LEADER JEFFRIES ON MS NOW: "AS DEMOCRATS, WE'RE GOING TO CONTINUE TO FIGHT TO LOWER THE HIGH COST OF LIVING"
Today, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on MS NOW's The Weekend, where he emphasized that Democrats are committed to protecting everyday Americans in the face of rising costs, including by extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
EUGENE DANIELS: Here to discuss it all and much more is House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Leader Jeffries, thank you for coming on this holiday weekend. I want to get into, before we get into all of the things that you guys are gonna do when you get back here, I want to read a Trump post about him denaturalizing, in his word, migrants. This is from Thursday. He posts that he wants to denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility and deport any foreign national who is a public charge, security risk or, in his words, non-compatible with Western civilization. What is your reaction to the President of the United States using this kind of language, especially the non-compatible with Western civilization?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, good morning, Eugene. Great to be with you. He continues to rant and rave in very unhinged ways, and I think the American people are sick and tired of it. What we want is a president who shows leadership, who brings people together, who addresses the problems that the American people want addressed—first and foremost, driving down the high cost of living—as opposed to constantly having meltdowns on social media, which is exactly what he did. And I believe that post was on Thanksgiving of all days. Now listen, we support a strong border. We support the notion that we need to fix our broken immigration system, but we should do it in a comprehensive and bipartisan way. We also are going to continue to stand by law-abiding immigrant communities, stand by our farmers, stand by our farm workers and stand by our Dreamers at the same time.
JONATHAN CAPEHART: Leader Jeffries, Congress comes back into session tomorrow with the House and the Senate. And the big thing that it should be the first order of business is doing something about extending those Affordable Care Act subsidies. Doesn't seem like there's any appetite for it in the House, even though the President of the United States, even though President Trump has said he wants to do something. You've got twelve legislative days left in this calendar year to do something. How confident are you that one, something can't get done, and two, that you and Leader Schumer in the Senate will meet with the President to get something done in twelve legislative days?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, you're absolutely right. The clock is ticking in terms of making sure that we extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits to prevent tens of millions of hardworking American taxpayers from experiencing dramatically increased healthcare premiums, co-pays and deductibles. In some cases, those health insurance costs will increase by a thousand or two thousand dollars per month. That is unsustainable. And we cannot have a situation where people will be unable to afford to go see a doctor here in America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Now, Jonathan, as you asked, the interesting thing about this is that when Donald Trump usually says to House Republicans, 'Do something,' when he tells them to jump, they just say, 'How high?' And he asked them to enact the largest cut to Medicaid in American history. They did it. He asked them to cut $186 billion from SNAP in the One Big Ugly Bill, literally ripping food from the mouths of hungry children, seniors and veterans. They did it. In that same One Big Ugly Bill, he asked them to enact these massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors and make them permanent. They did it. But when Donald Trump floats a possible proposal to try to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, now they want to act like they're a separate and coequal branch of government. It's extraordinary. And so, we need to find a handful of House Republicans to join us. We've got 212 Democrats on a discharge petition to force an up-or-down vote on a three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits, and we need just a few of my Republican colleagues to show some guts and show some courage and stand up for the people that they represent.
JACKIE ALEMANY: Leader Jeffries, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth verbally ordered a military strike on Venezuela that legal experts are saying is tantamount to murder. Are you going to call for Pete Hegseth's resignation?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Yeah, you know what's interesting is that I called for Pete Hegseth's resignation back in the spring. The guy is totally and woefully unqualified, the most unqualified so-called Secretary of Defense in American history. And so, it's long past time that he's got to go. Now the big challenge we have is, you know, what is the justification for what many people rightfully believe are extrajudicial killings off the coast of South America? We've had a few classified briefings that I've been a part of, and I've seen no evidence to actually justify the strikes that are taking place. We need a full congressional briefing as well. And the administration, if they believe they have the authority to do this, if they believe these targets undermine America's national security, then they need to present that evidence. But we've seen nothing to date.
JACKIE ALEMANY: Should Democrats be drafting articles of impeachment against Hegseth right now? Is that something you're considering for this week ahead?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, I think the problem is we can't even get Republicans to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. So the reality is that that type of accountability is not happening in this Congress with these people, who continue to be nothing more than a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump's extreme agenda. What we should be doing is making sure that there's a strong bipartisan investigation as it relates to what's happening under Pete Hegseth's so-called leadership. And that's been a challenge throughout the balance of this year. Moving forward, it seems like there's some interest in the Senate amongst Republicans in scrutinizing the behavior of the Department of Defense off the coast of South America. So let's see what emerges in the House of Representatives.
EUGENE DANIELS: Leader Jeffries, one of the things that I hear a lot, and I think maybe these two maybe as well, from immigration advocates, is that they wish that the Democratic Party was more vocally defensive and talked more optimistically about immigrants. We had Andrea Flores from—who was on just a week ago, saying something similar. And I'm curious, and I heard you talk about Dreamers and all of that, and so that's why it popped into my head. So I'm curious when you think about the balance of voters wanting stronger borders, that immigration continues to be maybe the one category that Donald Trump is not underwater on, how does the Democratic Party talk about immigrants as beneficial to society and immigration as a net plus to the American experiment?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, we want to continue to make clear as a country that hardworking immigrants, hardworking immigrant families are an important part of the fabric of communities throughout America. I think it's actually one of the reasons why we've seen Donald Trump, even on immigration, in the most recent Gallup poll, underwater. The American people are of the view that of course, it is appropriate to deport violent felons, to deport people who present a safety risk to the American people. However, that's not what we've been seeing from this aggressive extremism that Donald Trump has unleashed through his immigration policies all across the country. They're not deporting violent felons by and large. They're deporting families. In some cases, they're actually deporting American citizen children or separating them from their parents. And the American people have zero interest in that. Now we've got to continue to balance, as we move forward, these two principles of America as a nation anchored in the rule of law, and we have to continue to uphold that, but also a nation of immigrants, a gorgeous mosaic of people who have come to America from all throughout the world and have made us the envy of the world because of the dynamism that that creates.
JONATHAN CAPEHART: Speaker Jeffries, we're out of time, but I can't have you here without asking you about speaking of polls, a Marist poll out shows that if the midterm elections were held today, 55 percent said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate, 41 percent say they would vote for the Republican candidate. As with all polls, this is a snapshot in time. But there is a special election happening on Tuesday in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District. How confident are you that State Representative, the Democrat, Aftyn Behn, will win that? And two, do you expect to be Speaker of the House before the midterm elections?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, you know, I'm confident that it's gonna be a close race in the Tennessee special election, which is shocking in and of itself, because this is a district that Donald Trump just won by twenty-two points. And Republicans are scrambling to hold on to a deep red district. And so we'll see what the voters of Tennessee decide, but it definitively is going to be a close race, and that in and of itself is a great surprise and, I think, evidence of the fact that we are on our way to taking back control of the House of Representatives. We'll see what happens with Republican resignations and if something interesting occurs next year. But as Democrats, we're going to continue to fight to lower the high cost of living, continue to fight to fix our broken healthcare system and continue to fight to make sure that in this country, you work hard, you play by the rules, you should be able to live the good life.
JONATHAN CAPEHART: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of the Great State of New York, doing that gorgeous mosaic reference to the late Mayor David Dinkins of New York City. Thank you very much for coming back to The Weekend.
LEADER JEFFRIES: Thank you.
Full interview can be watched here.