LEADER JEFFRIES ON MSNBC: "REPUBLICANS ARE RUNNING SCARED"
Today, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes where he emphasized that Democrats will continue pushing back on the extremism being unleashed on the American people by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.
CHRIS HAYES: Joining me now is House Democratic Leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York. What do you make of all this, Congressman? Like, why are we here and what do you affirmatively want to see happen and the Democratic Caucus want to see happen?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, it's great to be with you, Chris. At the end of the day, the American people deserve to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as it relates to this whole Jeffrey Epstein matter. Donald Trump and his MAGA extremist allies have fanned the flames of this conspiracy theory for years. And so there's only two options at this point. Either Donald Trump, Pam Bondi and that whole crew have been lying to the American people over the last several years about what is actually in the Jeffrey Epstein files or, alternatively, Donald Trump, Pam Bondi and his allies in the Trump administration are hiding something from the American people right now. So we're determined to get to the bottom of this on behalf of the American people who deserve transparency from their government.
CHRIS HAYES: Reporter Annie Karni, who was just on in the last block, said that the line from Republicans on the House today—were talking about appointing a special counsel. I wonder if that's something that you would support or other Democrats would support.
LEADER JEFFRIES: It seems to me that a special counsel is just a diversionary tactic. If the files exist, produce them and produce them now to the American people. The Attorney General mentioned a few weeks ago that the files existed. In fact, she said it was on her desk. And so, all she really needs to do at this point is to release it, as Donald Trump promised that he would do. This is also a situation where what we've seen from the Trump administration is a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires. We saw it during Trump's inauguration. This One Big Ugly Bill was all about hurting everyday Americans to provide massive tax breaks to their billionaire donors. And now what we see is the possibility that there's a massive coverup taking place within the Trump administration, because there may be people on the Epstein list, within the Epstein files, that Donald Trump is trying to protect, who happen to be part of his billionaire cabal.
CHRIS HAYES: There's—I want to talk about the one, the bill, in a second. But there's something else happening this week in Congress, and it's very strange. It's called this rescission package. Basically, it's clawing back money that's already been appropriated. It would decimate public broadcasting in this country, including rural NPR affiliates and rural public radio. I know Democrats are opposed to it, but I want to ask about this technique. It seems like they've come up with a strange way to like, pass appropriations with a filibuster majority, where they come to Democrats, work out a bipartisan appropriations deal, and then they come back with a 50-vote threshold in the Senate so that they can kind of take back the money they don't want. And if that's the case, then, like, how can anyone do an appropriations deal with these people?
LEADER JEFFRIES: I completely and totally agree. These people cannot be trusted. And why in the world would we ever enter into a bipartisan negotiation to try to arrive at a spending agreement that meets the needs of the American people if Donald Trump and his administration, at the end of the day, conspiring with MAGA extremists in the House, who are nothing more than a Reckless Rubber Stamp for his extreme agenda, decide that after passing into law a bipartisan spending agreement, they're just going to come back through this rescission mechanism and undo the parts of that agreement that they don't like because they want to hurt priorities that are important to Democrats because they're important to the American people.
CHRIS HAYES: Have you talked to Senator Schumer? Because ultimately, you know, we avoided a shutdown. Senator said, look, we had to avoid a shutdown. There was a bipartisan spending line set. You in the House took a different tact, but if they do this rescission package, I just can't. I mean, how could there be some deal in September if they're just going to do this? Like, have you talked about this with him?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Yeah. And in fact, I think Senator Schumer has made some public statements in this regard, that if they are going to take this approach, it will detonate the possibility of arriving at any bipartisan agreement because we can't trust that these extremists are operating in good faith. And we're going to have to do something about this particular vehicle that is being used around rescission, which is a part of the 1974 Budget Control and Impoundment Act, because it's a backdoor to undermining actual bipartisan agreements.
CHRIS HAYES: I mean, at the same time, their position is that another part of that Act is totally unconstitutional, and they can impound funds unilaterally. But we'll put that part aside. On the huge bill that they just passed, I saw Josh Hawley talking about introducing legislation in the Senate to stop Medicaid cuts, having voted for Medicaid cuts—enormous, unprecedented, hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts, talking about how bad Medicaid cuts are, voting for it, now wanting to go back at Medicaid cuts. Would Democrats support some kind of, like, let's go back and take the Medicaid cuts legislation?
LEADER JEFFRIES: I mean, Josh Hawley is a complete and total phony at this point. He spent the last few months talking about how devastating these Medicaid cuts would be for the people that he represents in Missouri, and then turned around and actually voted for it. If he wanted to do something about these Medicaid cuts, he actually was the deciding vote, and he could have stopped it, just like Lisa Murkowski could have stopped it. We saw the same thing in the House of Representatives, where many of these so-called moderates who spent months saying they would never vote to cut Medicaid benefits to their constituents, and then they turned around and did exactly that. We're going to have to get this situation addressed, but we have no faith that Republicans are actually committed to doing it in good faith. This is going to fall to Democrats in the House and the Senate. It's one of the reasons why the midterm elections are going to be so important.
CHRIS HAYES: Two quick questions for you before I let you go. One is there's an announcement that Texas is going to do mid-decade redistricting. They did this under the Bush administration. It's a violation of the normal norms because they want to, like, juice Republican representation. And they're going to call a special session. Is there anything Democratic governors can do in large states like New York and California to respond to this?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Republicans are running scared. This is outrageous, that they're going to attempt to rig the midterm elections by gerrymandering a congressional map in Texas that is already gerrymandered, Chris.
CHRIS HAYES: Yes it is.
LEADER JEFFRIES: And so, what's interesting about this is that this may be what has often been referred to as a dummymander, where as part of the effort to actually steal some more seats, they may make it easier for us because they're going to shift Democrats into Republican held districts to actually flip some seats currently held by Republican incumbents. In terms of the Governor of California, who has been very vocal on this, and the Governor of New York and other states, it seems to me that all options should be on the table to make sure that we are unilaterally disarming when everything we care about, the economy and healthcare and democracy itself are at stake.
CHRIS HAYES: Final question quickly. You're meeting with Zohran Mamdani. You have not endorsed him yet. What do you say to people who say, why are you not endorsing the guy that won the Democratic primary in a contested election in your backyard?
LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, I look forward to sitting down and talking to him. I didn't get involved in that primary election, and I don't know him well. We had a very good conversation the day after the primary. We agreed to meet. And so, I'm looking forward to having that discussion on Friday.
CHRIS HAYES: Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Full interview can be watched here.