1094: Two Strikes. Is Hegseth Out?

26:28He just was, for some reason - Maybe he posted. Yeah, I think he posted. But he posted on Twitter. That's a fake thing to do. It doesn't really affect, like what percentage of people in the 7th District of Tennessee or seeing his tweets on like the ninth most trafficked social media site. That's where he calls for Democrats to be hanged. Yes, yes. I mean, not that his tweets don't matter. They do matter. But it's not a particularly effective or efficient GOTV tool. Have you... So obviously, this is like a rough calculation. But what? It was a Trump 22 district. She lost by nine. So that's like a 13-point swing.

27:04Have you done the math where like if in the midterms, It was a, I don't know, 10 plus point swing, like 10 and change if you're sort of approximating it, how many seats we'd win? Yeah. So there are four Republicans in seats Kamala Harris won right now. There are, I think, 10 Republicans in seats that Trump won by five or less. And then there's another 14 or so that are in seats that Trump won between five and 10 points. And so that gets you to 28 seats. Now, there are some Democrats in seats that are now - Jared Golden's seat. Jared Golden. Who's not running again. Henry Cuellar, Don Davis in North Carolina, who are a handful of people who are in very gerrymandered seats.

27:49They're Democrats who are in either lean or solid Republican seats, according to the Cook Political Report ratings. But the question here - None of them are in Trump, like over Trump plus 10 seats, right? No, no, no, no. But they're, no, I think they're all under Trump plus 10. The question – and then you have Don Bacon who is one of those four who's actually in the lead Democratic seat in Nebraska too. The question will be about the size of the Democratic majority to get to something that looks like a 2018-style majority. You're going to be able to get to those districts who are between Trump 10 and Trump 15.

28:32You have to put some of those in play because you're not going to win all of the Trump plus 10 ones just because of their – it depends on who our candidates depends on who their candidate. We actually only won – this is political report data that Amy Walter and I talked about on last Sunday's pod, but I think we won like a third of the Trump five to 10 districts in 2018. There just were so many more. There were 19 Republicans in districts that Hillary Clinton won that time around. And so there's just – it was a wider playing field. But with a plus 13, plus 10, you can have a majority much larger than what the Republicans have.

29:06So you mentioned that that certainly depends on the candidates that run in each party. After the results came in on Tuesday, since the results have come in on Tuesday, I should say, there's been a lot of conversation online about whether Afton Bain was the right candidate for the district and candidate quality generally as we head into the midterms. Would you like to weigh in? yeah i think this is a really hard instead of instead of just posting on twitter like elijah i know elijah's weighed in elijah he's having a great he's having a great time on twitter and he's doing about 100 retweets on that last time i looked that's that's a lot of engagement for an elijah tweet he hasn't got that much engagement since he got to a twitter fight with jamie harrison um it is hard to like there's a counterfactual here right which is to her credit afton bain drove up Democratic turnout in Davidson County, which has Nashville in it.

29:59She won Davidson County by 58 points, which is 20 points better than Kamala Harris did in 2024. So that's a significant gain. That's obviously a significant gain. It's probably fair to say that she is not the best ideological fit for a district that Trump won by 22. She had a lot of positions on defunding the police, a lot of video about saying how much she hates Nashville. She was a very prominent organizer with a robust social media history and endorsed by the DSA in the primary when she ran for state rep, that's easily weaponizable against the Republicans. And when you have to do the math and you have to win a significant number of Trump voters, that's probably not your candidate.

30:39Would someone else have won the seat? Probably not. I haven't looked at the other – there were four people in that primary. Hard to know that someone else would have won. I think this debate is really hard because yes, of course, you want candidates who are good fits ideologically and culturally for the district. That seems obvious, right? Even though he didn't win, you want someone like John Tester running in Montana. Jared Golden, who's obviously retiring, was an excellent fit for his district. But the question is, how do you execute that? Do we really want folks in DC to decide who the most electable candidate is?

