TRANSCRIPT: Leader Schumer On MSNBC’s The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell
Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) joined MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss Trump’s tariff tax, the Republican’s budget that will increase costs for American families, and Senator Booker’s historic floor speech. Below is a full transcript of Senator Schumer’s interview, which can also be viewed here:
Lawrence O'Donnell: Now is the Democratic leader of the United States Senate Chuck Schumer of New York senator, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I want to begin with something in the Senate you would call a point of personal privilege and it's something that the Republican Senator Bernie Moreno said about you. I'm going to read it to you. He said that Republicans are independently minded. This is a quote: "Democrats are monolithic sheep that follow the Führer Schumer's orders." What was your reaction to that?
Chuck Schumer: It is despicable, it is outright anti-Semitism. I lost family in the Holocaust, relatives who were little babies and adults. And to use the word “Führer” in the same breath is just despicable, disgusting. He ought to apologize. It is outright anti-Semitism. No question about it.
O'Donnell: Needless to say, Donald Trump has had no objection to Bernie Moreno using that word about you. That’s the same Donald Trump who says that you are no longer Jewish.
Schumer: Yeah, look, Donald Trump is... you know, he may not be an anti-Semite, but he certainly tolerates anti-Semitism in so many ways. Calling me a Palestinian, you know, don’t tell my mother, but also talking about in Charlottesville, both sides had good people. When he brings an anti-Semite like Fuentes to sit at his table at Mar-a-Lago. When the Great Replacement Theory, which we all know is a conspiracy theory among the hard right, that Jews are trying to replace the white race with immigrants. Every other president, Lawrence—every other president, Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, whether it's Reagan or Bush or Clinton or Obama—when there was bigotry, their job was to push it down. Donald Trump, he either revels in it or just lets it stay right there. That shows you one of the many reasons he doesn't deserve to be president.
O'Donnell: Senator you represent the state and the city where the stock market is located, the most important stock market in the world. That stock market now has spent a week suffering from the greatest drop in stock market history, caused by the single action of a president. What do you say to Wall Street tonight?
Schumer: What I say to Wall Street is this man is a menace. You know, Donald Trump—this is one of the worst decisions or one of the worst decisions Donald Trump has made, and given his presidency, that's saying a whole lot. Why are they doing this? Why are they imposing such tariffs on people? I'll tell you, there’s one reason, Lawrence. They want to use this money for tax breaks for billionaires, and they're making the average American family pay. It's now about estimated about $5,000 a year. These are across-the-board tariffs. Prices of everything—whether it's food, or medicine, or gasoline, or a car, or clothing, or furniture, or buying a home—are going to go way up. And middle-class people are going to suffer for this. Suffer dramatically. So will the economy. You know, when you're as uncertain and as erratic as Donald Trump is on issues like this, businesses don't spend money, consumers, their confidence is lower than it's been in close to a decade. They don't spend money. It's just ridiculous, and the way they implement it... You either laugh or cry. They've actually put tariffs on penguins but not on Putin. Their tariffs are on two islands, Heard Island and McDonald Island, which only have penguins on them. This is just government that is reckless. The bottom line Lawrence, there's a group of hard-right angry billionaires. They always wanted to run the government. Donald Trump has let them run the government, and they are just hurting the country, betraying the middle class. Donald Trump is betraying the middle class, and people are seeing it. The stock market went down even before this happened. Look what happened in Wisconsin and even in Florida. The American people are seeing that Donald Trump lied to them in the campaign. He's doing just the opposite of what he said. He said prices would go down on day one. Now, with these tariffs, they’re skyrocketing. They are seeing that he doesn’t keep his promises, that he’s betrayed them, and that his whole way of being is he's in this billionaire bubble with his friends Musk and Lutnick and people like that, and they just care about themselves.
O'Donnell: Senator, Donald Trump has taken the full blame publicly. Every stock market analyst that you see on CNBC, many of whom are Republicans, every one of them blames the president's announcement about tariffs for what's happening in the stock market. But the Constitution of the United States gives total power over tariffs to the Congress. The Republicans who run the House of Representatives have the constitutional authority to originate the tariff legislation there. Every Republican member of the House, every Republican member of the Senate has the power legislatively to block what Donald Trump is doing on these tariffs. When does the blame extend to them? How many days of grace do you think they should get before these tariffs are their tariffs?
Schumer: Zero, and we’re seeing all these Republicans, even those who know Donald Trump is wrong, have just gone along with him in every way. You know, but for the first time today on tariffs, we’re seeing a little bit of a crack. Senator [Cantwell] has a bill with actually Senator Grassley, as you know, a Republican from Iowa, that says no tariffs unless Congress approves them, and they’ve gotten four or five Republican co-sponsors. Tonight, as we do the voting on reconciliation, I am introducing legislation that says no tariffs will go into effect if it raises prices in any way. We’re going to ask our Republicans. We’ll see how many of them vote with us. But if they don’t vote with us and the prices go up, which they inevitably will, they will feel the heat. They're beginning to feel the heat, as shown by [Cantwell’s] bill. But we've got to, I think, there'll be a lot more heat on them day in, day out because this is the Trump tariff tax. It's hurting the middle class by more than anything. $5,000 a year, prices go up across the board when inflation's been the number one issue. I believe the Republicans will politically pay a very large price if they stick with Trump on these tariffs.
O'Donnell: Senator, you have a long night ahead of you. It's one of those nights in the Senate once again where the Republicans are trying to push through a budget framework, a budget resolution that will require a minimum of a five trillion dollar increase in the national debt over time because of the Trump tax cuts and other provisions in this bill. You have a series of amendments, which is traditional in these situations for the opposition to have amendments where you're going to try to pick away at what they're doing. Can you give us a preview possibly of some of those amendments that we’ll be seeing overnight? Cause this is gonna go well into the wee hours of the morning.
