TRANSCRIPT: Leader Schumer Joins Morning Joe To Discuss Democrats’ Plan To Address Trump’s Affordability Crisis And The Chaos Caused By The Surge Of ICE

Washington, D.C. - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) today joined Morning Joe to discuss Democrats’ plan to fight Trump’s chaos, corruption, and skyrocketing costs. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks:

Willie Geist: Joining us now, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Senator, great to have you on with us this morning. So, this plan just came out, you released it a couple of hours ago. The affordability issue appears to be on your side as Donald Trump denies that it's real. Again, yesterday in Michigan, we have these scenes playing out in the streets of Minnesota that polls show Americans do not like, that they reject. So, what is the plan from the Senate point of view to retake the upper chamber?

Leader Schumer: Well, thank you. We have a really strong, clear path to win back the Senate. As you know, a year ago, no one thought we did. And at that point, we said we had to do three things. We had to find good candidates, good, strong candidates in our battleground states. We have done that. With Mary Peltola announcing in Alaska, that's the final piece of the puzzle. And we have really strong candidates in Maine, in North Carolina, in Ohio, and in Alaska. I think we'll win all of those states. Second, we had to create the right political atmosphere. We said we had to bring Trump's numbers down and show people how bad he was. With the issue of costs, the number one issue facing the American people. Last night, millions of American families sat around the kitchen table and said, which bill do I not pay? My electric bill, my grocery bill, my health care bill? They're frightened and worried sick over this. And Donald Trump is making things worse with his tariffs, with the way he treated clean energy and made electric costs go up, and of course with health care. But the third thing we had to do is have a good, strong, Democratic platform that contrasted, particularly on the issue of costs.

Tomorrow, I'm rolling out the first step in that battle, in our plan, on housing, which is really important. When a young person can't buy a home and has to just put their money into rent and not build equity, they feel terrible. And then we're going to do the cost of groceries and the monopolization of the food industry. We're going to do health care. We're going to do electric costs and tariffs raising everyone's price. And finally, the cost of childcare.

So, we think we're in strong shape to win the Senate because we've fulfilled the three things that we needed to do over the last year.

Jonathan Lemire: Leader Schumer, good morning. You just laid out a lot of the economic issues in which this campaign will be run on. Let's talk about something else that was supposed to be a strength of President Trump. The economy was one. Poll suggests that's not the case anymore. Immigration the other. And get your thoughts as to what the latest you're seeing out of Minneapolis, this surge of ICE officers and Border Patrol agents in recent days in the wake of that shooting last week. And how do you think that is being perceived by Americans, many of whom, yes, wanted the southern border closed, but object to this?

Schumer: Yeah, Americans are appalled by what's happening in our cities. They're taking American citizens who've done nothing wrong as they go through life, walking their kids to school, filling up their cars at gas stations, and they're just pulling them into police stations and other places. They don't tell them where they are. They don't tell them what they've been charged with. They don't tell them what they did wrong. If some of them get injured, they dump them off in a hospital emergency room without telling people who they are and what's happened. This is appalling. Americans are outraged. And as you said, one of the strong suits that Donald Trump once had was immigration. Now, the majority of Americans don't like how he's treating immigration because these ICE agents who are trained to deal with crossing the border are now infiltrating our cities and creating chaos. You know, the three issues we fight Trump on are costs above all, still number one, chaos, what we've seen in the cities, and corruption, the idea that these big special interests can get their way. The oil industry gave Trump a billion dollars in return for him cutting off clean energy. But that's raising everybody's electric prices.

Mike Barnicle: Senator Schumer, I have a question for you that you may or may not be able to answer, really. And here's the question. There's been a lot of Democrats who have stood on the floor of the Senate and outside the Senate complaining about and pointing out the inequity, the outrages that are taking place in the streets of Minneapolis today. Why haven't you gotten like a dozen Democratic senators and maybe a dozen New York City cops flown to Minneapolis, stood there in the crowds, and said to the guys wearing masks, we've brought people who know how to operate. We've brought people who know what law and order really means. And you are wrong and they are right. And that's why we're here.

Schumer: You are so right. We have talked to police officers across the country and the police department in Minneapolis itself. And they know that these ICE agents are so totally untrained in police doctrine. They don't know what to do, how to do it, and it ends up even killing people and causing such mayhem that, yes, you are 100% right. We need our police officers across the country to tell ICE, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You need real police training.

Geist: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, again, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's platform, its plan, its strategy off and running as of this morning, looking ahead to the midterms. Leader Schumer, thanks as always for your time. We appreciate it.

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