31:23You're having this, we're having the same conversation because it seems like Jasmine Crockett's going to throw her hat in the ring in the Texas Senate race in the coming days. And a lot of people are saying, well, she's the least electable of the three candidates. And so do you want the DSCC or the DCCC to come in and say, no, this is the most electable candidate, which is the exact thing that we're very pissed about happening in Maine and Michigan. Well, it's not just, do you want them to do it? It's, do you think that will be effective? Well, that's, that's my point. I think there's a lot of like, oh, we can just move around pieces on a chessboard.

31:55Uh, those of us who play pundits on Twitter and it's like, yeah, I totally agree that like you want a candidate who fits the district for sure. But, uh, what five people ran in that primary or four people i think four yeah four four and she won so she ran she took a chance she ran for office she beat everyone else in the primary the voters decided the democratic primary voters decided they wanted her over the other candidates and then she went on and and so yeah was she the strongest candidate maybe not but like that was democracy it played out so like you can talk to all the candidates who ran against her in the primary and ask them like why why did you fuck up and not beat her if you were a more electable more moderate candidate and i realized that you know some of the discussion online is like well you know republicans in 2010 nominated a bunch of like tea party doofuses and that's what cost them the senate it's like yeah they did but i don't know that the nr sc could have really done much about that well they have and like you can try right like it's like someone can if you if people think that uh colin allred is the best candidate say in Texas, people can, you know, party leaders can call James Tallarico and call Jasmine Crockett and try to tell them, hey, look at the polling.

33:15This is it. You shouldn't run. They can try to do that, but they can't force them to do anything. They can try to put their thumb on the scale like they're doing in some other races. And that could easily backfire as we predicted it might in some of those other races. So you can try to do that stuff. But at the end of the day, it's like it's up to the voters in the district and the candidates running. And as much as I understand the concern among more moderate minded strategists and pundits that you need a candidate to fit the district and that some candidates are either and I would say either too progressive or it's always like talked about in terms of ideology.

33:58but I don't even know if it was her ideology as much as some of the, some of the things she said in the past and then chose not to really explain. Like it's not, this wasn't, this wasn't a race that was based on her positions necessarily. Like when I saw the clip of Catherine Rampell of MSNBC interviewing Afton Bain and asking her about some of her tweets from 2020 when she said that the Nashville police department should be dissolved and that, you know, good morning especially to the 54 of americans that believe burning down a police station is justified so it's like whatever you have tweets everyone has tweets they don't like and then she didn't explain them and she's like i don't remember those tweets and she's like all right what do you think about those do you have a position on that and she's like well i'm not really focused on that and i'm like you know zoran mamdani dsa socialist right uh had some positions and tweets in the past that he and his campaign decided that they were going to clean up, that they were going to say, no, this is the position I hold now.

34:59I am strongly in favor of X, Y, and Z, even though I said that in the past, you know? So some of this is ideology. Some of it is just like how you decide to campaign. And so I think like that's a big thing. But regardless, I also think that moderate candidates, candidates that do fit the district, have a responsibility to figure out how to beat some of these other candidates who they think are too progressive or too far to the left or not good fits for whatever reason. And if the moderate candidates are either too bland or boring to gain any traction or to like beat these candidates, then who the fuck's fault is that?

35:39Yeah, it's – I mean there is a world where you can – if this party apparatus were to choose, decide that they knew who the best candidate was, they can play a real role here. And the Republicans lost the Senate in 2010 because they nominated a bunch of knuckleheads, lost the Senate in 2012 because they lost a bunch of knuckleheads, even lost Indiana and Missouri in that cycle because they had terrible candidates, Todd Akin included there. By 2014, they decided we're not doing that again. And the NRSC and the Republican version of the Senate majority PAC, the Republican super PACs, basically nuked anyone who was not – they did not think was electable.

36:19They shut off their access to money. They would run ads against them. They would put pressure on them to drop out. They would play with the field. So like what happened in – as I understand it, what happened in Tennessee 7th – now obviously no one thought this was going to be a real race, so it's not like anyone should have been involved here. but as you had a progressive and a handful of moderates, what the NRSC and the problems they've done in the past is they've tried to get out the other moderate so that it's moderate versus progressive. Now, the problem with that is, is I don't really trust the people in charge to do that correctly.

