Republican lawmakers walk out on Gov Inslee’s farewell speech after he calls President-elect Trump ‘would-be authoritarian’

About 16 minutes into the speech attempting to craft a positive narrative around his disastrous tenure, the three-term Democrat said, regarding incoming Republican president Donald Trump, “Our state will work with anyone on policies that are positive for Washington. But we will not bend the knee to a would-be authoritarian’s worst impulses.”

That prompted almost a dozen members of the Republican caucus, including Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Aberdeen), who is also the chairman of the state GOP, to leave the chamber. He told The Post Millennial in a statement, "I really was hoping the outgoing governor was going to be gracious and high-minded. Instead, we got more of the same. Brittle, nervous sanctimony about his cap-and-trade tax scheme. Weird boasting about his disastrous mishandling of the Covid outbreaks. And then small-minded ad hominem attacks on Donald Trump. When an actual "would-be authoritarian" started attacking others for being would-be authoritarians, I'd had enough. I was either going to stand up and call out his hypocrisy or leave. For the sake of decorum and out of respect for the chamber, I walked off the floor."

After walking out, Rep Chris Corry (R-Yakima) posted on X, “I wasn’t going to listen to the man who was the last to give up emergency powers in the nation, and fought any legislative checks on his power, make false inflammatory claims about our incoming President.”

In February 2020, what is believed to be the first Covid death in the US was in Washington’s Snohomish County and Inslee used his emergency powers to mandate masks, shutter schools and businesses, limit gatherings for funerals and religious institutions, and require state employees to get the Covid vaccine or lose their jobs. Thousands of state employees, including first responders, were fired as a result of Inslee’s mandate.

Despite having ordered Covid-positive patients into nursing homes, Inslee also claimed during his address, “If the rest of the country had adopted our Washington approach to the pandemic, close to half a million lives could have been saved across America.”

Corry told The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, “When he decided to flip on his pure partisan mode, which he's really good at going into and he started referring to our duly elected president-elect as 'a would-be authoritarian,' I was done.”

Corry continued, “This is the guy who for 975 days refused to let anyone else have any decision-making authority in this state, actually shut out the legislature and fought my attempts and other people's attempts to have a legislative check, aka a citizen’s check on executive powers, claiming somebody else was authoritarian, and I was just done.”

“I'm usually very respectful. I want to hear these dialogues, but the outgoing governor clearly showed that he is more interested in just more blame game and name calling and maybe he's mad because, you know, he's not president,” Corry joked referencing Inslee’s failed run for president that cost Washington taxpayers millions of dollars in unreimbursed expenses.

Corry believes that people are “genuinely optimistic” about Inslee being gone. “There was definitely a lot of, how do I put this politely? There was a lot of angst against working with the Inslee administration because it was typical that anytime there was something he disagreed with, he would attack you personally. He did that to, not just to Republicans, he would do that to Democrats. It was his way or the highway.”

Compared with when Inslee entered office in 2013, Washington jumped from 30th to 1st as the most unsafe state in the US, the 4th most unaffordable from the 12th, and the 2nd worst in terms of homelessness from the 8th. That is on top of a $10-17 billion dollar budget deficit, despite record revenue.

Freshman Rep. Matt Marshall (R-Eatonville), who also walked out of Inslee’s speech, told Hoffman, “I am here to serve the 2nd District and foster unity, not division. It is disheartening to witness the Governor resort to falsehoods and exclusionary rhetoric in his address. I urge my colleagues to join me in collaborative efforts to bring all Washingtonians together for a shared vision of progress and unity.”