Conservative rips Dems for going easy on the 'most corrupt presidency in history'

During the 2000s, then-GOP strategist Steve Schmidt worked on the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and the late John McCain. But the New Jersey native, like other Never Trump conservatives, expressed his disdain for President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement by leaving the Republican Party and co-founding The Lincoln Project (a right-wing anti-Trump group).

During a Sunday, November 2 appearance on MSNBC, Schmidt — who supported Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024 — was highly critical of the Democratic Party, although not for their opposition to Trump. Rather, the 55-year-old Never Trumper argued that Democrats aren't doing enough to prevent the Trump Administration from ending democracy in the U.S.

Although Schmidt praised two Democratic governors for their anti-Trump efforts—California's JD Pritzker and California's Gavin Newsom — he emphasized that a lot more needs to be done.

"This moment requires a philosophical understanding of something deeper than Democrats have been able to articulate, which is this: the maximum abuse of power —

which is what Trump is doing — demands, on a constant basis, the maximum use of power by every Democratic leader, wherever they may be," Schmidt told host Ali Velshi and Media Matters' Angelo Casusone. "I think, for example — though there is much to admire about Gov. Pritzker, Gov. Newsom in their responses — their states are under siege. They should declare a special session of the legislature. They should convene investigative committees."

Schmidt continued, "I want to know, specifically, the chain of events that led to the firing of the pepper ball at the head of the priest (in Chicago). I want the full use of all statutory power 100 percent of the time. Those ICE agents who drove their vehicle and assaulted a driver on an Illinois highway should be arrested by the Illinois State Police. This moment requires, on a constant basis, communication."

The authoritarian abuses of Trump's second presidency, Schmidt warned, require a much more forceful response from Democrats.

"The MAGA Party is the biggest spending political party in world history," Schmidt told Velshi and Carusone. "The debt is higher than it has ever been, and the policies that the debt underscore are cruelty and venom — and they are being injected into the country on a constant basis…. A lot of these SNAP beneficiaries are Trump voters. Forty percent of the country doesn't have $400 available. Trump is looting the (U.S.) Treasury. It is the most corrupt administration in history…. The breadlines are here."

Schmidt continued, "The poverty is growing, and the punishment of poverty by the richest people in the history of the Earth is one of the great obscenities that we've ever seen. And the inability to articulate the depth of that depravity, the evil of that obscenity, is one of the great political failures of the modern era, and invests squarely on the shoulders of the Democratic leadership who cannot, will not, meet the moment where it needs to be met as this country faces down a crisis that is growing darker, literally, by the day."

- YouTube www.youtube.com