Exclusive: NY Republican Joe Pinion Seeks to Defeat Chuck Schumer

Republican Joe Pinion, a former political news commentator who is challenging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for U.S. Senate, discussed the burning issues facing New Yorkers and Americans today as well as his run for Senate in a race to “change the trajectory of our politics.”

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Friday, Pinion began by discussing his upbringing and how it influenced his political outlook.

Born in Yonkers and raised in New York most of his life, Pinion, after playing football for Colgate University, returned home to begin working in the nonprofit healthcare space.

“I served as director of a youth development program at a nonprofit healthcare organization dedicated to making sure that we could provide bridge grant funding for students who just needed a little bit of extra resources to be able to go off to college,” he said, adding that he substantially assisted struggling students during that period.

In addition to his professional endeavors, Pinion also worked “in the background” in both politics and media and served as the outreach director for the New York State Federation of Young Republicans.

“All of these experiences kind of led me to have a lot of volunteer opportunities within the party that led to me having the opportunity to start doing political commentary on Fox Business, Fox News, CBS News; working on campaigns from local races, like gubernatorial races to presidential races, and all of that kind of culminated in having my own show on Newsmax,” he said.

Senate run

Asked why he decided to run against Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in the Senate, the former Newsmax host attributed it to his concern for the country.

“I think obviously those are the experiences that informed my decision to run, but at the end of the day, as I told my mother when I decided I was going to resign from Newsmax and run for U.S. Senate against arguably one of the most entrenched members of Congress: there are some things in life worse than not having your own television show — it’s called not having the country,” he said.

He pointed to the continued failed policies of the left that created his sense of urgency.

“I truly believe that when you look at the policies that have been rubber-stamped by Chuck Schumer — policies that have never worked in the history of the world, the socialist bent that we see on the left, but more importantly, this attack on liberty, this attack on common sense, this attack on the core fundamental tenets that have always defined this greatest experiment in democracy in the history of the world — I thought, if not now [then] when?” he said.

Unwilling to ignore the matter, Pinion expressed his belief that things could change.

“I think in life when the moral responsibility collides with the political opportunity, sitting on the sidelines in many ways is an act of cowardice,” he said. “So we felt that we could build what we have called an uncommon coalition; to say that the people of New York deserve better, that noting what Chuck Schumer does in the name of New Yorkers impacts every single man, woman, and child that calls this nation home.” 

“And if we could just get out there and spread the word, there would be enough people that would come to the table in good faith to help us get the job done,” he added.

Unseating Schumer

Regarding those who have expressed doubt over a possible successful run against one of the most powerful Democrats in New York and the country, Pinion appeared unfazed.

“To me, New York is not a blue state,” he said. “New York is a purple state that has suffered from political malpractice on the part of the Republican Party.” 

“The last three people that have run for U.S. Senate against Chuck Schumer have raised collectively less than $3 million over the 24 years he’s been in the United States Senate,” he added. “We have not taken the business of unseating Chuck Schumer seriously.”

Admitting that such a feat would not be easy, the Senate candidate noted that both the message and the times are different today.

“Having said that, New York is not a simple state to flip, but I don’t believe that we’re coming to people with a traditional message and this most assuredly is not a traditional year,” he said. 

Pinion called to “look at the numbers” to understand the reality of Schumer’s standing. 

“I may be crazy, but I’m not an idiot,” he said. “At the end of the day, when we started looking at this race back in March of 2021, Chuck Schumer was polling at 37 percent with independents.”

“That’s not my Joe Pinion opinion, that was the public polling crosstabs according to Siena College — no friend of the Republican cause,” he added. “And since then, he has consistently remained below 40 percent with independents.” 

Noting that Schumer, who is seeking a fifth term, is currently hovering “somewhere around 33 percent with independents,” Pinion claimed a recent poll’s crosstabs that excluded the Democrat senator was no “coincidence.”

“The numbers have gotten so bad for him that I don’t think it’s a coincidence that for the first time in arguably close to 30-some-odd months, Siena College didn’t include him in the crosstabs for their latest [polling],” he said.

The former conservative political commentator continued to explain why now is ripe for challenging the powerful incumbent who was first elected in 1998.

“I think this is what we’re dealing with right now: an incumbent in the Senate who has been in Congress for 42 years who is a Senate Majority Leader for America. He is in many ways bleeding out,” he said. 

“The only people that don’t know it are the people who are so blinded by the history of New York politics, they’re not paying attention,” he added.

Issues facing America

Pinion called the recently announced creation of the Biden administration’s new Disinformation Governance Board aimed at tackling the spread of misinformation “very bizarre” given the country’s burning issues.

We have a system right now where children cannot read at grade level. They cannot do math at grade level, and the priority of the people who teach the math and teach the reading is to help children learn more about masturbation and 85,000 genders. We have a southern border that quite literally is delivering death to everyone from Harlem, New York, to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and instead of securing that border, dealing with the fact that every month we have more “gotaways” than the population of my hometown, Yonkers, New York — the third largest city of this state in New York; over 210,000 people live in Yonkers — we have more “gotaways” than that every month, and those are just the ones that we know about.  

