Hakeem Jeffries Compares Fighting Trump and Elon Musk to Fighting in a Civil War

MADDOW: “The case that you are making against Republican policies here is one that I hear and is cogent, and that plays to a greater or lesser extent, I think, all across this country. The other thing that Americans are stressed out about, though, right now, is that policy doesn’t feel like it’s the main conversation right now. It feels like we are in the middle of a ketamine-fueled, middle-of-the-night autocratic power grab that is rendering Congress irrelevant, that’s rendering policy irrelevant, and that’s rendering the rule of law an afterthought, if not a joke, to those who are planning on staying in power indefinitely without benefit of further elections. I mean, it is not about — I mean, it is about a bad budget. That’s one of the things you have to contend with. But the fight here feels like it’s on a different scale than the kinds of legislative point/counterpoint stuff that I think Democrats and Republicans are used to fighting over. And I think what Americans are sort of clamoring for is to hear from you personally, as the senior Democrat in Washington in the House, where the margins are so narrow, to hear from you that you understand the scale of the threat and you have ideas about how to interrupt what feels like something that we have not experienced since the Civil War in terms of the threat to our republic.”
Jeffries: “Well, certainly the case that we understand the scale of the threat, that can’t be doubted. The CBC, which I’m a part of, definitively understands the scale of the threat. Our communities have been under siege, as you pointed out, since before the Civil War. I’m a direct descendant of those very communities, so we understand the struggle, the history, the strength of people like John Lewis, which we’re going to channel. That’s my experience. That’s my personal experience. That’s my family’s experience. And so we understand that. And as a caucus, it’s definitively the case that we understand that. Listen, we launched the rapid response task force and litigation working group is going to be led by Joe Neguse and, of course, a brilliant constitutional lawyer, Jamie Raskin, to be able to respond to and work with our allies like Tish James and others. And part of what we are responding to, listen, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, they’re flooding the zone in part to create distress, to create a sense of invincibility and inevitability. But the reality is, there have been more than 75 different lawsuits that have been filed by democracy reform groups, civil rights reform groups, by attorney generals like Tish James and others. And we’re winning in court. They’re losing. More than 35 different unconstitutional and unlawful executive orders and administrative actions have been challenged. And they’re not winning those cases in terms of the Trump Administration. They’re losing over and over and over again. That’s been a forceful pushback, and that, of course, will continue. The congressional battles will continue. And the mobilization in the communities will continue.”