TRANSCRIPT: Leader Schumer On Fast Politics Podcast With Molly Jong-Fast

New York, N.Y. – Senate Democratic Leader Schumer joined the Fast Politics Podcast with Molly Jong-Fast to discuss the Trump tariff tax, the administration’s attempts to erode democracy, and other issues. Below is a transcript of the interview, which can also be heard here: 

Molly Jong-Fast: Chuck Schumer is the Senate Minority Leader and the senior Senator from the great state of New York. Welcome to Fast Politics, Senator Chuck Schumer.

Leader Schumer: Great to be back with you, Molly.

Jong-Fast: We're in the middle of this insane tariff situation, and I want you to talk us through where we are with that. There are bills. There's a bill that passed. It hasn't passed the House, but there certainly sounds like there's numbers to pass a bill in the Senate. Where are we with trying to wrangle some tariff authority back from the president?

Schumer: Well, first, Molly, these tariffs are just terrible. And it's a tax, a huge tax. We call it the Trump tariff tax on American families. Even with the little bits of step back that they did, Yale estimated it would cost the average American family $4,400 dollars a year, more money for food and for prescription drugs, more money for clothing, and for gas, you name it. It goes up. And why are they doing this? This is the most despicable part of this at all. First, they give six different reasons, but the number one reason is they want to use this to give more tax breaks to billionaires. So these billionaires who are doing damn well already would get more money and the average consumer would pay a cost of $4,400 a year. It's outrageous. The stock market for people who have 401Ks, and that's more than half the people in the country. The average person with a 401K lost $100,000. What are they going to do if you're about to retire? So, it's awful, awful.

Jong-Fast: With the tariffs part of the problem and the reason why Trump paused them, though there are still a lot of tariffs in place, especially in Canada and Mexico. The reason he paused it was because the bond market freaked out and it looked like people were not going to buy our debt and the dollar’s down from the lowest since I don't know, you know, five years or whatever. So, it seems as if because of the irrationality of the Trump administration, people don't want to invest in America.

Schumer: Yeah, Molly, people need certainty. Businesses need certainty. People need certainty. So, consumer confidence is at the lowest level in years because you're not going to buy that car if the tariff is going to slap you with $2,000 or $3,000 of extra costs.

Jong-Fast: Right, but that's consumer confidence which is also at record lows and is starting to really be something that may drive into a recession if we're not there yet. But the world also may not use the dollar as the default currency anymore. You guys in the Senate and the House may be able to put some guardrails up. Where are you with this?

Schumer: Okay, so we have one bill that passed the Senate because we got every Democrat voting to get rid of the – we did the Canadian tariffs first because that was last week and we got four Republicans to vote for it. Maria Cantwell put together a bipartisan bill with Grassley, we haven't had that on the floor yet. We'll try to have to force Thune to put it on the floor best we can. But that's seven more Republicans joined in. Public sentiment is everything. The public realizes how crazy this is. You know, they look at it and they say the administration has a different explanation. Even at the same time – Musk not my cup of tea – he called this guy Navarro a moron, who's the guy in charge of it. The public is telling Republican Congressmen and Senators. They're saying, wtf, get rid of these damn things, they're killing us, and they're beginning to feel the heat. I had an amendment in the reconciliation bill of two weeks ago, the first budget bill, to say no tariffs – all the tariffs go away if the price of groceries goes up. They didn't vote for it two weeks ago, but they're going to have to vote on it again, and there's going to be much more pressure on them to vote for it now that the prices are going up and that people see how crazy they are.

Jong-Fast: When you say, public sentiment is not with them, do you think and it seems to me like this is a real thing. Like last weekend we saw millions of people march to protect Social Security and Medicare. Do you think that that actually works, that that actually helps you? And tell us why.

Schumer: Why? Because if their constituents in Republican districts, go to them and say stop doing what Trump wants. They're afraid of Trump. He threatens them. But what's against that is the threat of losing your election – of your own Republican allies not voting for you. And we're seeing that, and that's why we're seeing for the first-time real cracks in the Republican wall on this issue of tariffs. And I think we'll find them on Medicaid. Right now, they're in a total mess on the budget because some of them, at least some of them don't want to cut Medicaid that much. I went into three Republican districts in nursing homes that said they'd close if they cut Medicaid, and Republicans were there saying, we can't vote for these guys anymore.

Jong-Fast: There's also a tariff case going up to the Supreme Court. It is by the group that is funded by Leonard Leo and the surviving Koch brother. Do you think there's a world - because we saw this week that the Supreme Court they were nine zero on due process. I mean, do you think that there's a world where the Supreme Court takes his power away from him?

Schumer: Yes. The law is very clear that if Congress wants to take the power of tariffs away from the executive branch, they can. It's crystal clear. And so even the Supreme Court hardly –I voted against all these right wingers you know, who were put on the court and argued against them. But even the Supreme Court, I think, is seeing how nuts this administration is, how crazy they are, and some of them may pull back. As you saw, even on due process we got a little bit of daylight, not enough, but a little.

