Cross posted at the MRC's NewsBusters blog
Appearing as a guest on Monday's Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman tried to give advice to Democrats on how to best beat President Donald Trump next year, lamely suggesting that they label the President a "chump" for relocating the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
He also fearmongered that the country could not "recover" from a second term of Trump, and worried that Democrats are being too openly to the left in some of the issues they have been pushing.
At about 7:34 p.m., after voicing disagreement with Democrats on decriminalizing illegal immigration and providing health insurance to illegal immigrants, he also suggested that he is open to doing away with private health insurance in the long-run but does not want Democrats to scare voters by being too open about it:
I think taking away the private health care of 250 million Americans who are one way or another covered by that and replacing it by Medicare for all, that may be a good ultimate goal, but that's something you really want to very gradually build up to, and I think that just shocked a lot of people. It shocked a lot of moderate Democrats and certainly was probably a real shock to some of those independents, moderate Republicans, and suburban women whom you're going to need to win.
Referring to his recent column, He then worried:
And my main point was this: If you want a revolution, I'll give you a revolution, Four more years of Donald Trump. Four more years of this kind of aberrant behavior. Four years in which he could likely appoint two more Supreme Court justices under the age of 40. Four more years of Republicans rolling over for him when he will be unconstrained by any need to be reelected. That will be a revolution. In fact, I think it would leave our country -- our norms, values and institutions -- in a tatters that I'm not sure would be recoverable from.
He went on to recommend that Democrats brand the President a "chump" for moving the embassy to Jerusalem rather than use the issue to pressure Israel to make concessions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
I think one of the ways to get at his weakness is to say, "You're a chump. Wait a minute, you -- you -- you moved the embassy -- the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and you got nothing for it? No, no, don't tell me that. You gave away one of the prime diplomatic assets which we could use to sweeten the leverage in an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, and you gave it for free?"