Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe complimented President Donald Trump on his popularity with the public and suggested the Democratic Party implement the same strategy.
McAuliffe, now 20 years removed from his position as the Democratic National Committee Chair, shared his insights on how the party has changed on The Chris Cuomo Project Tuesday. At one point, he offered some praise to Trump.
“Listen, he’s a great salesman. You and I– I’ve known the guy for 30 years. He is a great salesman, and he talks common sense, and he says the stuff that you know people like to hear,” McAuliffe said of the president. “I think sometimes Democrats get a little squeamish about how we make things so complicated. I mean, just lay it out. But listen, the prescription drug, I think, was very smart. We got the American Israeli hostage out. That’s great. He’s talking about a trillion dollars of investments on this Middle East deal. I don’t know if any of it’s ever going to come to fruition, but the public likes to hear that.”
The reference to prescription drugs was regarding Trump’s executive order to decrease prescription drug prices. According to the president, this could result in cuts anywhere between 59% and 90%.
“We’ve got to do that. We got to be big and bold. We need politicians in our party who are actually fun,” McAuliffe went on. “We have so many lemon suckers that people just tune us out and you know they like folks who going to just sort of lay it out have some fun doing it in common sense.”
McAuliffe lamented the changes since he was the cochairman of former President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign in 1997, which he called “the great Clinton years.”
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“Common sense used to be who our party was, and we’ve sort of lost it. We got caught up in all of these other issues that mattered to so few people, and we’ve lost our broad array,” McAuliffe said.
Meanwhile, the Republican party is fresh from its win in 2024, which included the Republican candidate garnering the popular vote for the first time since 2004. Republicans also won the majority in the Senate and House.