Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, on Friday chastised the progressive wing of his party for “telling the people in the middle that they’re not welcome."
In an interview with Newsmax TV’s “The Chris Salcedo Show,” Cuellar said voices on the far right and far left are trying to drown out moderates.
“We don't want the party extremes to tell the party center what sort of Democratic Party that we should have,” he said. “When anybody, whether it's the far left or the far right, started telling the people in the middle that they're not welcome, that’s not a good sign for anybody.”
“I’m a Democrat but I represent both Democrats and Republicans and that's my job… to go up to Washington, be civil and try to find real solutions to the problems we're facing as a nation,” he said.
He added that “we cannot let the fringe determine who we are."
Cuellar said Republicans faced the same problem when the GOP was the majority in the House.
“You saw the far right …trying to purify members of Congress,” he said. “Now that the Democrats in the House are in the majority we’re seeing the far left there trying to purify.”
“The problem is we just don't have any more civility,” he said. “The problem is that if you don't agree with somebody 100% of the time, they come after you. That's not the way our nation was built… the way our Constitution was drafted. It was built on consensus, people talking to each other.”
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