lack of available truck drivers was primarily due to vaccine mandates. He further claimed there were over 100,000 available trucking jobs in the U.S.
"A lot of them are quitting because of vaccine mandates,” Tuberville said. “I hope it doesn’t get out of hand, but we’ve got truckers coming to D.C. I wouldn’t care if they shut down the government for about eight months until November because we’re in the minority right now. They do not want people telling them they got to take a shot, and I don’t blame them because you own your own body. It’s going to be a tough time for the next year if we don’t get the vaccine mandates under control, the mask mandates under control, our supply chain under control, and get people back to work.”
Tuberville talked about his success in blocking “bad fiscal policies” by the Biden administration, blocking the expansion of the IRS, and blocking the growth of unemployment benefits.
Tuberville discussed the escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine. He claims that a large part of Vladimir Putin’s desire for further annexation of Ukrainian land is due to the amount of farmland in Ukraine.
“He can’t feed his people,” Tuberville said. “It’s a communist country, so he can’t feed his people, so they need more farmland.”
Tuberville says that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has personally told him that Ukraine does not require “boots on the ground,” only that they need weapons and supplies.
"The number-one problem in this world is China," Tuberville said. Their economy is past ours, their military is past ours, and they are getting ready to move just like Russia is moving across the world.
“We’ve been sanctioning Russia since 2014 since they came into Crimea. Sanctions don’t help.
“We are getting ready to put sanctions on Russia, and every day, Joe Biden buys 500,000 barrels of oil from Russia. Now how in the hell can you put sanctions on somebody, and you’re buying stuff from him? We bought 232 million barrels of oil from Russia in Joe Biden’s first year.
“We have to get back to being oil independent."
Tuberville supported the strengthening of the U.S military, and by dispensing with the “woke” prerogatives of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin.
“I’m tired of hearing about ‘we need to change our military to where they’re woke,’” Tuberville said. "To where they need to listen to the federal government, and we need to educate them on things that have nothing to do with the military.
“Secretary Austin, we need a killing machine, not that we want to kill anybody, but people know that we will kill them if they come here and if they mess with us.”
Tuberville is in his first term in the Senate.
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