Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Watch Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) give a line-by-line lesson on the Constitution of the United States of America in an impassioned speech on the steps of the National Mall.
Watch highlights from the full rally youtube.com/watch?v=4xKPv8IywCc
Read the Constitution constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text
Rep. Jamie Raskin raskin.house.gov/about
Subscribe for more youtube.com/TheDailyConversation
Our fathers were enlightenment thinkers.
They were scientists.
They were engineers.
They were builders.
They overthrew a king.
You for democracy.
They separated church and state.
They designed a constitution based on a representative democracy.
They wrote a preamble:
We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and preserve to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, do hereby ordain and establish the Constitution of these United States of America.
And the very next line took the sovereignty of the people and set up an equal one, saying, all legislative power is vested in the Congress of the United States.
We've got the lawmaking power. If anybody is going to tear it down, then I ain't. If anybody is going to dismantle the agency for International Development, if anybody is going to take down the Food and Drug Administration, it's going to be the Congress of the United States,
not Donald Trump.
Not you are not.
We created these institutions
and we fund these institutions.
And in the public relations Act
is an act of Congress.
It's a federal law like the law.
You can't assault federal officers.
That's what it
is. If we put the money in
and I hate you spending the money on it, I need.
So you go from article one,
which lays out all the powers of Congress--page after page after page:
to regulate commerce domestically and internationally; to declare war;
the budget; taxes; you name it; all of it is in there.
Then you come to article two. Four short paragraphs.
One of them is all about
how you impeach a president
who is in agony.
In other words, in this community
can't afford to live with the president.
You read an article to to take care
that the laws are faithfully executed
and take care. The laws are gratefully executed, not destroyed, not trashed, not thrown away, not maligned.
Take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
That's your job.
Do your job, Donald Trump.
Article six says the Constitution
of the United States, and the laws under it,
are the Supreme law of the land.
We have no preconceived.
We have no meetings here.
We have no czars, no monarchs.
We have no emperors, and we have no dictators
of a new Silicon Valley techno state.
We have just the Constitution.
And if you want to amend the Constitution,
there's a way to do that.
Two and two thirds vote in the House
and the Senate and three quarters of the states.
I'll leave you the words of another
great rationalist and radical democratic
patriot, the great Tom Paine, who my son Tommy was named after.
And Tom Paine got over here in 1774, two years before the American Revolution. He fell in love with the promise of America.
He said, if this land lives up to its values
and its ideals,
it will become an asylum to humanity.
He said a place of refuge for people seeking
freedom from religious, political, and intellectual repression all over the world. And then he wrote that book that ignited the American Revolution,
Common Sense, the sixth sense we all have when we are willing to reason together and put aside all of the dogma, and the conspiracy theories,
and what we would call in our time propaganda and disinformation.
That book helped ignite the revolution. You know, George
Washington had the soldiers at Valley Forge reading by to fire common sense to everyone. But it was a tough year. The people were split right down the middle. Paine wanted to write a pamphlet to give people hope during a very dark, hard time. And Paine said, "these are the times that train men and women souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink at this moment from the service of their cause in their country. But everyone that stands with us now will win the love and the favor and the affection of every man and every woman for all time.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. But we have this saving consolation. The more difficult the struggle, the more glorious in the end will be our victory. Let's make that victory ours.
U.S. Constitution Under Attack By President Trump -Rep. Jamie Raskin
Watch Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) give a line-by-line lesson on the Constitution of the United States of America in an impassioned speech on the steps of the National Mall.
Watch highlights from the full rally youtube.com/watch?v=4xKPv8IywCc
Read the Constitution constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text
Rep. Jamie Raskin raskin.house.gov/about
Subscribe for more youtube.com/TheDailyConversation
Our fathers were enlightenment thinkers.
They were scientists.
They were engineers.
They were builders.
They overthrew a king.
You for democracy.
They separated church and state.
They designed a constitution based on a representative democracy.
They wrote a preamble:
We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and preserve to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, do hereby ordain and establish the Constitution of these United States of America.
And the very next line took the sovereignty of the people and set up an equal one, saying, all legislative power is vested in the Congress of the United States.
We've got the lawmaking power. If anybody is going to tear it down, then I ain't. If anybody is going to dismantle the agency for International Development, if anybody is going to take down the Food and Drug Administration, it's going to be the Congress of the United States,
not Donald Trump.
Not you are not.
We created these institutions
and we fund these institutions.
And in the public relations Act
is an act of Congress.
It's a federal law like the law.
You can't assault federal officers.
That's what it
is. If we put the money in
and I hate you spending the money on it, I need.
So you go from article one,
which lays out all the powers of Congress--page after page after page:
to regulate commerce domestically and internationally; to declare war;
the budget; taxes; you name it; all of it is in there.
Then you come to article two. Four short paragraphs.
One of them is all about
how you impeach a president
who is in agony.
In other words, in this community
can't afford to live with the president.
You read an article to to take care
that the laws are faithfully executed
and take care. The laws are gratefully executed, not destroyed, not trashed, not thrown away, not maligned.
Take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
That's your job.
Do your job, Donald Trump.
Article six says the Constitution
of the United States, and the laws under it,
are the Supreme law of the land.
We have no preconceived.
We have no meetings here.
We have no czars, no monarchs.
We have no emperors, and we have no dictators
of a new Silicon Valley techno state.
We have just the Constitution.
And if you want to amend the Constitution,
there's a way to do that.
Two and two thirds vote in the House
and the Senate and three quarters of the states.
I'll leave you the words of another
great rationalist and radical democratic
patriot, the great Tom Paine, who my son Tommy was named after.
And Tom Paine got over here in 1774, two years before the American Revolution. He fell in love with the promise of America.
He said, if this land lives up to its values
and its ideals,
it will become an asylum to humanity.
He said a place of refuge for people seeking
freedom from religious, political, and intellectual repression all over the world. And then he wrote that book that ignited the American Revolution,
Common Sense, the sixth sense we all have when we are willing to reason together and put aside all of the dogma, and the conspiracy theories,
and what we would call in our time propaganda and disinformation.
That book helped ignite the revolution. You know, George
Washington had the soldiers at Valley Forge reading by to fire common sense to everyone. But it was a tough year. The people were split right down the middle. Paine wanted to write a pamphlet to give people hope during a very dark, hard time. And Paine said, "these are the times that train men and women souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink at this moment from the service of their cause in their country. But everyone that stands with us now will win the love and the favor and the affection of every man and every woman for all time.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. But we have this saving consolation. The more difficult the struggle, the more glorious in the end will be our victory. Let's make that victory ours.
U.S. Constitution Under Attack By President Trump -Rep. Jamie Raskin
