Schumer: GOP will break from Trump within months
.@SenSchumer to @TheView: "When you talk to Republicans quietly…they are having real problems with" Pres. Trump https://t.co/TJd2abALWm pic.twitter.com/na8qXxsCxX
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) February 21, 2017
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) predicted on Tuesday that Republicans will split with President Trump within months unless the administration changes course.
“My prediction is he keeps up on this path…within three, four months you’re going to see a whole lot of Republicans breaking with him,” Schumer said during an interview with ABC’s “The View.”
Schumer argued while most GOP lawmakers aren’t yet willing to break publicly from the White House, they are privately having “real problems” with Trump’s policies in his first month.
“A lot of the Republicans, they’re mainstream people. … They will feel they have no choice but to break with him,” he said.
{mosads}GOP leadership are largely dismissing any early signs of discord between Congress and the White House as they slowly try to make progress on an ambitious agenda.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) noted late last week that he’s not a fan of Trump’s tweeting but he supports the administration’s early actions — comparing it to hypothetical administrations led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) or Mitt Romney.
Though a growing number of congressional Republicans are also voicing concerns about the administration’s stance toward Russia, only 10 GOP senators have signed on to a bill expanding sanctions against Moscow over meddling in the U.S. presidential election.
Schumer added on Tuesday that he warned Trump he was breaking with his populist campaign rhetoric and that Democrats were prepared to “fight him tooth and nail” on areas where they disagree.
“If you do what you’ve been doing, just move to the hard, hard right … you’re going to be a failure,” Schumer said, recounting what he said to Trump.
Schumer also used his “View” appearance to hit back at the president’s accusation that the New York Democrat cried “fake tears” during a press conference last month on the administration’s executive order on immigration targeting refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries.
“He doesn’t know me,” he said. “I get tearful. At my daughter’s wedding I could hardly contain it in.”
He even confessed to getting emotional during the 1993 whale rescue movie “Free Willy,” adding: “When he escaped, I started to cry.”
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