Genocide Enablers Get Their Way.

This essay appeared in the April 16, 2026 edition of UNFTR’s premium newsletter. Become a UNFTR member to receive our bonus newsletter each week and for other perks.

Considering how ubiquitous the phrase “TACO” has become amid Donald Trump’s second try at playing president, it’s probably worth recalling the moment and context in which it first reached viral status.

On June 2, 2025, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the minority leader in the U.S. Senate, released a video assailing Trump and belittling him with the mocking acronym, which was first popularized by Wall Street as the president’s indiscriminate tariff regime sucked the oxygen out of the global economy.

But this video from the supposed Democratic leader, in which he’s hunched over on an upholstered armchair inside what appears to be a Senate office, had nothing to do with a financial earthquake Trump unleashed. Instead, Schumer sought to attack Trump from the right on Iran, blasting him for ostensibly being soft on Iran, which Trump attacked 20 days later, hitting multiple nuclear facilities.

“When it comes to negotiating with the terrorist government of Iran, Trump’s all over the lot,” Schumer said. “One day he sounds tough, the next day he’s backing off. And now, all of a sudden, we find out that [Steve] Witkoff and [Marco] Rubio are negotiating a secret side deal with Iran. What kind of bull is this? They’re going to sound tough in public, and then have a side deal that lets Iran get away with everything? That’s outrageous…If TACO Trump is already folding, [we] should know about it.”

The rabid neocon screed has 9.1 million views on X alone, a great deal thanks to people who were miffed that the leader of the opposition party was lambasting Trump for being too dovish on Iran. It was akin to Republicans deriding Obama during his presidency, even as his administration stalked an entire region from the skies and rained down hell on innocent people during his unprecedented and provocative drone war.

Schumer’s post that day was genuinely insane—he was provoking a guy that Democrats years earlier breathlessly warned shouldn’t be anywhere near the nuclear codes.

As it stands, Schumer and his neocon collaborators have effectively gotten everything they wanted. For all intents and purposes, they’ve been silent on this White House’s extrajudicial killings of people in the Caribbean and Pacific and the invasion of Venezuela that ended with the kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro.

Schumer, whose only contention (perhaps because he knows Congressional war authorization is a pipe dream at this point) is process-based, clearly has no desire to rein in the American empire.

And if you were paying attention to what was happening on Capitol Hill yesterday, you’d know why. On the same day he posted about an attempt to force a War Powers Resolution, Schumer voted against a pair of resolutions, pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), that would end support for Israel to varying degrees.

How you can ostensibly attempt to intervene legislatively on Trump’s illegal war while voting “Nay” on legislation that would potentially make it harder for the chief instigator of the conflict, Israel, to rampage its neighbors confirms everything people on the anti-war left have suspected about Schumer all along.

Naturally, the career Senator wasn’t alone on the Democratic aisle in joining Republicans to kill Sanders’ two resolutions, which, to be fair, received more support than they have in the past, a sign, possibly, of Israel’s diminishing support in the United States.

• For the resolution that would have banned arms sales to Israel, specifically 12,000 1,000-pound bombs, he was joined by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, Chris Coons, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jacky Rosen, Kirsten Gillibrand and, no surprise here, John Fetterman.
• The same group voted against the second resolution that would’ve banned the sale of Caterpillar bulldozers to Israel, which Sanders called the “IDF’s primary demolition tool—used to demolish Palestinian homes, raze refugee camps, uproot olive groves and build settler-only roads that make a Palestinian state physically impossible.”

“Americans, whether they are Democrats, Republicans or independents, want to see our tax money invested in improving lives here at home—not used to kill innocent women and children in the Middle East and put American troops in harm’s way as part of Netanyahu’s illegal wars of expansion,” Sanders said after the vote.

Sanders is right about the politics of American hegemony and the country’s association with Israel. According to a widely circulated poll from Pew Research, 60% of American adults view Israel unfavorably, up nearly 20 points from 2022. When they asked younger Americans, Pew found that majorities on the right and the left “now rate Israel and Netanyahu negatively.”

“Around six-in-ten Americans (59%) have little or no confidence in Netanyahu to do the right thing regarding world affairs,” Pew reported—a still shocking shift given the ubiquitous labeling of anyone opposed to Israel as “anti-Semitic” and years of trying to silence and chill the pro-Palestine movement.

Globally, a sea change is emerging as well. The prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, said an Italy-Israel defense pact, which typically renews every five years, will be suspended. The move comes after Italy’s foreign minister condemned as “unacceptable” Israeli attacks on civilians in Lebanon, which Israel invaded after Trump started his war of choice with Iran.

Elsewhere in Europe, Spanish Premier Pedro Sanchez has raised his profile amid frequent condemnations of Israel, and recently made a trip to Beijing to bolster ties with China, while Israel became enraged over a mundane line in the German chancellor’s press release expressing “concern about developments in the Palestinian territories.”

This is all to say, the United States is increasingly becoming isolated over its bear-hug policy with Israel, which is prosecuting an ongoing genocide in Gaza, has attacked multiple neighbors in recent years, and is effectively using Trump’s Iran war as cover to annex the south of Lebanon, while killing more than 2,167 people, including scores of children.

Yet, the Genocidal 7 had no problem on Wednesday killing two resolutions meant to curtail a rogue nation, one that hysterically warned of Iran’s impending nuclear capabilities for decades.

It’s the perfect encapsulation of modern Democratic politics. Engage in performative politics about a war being illegal, while simultaneously continuing to arm a flagrantly war-hungry “ally.” From a cynical perspective, it seems Schumer is betting that the American public, already against this war, will grow even angrier, potentially widening the Democrats’ advantage in the upcoming midterms. What he’s failing to consider—or is too arrogant to care about—is that a reckoning is coming.

We already know the genocide in Gaza impacted how people voted in the 2024 presidential election, and it’s effectively a guarantee that a similar dynamic will play out in the next race for the White House. The Democratic machine is on tenuous footing, and the playbook they used to twice impede Sanders’ path to the Democratic primary may not work this time around. Voters are angry and disaffected as the economic pain, accentuated by imperial misadventures, hardens their distrust in the establishment.

Sure, this was just a pair of resolutions the Genocidal 7 opposed. But it speaks volumes about where they stand and where the base is moving.

Image Source

• 4kbw9Df3Tw, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.