Chuck Schumer Blasts Trump’s State of the Union: ‘Political, Divisive, Calculating and Even Nasty’
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is rejecting the notion that President Donald Trump encouraged unity for the country with his State of the Union address.
In an interview with CNN’s John Berman on Wednesday, Schumer commended Stacey Abrams for giving the Democratic response to Trump’s address, saying it was a display of “real leadership” that Trump lacked last night.
“The president was political, divisive, calculating even nasty at times,” Schumer said. “You can’t talk about comity and working together and give a speech that’s so divisive, that just doesn’t fly.”
Schumer went on to say that Trump seemed to relish in the most divisive elements of his speech, and doesn’t seem capable of delivering a substantial, bipartisan, non-hypocritical speech. As Schumer presented his counterarguments to Trump’s remarks on the economy and foreign policy, he was asked for how he felt about the portion of Trump’s speech that called for an end of “revenge”-based politics.
“His first two years of the administration were not that at all. He loved divisiveness, he loved hot-button issues that inflamed his base but divided America. The speech was more of the same. The most enthusiastic parts, the parts that seemed to have the most weight, were the divisive parts. He’s got to change to make America better. He’s got to change to work with us in a bipartisan way. Look, we just had the shutdown. The president is correctly blamed for the shutdown. He wanted it. And he didn’t seem to back off in any way, didn’t mention the word ‘shutdown,’ but he’s sticking to the wall and the American people know that the wall is a bad idea. And if he insists on it, I think our Republican friends in the Congress will realize how bad the first shutdown was and try to overrule him.”
Schumer concluded by saying Trump is clearly not interested in inclusiveness and comity, judging by the New York Times report saying the president called him a “nasty son of a bitch” yesterday.
Watch above, via CNN.
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