Who Is Chuck Schumer?
Who Is?
iHeartRadio + NowThis
4.1 • 803 Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2020
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How did Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the son of Abraham Schumer, an exterminator, and Selma Schumer, a homemaker, become the most powerful Democrat in the Senate? Schumer’s path to power is, on the one hand, a case study in the American meritocracy elevating one of its best and brightest: a hardworking, public school graduate who worked his way to the top. On the other hand, Schumer’s politics are an object lesson in the demands American democracy makes of those who aim to reach such pinnacles of power. As the November election approaches--and Democrats aim to retake the Senate--this episode features a conversation with the last Democrat to run the Senate, former Majority Leader Harry Reid.
- Carol Kellerman, who has had a long and distinguished career in public service in New York City, and who has worked with, and for, Senator and Representative Chuck Schumer throughout his career
- Former Senate Majority Leader and former amateur boxer Harry Reid, who represented Nevada in the Senate for 30 years
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When you say the Senate has changed forever, what do you mean by that? |
| 0:04.8 | I mean, I don't think we're going to ever have a Senate that is the way it used to be. |
| 0:11.3 | When we had senators working together, Democrats and Republicans, |
| 0:16.2 | and that way you didn't have the tribal politics we have now. |
| 0:28.3 | We're now, we just have Democrats in one tribe, Republicans and the other, and nothing gets done. |
| 0:34.4 | Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was the last Democrat to run the Senate. |
| 0:39.8 | I spoke to Senator Reid to discuss his protege and sort of successor, |
| 0:46.7 | current Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer. Well, we're just two and a half short weeks from Republicans choosing to follow Ted Cruz into a box canyon and shutting down the Department |
| 0:53.0 | of Homeland Security. Incidentally, I had to look up what a box canyon was. down the Department of Homeland Security. |
| 0:56.8 | Incidentally, I had to look up what a box canyon was. |
| 0:59.6 | It's sort of like the dead end on 9th Avenue in Manhattan. |
| 1:01.6 | Anyway, 18 days. |
| 1:05.6 | Are you so serious, you don't laugh at anything over there in the press corps? |
| 1:07.3 | We only laugh at things that are funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| 1:10.0 | Thanks, Harry. |
| 1:11.5 | My best friend. |
| 1:13.9 | Okay. |
| 1:15.3 | At first, I didn't want to do an episode on Chuck Schumer. |
| 1:18.7 | I like doing episodes on guys that coordinate secretive networks of billionaires or own private |
| 1:23.6 | militaries or try to steal all the water in California. |
| 1:26.9 | That one's coming later this season. |
| 1:29.0 | But Chuck Schumer? |
... |
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