‘Downright Ashamed’: Adam Schiff Loses It Over Trump on CNN
California Senator Adam Schiff is once again lashing out at former President Donald Trump, this time over his handling of Ukraine.
During an interview on CNN, Schiff accused Trump of “betraying” Ukraine, blaming him for failing to secure peace with Russia. However, the war itself began under President Joe Biden, making Schiff’s attempt to pin responsibility on Trump—who has only been in office for a month—particularly baffling.
“This is an effort to pressure Zelenskyy into giving up something for nothing. And I have to say this, on top of the resolution at the United Nations where the United States sided with Russia, betrayed Ukraine, is one of the most shameful incidents in modern history,” Schiff stated.
He went further, insisting that “millions and millions and millions of Americans” watching the situation unfold would not only disagree with Trump but also feel “just downright ashamed” of him. According to Schiff, the U.S. had “betrayed an ally” and abandoned its core values. “Are we to be nothing except transactional now? We have no commitment to democracy, no commitment to our allies. It’s all going to be about the money that seems to be Donald Trump’s orientation, but what a sad chapter of our history,” he said.
Continuing his criticism, Schiff claimed that Zelenskyy might only be entertaining Trump’s proposals to maintain diplomatic relations with a “hostile U.S. President who seems so beholden to Vladimir Putin.” Praising the Ukrainian leader, he remarked, “He has been really Churchillian in his leadership through these three years of war. Ukraine has made just tremendous sacrifices and to be reduced to this by his most important ally, the United States, coming hat in hand with some kind of fig leaf offer of the mineral wealth of his country in exchange for little or nothing—it is really just tawdry. But it is what this administration has reduced our allies to.”
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Schiff also voiced his frustration over Trump’s plans to trim government spending and eliminate inefficiencies.
“I think President Trump’s description of bloated and fat may be a good description of the White House and its modus operandi, but what this really is, is just an effort to denigrate and demean people who are working hard. Some have worked as a career in the service of the country,” he said. Schiff then imagined a scenario in which tech billionaire Elon Musk received a similar memo asking for an account of his actions, sarcastically suggesting that Musk’s response would be, “‘Well, we fired a bunch of people working to stop the spread of Ebola, and we fired a bunch of people working to stop the spread of bird flu.’” Schiff concluded that, in any other case, “if that were any other federal employee, they would deserve to be fired.” He then accused Trump of attempting to “bully people working for the federal government.”
In another dramatic moment, Schiff suggested that a government shutdown could be imminent—even though the House already has enough votes to pass a spending bill.
“I think we may be headed for a Trump shutdown. They very much don’t have their act together. And here you have the House saying, basically, ‘Our way or the highway or we’re going to shut down the government,’” he argued.
He wrapped up his remarks by slamming Republican economic priorities, claiming that they contradict their stated goals. “That would be adding more catastrophe, another Trump shutdown. We went through that in the first Trump administration. But I think they’ve got a very narrow margin in the House, a bit bigger margin in the Senate, and their goals are internally conflicting. They say they want to address deficits and debt, and yet they’re pushing a tax cut that will only explode our deficit and debt, and you just can’t square that circle.”