TRANSCRIPT: On Morning Joe, Democratic Leader Schumer Discusses Donald Trump’s Many Lies And Mistruths In His Joint Address To Congress
Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) joined Morning Joe this morning to discuss last night’s Joint Address to Congress by Donald Trump, which was little more than a diatribe of lies and falsehoods designed to distract the American from the chaos and cruelty of his administration:
Joe Scarborough: Welcome back to Morning Joe. And, let's bring in, right now, Democratic Senator from New York, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Mr. Leader, thank you so much for being with us. We start with an open-ended question. Tell us your reaction to last night's speech.
Leader Schumer: It didn’t address what the American people really care about. It was a 100-minute diatribe, self-serving, self-congratulating. But costs are the real thing Americans care about. The only thing he talked about on costs was tariffs. And tariffs are going to raise costs across the board. It's not just one little area or another little area. It will raise the cost of food. It will raise the cost of gas. It will raise the cost of building a house. It will raise the cost of cars. How do you do these tariffs with Canada, Joe, when 40%, 40% of the parts in an American-made car come from Canada? It will destroy that industry.
Now let's just compare that to Elissa Slotkin. I was so proud. I chose her because she is one of our rising stars. And in five minutes, there was much more truth and much more direct things directed at what Americans care about in five minutes of Elissa Slotkin than in 100 minutes of that long, self-serving speech that Donald Trump gave. To say he is the greatest president since George Washington? Give me a break! With all the chaos and people hurt in 30 days, he's in his own bubble.
Scarborough: I actually think, to correct you, Senator, he suggested he was better than George Washington. That George Washington was number two, and he was number one.
Schumer: Excuse me, excuse me.
Scarborough: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. One of Fox News's senior political reporters, analysts, said it was the most partisan presidential speech he's ever heard inside the chambers. And Brit Hume, who has been around for a very long time, said that. I know you have as well. I guess the question that asks itself is, where is this president going to go when he needs Democrats to pass budgets, to pass CRs, to pass the things he's going to need to pass?
Schumer: I think, Joe, one thing that's characteristic of this speech—and many are—is that they don't think things through. Something appeals to Donald Trump, and he spews it out. And to many of the people around him, they just say, "Yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir." That was true of tariffs. They talked about tariffs, you know, the 20% against Canada and Mexico, the 10% against China. Then in the speech, he said, "We're going to do reciprocal tariffs." They don't think these things through. And as a result, there's chaos, and they're not going to get anything done. And they need to do things in a bipartisan way. But Trump doesn't seem to care about that. He seems to just enjoy talking to his base.
And let me just say this: that's not going to serve him well. When you attack Social Security, probably the most popular federal program – excuse me. They didn't just attack it. With the words of Elon Musk, you know, it's a ‘Ponzi scheme.’ Tell the senior citizen who gets that $1,100 a month and needs it to pay for food, to pay for medicine, that it's a ‘Ponzi scheme.’ But they're also cutting. They cut 7,000 people out of Social Security offices. So they're really going to do that. So they do that. They do the tariffs. They're cutting Medicaid.
Why are they doing all these things that are so unpopular with the American people? Simple. They want to give tax breaks to their billionaire buddies, and they need revenues to do it. And they're hurting the average American family to do just that. Elissa Slotkin pointed that out so well. I hope all your listeners and everyone across America will listen to her ten minutes, which had far more truth in it, far more things that affect Americans than Donald Trump's 100-minute ramble.
Scarborough: Senator, we came in with a clip of Stephen Colbert telling Democrats to do something. We've had other people on this show, Democrats being critical, saying that you and Hakeem Jeffries and other Democratic leaders on the Hill aren't doing enough. First of all, respond to those criticisms from other Democrats. And also, let us know what your plan is. What can you do being in the minority?
Schumer: Well, let me tell you our plan, which is a very good plan. The plan is to organize. The most important thing you can do is organize. It's not easy, but the American people are rising to the cause. So I had a call set up with our major activists in New York State. You know, lots of them. I thought about 500 people would get on the call. 3,000 did. And here's what we decided to do on the issues that so affect Americans—the cuts to Medicaid, Social Security, the tariffs. We're going to focus on the six Republican congress members in New York State. As you know, the margin is so small in the House that only two people changing their votes would help us win some of those fights. We're focusing on getting other people to go after Republican senators in their own states.
The best way to do this is organize, because their actual program is so unpopular and so bad for the American people. I believe organizing has a very good chance of succeeding. That's the answer that I have. That's the answer Hakeem is doing in the House. And it is the best way to protest the horrible things that Trump is doing.
Scarborough: Could you specifically tell us how Medicaid cuts would be devastating, not just to New York City, but also to rural parts of your state that you represent—upstate New York, where rural hospitals, nursing homes, about 35%, 40%, 45% of children's healthcare depends primarily on Medicaid? And I just ask specifically, if you're a New York congressman that either represents upstate New York or wants to get elected statewide, how could you vote for funding being slashed from Medicaid so you can pay for tax cuts for the richest Americans?
Schumer: You're on the money. You know, New York has the third-largest rural population in America, mainly in upstate, all in upstate of course. And so I'm very familiar. Our rural hospitals will close if they have these $800 billion cuts in Medicaid. They are the only way rural people can get healthcare, and they are often the largest employers in many of these rural counties. We have community health centers where rural people can walk in and get decent healthcare. They can't go to a hospital that's 50 or 100 miles away, and then they'd have to sit in a waiting room. They’re the most efficient part of the healthcare system, and yet Musk and DOGE say, "get rid of them.”
