It has been quite a week for Chuck Schumer. When I spoke to the Senate minority leader on Monday, we talked about a lot of things: the direction of his party; how Democrats are communicating their opposition to President Trump; and his new book, “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” which will be published March 18.
That was Monday. When we spoke again on Saturday afternoon, it was after an extraordinary few days in Congress, during which Democrats had to decide whether to vote for a Republican federal spending bill or to allow a government shutdown. House Democrats voted in near unanimity against the bill. Schumer initially said that he would as well, but in a surprising about-face on Friday, he and eight other Democratic senators joined Republicans, and the bill passed.
The backlash to Schumer from his own party for what some see as capitulation to Trump has been swift and loud, including calls for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to challenge him in his next Senate run. In our second conversation, I asked Schumer about the furious response to his vote, how he can lead a party that seems to be enraged at him and his relationship with Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader.
You write that you rarely faced antisemitism when you were growing up in Brooklyn. What was the moment that you felt that things changed in this country that made you want to write the book now? So, I was born in 1950, and for the first 50 years, it was sort of what you might call the golden age for Jewish people, not only in America, but forever, because we had never seen such acceptance. I experienced a little antisemitism. There was a moment, for instance, when I was 8 years old and we were driving home from my grandma’s house, and someone rolled down the window and said to my nice, decent father, “You [expletive] Jew!” But it didn’t happen very much. It began changing in the beginning of the 21st century. And what I’ve written in the book is, when things get a little rough, that’s when antisemitism bubbles up. Conor Cruise O’Brien said, “Antisemitism is a light sleeper.” So in 2001, for the first time after 9/11, we saw these conspiracy theories. Oh, the Jews did it, all the Jews evacuated the building, etc. It was not good, but it didn’t lead to a huge spread of antisemitism. 2008 got a little worse, because of the financial crisis and the “international conspiracy.” There were all kinds of theories. George Soros. But it was Oct. 7 that changed it all. And all of a sudden, antisemitism explodes in ways we’ve never seen, and overt antisemitism. Jewish bakeries being called Zionist bakeries and rocks thrown through their windows. People who wore yarmulkes or Jewish stars being screamed at, vilified, even punched. And it shocked us. For the first time, Jews I know started saying, “Oh, God, maybe it could happen here.” No one thought it would happen here, but for the first time, the thought: Maybe it could happen here. And as the highest-ranking Jewish elected official, not only now, but ever in America, I felt an obligation. I had to write the book.
When you were entering politics, how did you navigate how much to make Jewishness part of your brand? 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.
You just mentioned this idea of inauthenticity, and you wrote in the book, “Voters can smell inauthenticity the way bloodhounds track a scent.” And it did bring to mind the situation Democrats find themselves in at the moment. Do Democrats have an authenticity problem? 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.
There is a sense, though, that whatever messaging Democrats are doing right now is either too little, too late or, to use a bit of internet speak, a little cringe. I’ve noticed a discernible increase in the way party leadership, including you, is attempting to use social media since the election, with more direct-to-camera videos, more explainers. It feels as if it’s coming from consultants. I’ll use that word again: authenticity. Is it? No. We feel it. We just assumed we were on the side of working people, so they would naturally assume it, and it didn’t happen. We lost them because they didn’t think we cared about them enough. We always did care about them, but we didn’t convey it. So now, as you said, we’re learning to convey in different ways. I put Cory Booker and Tina Smith in charge of the social media. We had, like, 60 influencers at the State of the Union. And again, learning how to communicate. Not just Chuck Schumer talking about the legislation we passed, but I brought people there who were affected by what’s happening. I brought a veteran, and they went on all the social media and, according to the people who tell me, because I get all these reports, it had millions and millions of views. The bottom line is, I think the party as a whole neglected how the social media has become so much more important, but we’re learning it quickly, and we’re doing it much better, and we’re gonna do it better still.
As you know, you got a rough ride because of the protest that you had. I know. That’s in the past.
Whose idea was that? It just happened! I got excited. I didn’t do it right. [Laughs.] But it’s one day. You can’t get upset because a bunch of people online attack you. And most of the attacks on me were from the right wing.
Well, the former Ohio Democratic representative Tim Ryan called it depressing. He wrote it on X: “Is it ‘Saturday Night Live’ or real life?” 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.
