Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took a victory lap after throwing a wrench in President Donald Trump’s plan to have his latest batch of cabinet nominees confirmed before the upper house takes a month-long recess.
Jumping on the Jet2 holiday meme trend—in which social media users ironically share life’s flubs and fails using the travel provider’s audio ad as a soundtrack—Schumer shared a gif of Trump stumbling up the stairs to Air Force One on X with the caption, “Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday!”
Schumer’s barb comes after the MAGA figurehead launched a Saturday evening attack on the senior New York senator, accusing him of “political extortion.”
NPR reported that the Senate held a rare weekend session as Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Schumer traded deals on nominations and appropriations bills back and forth from Friday into Saturday to move Trump’s roughly two dozen cabinet nominees forward before recess.
Although the Senate moved seven nominees on deck for discussion, only two made it across the finish line, according to a report from The Hill: Fox News mainstay and Trump evangelist Jeanine Pirro was confirmed as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and former Rep. Marc Molinaro will lead the Federal Transit Administration.
Schumer gloated, “Trump got nothing,” in a tweet.
Schumer’s sticking point was reportedly over an attempt to claw back billions of dollars in foreign aid funding for the National Institutes of Health, and it was news of those terms that seemingly sparked Trump’s ire on Truth Social.
“Senator Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is demanding over One Billion Dollars in order to approve a small number of our highly qualified nominees, who should right now be helping to run our Country,” Trump wrote in the Saturday post. “This demand is egregious and unprecedented, and would be embarrassing to the Republican Party if it were accepted.”
Trump added that the deal amounted to “political extortion, by any other name” and told Schumer to “go to hell.”
He wrote, “Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL! Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country. Have a great RECESS and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Schumer’s last-minute gambit has reportedly galvanized Senate Republicans to consider changing the rules around how much time can be spent considering nominees.
Schumer called the discussion of such a change a “mistake.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Senate Majority Leader Thune and Minority Leader Schumer for more information about the implications of such a change. The Daily Beast has also reached out to the White House over Schumer’s remark.
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