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Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer yucked it up and trashed former President Donald Trump during a meal and interview with CNN that was broadcast this week.
CNN’s Jamie Gangel sat down with the two Democrats at the Chinese restaurant Hunan Dynasty in Washington, D.C., for what she billed as a “first-ever joint interview” with the two top Democrats.
“I want to talk about how the two of you navigated working with former President Trump,” Gangel said at one point.
“We had a good time,” Schumer responded with a sarcastic chuckle.
Gangel then noted that Pelosi “got under” Trump’s skin, which happened frequently.
“Was there a strategy when you went into a meeting?” Gangel asked. “Was there a good cop/bad cop?”
While picking food out of her teeth with her tongue, Pelosi criticized Trump’s inaugural comments.
“So I’m thinking, ‘How is he going to begin?’” Pelosi noted. “Is he going to quote the Constitution, American history, [a] poet, the Bible?” She then attempted to mock the former president by lowering her head and her hands, as if speaking at a podium.
“‘You know, I won the popular vote,’” she said, mimicking Trump. “And I said, ‘Mr. President, that’s just not true.”
“We sort of set him up, instinctively. We didn’t plan this,” Schumer said in reference to the first government shutdown that took place under Trump’s watch.“Chuck was masterful,” Pelosi remarked. “He was masterful.”
“She set him up so I could go in for the kill,” Schumer added.
“He’s talking to [Trump] about the government shutdown and about the immigrants and the rest,” Pelosi said. “And he says, ‘I take ownership.’”
Schumer added: “So I said, ‘Mr. President, will you own the shutdown?’”
“‘Yes,” Trump replied, “I will.’”
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Following last month’s midterm elections, which ultimately saw Democrats keep and then pad their majority by a single vote, Schumer said that served as vindication for the party’s agenda and he would continue pursuing it amid sky-high inflation, a chaotic southwestern border, and rising interest rates.
“With the races now called in Arizona and Nevada, Democrats will have a majority again in the Senate. And I will be the majority leader,” Schumer said, per Fox News Digital. “This election is a victory, a victory and a vindication for Democrats, our agenda, and for the America and for the American people.”
He went on to credit his party’s “terrific candidates,” “our agenda and our accomplishments,” and the “American people who rejected the anti-democratic, extremist MAGA Republicans” in helping keep the upper chamber in Democratic hands.
“Our candidates Catherine Cortez Masto, Mark Kelly, Maggie Hassan and John Fetterman, and Raphael Warnock are just fine human beings who really care about people who have the understanding of how to get things done. And those who have been in the Senate have already accomplished great things,” Schumer said, adding that voters voters “believed in what we got done, and it stood in contrast to the other party.”
Polls ahead of the midterm elections claimed that Americans were most concerned about the higher cost of living and so-called “kitchen table” issues and that Republicans polled better on them — but if the election results are any indication, a majority of voters did not seem to blame Democrats or, at a minimum, hold them responsible, as GOP pundits expected.
Following the elections, President Biden also said he would do “nothing” differently over the next two years of his term.
For his part, Schumer ticked off several things, noting that “we got a whole lot of things done” over the past two years. And he claimed that Americans “not happy with Republican leaders who condoned and even supported this nasty, poisonous rhetoric.”
“I’m making a plea to my Republican colleagues. We can disagree on so many issues. That’s fair. But let’s not have this kind of divisive negativity. Let’s not have the condemnation of viciousness and even violence against poll workers, against so many others. Let us try to come together,” Schumer, who has been accused of being dangerously divisive himself, added.