I’m sure. That gave me a visual! Yeah, it’s not a sight you want to see.
Before we move on, I do want to ask you about the last election, especially around President Biden’s decision to run for a second term. Did you know about President Biden’s declining faculties before that disastrous debate? No. Whenever I dealt with him — you know, the right wing was saying, “Oh, he’s mentally declined.” He wasn’t. He had rational, good, strong conversations. Did he ramble from time to time? He’s done that when I knew him when he was 45 years old. Did he sometimes forget a name? Who doesn’t? But he was fine. I didn’t realize, because my dealings with him were just fine, and we worked on many things and had a lot of success. 2022 was regarded as one of the greatest legislative sessions we had, and we did it together, the Senate and him. Until the debate, and then I realized he couldn’t win. Now, I did think the fact that he spoke lower and he walked slower allowed the right wing to portray him incorrectly as not competent, but I didn’t find that.
If you didn’t know, why didn’t you know? Was it because they were keeping him secluded? I can’t give you the answer to that. When I dealt with him, he was fine.
There have been allegations of a cover-up. What do you say to those? They’re just BS. Just BS. There was no cover-up.
I want to come back to your book. That’s good.
Jews in America have always been closely allied with the Democratic Party. But Trump, in this past election, clearly saw an opening to win some of them over. And it does seem as if the events of the past year and a half have shifted things, for American Jews. Do you think the political landscape has changed in any lasting way? No. There are different polling numbers, but most of them show a very high percentage of the Jews voted Democratic. Some of the more vocal people are on the right, and the Republican Party has made an attempt to make Israel and even antisemitism a political issue, which is horrible for Israel. I told that to Netanyahu actually years ago, not to make it a political issue, but he did. He embraced Trump and did it. But I do think the progressive values of the Jewish people, the fact that we’ve been oppressed for so long, we’ve always had a sympathy for the underdog, that doesn’t go away. Obviously with the situation in Israel, there are some people who felt the Democrats weren’t strong enough, but Biden was. He stuck by Israel very strongly, and most everyone recognizes that.
And it cost him. It cost him a little. I’m not sure how much, but OK. I think that basically, the rank-and-file Jewish person, who is not that political, no more than anybody else, is fundamentally a Democrat and will stay that way.
There is this big debate about where the line is between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel’s government. Where is that line for you? I’ve criticized the Israeli government, and I’ve criticized Netanyahu, as you know. Criticism of Israel and how it conducted the war is not antisemitic. But it begins to shade over, and it shades over in a bunch of different ways. When you use the word “Zionist” for Jew — you Zionist pig — you mean you Jewish pig. There was an incident on the New York subway and a bunch of people got on, protesters or whatever, and said, “All the Zionists, get off.” When the head of the Brooklyn Museum, who was Jewish, but the Brooklyn Museum had nothing to do with Israel or taking positions on Israel — her house is smeared in red paint. That’s antisemitism. And a lot of the slogans that people use either are or slide into antisemitism. The one that bothers me the most is genocide. Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people, a whole nationality of people. So if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened. In fact, the opposite happened. And Hamas is much closer to genocidal than Israel. And I told Netanyahu, I said to him what I thought: You gotta reduce the number of casualties and make sure aid gets in and stuff like that. Here is the difficulty: Hamas has a different way of waging warfare, of using innocent Gazans as human shields. They put rockets in hospitals. They put their military supplies in schools. What is a country supposed to do when rockets are being fired from a school? So Israel’s been in a much more difficult position because of what Hamas did. And it’s not that Israel is above criticism. Of course it is not above criticism. But Hamas — I’m sorry, it matters so much to me. I feel so deeply about it. No one blames Hamas. I mean, the news reports every day for a while showed Palestinians being hurt and killed. I see the pictures of a little Palestinian boy without a leg, or one that sticks in my head, there’s a little girl, like 11, 12, crying because her parents were both killed. I ache for that. But on the news, they never mention that Hamas used the Palestinian people as human shields. And so when these protesters come and accuse Israel of genocide, I said, “What about Hamas?” They don’t even want to talk about Hamas.
