USCE 2025: YOU HAVE TO BE MORE THANKFUL! (2025)

Schumer said that he made a “very, very difficult” decision to support the Republican bill in order to avert a government shutdown that, he said, President Trump and Elon Musk wanted. He called Trump and Musk “anti-government fanatics” and “nihilists.”

They want to shutter “agency after agency,” he said, which would create a situation far worse than the Republican bill. He continued:

Two days from now in a shutdown, they could say, well, food stamps for kids is not essential. It’s gone. All veterans offices in rural areas are gone. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. They’re not essential. We’re cutting them back. So it’d be horrible. The damage they can do under a shutdown is much worse than any other damage that they could do.

Isn’t this just —

Wait, let me just finish, Lulu. It can last forever. There is no off ramp. One of the Republican senators told us: We go to a shutdown, it’s going to be there for six months, nine months, a year. And by then, their goal of destroying the federal government would be gone. And finally, one final point here, and that is that right now under the C.R., you can go to court and contest an executive order to shut something down. Under a shutdown, the executive branch has sole power.

While he accepted that there were “divisions” within his party around his vote, he insisted that he and his fellow Democrats have a respect for each other and that they are united in their fight against Trump.

Schumer reluctantly acknowledged that he and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who talk often, have not spoken since Schumer’s surprising vote, suggesting that there is a rupture between the two most senior Democrats in Congress.

Here is that portion of our exchange:

Hakeem Jeffries seemed to throw you under the bus on Friday. He was asked directly if he thought you should be replaced as leader, and he very pointedly refused to answer that question. Have you spoken to Jeffries since the vote?

I speak to Jeffries regularly.

Have you spoken to him since the vote?

He and I have a good relationship. We speak all the time.

But have you spoken since the vote?

No, we haven’t spoken since the vote, but we speak all the time. We speak regularly, and we have a good, close relationship.

The divisions in the party about how to face down Donald Trump exploded into view with Schumer’s vote, placing his leadership into jeopardy.

In both conversations with me, Schumer made clear that, despite broad concerns from some that Democrats are operating with an old playbook, and specific concerns about his own leadership surrounding the shutdown vote, he’s still the right person to be Senate minority leader. In our first conversation, he said that he sees himself as “sort of like an orchestra leader,” and when pressed on this in our second conversation, he dismissed the idea that he wasn’t the man for the job, saying “We are a united and strong caucus fighting against Trump.”

Furious Democrats have even called for fellow New Yorker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to challenge Schumer in the next primary. When I pointed out that Schumer had been a leading voice in calls for Biden to step down, and asked if it was time for him to step down, he insisted that the Democrats were in a “spirited disagreement.”

Let me say this: There is spirited disagreement on which was the right vote. But as I said, I think we have mutual respect in our caucus, and we are all united, no matter how people voted on this vote, to continue fighting Trump. We are a united and strong caucus fighting against Trump. We disagreed on this issue, but that doesn’t diminish in any way how we’re going to fight every step of the way against Trump. And I believe that we’re going to have some real successes.

When a new candidate comes to me and says, “What’s your advice?” I say: “My best advice is be yourself. The public may not know the difference between your education platform and your opponent’s, but they can smell a phony a mile away.” And then I say: “I’m from Brooklyn. Sometimes it helps me, sometimes it hurts me. But I know one thing: If I tried not to be from Brooklyn, I’d be worse than whatever I am.” Well, that’s a synonym for Jewish. So I was always Jewish. But it was never that vital to my career. And when I ran in 1998, I would go upstate, and I was wondering, How would I be accepted, as somebody who was obviously Jewish, although I didn’t talk about it a lot? I was. It was very gratifying. You know, very little antisemitism, and when I got to Congress, the same. There was some. One of the senior guys when I got on the Judiciary Committee said, “Schumer, welcome to the Jew-diciary Committee.” So there was some of that.

Who was that?

Can’t say. He’s dead. He’s from Texas. You can figure it out.

