Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Mark Halperin Names Chuck Schumer And Hakeem Jeffries His ‘Losers Of The Week’

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Political analyst Mark Halperin on “The Morning Meeting” Friday named Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries his “losers of the week” amid the ongoing government shutdown.

Schumer and Jeffries met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Monday to discuss a short-term spending bill to prevent a government shutdown, but they did not reach an agreement. Halperin said during his show’s “losers of the week” segment that neither the media nor Democrats had confidence in Schumer and Jeffries.

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“Never in my career have I seen two leaders so dismissed, not just by the media, which normally loves Democrats, but privately by Democratic members of the House and Senate,” Halperin said. “People are just rolling their eyes and throwing their hands up and saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do. We’re not going to depose them now, but they are not leading us’ in the view of Democrats saying that ‘they’re not leading through this confrontation.'”

“I’ve never seen the senior Democrats in both chambers — or Republicans — I’ve never seen attitude like this,” he added.

The Senate failed to pass a seven-week continuing resolution, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster.

Three senators in the Democratic caucus — John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Angus King of Maine — voted with Republicans to keep the government open.

Moreover, Jeffries’ YouTube livestream regarding the shutdown had fewer than 100 concurrent viewers after running continuously for several hours as of early Wednesday morning.

The two Democratic leaders issued a joint statement on Wednesday blaming Trump and the Republican Party for the shutdown.

“After months of making life harder and more expensive, Donald Trump and Republicans have now shut down the federal government because they do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people … Over the last few days, President Trump’s behavior has become more erratic and unhinged. Instead of negotiating a bipartisan agreement in good faith, he is obsessively posting crazed deepfake videos,” their statement said. “The country is in desperate need of an intervention to get out of another Trump shutdown.”

Democratic members of the caucus who voted to shut down the government failed to explain their vote on footage exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.