‘Pundit-Brain, Poll-Tested Bullsh*t’: Democratic Senator Slams David Axelrod Over Trump Advice
Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via AP Images)
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) had some pointed remarks for Democratic strategists who have been advising the party’s elected officials to pick their battles carefully against President Donald Trump.
Since taking office, Trump has unleashed billionaire GOP donor Elon Musk at several government departments, including the United States Agency for International Development. On Thursday, it was reported that Trump will lay off nearly every worker at the agency. Trump has also halted funding of several programs in contravention of Congress, which funds USAID and other agencies Musk has been interfering with.
Some Democratic strategists have advised party leaders not to pick a fight over USAID, even as they admit Trump’s actions are “highly illegal.”
“My heart is with the people out on the street outside USAID, but my head tells me: ‘Man, Trump will be well satisfied to have this fight,’” Obama alumnus David Axelrod told Politico. “When you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is: Cut foreign aid.”
Another former Obama official agreed.
“You don’t fight every fight. You don’t swing at every pitch. And my view is — while I care about the USAID as a former ambassador — that’s not the hill I’m going to die on,” Rahm Emanuel said. Meanwhile, a Biden alum said Democrats should stand down on USAID because of what he had seen on TV’s The West Wing.
In an interview with Isaac Chotiner published in The New Yorker on Thursday, Schatz offered a blunt assessment of this advice.
“I’m not going to let some pundit dictate whether or not I exercise my obligations as a member of the Article I branch,” Schatz said. “David Axelrod, James Carville. I mean, those guys have not been in the trenches legislatively or electorally in a full generation. And there’s a cottage industry out there of Democratic strategists. But in order to be a Democratic strategist, you actually have to do politics currently and not just podcast about it.”
The senator acknowledged that while foreign aid is not as popular as Medicaid, the Trump administration is still violating the law. Schatz also made clear what he thinks of the aforementioned strategist class:
They’re ignoring multiple federal laws. And I’m just—excuse me for being quaint about this—but I’m not going to just gloss over that and wait until they touch the Affordable Care Act. That’s the kind of pundit-brain, poll-tested bullshit that got us into this mess. We are constantly being told that something isn’t polling well enough yet. And one of the things that Republicans do well is not allow their pollsters to tell them everything. They invent whole stories and then the polling follows. And that’s why we’re focussing so much on Russell Vought [Trump’s nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget]. He’s clearly not a household name, but we should make him a household name because he is the person who believes that the O.M.B. director, of all positions, should be essentially the king’s hand, that he should be exercising Presidential authority regardless of laws and rules and the Constitution.
Schatz went on to say that his Republican colleagues are also concerned about Musk’s seemingly unchecked access to government departments, but are unwilling to speak up.
“[Y]ou can’t be a senator in private,” he said. “At some point they have to do something.”
