Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.
Read more
A day after clashing with her co-hosts over Chuck Schumer’s decision to vote with Republicans to avert a government shutdown by passing a stopgap spending bill, The View’s Sunny Hostin directly confronted the Senate minority leader while telling him to his face that he “caved.”
While ostensibly appearing on the show to promote his latest book Antisemitism in America: A Warning, Schumer — who has canceled other book events due to planned protests by progressive activists — spent much of the interview defending himself for siding with the GOP on its continuing resolution, a move that has prompted Democrats to call for him to be replaced in leadership.
At the same time, the New York lawmaker largely received a friendly reception from the majority of the daytime talk show’s hosts. Even after Whoopi Goldberg kicked off the multi-segment interview by asking him “what were you thinking” by voting for the spending bill, Schumer didn’t face much resistance from the panel as he insisted he chose the lesser of two evils.
“How do you get out of a shutdown? Guess who determines it? Trump, Musk, DOGE, they’re the only ones, and one of the Republican senators told one of the Democratic senators you get in this, we’re staying in for six months, nine months until we decimate the entire federal government,” Schumer declared, asserting that a government shutdown would lead to a further dismantling of the government by Elon Musk’s government efficiency team.
.jpg)
“It was so bad that I felt I had to do this,” he added. “Now, it’s not happening immediately, but what does a leader do? When you’re a leader, if you see a real crisis a little bit down the road, your job is to stand up and say we cannot do that. That’s what I did.”
Hostin, however, wasn’t nearly as forgiving as her colleagues — and piggybacked on her previous claims that Schumer didn’t show enough fight in the spending battle.
Quoting the chief of staff of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who said that the war within the Democratic Party is not ideological but “between those who want to fight and those who want to cave,” Hostin pressed Schumer on backing the GOP’s bill.
“It gives me no pleasure to say this to you because we are friends but I think you caved,” she told the Senate leader. “I think you and nine other Democrats caved and didn’t show the fight this party needs right now because you’re playing by a rule book where the other party has thrown that rule book away.”
She also admonished Schumer for “supporting that GOP partisan bill that Democrats had no input in,” claiming he “cleared the way for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to gut Social Security, to gut Medicare, to gut Medicaid.” Hostin then wondered why he would “lead Democratic senators to play by that book that the Republicans are not playing by.”
Insisting that “no one wants to fight more than me and no one fights more than me,” Schumer said that while the bill “was bad,” it does “far less damage to” the social safety net than what Musk could potentially do if the government had been shut down.
“But aren’t there cuts in that bill?” Hostin pushed back
“There are many fewer cuts in their bill than it would be in a shutdown,” Schumer retorted. “It was a bad choice.”
He went on to compare the two options as chopping “off one of your fingers” over chopping “off your arm,” prompting co-hosts Joy Behar and Sara Haines to express agreement with him as Schumer vowed to take it to Republicans in the coming months.
“I want to fight, and we are fighting. We are going to fight every day on this — every day. Today we’re fighting them on Medicaid. Tomorrow we’re going to fight them on the next few days on tariffs. We’re going to fight them on Social Security, but I want to win and fight smart,” he declared to a smattering of applause.
“I understand we want to stick it to them,” he concluded. “We’re going to stick it to them and fight smart and win.”