Jong-Fast: Do you feel that there were things that Biden could have done differently to protect norms and institutions, or do you think he did as much as he could have?

Schumer: Well, obviously on certain issues we could have done more, and Biden could have done some more on certain things. But overall, the Trump administration has gone -- no administration has ever gone as crazy to undo norms in every way in terms of Social Security, look, this has been sacred in America. The bottom line is that they're trying to now eliminate - strangle it. You know what they did last week? Not only did they cut off the phone lines to Social Security offices, not only closing Social Security offices. They closed one in Westchester, they closed one in Elmira. But now they're saying no email to Social Security offices. But they're doing this across the board. I mean, one of the worst things we were going to talk about this is the Save Act.

Jong-Fast: Yeah, let's talk about the Save Act because it passed the House and it's coming to you.

Schumer: It's despicable. First, I want to tell your listeners it will not pass. I'm the Minority Leader. They need sixty votes for it. They will not get the sixty votes. Democrats will not vote for it. Here's what it does. About half the people in America couldn't vote anymore, particularly poor people, people of color, women. You have to have either a passport or a certified license, if you were married in a different name, you'd have to get a new document with your married name on it to vote. Half of Americans don't have passports. So many women don't you know, their birth certificate which they use is their name they were born with, not the name they changed to. This is like the Old South. This is the Jim Crow South in the whole Republican Party. And they put so many barriers in the way of voting that basically, if this passed, our democracy would be totally diminished, even gone. More than half the people I estimate who vote now couldn't vote. But we will not let it pass period, Over my dead body. It is despicable.

Jong-Fast: Trump has made a number of executive orders or at least one, where he has tried to exert power over our elections, which are supposed to be controlled by the states. Can you talk about how dangerous that is?

Schumer: It's totally dangerous. This is the whole wellspring of America is voting, is democracy, and even when we've had severe disagreements, we've kept democracy. No administration has come close, has come close, to abandoning, destroying the democracy. It is totally at risk, as this SAVE Act shows with them doing it. But I do think we can beat it. And there's no question about it that it is our right to do - that they cannot do this over Congress because you know it would go so far that it would be crazy. And they are crazy, don't get me wrong, but it's generally even the Republicans accept that they got to pass this stupid thing. I wouldn't say stupid, I'd say this fucking thing. I hate it.

Jong-Fast: So, AOC and Bernie are on this “Stop the Oligarchy tour,” they've got Maxwell Frost, they've got different people. Do you think Democrats need to do more of this to go everywhere?

Schumer: Yes, Look, there's lots of things we have to do. We have to fight them every way, every day, and we have to show how bad Trump is, as we did on the tariffs, and as you saw the polling by CBS this morning, people are understanding how bad these tariffs are for their wellbeing. But it's on everything. It's on Medicaid, it's on Social Security, it's on tax breaks for the wealthy. And the rallies are - we go to court and we've won three quarters of our court cases. We have a lot of good progressive groups and we're working with them closely, the AGs, you know, the Attorney's General like Tish James. So we go to court, but organizing is key, and these rallies are really important. I'm so glad to see so many people at them. And then what we're also doing is telling people go into these Republican districts, let them know that, for instance, all the healthcare would go down the drain. Go to rural areas if they cut Medicaid by what they want to cut it by, Molly, rural hospitals would just close. They're often the biggest employer and the only source of health care. Go after education. There's cutting education dollars in so many areas. Public education is everything. There's no choice. We have to go after them in every way. And the rallies inspire people to do it, and then they get them, we get the names and we can organize them, going into the letting - particularly the more rural Trump voting districts, know that this guy is betraying them. He's not doing what he promised. He is just for the wealthy. There's a billionaire little bubble up there. The billionaires all talk to each other. They don't understand what working people go through.

Jong-Fast: Talk to me about the violence. We have this Josh Shapiro story today. What can we do?

Schumer: This is yeah, we don't know the cause yet, so it's a little premature to say it happened. But it's despicable and the kind of right-wing rhetoric is just awful and that should be curbed. Whether it had anything to do with this violence or not, it's just awful. And my heart goes out to the Shapiro family. They were celebrating evidently their Passover Seder when the governor's mansion was set on fire, and the damage, from what I understand, is quite extensive.

Jong-Fast: We have this situation, I mean, it's Passover. We're Jews. It's been I think, a very tough time for Jews. We have Netanyahu, has really tried to use anti-Semitism as a cudgel. We see this administration trying to use anti-Semitism as an excuse to deport people. For me, my Passover Seder last night, my cousin is a son of survivors. You know him, Harold Koplewicz.

Schumer: I do.

Jong-Fast: And he was weeping about his dad and the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw uprising. And we're watching an administration use our names in order to be anti-democratic.

Schumer: We have to stand up strongly against anti-Semitism when it's anti-Semitism, but never let it be used as an excuse to go after something else. Plain and simple.

Jong-Fast: Thank you, thank you, thank you,

Schumer: It's great to talk to you. Happy Passover.

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