On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Democratic strategist James Carville reacted to the rift between New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) and President Joe Biden over immigration by stating that leaders in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), “could’ve cut this off” and wondered, “the White House and its intergovernmental relations office, what the hell are they doing?”
Carville said, “[T]he Leader of the Democrats in the Senate is Sen. Schumer, who’s from New York. Hakeem Jeffries, the Leader of the Democrats in the House, is from New York. And it’s not like — somebody’s got to get to somebody else and they got to figure this out and explain what’s going on. Of course, at the end of the day, it’s about resources. When is it not about resources? But, the White House and its intergovernmental relations office, what the hell are they doing? They have a congressional relations office. I mean, somebody ought to be able to fix this and get the kind of help and coordination that we need here.”
He added, “Well, first of all, at the end of the day, it’s about what most things are in politics, they’re looking for more resources. By resources, I mean money. And I just think it’s an intrafamily squabble that kind of went public. I think somebody could’ve cut this off before, the White House, some of the congressional leadership. We just — and in defense of the President, he’s got a fairly full plate here, and maybe the White House staff could’ve seen this coming and helped cut it off, I don’t know, but there’s a lot of people with a lot of jobs.”
Carville concluded, “[T]his could have been addressed a long time ago. I don’t know quite how we got to the point where you have the Mayor of the largest city in the country in a kind of public spat with his brother Democrat who’s the President of the United States. I’m just saying, congressional leadership, the people that knew this was coming, White House staff, and you wake up one morning, and you’re reading the stories and you go, hey, it’s kind of like the old — Casey Stengel, the Manager of the 1961 Mets said, hey, can anybody here play this game? I mean, this is not something that’s an intractable and unsolvable problem. It can be addressed, and I suspect it’ll get addressed here in the next three or four days.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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