I don’t think we have an authenticity problem. We have a real direction now. I feel good about it. It’s this: First, you gotta look at who the Democratic Party is and who the Republican Party is. Who they really are. We are the party of working people. We feel that very, very strongly. That’s who we have always been. The Republican Party is a dramatic contrast to that. In the last 20 or 30 years, in my judgment, they have been taken over by a cabal of greedy, very wealthy people. And their whole goal is to cut their own taxes, even though they’re extremely rich, and get rid of any government regulation.

But you know that’s not how the American people view the Democratic Party right now.

That’s right, and that’s where we’re moving. That’s where we have to move. So the contrast is real. What are we saying? It’s sort of a simple little phrase: Donald Trump is making the middle class pay for tax cuts for billionaires. And then you can add things to it: is making the middle class pay for tax cuts for billionaires by cutting your health care, your Medicaid. By adding in tariffs and raising your prices. By cutting education, so your kids don’t get an education. That has a number of virtues.

This isn’t new. It’s something that has always been the rallying cry of Democrats against Republicans.

We lost it. Correct. We always cared about the working people. But in the last few years, while we did a lot for working people, here’s what we didn’t do: We didn’t tell people about it. We thought, just by legislating, people would know about it. They don’t!

What I’m hearing you say is that you need to get back to the original message.

Yes.

Yeah, OK. There’s always going to be people who take a shot at you. That’s how it is. You just got to move forward.

I guess it brings in this wider concern that I’ve heard from Democratic voters. There’s real grief, anxiety, worry. And many feel that Democratic leadership is operating with an old playbook.

I don’t think it is. First of all, talking about the difference between the two parties, it’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to give the contrast. And we have a unique opportunity now. When Trump ran, he could say anything. He said, “I’ll lower your costs on Day 1.” Once he’s not running and he has to govern, and he is so enthralled by tax cuts for the billionaires, it gives us an opening to talk to the people who were listening more to Trump before because we didn’t talk to them. The negative that Trump is doing is spreading, but that gives us an opportunity to regain the ear of the working people and middle-class people so that we can connect with them the way we always used to.

You describe yourself as an institutionalist. You’ve been a Democratic leader through a period of American politics, though, in which the rules were understood. Politicians on both sides of the aisle operated under mostly agreed-upon norms, and I think it’s fair to say that that no longer feels true.

Especially with the Trump people, absolutely.

So are you the right person to lead the party at this moment?

Look, let me put it this way: I know how to win seats back in the Senate, which I’ve proven. Two, three, four years ago they said, “You’ll never get back the Senate.” We won the two seats in Georgia, everybody’s surprised. One of the talents that I have, and I miss some and have some, is how to get the right candidates, get the right campaigns and win. But basically, I’m not the only person, nor should I be. This idea we need one person, that’s a residue when you have a president. We don’t. I’m sort of like an orchestra leader. And there’s a great deal of talent in the orchestra. And my job is to highlight all those talents and emphasize those talents.

Last month, you said in an interview that Trump will screw up.

Yes. He can’t help himself.

Do you really think, though, that there’s something that will move the needle for either Republican legislators or voters? I ask because that feels like a familiar argument against the president. Surely this will be the final straw!

No, there’s no final straw. It’s all the things he is doing. But let me say this: The last time he was president, which is the closest experience we have with him — and admittedly, the world has changed some, particularly on the media side, how it works — we kept pushing and pushing and pushing and chipping away. And when he went below 40 percent in the polls, the Republican legislators started working with us. He was at 51. He’s now at 48. We’re gonna keep at it until he goes below 40.

Look, I talk to a lot of these Republican legislators. I’ve worked with them. Some of them are Trump devotees. But many of them don’t like him, don’t respect him and worry about what he’s doing to our country. Right now he’s so popular they can’t resist him. I mean, so many of them came to me and said: “I don’t think Hegseth should be defense secretary or R.F.K. should be H.H.S. But Trump wants him. He won.” The Republicans would like to have some freedom from Trump, but they won’t until we bring him down in popularity. That happened with Bush in 2005. It happened with Trump in 2017. When it happens, I am hopeful that our Republican colleagues will resume working with us. And I talk to them. One of the places is in the gym. When you’re on that bike in your shorts, panting away next to a Republican, a lot of the inhibitions come off.

Go ahead.

It’s about Andrew Cuomo. He is another very controversial figure in Democratic politics in your state, and he recently entered the New York City mayoral race. It brings up a philosophical question, which is not really about him, but the kind of politician that he is. You’re not quitting.

