Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly believed that Republicans would end their unwavering support for Donald Trump after the end of his first term, according to the authors of a new book detailing former President Joe Biden’s time in the White House.
Schumer told the authors, Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater of the New York Times, that he hoped the “old Republican Party” would return following the 2020 election.
“Here’s my hope … after this election, when the Republican Party expels the turd of Donald Trump, it will go back to being the old Republican Party,” Schumer reportedly told the writers, according to The Guardian.
The 2023 exchange with Schumer is included in the book “Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man With Rats in His Walls Broke Congress,” which is set publish on Tuesday.
The authors write in the book that they believed if Schumer had any indication of what was to come, he wouldn’t want to “face it.”
Excerpts from the book already shared in the New York Times provided insight into the behind-the-scenes discussions that led to Biden stepping away from the presidential race in June. Those passages included scenes of Schumer trying to convince Biden to relinquish the nomination.
Schumer is once again in the news, this time taking fire for leading a group of Senate Democrats who broke with the House and voted in favor of funding the government despite calls to force a shutdown from other lawmakers and Democratic voters.
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Schumer’s decision — which was a reversal of his previous commitment to vote against the funding — a “betrayal.”
“There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts, in some of the most difficult territories in the United States, who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people … just to see some Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk. I think it is a huge slap in the face, and I think that there’s a wide sense of betrayal,” she told reporters after news broke that Schumer was going to vote in favor of the funding.
On Tuesday, Maryland Democratic Rep. Glenn Ivey said it was time for Democrats to move past Schumer, reported USA TODAY.
“I respect Chuck Schumer. I think he had a great, long-standing career. He’s done a lot of great things” Ivey said during a town hall in Maryland. “But I’m afraid that it may be time for the Senate Democrats to pick new leadership as we move forward.”
The blowback from within the party has been significant enough to convince Schumer to cancel a tour for his upcoming book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning. Schumer’s team said the cancellation was due to “security concerns.”
The Karni and Broadwater book features other Democratic lawmakers who were skeptical of Schumer’s belief that the Republicans would abandon MAGA and return to whatever they were before.
“There are plenty of examples of societies captured by a singularly unique individual demagogue, and [they] get healthy after that person disappears,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy reportedly told the writers. “I’m not as optimistic as [Schumer] is. I worry there’s a rot at the core of the country that will continue to be exposed politically.”
