WILMINGTON, Del. – In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union with Dana Bashyesterday, where he highlighted how Republicans’ inability to field a governing majority means that Democrats will still play a substantial policy role in Congress next term.
Congressional Republicans’ struggles to pass a spending bill last week due to defections from their far-right flank that were egged on by billionaire Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump is a forecast of what’s to come, Senator Coons predicted, saying that “it's going to be difficult for them to pass much of President-elect Trump’s ambitious agenda on straight party-line votes.” As a result, Democrats will have to be partners in the legislative process despite their minority status in the House and Senate, as approving must-pass legislation will continue to be a struggle for Republicans.
Senator Coons also highlighted the role of Musk in instigating some this week’s chaos through early morning tweets and noted that he may have financially benefited from killing the initial bipartisan bill, noting that it contained at least two provisions – one governing outbound U.S. investment in China, and one governing AI-generated revenge porn – that could have harmed his financial stakes in Tesla and Twitter.
Senator Coons: We’re not just going to have President-elect Trump as a billionaire rage-tweeting at 4 a.m.; we’re going to have Elon Musk also injecting instability into how we tackle very complicated and important issues for our country. And while there’s going to be a majority with an “R” next to their name in the House and the Senate and a Republican in the White House, what we saw over the last couple of days is that they don’t agree with each other. What we just saw on this show was a Republican senator from Tennessee and a Republican congressman from Tennessee sharply disagreeing on what should happen with spending going forward and on exactly how it should all play out. You had to ask Senator [Bill] Hagerty, “do you expect a primary threat since you voted against what the president-elect asked for?” So, I think we’re in for some really rough sailing, and it’s going to be difficult for them to pass much of President-elect Trump’s ambitious agenda on straight party-line votes. … Democrats will have to be in the mix.
Dana Bash: Well, on that, just on the raw politics of what we saw over the past few days, again, a lot of Democrats think that the way it ended up was a – just on the politics – was a political win. I don’t hear you saying that.
Senator Coons: Well, because I’m concerned about the American people and what this is going to mean. Yes, in a narrow sense, it was a political win, in that President-elect Trump demanded all sorts of things, even threatened to primary Republicans who didn’t support him, and then failed to get most of what he wanted. But you’re right to focus on what fell out of the package. You know … things like transparency in drug pricing, investments in fighting pediatric cancer, investment reviews for new American investment into China. Given that Tesla has a major new factory in Shanghai, that may actually benefit Elon Musk’s business. A restriction on AI-generated revenge porn on social media platforms – [its exclusion is] something that would benefit X. So, I do think we should look hard at what dropped out at the last minute.
The full interview can be watched here.