Gingrich to Schumer: Be worried if Trump focuses on you

New Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should take a lesson from the past and brace himself for the full force of a nickname from President-elect Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich said Thursday.

In Twitter posts each of the past two days, Trump referred to Schumer or the Senate Democrats he leads as clowns, an early indication that he has sized up the New York Democrat for a nickname such as those that helped sink any campaign opponent in his path.


“Schumer and Trump have known each other for many, many, many years, and I think the president, frankly, just wants to shrink him,” Gingrich said Thursday morning on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.” “And I would say to Sen. Schumer, if you look what happened to Jeb Bush or you look what happened to Hillary Clinton, you should be very worried if Donald Trump decides to focus on you because, so far, the track record is pretty good that he can define you a lot better than you can define him.”

In a post to Twitter, Trump decried Democrats, under the leadership of “head clown Chuck Schumer,” for working to pin any pain that comes from the repeal of the Affordable Care Act onto Republicans who campaign on scrapping the controversial law. If the nickname sticks, it will be the latest in a string of such labels that he has successfully pinned to political opponents, including “little” Marco Rubio, “low-energy” Jeb Bush, “lying” Ted Cruz and “crooked” Hillary Clinton.

Schumer made his own attempt at catchy phrasing on Wednesday, offering a variation on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan during a news conference on Capitol Hill. With Democrats from both houses of Congress behind him, Schumer said the GOP’s plan to repeal Obamacare would “make America sick again.”