Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is not staying silent after the president tore into him.
In response to the Senate Democrat’s call for him to appoint a senior military official to serve as a czar in charge of medical equipment to combat the coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump fired back.
Sen. Chuck Schumer is calling on President Trump to appoint a military general, a "czar" to be in charge of medical supply production and distribution. He says Peter Navarro, the White House official who will lead Defense Production Act efforts, "is not up to the job." pic.twitter.com/NsCh7DglOh
— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) April 2, 2020
“Thank you for your Democrat public relations letter and incorrect sound bites, which are wrong in every way,” Trump wrote in a letter on Thursday.
The president also said in the scorching letter, “I’ve known you for many years, but I never knew how bad a Senator you are for the state of New York, until I became President.”
See the full letter below:
Trump blasts Schumer in a letter the White House just released.
— Allan Smith (@akarl_smith) April 2, 2020
"I've known you for many years, but I never knew how bad a Senator you are for the state of New York, until I became President." pic.twitter.com/V9EQLBxN9a
Schumer, however, did not hold back in responding.
“I’m just appalled,” Schumer said of Trump’s letter during an MSNBC interview late Thursday.
The New York senator continued with a message for the president:
“I say to the president, ‘Just stop the pettiness. People are dying. And so, President Trump, we need leadership, we need to get the job done. Stop the pettiness. Let’s get it done. Let’s roll up our sleeves. I sent the letter with the best of intentions, trying to improve a very bad situation.”
Watch Schumer’s interview below:
Chuck Schumer hits back at Trump: "I'm just appalled. I say to the president, just stop the pettiness, people are dying. " #ctl #p2 pic.twitter.com/lS4hMjVEDP
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) April 3, 2020
The exchange between the two comes shortly after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced that she will be creating a House select committee to oversee coronavirus response.
“The House select committee on the coronavirus will be bipartisan and have an expert staff,” she noted during a phone call with reporters on Thursday.
Pelosi later added, “Right now, we just have to work together to get through this, but as we do we don’t want to make more mistakes.”
Trump hit back at Pelosi’s announcement during the White House’s coronavirus press conference on Thursday.
He said, “I want to remind everyone here in our nation’s capital, especially in Congress, that this is not the time for politics, endless partisan investigations. Here we go again. They’ve already done extraordinary damage to our country in recent years.”