MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend shocked her fellow panelists after announcing live on air that she is leaving the Democratic Party.
Sanders Townsend, 35, is a political commentator who hosts MSNBC’s The Weekend. She was a senior adviser to Joe Biden before he won the 2020 election. She was also chief spokesperson and a senior advisor for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sanders Townsend was a fiercely loyal political strategist for the Democrats.
But now she is fed up with the party that suffered a record low 27% approval rating in the latest NBC News poll.
Her announcement came while blasting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and fellow Democrats for caving to Republican demands in order to avoid a government shutdown.
“I’m pi**ed,” Sanders Townsend said angrily during The Weekend show. She expressed her outrage over Schumer’s decision to approve the Republican-led spending bill.
Sanders Townsend said there’s nothing Schumer can say to her after he approved the Trump-backed GOP spending bill to avoid a shutdown.
“There’s actually little that the Senate Minority Leader can say, and the 10 Democrats that voted with the Republicans can say, to appease somebody like me. I’m going to change my registration to Independent,” a frustrated Sanders Townsend said.
“There’s not another option for Senate Democrats or House Democrats to effectively push back. This was it. They blew it,” Sanders Townsend added.
President Donald Trump gloated in a post on his Truth Social on Friday: “Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing. It took ‘guts and courage,'” Trump wrote.
Protesters gathered outside Senator Schumer’s house in New York and his office in DC over the weekend. Thousands more flooded the streets in Manhattan.
Sanders Townsend said that the same Democrats who warned about Trump’s danger to democracy now refuse to stand in unity against him.
Watch the video below.
