On Sunday, Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez doubled down on his statement that “Republicans don’t give a shit about the people” during a panel discussion with Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“With all due respect, when Tom’s saying Republicans don’t give a blank about anyone, when he goes around and says that about the other party… We just have a difference of opinion on the path to get there, but that type of rhetoric doesn’t bring people to our party,” McDaniel said.
When host Chuck Todd asked Perez if he regreted saying that “Republicans don’t give a shit” about Americans, Perez parroted the same talking points as members of the “resistance” in his party. “Chuck here’s the problem. I meet people who are worried to death because this Republican repeal bill is not a health care bill. It’s a tax cut bill for the mega-wealthy, masquerading as a health care bill.”
The day before Perez’s NBC appearance, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) participated in a town hall in Massachusetts where she told the crowd that the Republican Party’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) plan is “not a healthcare plan. It’s a tax-cut plan.”
In response to Perez’s statement, McDaniel said, “That’s a broad statement, to say Republicans don’t give a blank about you. That’s a big statement. And that rhetoric’s over the top again.”
Under Obamacare, businesses with 50 or more full-time employees were required to provide their employees and dependents with health insurance. Many small business owners were unable to afford this. The House of Representative’s AHCA and the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) would repeal Obamacare’s mandate that employers pay for employee’s healthcare. Additionally, the BCRA offers larger tax credits, and both the AHCA and BCRA replace Obamacare’s subsidies for Americans to purchase health insurance with refundable tax credits.
This is not the first time Perez has said Republicans “don’t give shit about” Americans. In April, he went on one of his infamous profanity-laced tirades against the GOP and President Donald Trump:
Perez has also stated, “They call it a skinny budget. I call it a shitty budget because you know what… budgets are moral documents,” regarding Trump’s budget proposal for the 2018 fiscal year.
Earlier in the panel discussion McDaniel told Perez, “We have to have reasonable discussions. Have a dialogue, be respectful of each other. But, share our opinions of what the best path is to get to the same place we both wanna go, which is a better life for our kids, for our grandkids.”
The Democratic Party has veered further to the left over the past year and has also provided a significant platform to progressive Sharia advocate Linda Sarsour. She recently called for a political jihad against President Donald Trump and his administration and said Muslim Americans must not assimilate into the fabric of American civil society.
This has not settled well with everyone in the Democratic Party.
The New York Post noted that on Sunday, former Bill and Hillary Clinton adviser and pollster Mark Penn told John Catsimatidis on his Cats Roundtable radio show that “It’s time for the Democratic Party to move back to the center. The center is where America is.” Penn added, “It’s time to reject the calls of the left” and “To go further and further left, that would be the wrong direction.”
Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.