Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer argued Tuesday that he remains the “best leader for the Senate” despite backlash from some Democrats over his decision to allow a Republican-led measure to advance, avoiding a government shutdown.
“We have a lot of good people,” Schumer said on “CBS Mornings.” “But I am the best at winning Senate seats.”
Schumer initially signaled last week that his caucus would fight back against a partisan measure to keep the government funded. But a day later, he reluctantly pledged to advance the continuing resolution, delivering one of the Democratic votes necessary to propel the measure to passage. The move has prompted frustrations among some within his party, and questions about his leadership, but Schumer has repeatedly defended his decision.
“I knew when I took this vote there’d be a lot of protests, but I felt I had to do it for the future, not only of the Democratic Party, but the country,” Schumer said, adding that “as bad as that CR bill was — and it was bad — a shutdown is 10 times worse.”
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Schumer said a shutdown would have given “sole power” to the executive branch and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to determine what remained open and closed during a shutdown, saying “within two weeks, everyone would have been howling.”
The New York Democrat said he and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had a strategy to try to get a bipartisan bill to keep the government funded. But they didn’t expect that House Republican leadership would be able to keep its conference together to advance the partisan continuing resolution — a heavy lift that defied the typical political dynamics, with conservatives who routinely oppose continuing resolutions joining their party to support the measure.
Schumer said a “shutdown would have been the greatest disaster,” putting the government in the hands of “evil, nasty, nihilistic people” like Musk, President Trump and OMB Director Russ Vought.
“We would have had half the federal government we have now,” Schumer said. “So I thought I did the thing a leader should do: Even when people don’t see the danger around the curve, my job was to alert people to it — and I knew I’d get some bullets.”
On the question of his leadership, Schumer said he isn’t going anywhere, citing his record as leader on winning Senate seats, including in 2021, when Democrats secured a majority in the upper chamber with two surprise runoff victories in Georgia. Schumer came to Congress in 1981, representing New York in the House before being elected to the Senate in 1998. He’s led Democrats as leader in the Senate since 2017.
Schumer said Democrats are fighting back against the Trump administration with a message focused on how GOP leaders want to “screw every average American so they can get tax cuts for the rich,” saying the strategy is “beginning to work.”
“If we keep at it everyday, relentless fighting and showing how they’re hurting people so badly, Trump’s numbers will get much lower, and his both popularity, but also his effectiveness will decline,” Schumer said. “I believe that strategy will work.”
Tuesday’s interview was held one day after Schumer postponed events to promote his book, “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” this week, citing security concerns following backlash from his move to keep the government funded. Schumer had a number of events scheduled this week in Maryland, New York City, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and California.
Schumer said he wrote the book aimed at a number of audiences — including his “friends on the left.” He noted that while “we’ve always seen antisemitism on the right,” more recently “a lot of it’s trickled over to the left.”