Schumer: Yeah, we’re gonna have amendments against these terrible tax breaks. We’re gonna have amendments on Social Security. They're trying to destroy Social Security. We’re gonna have amendments on the corruption and self-dealing of Musk and Trump. We’re gonna have amendments preventing these Medicaid cuts. We're gonna have amendments stopping cuts to veterans. We’re gonna have amendments dealing with education cuts. It’s going to be across the board, and we are going to show in every way how Donald Trump is doing things that hurt the middle class across the board, help the billionaires, and Republicans will vote against us at their political peril. The American people are totally against this, and we’re beginning to see the signs of that. You saw what happened in Wisconsin. Even in Florida. And you’re gonna see many more signs like this because again, Trump betrayed the American people. He promised one thing in the campaign, he’s doing the exact opposite. And on amendment after amendment after amendment, we are going to expose the Republicans and Trump for their hypocrisy.
O'Donnell: And the way these things work, as you and I know, is it’s extremely unlikely that you will win these amendments or any of these amendments. But what it is, and the leader’s job tonight, your job tonight, is to give all of the Senate campaigns coming up the ammunition of the votes that you will force Republicans to cast tonight.
Schumer: Exactly.
O’Donnell: Votes about Social Security, about Medicare, about Medicaid, that you can create campaign commercials about.
Schumer: Lawrence these things are going to be so indefensible that Americans come election time and even throughout the next year will no longer want to support Republicans who embrace Trump. That is a goal of ours. Obviously, it will help us come election time. But we’re fighting them every day, and my message to Democrats is, as bad as Trump is and as bad as the American people are seeing he is, we have to fight every single day to show them what he’s doing and what we will stand for, in complete opposite of what Trump wants.
O'Donnell: Senator, I want to distinguish for the audience what’s being voted on tonight. This is different from that bill that came up a couple of weeks ago that was simply to continue the funding of the government so the government would not have a shutdown.
Schumer: Right, yes.
O’Donnell: Tonight is the future budget of the United States. That is for years and for years to come –
Schumer: Exactly.
O’Donnell: And I want to go back to that difficult vote you cast on keeping the government open. And let me just stipulate, I don’t want to get into a long discussion of it, but I completely, in my view of the way things work in the Senate and the government, completely agreed with your reading of the situation, and I firmly believe that keeping the government open was the better of the two terrible options that you had in front of you. So, I’m one who actually thinks you did what the leader has to do in a moment like that.
Schumer: You bet.
O’Donnell: However -
Schumer: Let me just say a shutdown, Lawrence, would have been even worse than the CR. I knew that there would be opposition. But as you said, sometimes a leader has to do this. You know, I tell people when you're on the political mountain, the higher you climb, the more fiercely the winds blow. The only thing that keeps you from being blown off is your internal gyroscope, and I believe then, and I believe now, I did the right thing. If we had a shutdown right now, things would have been ten times worse, as bad as that CR was.
O'Donnell: I agreed with your view that a shutdown would have been a gift, particularly to Elon Musk and the kinds of crimes against government he could get away with. But let me go to that point, Senator, because this is the first time you’ve really faced some really stiff criticism inside the party, some people just thinking your time should be up as a leader. What do you have to say to them tonight about your future as a leader of the Senate?
Schumer: Here’s what I’m saying. We are united. My whole caucus, whether they voted with me or against me on that issue or agreeing with me or disagreeing, we’re totally united on how we fight Trump, and it’s something we have to do relentlessly. But it simply says he is cutting so many things that the middle class wants to give tax cuts to billionaires. You’re going to hear that as, us as a united caucus. I think we’ll have every Democrat vote for every amendment, and if we keep united and keep our focus trained on Trump, we can certainly bring down his popularity and make those Republicans who vote with him pay that political price.
O'Donnell: What did Cory Booker’s record-setting holding of the Senate floor for 25 hours, what did that mean for Democrats going forward? I have to tell you, Senator from out here -
Schumer: It was great
O’Donnell: - In the grandstand. It looked like a turning point.
Schumer: Let me tell you, it was, he was great. Not only the physical stamina—25 hours—and I worked with him a little bit on this. He showed such preparation and such perseverance. But as important as the length of time he spoke, which was incredible, was what he said. He gave such a severe, well-thought-out, comprehensive indictment of the Trump regime that had caught American’s attention and helped us advance the cause of letting the American people know how bad Trump is and how he has sold them out. So I salute him. Our caucus loves him. As I said that night when I told him he broke the record, not only do we love you, Cory, America loves you.
O'Donnell: Senator, just one last question. In my experience working in the Senate, both leaders always hated filibusters and they never supported them, even if it was coming from their side. But when I saw you out there at one o'clock in the morning with Senator Booker, I believed—I may be wrong, but I believed I was watching a Senate leader for the first time supporting a filibuster like this. What was it like for you to be out there in the middle of the night with Senator Booker?
Schumer: It was Beautiful
O’Donnell: In the lonely hours.
Schumer: It was. I was there late at night. It was a tour de force. It was like looking at something so beautiful, politically so beautiful. But even in a human way, so beautiful, the way Cory presented himself, the way he told stories about his life and his father, the way he talked about John Lewis and the way he ended, which was right on the money. We got to make good trouble, and we will.
O'Donnell: Senator Chuck Schumer, another late night in the Senate tonight, thank you very much for taking the time to join us tonight.
Schumer: Thanks Lawrence, great to be with you. Bye.
O’Donnell: Thank you.
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