Under pressure from a frustrated leftist base, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer appears on PBS to defend himself against increasing calls for his replacement.
Senator Schumer is having difficulty explaining to the base how ‘government shutdowns’ are now a bad idea, when previously the shutdown battles were always supported by Democrat leadership.
As Schumer notes, things are different now; the agenda of President Trump would benefit from a reduction in government and there’s no reason to believe Elon Musk (DOGE), Russ Vought (OMB) and President Trump would not like to continue a shutdown for an extended period while they reduced the size, scale, scope and power of the federal government. Such an approach would be against the interests of the hardline leftists.
The larger point on the shutdown and reasoning for supporting the Continuing Resolution are accurate. However, leftists are tribal followers by nature and when the direction of the activism is reverse by their leaders, they struggle intellectually and cognitively to understand why. Hence, Schumer is under fire.
That said, there’s a moment within the interview where Schumer is forced to outline what the political leadership is doing against the favorability of the Trump agenda. Within Schumer’s explanation of what they are doing, he admits to Democrats organizing activist groups to travel the country and target GOP townhall meetings to give the illusion of non-support. The goal, he says, is to change the narrative and pretend the policies of Democrats have more support than they do. Watch, it’s a remarkable series of admissions.
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Schumer also notes the Democrats also have a new “online operation” where they are intending to shape public opinion through the use of Astroturf activists to give the illusion of a larger support network.