In terms of cutting Medicaid, in terms of the cuts that they have proposed, it will be devastating. And that's why focusing on these Republican congressmen and senators and letting the constituencies know—I don't care if they're Republican or Democrat—they care about Medicaid. They care about the cost that tariffs would bring to them. Focus on those things, and we can really push back on the Republican members. So that's the best thing to do.
And you're so right, Medicaid doesn't just affect the inner city, although it does. And by the way, it doesn't just affect rural areas. In the suburbs, how about all those suburban couples, they are earning a nice living, but mom or pop is in a nursing home, and you slash Medicaid, which is paying to keep them in a nursing home, and you're telling them, "Well, your mother-in-law is coming to live with you. You better build another room on the house," and of course, the room will cost more because of the tariffs on wood.
Scarborough: Well, and of course, often that's just not an option if the parent is in an advanced state of dementia or if there are other challenges. So again, these cuts would leave a lot of people in upstate New York and in rural America and the exurbs without much of an opportunity. Let me ask you about –
Schumer: I just want to say this: In the next few months, these devastating cuts on Medicaid, on imposing tariffs, on maybe Social Security, are going to actually be felt by the American people. And I believe Donald Trump's popularity will plummet. It's beginning to go down a little bit now, but it will go down much further once these things take effect. He's not backing off on them, as the speech showed on tariffs. And he didn't even mention Medicaid, which is such an important issue. And so people aren't going to like what he's proposing. The number one issue in the election, we all agreed, was costs. Now he's raising costs. Tariffs could raise the average costs on the average American family by $2,000. One new estimate is $2,700. And across the board, you know, everything—food, gas, and cars. So this is not going to bode well. And this speech may have been applauded by the MAGA right for all its rhetoric and nastiness and divisiveness, but it ain't going to go down well with the American people.
Scarborough: Four years ago, we were recovering from January 6th, and I can say that remembering Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, most Republicans being horrified by January 6th, independents being horrified by January the 6th. There's been, of course, a massive rewriting of history, and those numbers have changed. But that said, even in that environment, Joe Biden there does seek bipartisan compromise, and many in his own party mocked him for trying to do that. But he did it. He passed more bipartisan legislation than any president this century. I know you need a willing partner. And right now, Donald Trump is not acting like a willing partner for bipartisan legislation. But let's just look forward. What are some areas that you and Republicans and the White House could come together on? So we could move past this, this sort of ugliness, this nastiness that turns off so many Americans?
Schumer: Well, I think you're right and so many people want bipartisan compromise. And you’re right, of those seven bills that we passed back in 2022, six were partisan. But let's take something like the Chips Act, which is bringing chip manufacturing back to America, which I, a Democrat, and Todd Young, a Republican, were the coauthors of. And it got a lot of Republican votes, as well as Democrat. [Trump] said he wants to cut it. I don't even know why he wants to cut it. They say they want to bring chip manufacturing back to the United States. They say they want good paying jobs in lots of areas that don't have them. We're so proud of the big chip fabs that are going up across upstate New York and Syracuse and Albany, and in between Buffalo and Rochester. Why would he do that?
And if he stays partisan as he is, he's not going to get anything done. And that's not going to inure to his benefit or to the Republican party's benefit. So I hope they do work with us in a bipartisan way. You know, one of the things is bringing manufacturing back to the United States like we've done in the chips act. We can do a lot more of that. There are things we can work on if they're willing to work with us. So far, by the tone of last night's speech, they're not.
But let me just say one other thing. If his numbers continue to go down, if, as I believe it will, his popularity will decline because he's proposing so many things that hurt the average American, do nothing about the number one issue, costs, and instead give tax breaks to these billionaires. We're going to start finding some of these Republican senators are less afraid of Trump and are willing to join us in the kinds of activities that we did, the kind of bills we did that helped America back in 2022. I was so proud as Majority Leader to lead the charge on those, and I found a lot of willingness on Republicans back then. Hopefully we'll find it again.
Jonathan Lemire: So Leader Schumer, there were a lot of people watching last night who surely agreed with what Donald Trump had to say, that they believed what he had to say about his accomplishments. They believed that the cuts he's proposing sound good. These are perhaps low information voters who don't have ready access to fact checks. They don't recognize that much of what he said last night were lies. In fact, poll after poll shows that low information voters in last year's election, including independents, broke heavily for him. So how do you break through that as Democrats? How do you surpass that challenge of reaching those voters to say, hey, actually, this is hurting you?
Schumer: Look, some of those voters are never going to change. They may be MAGA and, you know, they're upset and angry and all that. But a lot of those voters, once the tariffs start hitting, once the Medicaid cuts start hitting, once they see that the attempt to dismantle Social Security, you know, one of the most sacred programs in America may be real, they're not going to support him as they do now. And so the point is that he is not reaching out to compromise, which always works better and in the long term, for the American people. We always try to do things on our side in a bipartisan way. But because he's not doing that, I think you will find over the next – well, people turning away from him.
These Medicaid cuts are highly unpopular. Look, you saw the Republican town hall meetings, Republican town hall meetings in conservative districts were so angry at what they were doing that the I think the head of the Republican campaign committee had to say, Republicans hold no more town hall meetings. That means hide from the people because the people don't like what you're doing.
Lemire: Yeah, you are right about that. That guidance went out from the NRCC yesterday telling members, stop these town hall meetings, at least for the time being. Senate minority leader – Yeah, go ahead finish, sir.
Schumer: No. If the programs were popular, they'd be happy to have town hall meetings and cheer them. But they're not. They're unpopular. They're bad for America. They won't lower your costs. They'll raise your costs. All to help the billionaires. That's the theme that we are echoing, and it's resonating with the American people.
Lemire: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Senator, thank you.
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