“We should not be talking about impeachment. We should keep our sole focus on protecting our institutions, the rule of law, and winning the midterms. What we should be really trying to do is not just make the case against Donald Trump right now.”
View the full interview here.
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki to discuss the chaos of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days, how Democrats need to focus on winning back the House and Senate, and the Trump administration’s attacks on the rule of law.
On Democrats staying focused on the path ahead:
[…] I really think we should not be talking about impeachment. We should keep our sole focus on protecting our institutions, the rule of law, and winning the midterms. What we should be really trying to do is not just make the case against Donald Trump right now in terms of the midterms and retaking the House and Senate, but also making the case for ourselves. I don’t think it’s enough, even though he’s doing this terrible job, to rely on presidential self-destruction.
On fighting back against the chaos:
I like to think that our freshman class, which is largely House members, are bringing the best of the House to the Senate. That is, our willingness to fight and fight hard and make the case in no uncertain terms — both against this president and the dangerous things he’s doing. I don’t want to bring the kind of vile performance art that you see of the Marjorie Taylor Greene’s and whatever. I don’t want to bring that to the Senate. And I also want to preserve the ability to work together with others. My first bill is a bipartisan bill with a Republican from Montana. But our class is determined not to be wallflowers. We’re going to be out there fighting to protect our democracy and the rule of law. And we’re willing to fight in new and tough ways to make that happen. So, in that respect, I think we add a lot of value to the Senate.
On President Trump’s failure to deliver for Americans in his first 100 days:
[…] They keep saying that he’s just falling through on his promises. But in fact, he’s not. His main promise was he was going to improve the economy; he was going to bring prices down. Of course, everything he’s done has been contradictory to that. The tariff wars have just driven inflationary pressures even higher. American families are struggling even more.
So really the central promise he has reneged on, and now he’s doing all these other things that he never promised during the campaign, in fact, to the degree that they were written about during the campaign in Project 2025, he tried to run away and disavow them. So, he doesn’t have a mandate to do what he’s doing, and I think it’s reflected in the already enormous voter dissatisfaction in his first 100 days.
On the Trump administration’s assault on the rule of law:
In a normal, rational world, you would have immigration authorities work with a courthouse and decide, “Okay, how do we work together, or how do we, at least, not interfere with what each other are doing?” You wouldn’t have the kind of confrontation and arrest that we saw. But the administration relishes this. They relish the opportunity to go after judges. They relish the opportunity to try to intimidate and shock people. They talk just gleefully about impeaching judges they disagree with. So, it is part of a broader assault on the rule of law, a broader effort to intimidate. They’re intimidating the universities. They’re intimidating the law firms. They’re intimidating corporations, forcing them to come hat-in-hand begging for exemptions from tariffs, and now they’re trying to intimidate the judiciary as well.
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