Radio host Charlamagne tha God on Friday slammed Democrats leadership in Congress, calling for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to step aside.
“The party of inaction, the Democrats, have failed to protect the interest of the American people,” he said on his radio show “The Breakfast Club.” “And you know why Dems suck at messaging? Because they never talking about nothing and they do nothing.”
“Dems don’t just have a messaging problem. They got a leadership problem,” he continued. “The Chuck Schumers of the world, the Hakeem Jeffries’s, they should all step down.”
His comments come amid internal turmoil within the party, which was only exacerbated further when Schumer broke with his party’s ranks to vote to advance the GOP-backed spending bill in the Senate.
The bill passed Friday evening in a 54-46 vote, with the support of Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats. All but one Democrat opposed the measure in the House vote earlier this week.
After Schumer announced Thursday he would not support a filibuster, several House Democrats blasted Schumer for his decision after urging the Senate to tank the bill.
“There is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said. “And this is not just about progressive Democrats, This is across the board — the entire party.”
Jeffries, who opposed the bill, refused to answer questions from reporters on Friday about his confidence in Schumer’s leadership.
“What we’re saying is [that] we look forward to continuing to work with our Senate colleagues — all of them — in opposition to the extremism that’s being unleashed on the American people,” he continued. “But the focus right now is on everyday Americans — on children, on families, on veterans, on the people that we are fighting for, who Donald Trump and House Republicans are intentionally trying to hurt.”
Charlamagne reiterated some House Democrats criticisms on Friday, going a step further and calling for lawmakers to be primaried.
“Any Dem who isn’t fighting for the people and standing with the party should be primaried,” Charlamagne added.
Schumer called the funding stopgap a “bad bill,” but insisted it would be worse for the government to shutdown with President Trump at the helm.
“We all know that [Elon] Musk and [the Department of Government Efficiency] and Trump want to decimate the federal government and letting them shut down the government, allowing them to shut down the government, they would have done it within two, three weeks,” Schumer said in a CNN interview Friday ahead of the final vote on the resolution.
He also reiterated his caucus’s support of his leadership, stating that he is “in sync” with the party.
But Charlamagne on Friday questioned Schumer’s logic, arguing Democrats should have presented an alternative funding measure.
“How can you say the bill sucks, but you passing it anyway?” he asked. “You not gonna even try to present something different?”
Democrats have fumed over party leadership’s response to the Trump administration as they continue to seek to rebuild after the party’s devastating November loss.
