Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Earlier this year, 17 Senate Democrats joined every Senate Republican in voting to weaken bank regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis.

The most strident opponent of these changes was Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren. A former bank bailout oversight chief and longtime expert on financial issues, Warren explicitly excoriated her Democratic colleagues for supporting the changes in a last-bid effort to stop them. It is rare for a member of Congress to openly castigate members of their party over a high-profile vote.

In an interview with The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan for his Deconstructed podcast, Warren at first avoided criticizing her Democratic colleagues when asked about that vote.

“So on the bankers’ front, we have the Dodd-Frank law. Ten years on from the financial crash, parts of it are repealed in a vote in the Senate: Seventeen Democrats voted for that; 33 Democrats in the House voted to repeal parts of that legislation. Why?” Hasan asked.

Warren responded by putting the blame on Republicans. She noted that community banks had asked for some changes in […]