No, because I think there’s a wider issue here: He’s polling far ahead of the rest of the pack at this point. And I wonder what you think his popularity says about what kind of Democrat voters can get behind right now. I mean, do Democrats need to run candidates that are more like Trump? Let’s see what happens in the election. That’s all I’m going to say.

That is the $64,000 question. So let us say the courts uphold this. And one of the people who will determine that more than any other is probably John Roberts, who is very conservative. I didn’t vote for him. But I do believe that he believes in the courts. And so I think that even at the highest level, if you get the Supreme Court upholding the law, it will matter. What if Trump keeps going? That’s the question everybody’s asking. And I worry about this a lot. I wake up sometimes at 2, 3 in the morning thinking about this. I believe this, and it’s a little bit in concert with what I’ve said to you before: I believe Republican senators, on this issue, will stand up. I’ve talked to some of them. About five or six have said publicly they will work to uphold the courts, and to uphold the law if Trump tries to break it. And we can do that legislatively if we have to. That’s my hope. That’s what we’ve got to work toward. And I think there’s a decent chance that that would happen, particularly if Trump, three months from now, is less popular.

I don’t. I think it was a very, very difficult decision between two bad options, a partisan Republican C.R. [continuing resolution] and a shutdown that Musk and Trump wanted. For me, the shutdown of the government would just be devastating and far worse than the Republican C.R. Let me explain: A shutdown would shut down all government agencies, and it would solely be up to Trump and DOGE and Musk what to open again, because they could determine what was essential. So their goal of decimating the whole federal government, of cutting agency after agency after agency, would occur under a shutdown. Two days from now in a shutdown, they could say, well, food stamps for kids is not essential. It’s gone. All veterans offices in rural areas are gone. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. They’re not essential. We’re cutting them back. So it’d be horrible. The damage they can do under a shutdown is much worse than any other damage that they could do.

Can I just ask you about the tactic here? Because the choice that you made to vote with the Republicans, isn’t that an argument to get rid of the filibuster? You wanted to keep it when you were in the majority, but if you’re not going to use it in the minority, then what’s the point of it?

The point here, again, I’ll repeat what I said, would be how devastating a shutdown would be.

But I’m asking about the use of the filibuster.

The bottom line is if the filibuster would have been used and the government shut down, the devastation would be terrible. You see, we’ve had government shutdowns before, but never against such nihilists, such anti-government fanatics as Trump, DOGE, Musk. They’ve given us a playbook, by the way. [Russell] Vought has already has written what he wants to shut down if he got a shutdown. Trump wanted a shutdown. Musk wanted a shutdown. Ask yourself why.

Look, in my caucus, for instance, I knew there would be divisions. There are, but we have respect for one another. We each respect that each of us has made the decision because we thought it was right. And we are all unified in going after Trump.

But it’s how you go after Trump. The complaints are about your leadership. There has been reporting that you were not in regular touch with Hakeem Jeffries leading up to your decision, that it took many in your caucus by surprise, that there didn’t seem to be a plan. That is what more than anything seems to be the case that many in your caucus are making against how this was handled.

For weeks and months, we had said a shutdown is awful. And by the way, every Democrat, no matter how they voted, wanted to make sure there was no shutdown. We thought there could be a bipartisan plan, and I talked to Hakeem regularly during this period. We didn’t think that [Mike] Johnson could get all his votes. He did. When it came to the Senate on Tuesday, our hope was that Patty Murray could negotiate with the Republican senators and get that 30 day C.R., a bipartisan plan. She couldn’t. So we were faced with two awful choices. The choice has been made, but I think the whole Democratic Party is united on what I mentioned in the earlier broadcast, showing how bad Trump is in every way. We’re organizing this week and next week in Republican districts. We’re having rallies to not give tax breaks to millionaires, and we’re succeeding. We’re succeeding, Lulu. We’re bringing his numbers down.

That’s a long time away. I am focused on bringing Trump’s numbers down, his popularity down, exposing what he has done to America and what he will do. That’s my focus right now. You know, three years from now is a long way to speculate. I believe that my hard work against Trump will pay off.