Clyburn: Trump Has ‘Marginalized Himself,’ There Is No ‘Comeback for Him’

Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) said President Donald Trump had “marginalized himself” and doubted he could ever come back from it, given Trump’s statements about the violence in Charlottesville, VA.

Partial transcript as follows:

CLYBURN: When there is a failure, and we do have a failure, in the executive branch of the government, it is time for the other two branches to step up. And Congress needs to step up, and our judiciary needs to step up and let’s do what is necessary to restore people’s faith and confidence in this great country of ours. It is at the brink of disaster. And we ought to step back from the brink.

MITCHELL: You’re basically saying, congressman, let’s ignore the White House, because it is not rising to the level of leadership here, to the contrary, in fact, we’re told that the president had no real planning on infrastructure, that there is nothing legislatively coming through the White House to the Hill.

CLYBURN: That’s exactly what I’m saying. We have three co-equal branches of government and everybody can see on yesterday that there is a total disaster in the executive branch. But the Congress is representative of what we call ourselves all the time, the people’s house. It is time for us to step up and demonstrate that we are, in fact, the people’s house. I know Speaker Ryan. I like him a whole lot. We have worked together. He has put our 10, 20, 30, into 14 pieces of the Republicans’ appropriations bill. That’s a way of getting funding into low-income communities, and that’s the kind of thing we’ve got to do. We can have an infrastructure bill that puts this in place so low-income communities can be a part of this significant recovery that’s doing well for Wall Street. Let’s do something about infrastructure. Let’s do something about what I like to call a fair tax bill. Not a tax bill that’s going to give unusually high breaks to upper income people, but a tax code that would be fair to everybody that would be pro growth for business and pro growth for America’s families. We can do that! It’s been done before. And so let’s just work together in a bipartisan way and get that done. Because this president has marginalized himself in such a way that I don’t think there is any comeback for him. There is no way that he is going to be able to revive himself and be of any real good going forward.

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