36:51And so it's sort of as we live where we have, I think, I think the responsibility of all of us have who talk about and write about politics is to be as honest as we can be about our assessments of the candidates and what it takes to win and have humility about what makes someone electable in 2025. Yes. And that it is the, I do. And also, I think it's the responsibility of both sides of this debate to field candidates and support candidates that they think can win. And it's the candidates in those campaigns responsibility to win in these primaries. Yeah. It's just, there's this assumption that there's a bunch of people on the left in the middle who are like, they're puppet strings picking the people.

37:28It's really just a bunch of local candidates deciding to run. And then maybe some DC groups get involved and support them. But it's a much more organic process than I think the conversation about Tennessee 7 allows. We should say that there's some breaking news before we leave the midterm map here. The Supreme Court has permitted Texas to keep its newly redistricted GOP favorable congressional map in 2026. Kyle Cheney from Politico just tweeted this. 6-3 decision. Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson dissent. although Kyle also points out that it's notable that Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch say they view California's new map as indisputably driven by the pursuit of partisan advantage as opposed to impermissible race-based goals, which bodes very well for Newsom and California in that legal challenge.

38:19Because partisan gerrymandering is allowed by the Supreme Court. Of course. But it's also interesting, though, that they're saying, as opposed to impermissible race-based goals, when we know that the section two of the VRA is very much up for grabs. So I don't know what that says about that, but that's what we got. Yeah. And they had to make this decision now because the filing deadline's in five days, I think. Right. Now I think, I don't know, with everything we've seen, like I still think, and I know you talked to Amy Walter about this on Sunday's episode, but even with Texas keeping their gerrymandered plus five map, I don't think Democrats are in terrible shape.

38:57I mean, the Speaker of the Virginia House just said that he was contemplating a 10-1 Democratic-Republican map in Virginia. How many seats does that net us? I think the map in Virginia is like 6-5 right now. Oh, wow. Look at that.

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41:17So Republicans aren't waiting for the midterms to knife Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, who's becoming less and less popular with some of his MAGA members. Elise Stefanik, who's been performing the role of MAGA attack dog so she can get a better job. She's currently gunning for governor of New York. Good luck with that. Is out there calling Johnson a serial liar who's in league with the deep state and said that he wouldn't win the speakership again if the election were held today. Nancy Mace, who seems perpetually unwell, told the New York Times, quote, I stand with Elise and is reportedly considering following Marjorie Taylor Green into early retirement because of her anger at Johnson's treatment of Republican women.

42:01What is all this about? Can you tell us what all the anger at Johnson is about lately? Well, I talked to Leader Jeffries about this and you'll hear his comments on it. But I think there are a couple of things going on here. One is Mike Johnson's a doofus. He just, I mean, he just is. He just happened to be the least offensive person when they needed to get, desperately needed to get to 218. And so he got the job. He is not a policy wonk. He's not a strategist. He's just a guy. And being just a guy in charge of the narrowest majority since the Great Depression is probably, he's punching above his weight.

42:34He's not doing it well. The second thing is he owes his entire job to Donald Trump. And so he's always one Trump truth away from being ousted. And so he has put Trump's interests in his own job security over the interests of the caucus. And I think you saw that most vividly during the Epstein files thing. Basically, he made these Republicans go months of answering awkward questions, being on the outs with the base, because that's what Trump wanted, even though it was bad for the members themselves. It was bad for the caucus, probably bad for their attempt to actually have the majority. And then I think the last thing here is just they're all feeling the pressure, right?

43:15They see these results in the elections. They see the poll numbers. They see that Trump's numbers are in the toilet and they're all starting to look for the exits. They figure out what's going on. They're nervous. They don't want to lose. And so they're starting to act out. It seems like with Elise Stefanik, she's just pissed that remember she was up for the UN job. Yeah. And then Trump and Johnson basically told her, no, you got to stay in Congress because the number, the margin is so slim. And so we need you in Congress. So she loses that job. and then she's running for governor. And her whole gubernatorial campaign is that, you know, Hochul is too tied to Mamdani and then Trump yucks it up with Mamdani in the Oval.

