Senate Democrats jumped at the chance on Thursday to tie Republicans lawmakers to Donald Trump, even as they acknowledged the GOP is far from unified around its presumptive presidential nominee.
“They are caught between a rock and a hard place,” said the Senate’s number-three Democrat, Charles Schumer of New York. “They can go into a whirlpool or a pillar of fire.”
Democrats gleefully watched when the national spotlight turned to Republicans as they tried to mend their deep differences with Trump in a series of meetings on Capitol Hill. The Democratic strategy, though, will be to tie the Republican Senate to Trump, who they say has basically echoed what the GOP has been promoting for years.
“They may not be proud of how he expresses himself or the tone of the campaign, but they are singing from the same hymnbook,” Schumer said. “The idea that there is a massive gulf on policy between Donald Trump and the Republican conference is pure fiction.”
Schumer staged a press conference with other Senate Democrats to tie Trump to GOP lawmakers. Democrats set up a large photo of Trump that declared, “Policies Trump and Senate GOP already agree on.”
The list included “cut taxes for the wealthiest one percent, deny climate change and take away healthcare from 20 million Americans.”
Trump’s impact on the ballot could be fatal to the GOP Senate majority, some pollsters have predicted. A half-dozen GOP seats are under serious threat of Democratic takeover, and Schumer, who will become Democratic leader in 2017, wants to win back the gavel.
“They are in a huge pickle,” Schumer said of the Republicans. “That is what created this circus today.”
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., talked about Trump’s “erratic nature” and “explosiveness.” She declared Trump unqualified to become the next president compared to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“The biggest question is whether or not he is prepared to be president of the United States when he is going to be up against someone who, in my judgment, is overqualified,” she said.
Schumer downplayed the fight within the Democratic party between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., her primary opponent who continues to win contests despite her clear path to the nomination.
“When Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, everybody will endorse her and embrace her,” Schumer said. “We won’t have to have the summit meetings they will have to have. At all. It’s a world of difference.”
