Chuck Schumer on Blocking Trump Nominees: ‘Damn Straight We’re Blocking These Nominees’

PARNAS: “I want to jump right in and get your reaction to something that Donald Trump put on his Truth Social. He attacked you for stalling his nominees in the Senate saying: ‘Politically embattled Senator Crying Chuck Schumer wants the Republicans to pay as extortion billions in order to, in order for the radical left Democrats to approve the hundreds of Trump appointees who have been waiting for months.’ What’s your response to Donald Trump?”

Schumer: “My response is, damn straight we’re blocking these nominees. And we can’t really block them. The rules don’t let us prevent them, but we can use every tool in the toolbox to delay them. And we have. So, John Thune goes up on the floor crying almost, and he says Schumer has done something unprecedented. He has — he has not given us a single pass on one of the nominees that we have done, zero, it says in his big chart. I said, you’re damn straight. Historically bad nominees need a historic response. And so, we did. We blocked them all and they were frustrated. So, then they came to us and said, well, let’s try to do some of them without your blocking them. And, you know, they sent us some ambassadors from very small countries, people who are not objectionable. You know, when you hear about nominees like Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, you know something’s up. They’re putting in really crappy, terrible people. But anyway, so these [inaudible], we said, yeah, we’ll do it, but only if you spend all the NIH money that you said you would spend. Only if you give that money back for starving children around the world in terms of the World Hunger Program, and only if you put at least $300 million into feeding Gaza done by — not by this crappy organization that doesn’t get them the money, but by the World Food Programme led by McCain. Trump howled.”

PARNAS: “Right.”

Schumer: “And he got mad. He wouldn’t — we offered him stuff that made a big difference. He wouldn’t do it. And so, he whined. And you know what he said? ‘Schumer, go to hell.’ I’m proud of that. Yeah, say it again. He can say it again and again and again. And he walked away with nothing but his tail between his legs. So, you know, we confront him and he tried to bully us. He failed, and he whined.”