Watch Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell spar over bourbon

(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/cspan)

published 12 February 2018

Mere weeks ago, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer were hardly drinking buddies. But on Monday, the Senate leaders came together in a tentative show of bipartisanship, with Schumer speaking in Kentucky at the majority leader's namesake McConnell Center, part of the University of Louisville, at McConnell's invitation.

Schumer, a New York Democrat, attempted to bolster his relationship with McConnell by presenting the long-time Kentuckian with a spectacularly ill-advised gift: bourbon. "It turns out that Brooklyn, where I was born, raised, and still proudly live, produces some of the best bourbon in the world," Schumer said, absurdly, before gifting McConnell a bottle of bourbon from the Brooklyn-based Widow Jane distillery. McConnell responded drily, "There's no such thing as Brooklyn bourbon."

To his credit, McConnell smiled gamely in the face of such an affront by Schumer. We can only hope Schumer is prepared to react as politely when McConnell presents him with a world-class "Kentucky slice" on his next visit to New York City.