Former Clinton Pollster Warns Democrats That ‘Scaring People’ During Trump Term Losing Strategy
By Harold Hutchison, Daily Caller News Foundation | February 05, 2025
Former Clinton campaign pollster Doug Schoen said Wednesday that Democrats’ efforts to “scaring people” about President Donald Trump’s policies would not work.
After the Trump administration began implementing an executive order to reevaluate and realign foreign aid spending, Democratic members of Congress joined protests outside the headquarters of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Treasury Department Tuesday. Schoen told “Fox and Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt that Democrats’ current strategy “isn’t doing much” to win voters back.
“Fundamentally, I think the party should be cooperating with President Trump where the issues he’s taking on, like immigration, have broad public support,” Schoen said. “The economy where broad public support. Reducing the side of government. You can differ with the president on substance where that is in line with party principles, but to just oppose him and just spite him proves to be a recipe for failure in the last election and we’re facing the consequences, Ainsley, of that right now.”
After playing a video clip featuring Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, along with MSNBC hosts Jen Psaki and Joy Reid and CNN contributor Van Jones attacking the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and making claims that shuttering USAID would lead to people dying, Earhardt asked Schoen to react to the Democrats’ comments.
“Well, Ainsley, you make a number of points. Let me take them up,” Schoen said. “First, Americans want a smaller government. That is undeniable. Second, it is entirely appropriate to say to President Trump, we don’t think we need to cut a third of the budget, we don’t need to eliminate the number of employees he is talking about with Elon Musk, talking about reducing.”
“But there is a clear desire to reduce the size of government, and internationally, the scope of foreign aid is almost certainly too broad and less targeted to where our friends and allies are,” Schoen continued. “I think we Democrats do a much better job looking at the policies and offering alternative visions and alternative policies rather than, as you rightly put it, Ainsley, fear-mongering, scaring people and engaging in reckless hyperbole.”
Representatives from DOGE and the State Department gained access to the USAID headquarters Friday night to review the agency’s spending in order to align it with U.S. foreign policy after a brief standoff with employees of the agency, ABC News reported. Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who leads the new department, later announced plans to shut the agency down, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio citing the USAID employees’ refusal to “cooperate” with DOGE.
Harold Hutchison is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation
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