On Thursday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “Cuomo,” Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) talked about his proposal with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) to end the DHS shutdown and responded to claims that House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) isn’t a big fan of the proposal because he views the shutdown as something the base wants by saying that “there’s no question that the base of Brian’s party wants one thing and the base of my party wants another thing. The people, though, the people are sick of this.”
Host Chris Cuomo said, “Now, Tom, my reporting around Hakeem Jeffries is they’re not crazy about you doing this either, that they believe that this shutdown is a muscular resistance that the party faithful are demanding.”
Suozzi responded, “No, there’s no question that the base of Brian’s party wants one thing and the base of my party wants another thing. The people, though, the people are sick of this. They see the long lines at the airports, even if they’re not people who are going to the airport and getting frustrated…they’re frustrated seeing this stuff happening. They’re frustrated with everybody pointing fingers at each other and attacking each other and they don’t know who to believe, because they see one thing on this show and another thing on that show and another thing on social media and another thing on cable news and another thing on their TikTok feed, everybody’s getting different information and people are just getting more and more disenchanted with our system. And so, we’ve got to figure out how can we break through this noise that is so prevalent and so toxic to try and find a path forward. So, yeah, it’s going to upset people. But Brian’s party needs him, and my party needs me, and we’re just really trying to do the right thing. And so, it can’t just be about the party. It’s got to be about the people, and we need the people more engaged, quite frankly, in our democracy for it to work, which is hard to do when they’re busy with their jobs, they’re busy with their families, they’re busy paying their bills, and they’re looking at the whole system and they say, eh, the whole thing stinks, it doesn’t work, it’s all rigged. Well, we’re idealists, that’s why we keep on doing this stuff, and we want to try and make our system work again. It’s not easy, but it’s the right thing to do.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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