43:59So it's possible that she's just pretty pissed at Mike Johnson. She's taken out her anger at Donald Trump on Mike Johnson because obviously she can't be angry at Donald Trump. I see. I think it's more political calculation than pure anger. You think she just looks like a, I mean, what is the political calculation there that just helps her with the base? Well, no, I think it is. So just, I don't think she has any sincere moments in her life. She was anti-Trump when that was good. She was pro-Trump when that was good. And now she wants to be governor of New York. And so like she has to, she has to seem, and she is in the worst position possible.

44:30She is the, in the leadership of a Congress that is at its second least popular time in the history of Gallup polling. And so she's trying to separate herself, seem like an outsider, but do it without actually pissing off Trump or the base. And this is a way to do it. Yeah, I guess. Because the actual substance of what she's pissed about is supposedly this provision that would force the FBI to notify Congress if they ever open another investigation of a political candidate. And so she's alleging that Mike Johnson is in league with Jamie Raskin in the deep state. Yeah. I mean, like it's absurd.

45:03I think she is looking for places to distance herself from her own party without upsetting the base before a primary. Now, I mean, it makes for interesting conversation about the drama with Mike Johnson, but he doesn't seem like he's in any real trouble. Like it's a year to the midterms. What are they going to hold a new vote for Speaker and someone else is going to get the votes? I mean, I could see him exiting after 2026, but I can't see him getting ousted before then, can you? No, I would be shocked if he was ousted before that. It just seems no one wants the job. The process before was so painful.

45:38They've tolerated having this doofus in charge for years now because they don't want to revisit that process. I think it's highly likely if they lose the majority, which I also think is pretty likely, that he will get tossed aside then. He doesn't even really want the job. I can't believe I did this, but I watched several minutes of his and his wife's interview with Katie Miller on her podcast. Yeah, big Katie Miller fan. Well, it's like I'm always looking for content out here, right? Just to try to help Elijah in his job. And the whole thing is a sob story about how hard the job is and how he doesn't like it.

46:10So sad for you. Yeah, so hard. Well, luckily for Johnson and all of these very anxious Republicans, Trump is reportedly planning to tear himself away from ballroom renovations and midday naps long enough to hit the road for the next year so he can sell Americans on everything he hasn't done to bring down the cost of living. We're already getting a preview of how that's going to go. Take a listen. It's a con job. They say affordability. They don't say anything else. Everyone says, oh, it's a fake narrative that the Democrats talk about affordability. The word affordability is a con job by the Democrats.

46:47Affordability, affordability, affordability. She had no idea. Their prices were much higher. You think that was on the message calendar for that day? No, I don't think so. I think that is possibly the worst message you could possibly design ever. A new Politico poll has 46 % of Americans and a slim plurality of Trump voters saying the cost of living is the worst they can remember where they live. Asked whether Trump bears full responsibility for today's economy. Almost 20 % of Trump voters said yes. Obviously, a big majority of all voters said yes. what are your thoughts on the affordability pivot will we even get one i don't think we're going to get one because when trump hits if you read the axio story that previewed his upcoming event and trump has been so i don't say lazy the right words he really hasn't done any domestic travel at all as president he really just he does foreign trips and he and he renovates ballrooms and that's like the full extent of his duties but if you read the story preview it says that trump is going to hit the road to talk about his economic accomplishments which is the exact wrong thing to do.

47:56You're going to call it Trumponomics? Exactly. I mean, we talked about this, there are parallels to Biden, but it's like 100 times worse than Biden at this. And Trump is going to fail at this because to admit that prices are still high is to admit that he failed. And he can't admit failure. He's never done it in his eight decades on the planet, so he's not going to do it that. So instead, he's going to go out and do what he did in those clips we just listened to, which is poke voters in the eye every single moment. It has to make it as being an absolute political disaster, which I plan on enjoying.

48:27The other big difference is Trump has like at least two very easily doable options in front of him to help with the cost of living. He could get rid of the tariffs that everyone knows he put in place on his own and have hurt the economy and have made things in their lives more expensive. or he could do something about the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are about to expire and the premium hikes that are coming for 20 million Americans. And he is thus far refusing to do anything about that. So people are going to know that there are just options that he is just saying no thank you to. And he's just going to go around talking about the tax cuts that he passed from the big beautiful bill and then talk about how he lowered drug prices 5 ,000%.

