Chuck Schumer Slams Trump SOTU Speech: ‘It’s Sort Of Like Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde’
In an interview broadcast Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, The Hill reports.
According to Senator Schumer, Donald Trump went back and forth between calling for unity and criticizing the Democratic Party, which is why there is “very little nice to say about it.”
“It’s sort of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the excitement and the enthusiasm was all in the Mr. Hyde parts.”
“You can’t talk about comity and working together and give a speech that is so divisive, that just doesn’t fly,” the top Democrat added.
As The Hill notes, during his SOTU address President Trump called for bipartisanship and unity, but also double down on issues such as immigration and abortion, attacked “partisan investigations,” and what he described as “politics of revenge.”
During the speech President Trump made a number of false and misleading statements, according to the Associated Press.
To make an argument in favor of building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump referenced the border city of El Paso, Texas, claiming that it used to have one of the highest rates of violent crime in the country, and arguing that the crime rates dropped once a border fence was built. But according to the Associated Press, El Paso has never been considered one of the most dangerous cities in America. The crime rates in the border city have “largely mirrored” national trends for decades.
Similarly, the president argued that human traffickers take advantage of “the wide open areas” between ports of entry to smuggle “thousands” of women into the United States. The administration has not, AP notes, provided any evidence to back up this claim. However, statistics show that nearly 80 percent of human trafficking victims cross through legal points of entry, which means that a border wall would not do much to curb human trafficking.
Trump promotes a notorious abortion lie in his State of the Union speech https://t.co/JnCTZoBnwc pic.twitter.com/XRGrkRCn1M
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) February 6, 2019
Trump made a number of false claims pertaining to the economy as well, according to AP. The president took credit for an “unprecedented economic boom,” but the news agency notes that there has only been a mild improvement in hiring and growth. Although healthy, the economy is not nearly as good as Donald Trump claims, and the growth is expected to slow down once the effects of tax cuts fade away.
According to Schumer, Donald Trump’s calls for bipartisanship and unity came across as “hypocritical.”
“It’s got to be real, it can’t just be words,” he said.
“There’s very little nice to say about it. It’s sort of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Senate Minority Leader @SenSchumer says about President Trump’s SOTU address.
“You can’t talk about comity and working together and give a speech that is so divisive.” https://t.co/WUvZqhVH4X pic.twitter.com/sun5GyZfi8
— CNN This Morning (@CNNThisMorning) February 6, 2019
Schumer praised fellow Democrat Stacey Abrams’ rebuttal to Trump, comparing her speech to the president’s. According to Schumer, unlike Trump, Abrams was “thoughtful” and “caring.”
“The president was political, divisive, calculating, even nasty at times,” Schumer concluded.
