Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s book tour has landed her on the late-night TV circuit. The Democratic lawmaker from Massachusetts, whose latest book This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class went on sale Tuesday, appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday and explained to the talk show host Democrats’ three-point approach to Donald Trump’s presidency.
Fallon started his interview by asking Warren about the Democratic Party’s plan for the next four years.
“For me, it’s three things,” Warren said. “The first one is we’ve gotta be in the fight. We cannot lay down and play dead.”
Secondly, she said, “we cannot shoot at everything that moves.” Rather than reacting to Trump’s statements and tweets, Democrats must “keep a focus on what he actually does.”
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“Remember in the movie Up? When the dog yells ‘Squirrel!’ We cannot all go over there,” she said. “What’s critical is to keep a focus on what [Trump has] actually done because that’s what he has to be held accountable for.”
The third key, she said, is to promote Democratic values. “We’ve gotta talk about the reasons why we get up in the morning and what we fight for all day long and what we’re still fighting for when we go to bed at night,” she told Fallon. “And that comes down to something pretty straightforward for me: we get out there and fight for opportunity. Not just for some of our kids, but we fight for opportunity for all of us. That’s what it’s about.”
Her full Tonight Show segment can be seen here.
The firebrand’s new book chronicles the history of the middle class in the U.S., starting with the New Deal and ending with the Trump administration. She’s promoting it while Congress is on its Easter recess.
Warren, first elected to the Senate in 2013, saw her political star rise she as sparred with then-candidate Trump in a series of epic Twitter feuds during his presidential campaign. She cemented her role as a fierce opponent to Trump and the GOP in February when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell chastised her with a now-infamous statement—”She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”—that was immediately picked up by Democrats as a battle cry.
Warren’s run-ins with the president and Congressional Republicans have been good for her campaign coffers. She raked in more than $5.2 million in donations in the first quarter of 2017, up five-fold from the last quarter of last year. Her campaign account now stands at $9.2 million.
Her growing prominence on the national stage has fueled rumors that she will run for president in 2020, while making her Republicans’ favorite liberal villain ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