He claimed the current “explosion in population” is due to people illegally crossing the border while “four million people wait in line legally” to enter the U.S. 

“If we want to have an influx in population, certainly we must start with the people who raised their hands, said they want to come here, and are following the laws to do so.”

Pinion continued to highlight those issues most concerning to Americans, from inflation to corruption.

“We have 87 percent of New Yorkers talking about the rising costs of food, [which] were already at historic rates before a single tank rolled across [Ukraine’s] border, because of the supply chains; because we have become completely dependent on other nations to do for us what we have always had the power to do for ourselves,” he said. 

“This [is the] outsourcing of the American Dream and the jobs that go with it, and this is only going to get worse,” he added.

He then warned of the impact the current conflict in Ukraine will have on Americans. 

“People forget Ukraine is the Iowa of Europe,” he said. “It’s the 4th largest producer of wheat, 5th largest producer of corn, and one of the largest [world] producers of fertilizer.” 

As a result, according to Pinion, “everywhere from the continent of Africa to the Walmart aisle in Iowa, we are going to feel the price at the cashier in the grocery store.”

“And that’s just going to continue to erode the trust that people have in our government; the faith that we have in our ability to be a preeminent power; and I think it’s going to galvanize enough people to say that they have to start going to the ballot boxes with clear eyes and a full heart,” he said.

Lamenting the atmosphere of “record-high costs for food,” Pinion blasted Schumer’s policies for harming New Yorkers.

“People go to the local diner and they are paying market prices for the chicken wings, not market prices for the lobster or the caviar — market daily prices for chicken wings. Rotisserie chicken cost is exploding in the poultry aisle,” he said.

“When you’re looking at a harsh reality that everyday Americans can’t afford to put gas in the car — the American consumer paying $400 million a day more on fuel than they were when Joseph Robinette Biden placed his hand on the Bible — these are the conditions that forced people to take off their political blinders and just confront the harsh reality,” he added. 

As a result, Pinion claimed his campaign’s very thesis is that “if you are unhappy with the world as it is today, you cannot vote for the architects who built it.”

“There is no greater architect in American politics today than Chuck Schumer, and what I have in my bag, the wind beneath my sails, is that people know who he is,” he said. 

“Six years ago, he was just a senator from New York, and today, he is on the top five most-wanted list by Americans of good conscience who simply want their country back,” he added.

Education and indoctrination

On issues surrounding education, Pinion posed voters with two options.

“So we can go to the soccer moms in Arizona, we can go to the PTA moms in Florida and say, ‘we have a choice: Do you want an America where three and four and five and six-year-olds are taught masturbation? If so, then vote for Chuck Schumer and send him money,’” he said. 

However, he continued, “if you believe that childhood is something worth protecting; if you believe that a New York State where 60 percent of the children do not read at the proficient level is unacceptable; if you believe that a Baltimore where 70 percent of the high schoolers are reading at an elementary school level is a moral abomination and akin to child abuse — the actual real Jim Crow that is hidden in broad daylight here in America that Democrats don’t want to talk about — then join this coalition and help us raise the dollars but also help us knock on those doors.”

Calling it a “continuation of the left,” Pinion criticized the state’s use of federal COVID-19 relief funds to push critical race theory (CRT) in schools as well as the inability of others to anticipate it:

We saw it with the funding of the education for emergency COVID funding, and now we have some of these think tanks who are just now figuring out that they’ve used COVID emergency dollars to fund CRT. My response to them is, “Where have you been when you saw the CBO [Congressional Office Budget] come out with scoring that said that they had $32 billion in emergency COVID funding allocated for a 2022 and 2023 school year? What did you think the money was going to be spent on?” Certainly, it wasn’t going to be on PPE supplies, not for a COVID emergency crisis two years from then. It was going to be a blank check for the government for these Democrat municipalities to do what they’ve always done — to implement these semi-permanent programs that have semi-permanent funding that allows them to have a Trojan horse to have a wish list of all their greatest worst hits.

“That’s why I’m running for U.S. Senate,” Pinion said. “That’s why I know not only can we beat Chuck Schumer, but we have to beat Chuck Schumer.”

Local antisemitism

In response to a report released last week revealing that antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high in both New York and the country, Pinion called the situation both “horrific” and “inevitable”:

When Benjamin Netanyahu broke all manner of national protocol to talk directly to Congress and by extension directly to the American people March 3rd, 2015, he said that the greatest threat to the world is a militant Islam joined with nuclear capacity. And we have the senior senator for the state of New York, the Senate Majority Leader for the nation, the man who represents the greatest population of Jewish people not living in Israel, he is silent on these efforts to refund Iran — a nation that effectively is run by an Ayatollah that does not believe that America should exist and has called Israel not a nation but a military base. 

The Yonkers native referred to Schumer as “a man who has remained absolutely, positively silent, and thus complicit with the BDS movement [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] that is effectively the tip of the spear for the antisemitism that has run amok in a city that is the home to the largest Jewish population in America.”

He also called out the “insanity” of Jewish citizens being abused in the streets as he blasted Schumer’s equivocation.

