Democrats say House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., blew their chance to rebut President Trump Tuesday night after the president’s nationwide address on border security.
“I haven’t spoken with one person yet who thought they did a good job,” said one House Democrat who asked not to be named.
“I love Nancy. I think she was clearly the best candidate for speaker … But is she the most effective spokesperson for our side? Obviously, the answer is no. Both she and Chuck Schumer are not our best spokespeople on TV,” the Democrat said, adding that Rep. Hakeen Jeffries, D-N.Y., would have done better.
Another House Democrat believed Pelosi did a better job responding to the president but said Schumer did not impress and seemed “shrill” in his remarks.
“The speaker sounded better to me than the senator because I feel like he’s a little too personal. To me, I think that we can’t out-Trump Trump. You should never even try. We should not stoop to personal attacks. We should not belittle him,” said the second House Democrat, who also requested anonymity.
“Some of it just sounded shrill to me. A little shrill,” the House Democrat added. “Coming out of Donald Trump’s mouth, I think we’re used to shrill at this point. Coming out of others on our side, I think it comes off better if we say where we disagree, what are the facts. We can be tough without being personal.”
[Related: Twitter mocks ‘creepy twins’ Schumer and Pelosi for their Trump response]
Schumer received some tough public criticism from Democrats. James Carville, a top adviser to former President Bill Clinton, argued that it looked like the New York Democrat “didn’t want to be there” for the speech.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., told the Washington Examiner that the Pelosi and Schumer visual didn’t help them either.
“I thought the content was right on. I thought the optics could have been improved upon,” Connolly said. “It was odd staging to me to have them crowded behind a podium in a hallway, and we might have found a more felicitous tableau.”
Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, dismissed the complaints.
“Responding to the president is an incredibly difficult job given the stature of an Oval Office address,” Hammill said in a statement. “By all accounts, the Democratic leaders delivered an effective and concise presentation, which has received strong reviews. Sniping from the cheap seats is always expected.”
A spokesman for Schumer did not respond to a request for comment.
Connolly and other Democrats still think Schumer and Pelosi were the right people to deliver the response to Trump given their seats at the negotiating table in the ongoing talks.
“This is his first Oval Office speech. We just elected our leader in the Senate and our speaker in the House,” Connolly said. “I think that it’s perfectly appropriate that they be the first to respond under the circumstances.”
Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., said that while Pelosi and Schumer were the only choices who could have matched the president’s speech, the whole string of events was a waste.
“I thought the whole thing was kind of a waste of time … on both sides,” Yarmuth said. “You had to match stature with stature.”
