Donald Trump's top aide on Sunday mocked House Minority Leader’s Nancy Pelosi’s bid to retain her position.
Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan is challenging Pelosi, who has led the Democrats in the House since 2003, saying that the disastrous election results for his party show that there is a need for a new direction that is possible only with new leaders.
The election for the House Minority leader is on Wednesday.
Ryan told NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday that “the level of frustration in our caucus is as great as I've ever seen it… now we're not even the national party. We're a coastal party. And we've got to move forward. If we're not going to get voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, go back down south. When I first got in Congress, we had members from Tennessee. We've got to go back there and campaign and get those folks back in the fold.”
Ryan said it is important not to divide up the electorate, stressing that “The key to, and magic of, good campaigns is when you pull people together. You unite them around a common theme. And look, if you're black, white, gay, straight, brown, you want a good job. You know, we focus sometimes too much on the minimum wage and we should be talking about living wages and middle class wages and pensions and benefits and the kind of thing that people in the industrial Midwest talk about all the time.”
The Ohio congressman stressed that the “reality of it is our message has been wrong... [and] We've got to get the message right. We've got to have the right messenger.”
When asked if the Democratic Party should try to work with Trump, Ryan said “I think it is yet to be seen. I think we have an obligation to respect the voter who put Trump in. And we may not like it… But this is a unique president in a unique situation with a divided Republican Party. And that is going to reveal itself as we get into the legislative proposals. Now it's just rhetoric, it's positioning, it's tweets. Proposals have to land at The House of Representatives, budgets, real numbers. And we have to wait and see. There may be an opportunity to work with Trump, and other issues, we may have to fight him.”
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