Tipsheet

Flashback: Schumer Warned Trump About the Intelligence Community

A 2017 flashback of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is circulating on social media again after the FBI’s raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

In the clip, the top Democrat spoke about Trump’s criticism of the U.S. intelligence community and warned about the agencies’ ability to enact vengeance.

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in response to the president-elect challenging allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

“So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this," Schumer added.

“What do you think the intelligence community will do if they were motivated to,” Maddow wondered. 

“I don’t know, but from what I am told intelligence officials are “very upset with how [Trump] has treated them and talked about them,” Schumer replied. 

“Do we think he has an agenda to try to dismantle parts of the intelligence community? I mean this form of taunting hostility," she said. 

“Let me tell you. Whether you’re a super liberal Democrat or a very conservative Republican, you should be against dismantling the intelligence community," Schumer noted. 

The raid comes weeks after an Axios report revealed Trump's "radical" plan to purge the government of “tens of thousands of civil servants" if reelected--a move cheered on by conservatives who want to see the "deep state" rooted out.