This is the warning week two of the Trump presidency. Chuck Schumer has enunciated a strategy to The New York Times. It is the lay down on the railroad tracks strategy in front of the Trump locomotive. Let's go to the videotape of winning.
We will win, we will win. We will win, we will win.
We won't we won't rest, we won't rest, we won't rest, we won't rest.
Yes, winning, I like the cane on the left. It's very nice. It's a good effect. Now, what Democrats need to do in this moment is fight back. And so John Stewart posed a fundamental question, and it goes to the decision making process. Let me show you.
What is the decision making process here? Hey, who should we get out there to effectively battle one of the most savvy presidential media manipulators in history.
I don't know how about Schumer.
He's uninteresting, but at least he's monotone.
So two weeks in, with almost two years to go until the next midterm election, what can be done? Many people ask what should the strategy be? Now Politico, which has some explaining to do, regardless of how insane it is that Elon Musk and six teenagers have taken control of USAID. That doesn't change the fact that Politico is getting eight million dollars plus from government. It's unacceptable, it's corruption, and it's part of the reason that there's such a
collapse of trust in the media. Let's listen to Jim VandeHei, who is the founder of Politico left many years ago, talk about journalism.
Be the reporters hard, really hard. You have to care, you have to do the hard work. You have to skit up every single day and say I want to get to the closest approximation of the truth without any fear, without any favoritism. You don't do that by popping off on Twitter. You don't do that by having an opinion. You'd do it by doing the hard work.
What Politico under John Harris has become there's an information pipeline between the Politico and lobbying community that has turned the average congressional staffer into a quasi celebrity with their look at Me feature at the bottom of the morning playbook, which is like catnap at our age of political narcissism.
And this transactional politics and transactional journalism combine to make trivia the news, to make celebrities out of politicians, and turn Washington at some level into a reality show landscape. And it's a business model. Politico debased journalism, didn't elevate, it didn't make anything better. All it did was make journalism worse. Now, how to fight back against Elon Musk is not a concern of journalism. It's not a concern
for a fair media. The story right now politically in America, when it comes to Democrats through the access media, is fundamentally about what might Kamala Harris do next, or who might have power next, as opposed to what the obvious is staring everybody in the face, which is why is there no ability for Democrats in Washington to effectively fight back? Why is there no ability to stop any of the
worst Trump nominees despite the thinness of the majorities. Why is there a total inability to use procedure, to use process, to use Senate rules, to use House rules. Why wasn't the House Democrats even in Washington to oppose Donald Trump? Why isn't there a plan? Why isn't there an opposition vision? Why has there been no major speech coherent at least from the floor of the House, from the floor of the Senate. Why has there not been a single Democratic
governor who has risen to the occasion. JB. Pritzker is the governor of Illinois, and he is a billionaire. He wants to run for president. JB. Pritsker needs to open up a political account and JB. Pritzker, who The Nation magazine has rightfully declared maybe the best governor in the country, needs to say stand with me right here on this
spot and fight. There should be an effort for advertising in Washington, DC that is aimed at the Trump White House and at Trump directly to destabilize him, to cause infighting and friction amongst those that compete full time for his affection and his attention. Winning means putting Donald Trump on his heels, which means attacking him where he lives,
which is the conversation inside his head. This is a big deal here when Donald Trump makes up a story about a conversation around Patrick Mahomes with Tommy Tuberville and then articulates it out loud. Because Tuberville never coached.
Mahomes and Tommy Tupperville a great coach. You know, his quarterback was named Mahomes. He was a great college coach, and I said, how good was He said, you don't want to know how good he made me into a great coach. It's pretty good quarterback. Right.
Ultimately, the political target, of course is Donald Trump. But right now, the way to get at Donald Trump is by lassoing the rock of Elon Musk to his leg and drowning him politically, proverbially, Elon Musk is a target rich environment. The Democratic Party should use his Hitler salute and his South African accent and every weird thing he ever said, and put it on television and make sure Trump sees it, and make sure Trump sees every day the impact of Trump's polling and what Elon is doing
to it, how unpopular he is. This is how you fight back. It's not about the data or the polling. It's about the instinct to be in the moment, to be present, to understand what's happening. You don't need to give people dial tests to appreciate the assault. The words that you need to fight back or there there are history, there are American Canyon, there are story, and so what there must be is aggressiveness. What democratic governor is going to be the first to stand up and remind the
American people what the country's about. Right now, Donald Trump is past apogey. These two weeks have been shambalacked. Laughing at Trump is how he will be undone. Donald Trump's narcissism is how they will be undone. There is only one thing that matters to Donald Trump. That's Donald Trump. Watch his cabinet secretaries compete for his attention and affection.
Transportation Secretary Presidence leadership has been remarkable during this crisis.
Defense Secretary.
This is an outside the box thinker who understands Laura the definition of insanity, which is trying to do the same thing and hoping for a different result.
The advertising should be built around how they are failing him, spotlighting their mistakes, how unpopular they are, because when that happens inside, their enemies will seek to take advantage by tearing them down, and by tearing them down, they in the end tear Trump down because it's a vicious hyena pack feeding on each other. That is how you fight Trump. By putting a stake in the heart of his relationship with his number one sugar daddy, Elon Musk, who's going
for broke and going for the gold. What Trump loves is having the richest man in the world work for him. What Trump cannot abide is the notion that he serves the richest man in the world as his presidential puppet. And there's nobody making the argument that can make it hit home. And by the time we reach the end of the Trump four years will be an urgent national crisis. That's the strategy. That's how you fight back. That's what you do. You make every hour of every day difficult.
You appoint a shadow cabinet, and every day there's content created by it that highlights the idiocies of these people, the smallness of these people, the corruption of these people, and delivers a message to the right places, through the right portals, to the right people that will get to the right places on its own because Democrats, for for some reason, don't understand that politics lies below culture in the great River of America that defines our times and
lives as it flows like the Mississippi, from the headwaters into the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, Donald, it's the Gulf of Mexico. And with that, this is the warning. I'm Steve Schmidt, this is the warning, and I invite you to join. Subscribe on our substack, on our YouTube channel, follow us, Welcome to the community.