Washington Free Beacon editor Matthew Continetti said Thursday that Democrats cannot talk about an economic message if they continue to talk about Russia and trying to lower President Donald Trump's approval rating.
MSNBC host Chuck Todd asked Hillary Clinton's former communications director, Jen Palmieri, about intra-party criticism of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and whether she should not be leading the Democrats.
"Let me say I hate about Democrats that the first reaction to the loss in Georgia is to figure out how do we blunt Republican criticism of us as opposed to what's our good offensive message. I feel like it would be much more productive to focus on that," Palmieri said.
She went on to say that many House Democrats like Rep. Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) are trying to come up with an effective economic message and that Democrats need to recruit great candidates to run for Congress by keeping Trump's approval ratings low.
Continetti later responded to Palmieri's earlier statements by mentioning Russia and how Democrats keep talking about it, but not delivering an economic message.
"Had there been evidence to the Russia story in terms of the quid pro quo [and] collusion that was being implied when the investigation opened a year ago and when the so-called dossier was disclosed earlier this year, that might have helped the Russia story," Continetti said. "Maybe Democrats would be more eager to talk about it."
"It's not over," Palmieri said.
Continetti went on to ask Palmieri how Democrats are going to talk about their economic message when the Democrats keep talking about Russia.
"Your point about it having a tactical sense of continually lowering [Trump's] approval rating might be the case, but you're still never going to have an affirmative way to talk about jobs," Continetti said.
Palmieri said that they will be able to talk about jobs during an "election year."
"The way you're going to talk about jobs would be Donald Trump's economic plan. Trump took the economic agenda from the Democrats. What would the traditional Democratic economic plan be?" Continetti asked. "Infrastructure and protecting jobs from going overseas."