Schumer In His Own Words
We should not be surprised that he voted to pass the Trump/Musk spending bill.
On Gaza:
“Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people, a whole nationality of people. So if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened. In fact, the opposite happened. And Hamas is much closer to genocidal than Israel. And I told Netanyahu, I said to him what I thought: You gotta reduce the number of casualties and make sure aid gets in and stuff like that. Here is the difficulty: Hamas has a different way of waging warfare, of using innocent Gazans as human shields. They put rockets in hospitals. They put their military supplies in schools. What is a country supposed to do when rockets are being fired from a school? So Israel’s been in a much more difficult position because of what Hamas did. And it’s not that Israel is above criticism. Of course it is not above criticism. But Hamas — I’m sorry, it matters so much to me. I feel so deeply about it. No one blames Hamas. I mean, the news reports every day for a while showed Palestinians being hurt and killed. I see the pictures of a little Palestinian boy without a leg, or one that sticks in my head, there’s a little girl, like 11, 12, crying because her parents were both killed. I ache for that. But on the news, they never mention that Hamas used the Palestinian people as human shields. And so when these protesters come and accuse Israel of genocide, I said, “What about Hamas?” They don’t even want to talk about Hamas.
“One final thing. This is very important. Jewish people were subject, at least in my judgment, to the worst genocide ever. I put in the book, on the day they got Kyiv, the Nazis asked 33,000 Jews to line up by a trench, strip naked, and they shot them all dead. Every day Auschwitz killed 20,000 people. My family was killed from a place called Chortkiv in western Ukraine. And this was vicious and horrible. And it is vicious of the opponents to call this genocide. Criticize it? For sure. Say Israel went too far? For sure. And you know what it does? It increases antisemitism, because they’re making Israel and the Jewish people look like monsters, which they are not.”
Comment: Schumer is basically repeating Israeli government talking points. Somehow, at least 45,000 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces because Hamas was using civilians “as human shields”. (I.e., they lived in the Gaza Strip.) And “nobody blames Hamas’?! Really? Well, maybe Israel went a little too far, but what about the Holocaust!
On Trump cutting funds for Columbia University:
“Columbia did not do enough. I criticized them. And believe me, I believe in free speech, I believe in the right to protest, as you read in my book. I started my career protesting the Vietnam War. I say to some people, “If I were your age, I’d be protesting something or other.” So I get that, and I love it, and it’s about America. But when it shades over to violence and antisemitism, the colleges had to do something, and a lot of them didn’t do enough. They shrugged their shoulders, looked the other way. Columbia among them. So what did they do? They took away $400 million. I’m trying to find out what they took away. Are they taking away money from cancer research, or Alzheimer’s? What is the $400 million? It could be hurting all students. Students who go there who have nothing to do with the protest, students who might have protested peacefully, or Jewish students who were victims of some of those protests. So I think we have to see. My worry is that this $400 million was just done in typical Trump fashion: indiscriminately, without looking at its effect.”
Comment: So maybe Columbia just had it coming? Who knows?
On arresting and preparing to deport Mahmoud Khalil:
“I don’t know all the details yet. They’re trying to come out, and there’ll be a court case which will determine it. If he broke the law, he should be deported. If he didn’t break the law and just peacefully protested, he should not be deported. It’s plain and simple…It’s a legal issue, and it’s, what are Columbia’s rules, and what does it mean breaking them, and what are the legal rules? What did he do? I don’t know what he did, I don’t know what the charge against him is. So it’s a little premature to make a decision, except if he didn’t break the law, he should not be deported. If he broke the law, he should.”
Comment: Khalil is a legal permanent resident of the US married to a US citizen, and therefore his speech is protected by the 1st Amendment. He should never have been arrested or have to appear in court, since no evidence has been presented that he ever broke any law. So basically, Schumer is saying again, yeah, who knows, maybe he had it coming.
On what if Trump refuses to abide by court rulings:
“I believe this, and it’s a little bit in concert with what I’ve said to you before: I believe Republican senators, on this issue, will stand up. I’ve talked to some of them. About five or six have said publicly they will work to uphold the courts, and to uphold the law if Trump tries to break it. And we can do that legislatively if we have to. That’s my hope. That’s what we’ve got to work toward. And I think there’s a decent chance that that would happen, particularly if Trump, three months from now, is less popular.”
Comment: WTF?
On whether Democrats have failed to recognize that the political reality has fundamentally changed:
“I think we’re fighting very hard on every front. Initially, we’ve had some successes, but we’ve got to keep at it, and we’ve got to be open to new suggestions and ways to do it. But I think what we’re doing is working, so far.”
Comment: So, yes. Schumer still thinks the old ways apply.
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