California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff appears to have conceded that it’s time to “reach across the aisle” and work with Republicans as President-elect Donald Trump is headed back to the White House.
Speaking with NBC San Diego, Schiff spoke about winning the election in November to fill the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat before beginning his full six-year term in the new year.
“I’m going from 750,000 in my district to 40 million, which is very exciting,” Schiff told NBC 7. “In order to get things done, you really have to work with people across the aisle, so there’s a lot of incentive to find good partners.”
The California Democrat, who has spent years attacking and going after Trump, wants to reach across the political spectrum to “get things done.”
“There are times I’m going to have to stand up to the president and push back,” Schiff said. “Californians are going to expect that of me. I’m going to have to try to do both at the same time. I’m sure that will prove to be challenging,” Schiff said.
“Because housing is more and more scarce, and we have a population that’s growing, people are left homeless, or people can’t afford to buy a home, or people can’t afford their rent anymore. And there are things that we can do about this, and a lot of them are bipartisan,” Schiff said.
“On healthcare, on the economy, on bringing prices down, there’s ample room to get these things done if we’re looking for solutions rather than just fighting each other,” Schiff added.
Schiff’s newfound motivation to reach across the aisle comes after he lashed out at Trump after he won November’s presidential election.
In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Jake Tapper questioned Schiff regarding President-elect Donald Trump’s recent cabinet picks.
“You were censured in the House last year for, in their view, holding positions of power during the Trump presidency as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and, according to them, ‘abusing this trust by saying there was evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia,’” Tapper said.
“And I wonder if you are feeling at all, introspective at all, about that was, according to the Mueller report and according to your Republican colleagues, an overstatement? And I wonder if you think, in any way, you helped set the table for these disruptors?” Tapper asked.
“First of all, it wasn’t an overstatement,” Schiff answered. “There is evidence of collusion. The Trump campaign manager was meeting with Russian intelligence and giving them internal polling data, just to give you one example. And the Mueller report sets all this out.”
“It does say, ‘The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,’ which doesn’t mean that he didn’t, that there weren’t meetings, but they didn’t find evidence of it,” Tapper followed up.
Schiff said, “Mueller says that, too. He says, ‘The fact that we didn’t find proof beyond a reasonable doubt doesn’t mean there wasn’t evidence of conspiracy or coordination.’”
The House of Representatives censured Schiff in 2023 in a party-line vote for his repeated allegations that Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russia to gain the presidency. Earlier that year, he was also dismissed from the House Intelligence Committee.
His allegations were based on the notorious Steele dossier, which said that the Kremlin possessed blackmail information against Trump and that Trump’s team had conspired with Russia.
In his report, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded in 2019 that there was no proof of Trump’s collusion with Russia.
In 2021, Special Counsel John Durham accused Russian analyst Ivan Danchenko, who was thought to be the main subsource for the Steele dossier, of lying to the FBI, further undermining the dossier’s credibility.
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