AP Photo/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump added insult to injury on Friday by praising Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) politically fraught decision to support the House GOP spending bill to keep the government open.
“The Republican bill is a terrible option,” Schumer announced on Thursday evening, adding, “It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address far too many of this country’s needs. But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.”
Schumer also reportedly rallied enough of his fellow Democrats to support the bill to avoid a filibuster in the Senate, despite the majority of his party opposing the bill.
“Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing — Took ‘guts’ and courage! The big Tax Cuts, L.A. fire fix, Debt Ceiling Bill, and so much more, is coming. We should all work together on that very dangerous situation,” Trump cooed on his Truth Social platform, just days after slamming Schumer as not “Jewish anymore” and a “Palestinian.”
“A non pass would be a Country destroyer, approval will lead us to new heights. Again, really good and smart move by Senator Schumer. This could lead to something big for the USA, a whole new direction and beginning!” added Trump.
Schumer offered a heated defense of his position on MSNBC on Thursday night, warning that a government shutdown could “disable” the courts – the Democrats’ only line of defense against the Trump administration. Schumer had come under fire from members of his own party who urged Senate Democrats to oppose the GOP spending bill as a way of protesting Trump and Elon Musk’s attempted dismantling of the federal workforce.
“We are going to conflict with them on everything, on the tax cuts for the billionaires. They’ve become a plutocracy, an oligarchy. On Medicaid, we have plans to conflict them with all of that. If the shutdown occurred, we wouldn’t be able to do that because they would fill up both the Senate and the discussion on whether we should cut this and not cut that of things that they want to cut,” Schumer told Chris Hayes, adding:
So to have the conflict on the best ground we have, summed up in a sentence, that they’re making the middle class pay for tax cuts for billionaires, it’s much, much better not to be in the middle of a shutdown which divert people from the number one issue we have against these bastards. Sorry, these people.
“Which is not only all these cuts, but they’re ruining democracy. And one other thing on a shutdown, on a shutdown, the courts could close, or at least be totally, totally disabled, and the courts are one of the best ways we’ve had to go after these guys,” Schumer concluded.
The Senate is expected to vote on funding the government later on Friday, ahead of the midnight deadline to avoid a shutdown.
