Tuberville to Newsmax: Schumer 'Hole in the Golden Football' in Shutdown

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is the "hole in the golden football" that's keeping Congress from reopening the federal government, Sen. Tommy Tuberville told Newsmax Wednesday.

"Well, Chuck Schumer is one hole in the golden football here," the Alabama Republican and famed former football coach said on Newsmax's "Newsline." "All he's got to do is sell four or five of the Democrats, go out and vote for it, and let's get this over with."

But Schumer "wants to hold the American taxpayers hostage for 1.5 trillion more dollars and we're not going to do it as Republicans," said Tuberville.

The Senate's latest vote to advance a short-term spending bill failed, leaving the government shuttered as Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked over funding levels.

Tuberville said even a so-called "clean" continuing resolution would keep spending at unsustainable levels.

"If we pass this CR, we're still spending over $1 trillion more money than the taxpayers send to the federal government every year, so we're still digging ourselves a deeper debt," he said. "But this would really get bad if we passed this with all the Democrats' Christmas gifts in it."

Tuberville dismissed concerns that the shutdown is disrupting government operations, including air traffic control.

"Don't listen to all the media pressure," he said. "I talked to the FAA director today about air traffic controllers. It's not near what you see on some of these national news networks."

There will still be some people who don't get paychecks, he added, but "if we pass this, all we're doing is giving the Democrats an opportunity to spend a trillion and a half more dollars, and we can't do it."

The Alabama Republican also criticized former special counsel Jack Smith after reports that Smith's office obtained phone records of several senators as part of investigations tied to the Jan. 6, 2021 protests at the U.S. Capitol.

"If you do it to a sitting United States senator — eight of us — you'd do it to anybody," Tuberville said. "Jack Smith shouldn't be able to get a dogcatcher's job after all this is over with. Marsha Blackburn and I are trying to look into a situation where we can get him disbarred."

Tuberville said telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon should have pushed back on the Justice Department's requests for lawmakers' communications data.

"When they were called by the Department of Justice and said, 'Listen, we want to look into the phone logs of these senators,' they should have stopped right then," he said. "'Wait a minute. Now you're talking about United States senators. Let's make a call to them. Let them know we're going to release those to you.'"

He credited FBI Director Kash Patel and whistleblowers for uncovering the surveillance effort.

"If Kash Patel had not gotten his hands on these secret documents behind closed doors, this would have never been found out," Tuberville said.

"We have hit the tip of the iceberg with all these whistleblowers coming out almost daily now telling about what was happening during the Biden administration," he added.

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