Donald Trump is an “erratic, helter-skelter, get-nothing-done president”; he has no “real accomplishments,” and if he were smart, “he’d sit down” with Democrats to do an infrastructure deal, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday.
In the course of that 17-minute, bash-Trump interview, Schumer said Democrats “came out a lot better” than Trump did yesterday, when Trump walked out of a meeting on infrastructure, telling Democrat leaders he won’t work with them until they “finish playing their games.”
“We want to do this (infrastructure), and he’s incapable of it,” Schumer said on Thursday.
What happened yesterday, in my judgment, is that they were so ill-prepared and afraid to actually say how they’d pay for infrastructure — they were unable — that they looked for a way to back out.
And you may remember, Tuesday night they sent us a letter saying let’s do NAFTA before we do infrastructure. That was their first gambit. But then they realized they had nothing to say on NAFTA, so I think probably early that morning they concocted this, you know, temper tantrum and he walked out,” Schumer said.
But it doesn’t look good for him, to anyone but his hard core base, and even some of them are going to start saying, he’s not getting anything done. It’s just a show.
Shortly after Schumer made those comments, Trump fired back, texting:
The Democrats are getting nothing done in Congress. All of their effort is about a Re-Do of the Mueller Report, which didn’t turn out the way they wanted. It is not possible for them to investigate and legislate at the same time. Their heart is not into Infrastructure, lower drug prices, pre-existing conditions and our great Vets. All they are geared up to do, six committees, is squander time, day after day, trying to find anything which will be bad for me. A pure fishing expedition like this never happened before, & it should never happen again!
The Democrats have become known as THE DO NOTHING PARTY!
Trump, appearing in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, said he intended to discuss infrastructure with Democrats, but right before the meeting, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused him of engaging in a “cover-up.”
“And instead of walking in happily into a meeting, I walk in to look at people that have just said that I was doing a cover-up. I don’t do cover-ups,” Trump said.
Trump said he wants to work on infrastructure and border security, but “you can’t do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over with,” he told Democrats.
Schumer on Thursday noted that Trump ran on a campaign of getting things done for the American people, and therefore, the minority leader tried to make the case that Trump is getting nothing done.
“And a lot of people now see, more and more people, that he’s not getting anything done, and he doesn’t realize what a liability that is,” Schumer said. “The presidency is not just a reality show, and if you don’t get real things done for the American people, they’re going to want change again, and they’re going to want change away from Donald Trump.”
Schumer did not mention that Democrats have opposed Trump at every turn and now are consumed by talk of impeachment. A number of Democrats have admitted they can’t get to impeachment unless the American public supports it, so turning Trump’s base against him is part of the plan.
In fact, Schumer on Thursday used the phrase, “When Trump really becomes unpopular…”
“Maybe all this show is a ‘cover-up,’ quote-unquote, that they can’t get anything done,” Schumer said.
He noted that the only administration officials who were inclined to stand up to the president have left: “And so there’s no one home. And that’s why the next year and a half — if it’s a do-nothing, helter-skelter, erratic presidency, which it is right now, it’s going to inure to Donald Trump’s detriment. And the hope here to get something done?
“When Trump really becomes unpopular, then our Republican colleagues in the Senate, which is the fulcrum here…they have to pull him back in and break with him. And if this continues and if he becomes so unable to get things done, they may realize their political fate is tied to his and start working with us even when Trump will say no and pound the table and do all the other stuff he does.”
