Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Wednesday that President Trump is out of his depth in policy discussions.
“He doesn’t know the details and he says whatever he wants to say,” Mr. Schumer told reporters when asked about the president’s negotiating strategy on legislation, including the tax-cut bill.
Taking a victory lap after Democratic candidate Doug Jones’ victory in a special Senate election in Alabama Tuesday, Mr. Schumer said the fact that a deep-red state elected a Democrat is a rebuke of the president.
“There’s great discontent about the way Donald Trump has conducted his presidency,” Mr. Schumer said.
Many analysts have said Mr. Jones’ victory was due to the flawed nature of GOP candidate Roy Moore, a divisive former state Supreme Court chief justice who during the campaign faced allegations of of being a sexual predator on teen girls.
But Mr. Schumer said that wasn’t the full explanation, and “it was not simply Roy Moore’s conduct” that led to the GOP defeat.
He pointed to suburban Alabama counties that dramatically underperformed for Republicans, saying it was evidence that even core GOP voters are turning on their party and embracing Democrats.
“The lesson of this election is that the Republican policies are all wrong. They favor the wealthy, they favor the powerful corporations and they hurt middle class people,” Mr. Schumer said.
Mr. Trump, though, said the election was all about candidates.
“If last night’s election proved anything, it proved that we need to put up GREAT Republican candidates to increase the razor thin margins in both the House and Senate,” the president said on Twitter.
He had backed another Republican, current Sen. Luther Strange, in the GOP primary, then threw his support to Mr. Moore late in the general election.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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