One final thing. This is very important. Jewish people were subject, at least in my judgment, to the worst genocide ever. I put in the book, on the day they got Kyiv, the Nazis asked 33,000 Jews to line up by a trench, strip naked, and they shot them all dead. Every day Auschwitz killed 20,000 people. My family was killed from a place called Chortkiv in western Ukraine. And this was vicious and horrible. And it is vicious of the opponents to call this genocide. Criticize it? For sure. Say Israel went too far? For sure. And you know what it does? It increases antisemitism, because they’re making Israel and the Jewish people look like monsters, which they are not.
I will say, it’s a word that a U.N. special committee has used. Please. The U.N. has been anti-Israel, antisemitically against Israel. [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan was my idol. He became famous when in 1976 [it was 1975] they tried to pass a resolution, Zionism is racism. To say that the Jewish people should not have a state when every other people should have a state is antisemitism, the old double standard, ipso facto. And the international organizations, I have no faith in them being fair. These same international organizations, when horrible things go on in Darfur or China or wherever, they look the other way.
I’m curious how you think about how protests should be addressed, considering the context of what you just said. The Trump administration just announced it’s pulling $400 million in funding from Columbia University, giving the reason as “relentless violence, intimidation and antisemitic harassment.” I’m wondering what you make of that. Columbia did not do enough. I criticized them. And believe me, I believe in free speech, I believe in the right to protest, as you read in my book. I started my career protesting the Vietnam War. I say to some people, “If I were your age, I’d be protesting something or other.” So I get that, and I love it, and it’s about America. But when it shades over to violence and antisemitism, the colleges had to do something, and a lot of them didn’t do enough. They shrugged their shoulders, looked the other way. Columbia among them. So what did they do? They took away $400 million. I’m trying to find out what they took away. Are they taking away money from cancer research, or Alzheimer’s? What is the $400 million? It could be hurting all students. Students who go there who have nothing to do with the protest, students who might have protested peacefully, or Jewish students who were victims of some of those protests. So I think we have to see. My worry is that this $400 million was just done in typical Trump fashion: indiscriminately, without looking at its effect.
What do you make of what happened last weekend when ICE arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate who is Palestinian, an activist and a green-card holder, who was one of the few participants in last year’s campus protests to identify himself publicly. Apparently Trump has made good on his campaign pledge and is set to deport him because of his participation. I don’t know all the details yet. They’re trying to come out, and there’ll be a court case which will determine it. If he broke the law, he should be deported. If he didn’t break the law and just peacefully protested, he should not be deported. It’s plain and simple.
What does breaking the law mean to you in this context? It’s a legal issue, and it’s, what are Columbia’s rules, and what does it mean breaking them, and what are the legal rules? What did he do? I don’t know what he did, I don’t know what the charge against him is. So it’s a little premature to make a decision, except if he didn’t break the law, he should not be deported. If he broke the law, he should.
That sounds easy. But when we’re talking about the right to protest, breaking the law, not breaking the law — those things can be weaponized for political purposes. You can arrest political protesters, put them in prison, but they’re actually taking part in what is their constitutionally protected right. Well, if they’re just protesting, and they’re arrested, they shouldn’t be arrested for protesting as long as they go by the rules. Look, I get protests in front of my house all the time, but they have to have a permit and they have to obey certain rules. There are rules. But the bottom line is we have courts, and Khalil will go to court. And I have a lot of faith that the judge will give a fair ruling. It’s not the Trump administration, it’s an independent federal judge. [The day after we spoke, Schumer tweeted that Khalil should be punished by the legal system only for breaking criminal law, not for breaking university rules.]
I want to ask about your own state, which has been seen as a bit of a bellwether these days. This past election Trump improved on his 2020 numbers by six points in New York State, including a seven-point shift in New York City. What do you make of that drift? I think that there is a feeling in New York on certain issues that New York is not doing a good-enough job. Crime: Now, crime is actually lower. But I talk to lots of people, they go on the subway and almost inevitably there’s someone there who’s not hurting people, but disruptive, and frightening them because they read in the paper that some people were hurt. You know, the pushing of people onto the tracks. And so I think that, above all, that influenced New Yorkers. New Yorkers are willing to put up with a lot to live in New York, but they want to be safe.
