LEADER JEFFRIES ON MSNBC: "THE ADMINISTRATION IS CLEARLY TRYING TO WEAPONIZE HUNGER"
Yesterday, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on MSNBC's The Last Word, where he highlighted that Democrats will continue fighting to protect the healthcare and nutritional assistance of the American people from Republicans who continue to weaponize them.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: Leading off our discussion tonight is House Democratic Leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. I want to begin with that last meeting that you had in the Oval Office, which was about this government shutdown. Hasn't been a meeting since. There's been no attempt to solve the problem since by Donald Trump or the Republicans. And Donald Trump taunted you with that hat. And you cut to today, and there's Speaker Johnson trying to end this subject, trying to make it clear that there's absolutely no possibility of Donald Trump running for a third term, while Donald Trump still plays that game publicly. Do you see the Johnson move as an attempt to just completely shut this down for strategic reasons? That Trump is probably helping you elect Democrats with that kind of talk.
LEADER JEFFRIES: Yeah, it seems to me, Lawrence, that Johnson understands that the second Trump term has been a national nightmare, and the notion that the American people will have to experience more of what they are dealing with right now, largest cut to Medicaid in American history, Republican healthcare crisis, threatening to starve children and seniors and veterans by cutting off SNAP. The fact that costs haven't gone down, they're going up. The assault on all of the things, the American way of life, law-abiding immigrant families, democracy itself, the rule of law. It's all a nightmare. Now, Donald Trump tries to distract, as he did in that meeting, by dropping those hats in the middle of the meeting randomly in front of myself and Chuck Schumer. We were there to talk about the fact that Republicans are gutting the healthcare of the American people, and as Democrats, we would not support it. And I think Johnson wants no part of this subject. Because he knows the more talk of Trump and a third term, the more disastrous it is for Republicans electorally.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: So on the nutritional benefits, they have never been interrupted during any of the previous government shutdowns that we have ever seen. It was never contemplated by Republicans or anyone at any point in power to do that. You have state attorneys general saying it's illegal. This is against the law. That the law specifically provides for the ability to deliver those benefits even in a government shutdown. Is this something that the Congress could simply rise up tomorrow and say, okay, we will pass a bill right now to make sure this happens, if necessary?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Yes, the Congress could rise up tomorrow, part of the problem, of course, is that Republicans, as you've pointed out, have been on vacation for the last six weeks. Canceled votes for the last five weeks. It's extraordinary. They're nowhere to be found. But the money already exists to ensure that SNAP benefits continue through November 1st into November. But the administration is clearly trying to weaponize hunger as part of their effort to continue to try to jam their right-wing ideology and this partisan spending bill down the throats of the American people. And remember, this is the same group of folks, these MAGA extremists, who passed their One Big Ugly Bill that, in addition to including almost a trillion-dollar cut to Medicaid, involved the largest cut to nutritional assistance, Lawrence, in American history, $186 billion. They literally ripped food out of the mouths of hungry children and seniors and veterans and women and families in order to provide billionaire donors with massive tax breaks that they also made permanent. And now they can't find a dime for nutritional assistance, they allege, and can't find a dime to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for working-class Americans.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: So there's a new mystery Republican healthcare bill, apparently or policy or piece of paper or sentence or something. And Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently does not believe it. We saw her public reporting about the Republican Conference call today, in which the Speaker apparently tried to placate people like her and others, possibly, with the idea that, 'oh, no, no, we're working on coming up with something on healthcare.' Have you ever seen a sentence of Republican healthcare policy?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Not at all and you know Mike Johnson has been fond over the last several weeks of saying we're working on it, we're working on it, Republicans are the party of healthcare. No reasonable person in America believes that Republicans give a damn about the healthcare of the American people. This is the same group of folks, mind you, who have tried to repeal and destroy the Affordable Care Act more than 70 different times since 2010—over the last 15 years. It's the same group of people who, as a result of their policies from the One Big Ugly Bill, are causing hospitals and nursing homes and community-based health centers to close all throughout America, including in rural parts of the country, in Louisiana, in their own communities. It's the same group people, of course, who have triggered the possibility of a $536 billion dollar cut to Medicare if Congress doesn't act at the end of this year because of the One Big Ugly Bill. It's a Republican healthcare crisis that's devastating rural America, urban America, small town America, working-class America, the heartland of America and Black and brown communities throughout America. So it's laughable for them to argue that they have a healthcare plan designed to make life better for the American people. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is correct, that it's nowhere to be found.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: Before you go, this government shutdown can only end when there's a phone call from Donald Trump to you or from the Speaker to you. At some point, someone has to reach across the aisle to someone, Chuck Schumer, you, and the conversation has to start. What is going to happen next?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, we continue to maintain publicly—Leader Schumer, myself, House and Senate Democrats—we're ready, we're willing, we're able to sit down with any of them, anytime, anyplace, either at the Capitol or we'll go back to the White House, in order to reopen the government, to pass a bipartisan spending agreement that actually makes life better for the American people, not worse, and then, of course, decisively addresses the Republican healthcare crisis. Trump gets back into town, apparently, at the end of the week. We'll be here ready to meet with him, because we certainly know that in the absence of Donald Trump actually coming to the conclusion that it's time to end the Republican shutdown, Mike Johnson and Leader Thune don't have the permission or the ability to act independently because Republicans in this Congress are nothing more than a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump cartel.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: House Democratic Leader, Hakeem Jeffries. Thank you very much for starting off our coverage tonight.
LEADER JEFFRIES: Thank you.
Full interview can be watched here.