While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., "overreacted" and "got carried away by the crowd," the Republican who lost the Senate seat to him is defending him and calling it a "learning experience."
"He overreacted," former Sen. Al D'Amato, R-N.Y., told "The Cats Roundtable" on 970 AM-N.Y. about Schumer's pointed comments about GOP-placed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. "He really did. He got carried away by the crowd. I don't think he really meant to do what people have interpreted."
Schumer has said his "reap the whirlwind" remarks were not aimed at the justices themselves, but the Republican politics that got them nominated.
"But that was tough language," D'Amato told host John Catsimatidis. "He was responding to a cheering crowd, and he got somewhat carried away with it. But he never meant, himself, to call upon people to make attacks or to subject the two judges, Supreme Court judges that he mentioned."
D'Amato lost to Schumer in 1998 "in a fair election," he said, adding "I respect him; I think he's done a good job."
"But it was inappropriate," D'Amato added. "Let me tell you: The best of people, sometimes we say things. We never mean them in that light. He never meant it in that light. But it was a mistake."
D'Amato expressed hope the situation would cool down the partisan rhetoric among lawmakers.
"You learn by mistakes," he concluded. "He and others in the future will be much more careful, and let's make it a learning experience."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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