Throughout your career, you’ve talked about this fictional New York couple the Baileys. And you think of them as sort of your representative voter constituent. You said the Baileys voted for Trump in 2016. They split Trump-Biden in 2020. I’m wondering who they voted for in 2024. Probably voted for Trump. But if you ask them why, I think they’d say, “Above all, crime.”
There are cultural issues, aren’t there? There are some, but less so in New York. When I used to advise candidates who were running for mayor, Democratic candidates, I’d say, “If you can assure New Yorkers they’re going to be safe, it’ll almost ensure your election, because on all the other issues, New Yorkers are Democrats.”
Well, that brings me to Eric Adams, the embattled mayor of New York City. Do you think Eric Adams should resign? I’m not getting into the mayoral race. I know you’re going to ask questions about the characters in the mayoral race, but I have had a tradition that has served me well: Don’t mix in primaries in New York. And this will be interpreted as mixing in the primaries.
But Eric Adams is a sitting mayor. This isn’t about someone who’s going through a primary. This is about someone going through very serious allegations against him, and the Trump administration getting involved in that, in your home state. I get it. I understand it. If we weren’t close to a primary, I might give you another opinion, but I’m not going to give you an opinion on that.
All right, let me ask you this. 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.
All right. Look, without characterizing any of the candidates, I think that safety is the biggest issue. I don’t think New Yorkers are anti-immigrant. People may disagree with how things were handled initially. I don’t think New Yorkers are of the view that let the very wealthy succeed and everybody else will succeed. I don’t think you need candidates like Trump. In fact, I think the candidates who support Trump in the next election, the gubernatorial in 2026, are going to lose because of Trump’s support. Donald Trump will be a detriment to candidates who have embraced him.
You know, I’ve heard you and other Democratic leaders talk about the next election as if it’s just going to be another election like any other election. But there has been all of this discussion about Trump auguring the end of democracy. I worry about this. When I say we’ll win the election, I’m assuming democracy stays, but that we have to fight to make sure that happens. I think that Trump is destroying norms that have preserved our democracy for centuries, certainly for decades, and he’s destroying them, and he doesn’t care. What is our best bulwark? It’s the courts. And one of the things we were able to do, which is proving very, very good, is we put in 235 new judges. And they’re now hearing so many of the cases that attorneys general, private citizens, unions and others are bringing. We’ve had preliminary success.
Are they going to respect those court orders, do you think? 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’ve covered a lot of countries going through democratic backsliding all over the world. And it’s a very difficult process to roll back once it is underway. And I’ve seen how often opposition parties fail to recognize until it’s too late that they might have been made irrelevant. And I wonder if you think that the Democratic Party might be making that mistake. No. I think we’re fighting very hard on every front. Initially, we’ve had some successes, but we’ve got to keep at it, and we’ve got to be open to new suggestions and ways to do it. But I think what we’re doing is working, so far.
On Saturday, one day after his vote to pass the Republican funding bill, Senator Schumer and I spoke again.
Senator, a lot has happened since we spoke on Monday, and you’ve been at the center of most of it. In our first conversation, you said you had a plan going forward to fight Republicans, but then, only a few days later, it looks as if your own party is in a civil war. Do you think that you made the wrong choice? 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.
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. So, in conclusion, I knew this would be an unpopular decision. I knew that. I know politics. But I felt so strongly as a leader that I couldn’t let this happen because weeks and months from now, things would be far worse than they even are today, that I had to do what I had to 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.
When I spoke to you earlier, I asked you if you were the right leader for the second Trump term, and you made the case that you were. You said, and I’m quoting you here, “I’m sort of like an orchestra leader.” But with this vote, it seems you’ve lost the confidence of many of your players, from Nancy Pelosi to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have expressed genuine fury at this. 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.
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.
Senator, you were crucial in getting President Joe Biden to step down. Do you think it’s time for you to do the same? 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.
There is reporting that some Democrats are now privately urging Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to consider a primary run against you. It now seems very likely that she or someone else will primary you in 2028. Do you think the base has your back after this? Because ultimately they’ll decide who becomes New York’s next senator. 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.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations. Listen to and follow “The Interview” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music or the New York Times Audio app.
The post Chuck Schumer on Democrats, Antisemitism and His Shutdown Retreat appeared first on New York Times.
