Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (8th District of New York)
Today, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on MS NOW’s Morning Joe, where he highlighted the lies, propaganda and hatred spewed during the State of the Union address and the fact that Donald Trump has no plan to make life better or more affordable for everyday Americans.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Joining us now, House Minority Leader, Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Thank you very much for coming on this morning. Sir, the President blamed the nation’s challenges on you and other Democrats. How do you respond to the President and also to your fellow Republicans who repeatedly stood up and applauded his words?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, good morning. Great to be with you. The President’s speech was riddled with dirty, rotten lies, including his unwillingness to confront the affordability crisis that Donald Trump has made worse throughout his entire time in office. This is a guy who promised that he was going to lower costs on day one of his presidency. And, of course, costs haven’t gone down. Costs have gone up. Millions of people are working hard, they’re playing by the rules, but they’re struggling to live paycheck to paycheck. Can’t thrive, can barely survive. The American people know it. Donald Trump tried to lie about it, and he will be held accountable.
WILLIE GEIST: Leader Jeffries, good morning. As we’ve been detailing this morning, so much of what the President said in his speech last night simply isn’t true factually. And yet, Republicans leapt to their feet with every line he delivered. Not totally surprising, that’s standard in State of the Union addresses. But how do you explain, other than just fear of President Trump, fear of his supporters, their abdication of power, that you have the Speaker of the House standing and applauding when President Trump says, for example, ‘I don’t need Congress to place tariffs, I can do it on my own,’ and then the leadership of the Congress jumping up to applaud that. How do explain it as someone who sees it up close?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Yeah, the cult-like behavior of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is a complete and total abdication of their responsibility to conduct themselves like a separate and co-equal branch of government. But what we’ve seen repeatedly from these folks is that they regularly bend the knee to Donald Trump and behave like they are nothing more than reckless rubber stamps for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda. It’s the reason why the American people are rejecting Republicans in election after election after election over the last 14 consecutive months because they’ve broken promises. They’re visiting extremism on the American people. They’ve failed to actually address anything that is designed to make life better for everyday Americans. And then they lie about it regularly. And so we’re going to continue, as Governor Abigail Spanberger did in such a phenomenal way, to contrast their corruption with our commitment to make life better for everyday Americans, to drive down the high cost of living, to fix our broken healthcare system and to make sure that immigration enforcement in this country is fair and just and humane.
JONATHAN LEMIRE: Leader Jeffries, good morning. The name Jeffrey Epstein was never spoken last night, but his presence hovered over the proceedings. A number of his victims, the survivors, were there in the House of Representatives as guests of Democrats. And the speech last night came just hours after a blockbuster NPR report matched by MS NOW that suggests that a lot of documents pertaining perhaps even to interviews with an accuser of Donald Trump were missing. Setting that aside, we don’t know if that’s true, at the very least DOJ has not, it appears, produced all it’s supposed to. Give us your reaction. What can Democrats do about this?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Yeah, there were at least 14 Epstein survivors who were in the chamber last night, and I had an opportunity to talk with several of them in advance of the so-called State of the Union Address to thank them for their strength, their courage, their resilience and their persistence in getting us to this point to try to push for maximum transparency and maximum accountability. And yet, of course, we all understood that the fight needed to continue because the Department of Justice has failed to comply with the law. This is a situation where ‘public sentiment,’ as Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘is everything. With it, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can [succeed].’ And the American people are going to continue to demand, led by the survivors, that we get full transparency, full accountability, that the files are completely and totally released to the American people. We’ve made a lot of progress. There’s still millions of documents that remain hidden by the Department of Justice. But I am confident, led by these courageous survivors, that we are going to get to the place that we need to get to.
MARA GAY: Leader, President Trump is calling on Congress to pass a bill that would require Americans to show ID in order to vote. What can the Democrats—and in particular Democratic leadership—do right now to ensure that the vote this November is protected and that this President and his enablers do not take it away?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, first of all, we strongly oppose the so-called SAVE Act in the House, and Leader Schumer has made clear that it is dead on arrival in the Senate. Donald Trump is not interested, of course, in a free and fair election and this legislation is about voter suppression because the Republicans know that they are on their way to losing as has been the case for the last 14 months. Now, part of their scheme had to do with trying to gerrymander the national congressional map. And cynics and skeptics suggested that Democrats were just going to allow that to happen and Republicans would be able to steal 10, 12, up to 15 seats. Of course, that effort has been met forcefully and decisively, and that has failed. Successfully, we’ve stopped them in the courts from being able to federalize the National Guard, which certainly was part of his scheme. And now we’re involved in an all-hands-on-deck effort with civil rights groups, civil liberties groups, unions, civil society, Democratic governors, Democratic attorneys general, Members of the House and the Senate, partnering with state and local elected officials to unleash the largest voter protection effort that the country has ever seen, including in presidential elections, though this will be a midterm because we understand the stakes are so high.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: House Minority Leader, Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Thank you very much for coming on this morning.
Full interview can be watched here.
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