A couple of days ago, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on Jake Tapper's CNN show to talk about Donald Trump's appointments. It did not go well.
Jeffries appeared shortly after it was announced that Trump had chosen Robert Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Tapper asked Jeffries for his "reaction to this breaking news." Facing a fat pitch right over the plate, Jeffries ... talked about bipartisanship:
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): Well, great to be with you, Jake. Since the election we've made clear that we will work to find bipartisan common ground with the incoming administration on any issue whenever and wherever possible in order to make life better for the American people, but, of course, we will push back against far-right extremism whenever necessary.
And what did Jeffries have to say about Kennedy? A lot of empty, meaningless words that told viewers nothing about
why Kennedy is a dangerous pick:
Throughout the campaign, the former president promised America the very best, promised the best economy, promised the best border security, promised the best administration possible. The question that we all have to ask with respect to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others, is this America's very best? Is this the best that America has to offer to safeguard the health and well-being of the American people?
Of course, it's not, and that's problematic and it's an unfortunate sign perhaps of what's to come.
Tapper offered Jeffries the opportunity to go into more detail. Jeffries responded with more vague mush.
TAPPER: What are your issues specifically with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary?
JEFFRIES: We understand he's completely and totally unqualified as it relates to protecting the health, the safety, and the well-being of the American people. We have a lot of challenges emerging from the pandemic. We need serious folks with a serious background and serious expertise. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is, of course, none of the above.
In this segment, Jeffries does the two terrible things Democrats invariably do when they get TV time: He embraces a bipartisan approach to governing that Republicans have rejected since the Newt Gingrich era thirty years ago, and he talks to the public as if all of his listeners read three print newspapers a day cover to cover and already know all the relevant facts. It's a terrible approach to public communication.
To be fair, Jeffries came on just after Tapper and other CNN talking heads had gone over some of the appalling things Kennedy has said. Tapper had played a tape of Kennedy uttering crackpottery about the COVID virus:
COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. And -- but we don't know whether it's deliberately targeted that or not.
Kaitlan Collins had said,
All of the clips that you'll see where he's linking autism to vaccines even though that's been completely debunked, where he's linking, you know, mass shootings to prescription drugs, all of these things that are just his conspiracy theories that he has pushed.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta and former congressman Charlie Dent had rejected the idea that vaccines are linked to autism. So you could argue that Jeffries didn't need to go over this ground once again.
But not everyone who was watching CNN on Thursday saw the entire 23-minute segment, which you can watch
here. And Jeffries knows that these on-air segments are clipped and excerpted on social media, which is how many people see them. The Instagram clip above consists only of the Jeffries interview. If he'd made news in that interview, or said something memorable, even shorter clips would be appearing on social media.
No chance of that, though. Jeffries had nothing specific to say.
Jeffries might have mentioned the fact that Kennedy has said no vaccines are safe and effective.
He made this pronouncement on the Lex Fridman podcast in July 2023:
Fridman, July 6: You’ve talked about that the media slanders you by calling you an anti-vaxxer, and you’ve said that you’re not anti-vaccine, you’re pro-safe vaccine. Difficult question: Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?
Kennedy: I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.
And he specifically cast doubt on the polio vaccine:
So if you say to me, “The polio vaccine, was it effective against polio?” I’m going to say, Yes. And if you say to me, “Did it kill more people ... did it caused more death than averted?” I would say, “I don’t know, because we don’t have the data on that.”
Jeffries might have brought up
Kennedy's visit to American Samoa in 2019 during a measles outbrak. Kennedy encouraged vaccine resistance. The outbreak killed 83 people, most of them children.
Jeffries might have mentioned some of Kennedy's other beliefs:
Wifi causes cancer. Drinking water is
turning kids gay.
You might say that Kennedy was a shocking pick and Jeffries was unprepared to talk about him in detail. But we've known
since August that Trump was considering Kennedy for an important position in his administration. And Jeffries is the House Democratic leader. He has Nancy Pelosi's job. He would have been Speaker of the House next year if Democrats had won a few more House seats. He should have first-rate staffers who could have done a better job of preparing him to talk about Kennedy.
Jeffries continued to fail in that Jake Tapper interview after Tapper changed the subject to Trump's attorney general pick, pedophile Matt Gaetz. When Tapper asked about Gaetz, Jeffries once again talked about a fantasy world of bipartisanship:
TAPPER: Do you think the House Ethics Committee should report -- should release the report on Gaetz even though he's no longer a member of Congress, so it's no longer his -- their jurisdiction I suppose?
JEFFRIES: Well, the House Ethics Committee has traditionally operated in a bipartisan fashion. You know, I have great amount of trust and respect in the top Democrat on that committee, Representative Susan Wild. I haven't had an opportunity to have a conversation with her about what's possible.
Certainly, full transparency is always the preferred approach, but the House Ethics Committee has always operated in a straightforward fashion, not as part of a command and control structure connected to leadership from either the House Republican side or the House Democratic side, and I'm just hopeful that consistent with that background, with that history with the integrity of what the House Ethics Committee should represent, that it chooses to do the right thing, consistent with House rules and with the law.
And in response to the next question, Jeffries envisioned a nonexistent universe in which congressional Republicans agree to join with Democrats so both parties in Congress can act as a check on Trump's excesses:
TAPPER: So what are you expecting the Senate to do when it comes to some of these more -- some of the more controversial appointees, whether your former colleague Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at HHS, Fox News co-host and decorated veteran Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon.
Do you expect that they're all going to be confirmed?
JEFFRIES: Well, certainly would be surprised if that in fact was the case based on some of the reaction from some of the moderate Republican senators to several of these elections.
But at the end of the day, what's going to be most important is that both the House and the Senate commit to functioning as a separate and coequal branch of government and that we elevate the principle of being a check and balance on a potentially out of control executive branch.
Wait, this gets worse.
That is the vision of James Madison and the framers of the Constitution as to what we should be doing in the House and in the Senate and House Democrats are committed to just solving the problems that the American people want us to solve, which first and foremost relates to lowering costs and making sure that we can help everyday Americans who are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck get ahead and not simply get by. And all of this that we're seeing over the last few days seems to me to be a distraction from the mission that all of us should be focused on in the context of delivering real results for everyday Americans and solving real problems for hardworking American taxpayers.
Trump is very seriously planning to put Democrats in prison and Jeffries is giving us reheated mush that sounds as if it's been kept in cold storage since the days of Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council.
Yeah, there might be tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue soon, but my fellow Democrats and I will be over here quietly problem-solving, and gee whiz, we sure hope congressional Republicans will join us.
If we survive the second Trump presidency, it will be in spite of Democratic leaders like Hakeem Jeffries. We're really on our own here.
