{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://rubengallego.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/not-every-congressional-democrat-shares-leadership-s-desire-work-trump", "Not every congressional Democrat shares leaderships desire to work with Trump", "2016-11-17", "2016", "2016-11", "Democrat", "House", "AZ", "Ruben Gallego", "G000574", "rubengallego.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Democrats in Congress appear to be taking the idea of \u201cgive Trump a chance\u201d seriously, with Jennifer Steinhauser reporting on a surprisingly wide consensus ranging from Chuck Schumer to Elizabeth Warren that\u00a0Democrats should try to work with Trump on an infrastructure bill\u00a0and perhaps other priorities in order to distance him from congressional Republican leaders.\nJonathan Chait says this is political malpractice, and\u00a0Brad Plumer\u2019s explainer on the actual content of Trump\u2019s infrastructure plan\u00a0reveals that it actually has nothing in common with liberal ideas on infrastructure. Rather than spend new money on important priorities that only the public sector can execute, Trump is proposing tax cuts for private companies that are already investing in profitable private infrastructure schemes.\nOutgoing Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid has struck a very different tone, but he\u2019ll be gone come January. But last night, Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego \u2014 who, similarly to Reid, represents a heavily Latino constituency in a region of the country where Democrats are gaining ground \u2014 gave a speech that was much more along Reid\u2019s lines. He ran down the record of Trump\u2019s\u00a0bigoted statements, his\u00a0dishonesty, his\u00a0self-confessed sexual assaults, his\u00a0mismanagement of charitable funds,\u00a0his lack of financial disclosure, and his\u00a0conflicts of interest, and concluded that it would be ridiculous for Democrats to trust him to manage a series of infrastructure public-private partnerships:\n \n\tGiven everything we know about Donald Trump \u2014 and everything we don\u2019t know \u2014 I was alarmed by the words of senior leaders from both the progressive and centrist wings of the party regarding their openness to working with Donald Trump on infrastructure.\n\tUnder ordinary circumstances, we would welcome a plan to invest in infrastructure \u2014 even if that plan came from the other side of the aisle. Especially if it came from the other side of the aisle!\n\tBut Donald Trump is not an ordinary politician. He is a con artist. He has refused to give the American people reason to believe that he is not in this to enrich himself. In fact, he has bucked tradition by maintaining his family's interest in a private corporation.\n\tAnd, unfortunately, his infrastructure plan is really a privatization scheme, rife with graft and corruption, whose real purpose is to enrich the Trump family and his supporters. He is not reaching out. He is reaching his hand into America's pockets, just as he has his whole career. And we must not let him do it.\n\tThis strikes me as a better approach. As everyone endlessly repeated throughout the 2016 campaign, both Trump and Hillary Clinton were unusually unpopular nominees. Clinton, in the end, proved slightly less unpopular but lost the Electoral College anyway. That leaves the country with an unusually unpopular president-elect who also happens to\u00a0pose an unusual risk to American institutions.\n\tObviously if Trump happens to miraculously roll out a fantastic infrastructure proposal, members of Congress from both parties should take that seriously. But there\u2019s no reason to be bending over backward to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially when he hasn\u2019t even begun to address the obvious conflict-of-interest problems.\n\tCSPAN_11-16-2016_19.36.37.mp4", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://rubengallego.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/not-every-congressional-democrat-shares-leadership-s-desire-work-trump"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9837939869612455, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}