“This is the insanity that we’re dealing with when Jewish people are being beat in the theater district and the Senate Majority Leader for the nation comes back and effectively gives an ‘all hate matters’ speech,” he said.

Police and medical workers

He also addressed those issues facing struggling law enforcement personnel and medical workers.

“Police officers that watched 2021 become the deadliest year to wear a badge in America, now watch 2022 become even more dangerous already with a 43 percent increase in police shootings on top of the 125 percent increase in ambush attacks we saw a year ago,” he said. 

“We can build this coalition of police officers who have been aggrieved; of nurses who were heroes a year ago and today find themselves on the unemployment line without access to the unemployment benefits they’ve been paying into their entire professional lives because of COVID policy mandates that have no basis in science,” he added.

Failed leadership

Pinion blasted the current leadership for showing more concern for other countries’ issues than their own. 

“Overall, the lack of ideas, the apathy that we see, this continuation down this endless war tirade that we go down where this war of aggression we see now with Ukraine and Russia. I mean anyone could have seen this coming because we have leadership that does not prioritize the safety and security of our own nation,” he said. 

“They’re more concerned with the border in Ukraine than they are with our southern border,” he added. 

As an example, the former news commentator referred to the country’s current fentanyl crisis.

“Right now, here in America, the leading cause of death for people ages 18-41 is fentanyl overdoses, and most people who die of a fentanyl overdose didn’t ask for any fentanyl,” he said. 

“These are counterfeit prescription drugs that are coming to Main Street, USA, courtesy of Chinese cartels that have teamed up with Mexican cartels and are bringing death to suburban and urban mothers alike,” he added.

According to Pinion, today’s leadership has failed all types of American citizens. 

“This is no longer a matter of black or white, rich or poor; all Americans are equally yoked here,” he said. “It’s our children doing the dying because our leaders do not have any sense of decency when it comes to making sure they do their first job, which is to ensure that domestic tranquility that comes from actually securing our border and establishing American sovereignty.”

On the notion of imposing term limits, Pinion pointed to Schumer as a prime example of its necessity.

“The man has been in Congress for 42 years; he has been in the Senate for 24 of those 42 years; he was in the New York state legislature for six years before that — 48 years in government!” he exclaimed.

“So this to me again is the perfect illustration of why we need term limits. And we need them today,” he added. “I think the term limits that Chuck Schumer will be finding will be on November 8 when we can build that coalition to defeat him.”

While supporting term limits, Pinion expressed his belief that responsible leadership is the ultimate key.

“Term limits are a must. We need them and we need them today, but I think beyond that,” he said. “I think it’s about having leadership that recognizes the purpose of America; the value of America.” 

“You cannot save what you do not love,” he added, “and I truly believe that we have leadership that does not have a value for the love and care that went into building this nation that we all love.”

Pinion described the Democratic majority leader from New York as “completely disconnected” from reality. 

“It’s never been about us — it’s been about power,” he said. “It’s been about power the entire time he’s been there but now his craven lust for power, and his actual contempt for the people, is finally beginning to be in direct conflict, and so that is where we are today.” 

Calling him “the handpicked senator from Wall Street,” Pinion said Schumer is the “number one recipient of campaign donations from commercial banks [and] hedge funds.”

“You name it,” he said, “if there’s money involved, it’s going to Chuck Schumer.” 

According to Pinion, Schumer can and must be defeated. 

“Any way you slice it, the man has to go and by that grace of God, by the will of the people, as long as we help spread the word,” he said.

“We have to have that education process over the course of this campaign to let people know that they have a chance to have a choice and whether they’re left of Bernie Sanders or right of Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer’s fingerprints are on everything that is affecting their lives today and with their help, we can end that pain and suffering in November’s race,” he added.

Campaign

Pinion urged those Americans frustrated by all this to join the “uncommon coalition” that is brewing.

“In some ways, I am not even the one building it; it is Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden who continue to build this coalition with their neglect and with their contempt for the needs and concerns of everyday Americans,” he said.

He then called on voters seeking change to “wake up” and make a difference.

“If people are tired of the direction this nation is going in, there is one race in America that — if you wake up on November 9 — will change the trajectory of our politics,” he said. “It’s Chuck Schumer versus Joe Pinion.”

He also described the historic victory that would take place if the Republican Party “was the party to nominate the first black man in the history of New York State for the United States Senate [and] that that man was able to defeat the most entrenched political figure in our modern politics.”

Calling such a win “a complete repudiation of everything that has happened in this country on the watch of Democrats” from the time then-President Barack Obama was sworn in, Pinion said, “that is the type of earthquake required to let people of good conscience know that America is actually back, not just pretending to be back while we place our head in the sand and allow China to become the chief underwriter to the terrorist threat to the Western world and run roughshod across the globe.”

He described his campaign as a “true grassroots” one to “let people know that they really do have a chance to have a choice” while focusing on raising the necessary resources.

“So we just have to make sure that we can get the word out, and from there, we’ll be in great shape,” he concluded.

For more information about Joe Pinion’s campaign, visit his campaign website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages.

Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.