49:18Now he's paying people to take their drugs. Like Mike Johnson went out and said, he was trying to put a brave face on everything that happened on Tuesday, and he said, well, when the big, beautiful bill kicks in, people are going to feel better. They're not. He's just extending tax cuts that people already had. They're not going to. I know. I guess that some of the smaller tax cuts, like the no tax on tips, are going to affect some people. That's a small percentage. Yeah, maybe a small percentage of people we'll maybe see a slightly higher tax refund in the spring. But I don't know when you've got the tariffs hitting the economy like they have been, the premium hikes, everything else.

49:54I don't really, I wouldn't count on that if I were the White House. No, I would not. One tried and true option for Trump is to just tell everyone that the real blame for all their problems lies with immigrants. I'm certain he'll do that. He's already doing it this week. He put a really disgusting new spin on this while talking about enforcement operations in Minnesota, which is home to a large population of Somali Americans. Let's listen. We're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage. These are people that work.

50:31These are people that say, let's go. Come on, let's make this place great. These are people that do nothing but complain. They come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch. We don't want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it. Thank you very much. Just really sick stuff. For people who don't know, the reason he was even talking about the Somali community in Minnesota is because there was a fraud charges brought against an organization, a couple organizations, I think, that were basically, you know, stealing taxpayer money. And I think a lot of Somali Americans in Minnesota were charged, though the ringleader, the person who ran the whole scam was a white person.

51:28And so Republicans, right wing media, everyone is using that case as a reason to say, you know, we've got to kick all of the Somali Americans out. Never mind the fact that the vast majority. So Minnesota has the largest Somali community in the United States. The vast majority of Somalis in Minnesota are U.S. citizens who've been here for over a decade, who have jobs. just so everyone knows there's only a small percentage that have temporary protected status or are refugees or, you know, applying for asylum or whatever it may be. Um, and I don't know, what do you, what do you think of, uh, the, the tried and true tactic from Trump on this one?

52:07Just so people know that sound you heard at the end of the clip was JD Vance banging on the table and support. Was that JD Vance? Of course. In the past, Trump has somewhat effectively changed the subject by making these outrageous sort of statements. This is they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats from 2024, various attempts during his first term where he was able to just focus people on something else through offensive, jingoistic, racist remarks. And sometimes that would be effective. I think that is doomed to fail this time around because Because every single – now there is – unlike in Trump's first term where things were kind of just like proceeding to pace in life, now there is one central issue that everyone cares about and everyone's mad about, and it's cost of living.

52:57So every time Trump is doing something that's not affecting the cost of living, he is not helping himself. You can't really distract people from the price of groceries, utilities, and housing. You're not going to convince them that that's not a big deal and a big problem. So when you're trying to distract them, it's very – they can see the cards up your sleeve. They know what you're doing. And I think it's going to be incredibly ineffective. Yeah, the big problem for him here is that he's in charge. Like you could imagine a scenario where Biden was president. Trump's running against Biden. And he's saying, oh, you know, this the reason that we still have high prices and inflation is because all these immigrants are stealing government benefits and Biden's letting them because he let them all into the country.

53:32And you could say, OK, I could see that, unfortunately, being politically effective. But in this instance, it's like, OK, you're complaining about Somali immigrants who the authorities in Minnesota, a state mostly run by Democrats, are they've been charged. Governor Walz was like, good. People who are criminals should go to jail. I don't care what nationality they are. I don't care where they come from. If you commit a crime, you go to jail. and so I don't really understand the argument there that like oh yeah prices are high costs are high you're having a tough time also I'm in charge I'm gonna blame immigrants I am deporting immigrants I am cracking down on them but like what's his excuse you know there's just not a it just doesn't it doesn't work as well okay one last thing before we get to your conversation with Hakeem Jeffries uh you may remember that uh back in October basically the entire Pentagon on press corps, including Fox News and Newsmax, gave up their badges and walked out of the building rather than agree to a list of new rules from Hegseth that basically amounted to a ban on real reporting.

54:32The Times announced on Thursday they're suing Hegseth over the policy. But fear not, we've got a new crop of defense reporters on the beat, including 9-11 truther Laura Loomer, ladies' man Matt Gaetz, the National Pulse, the Post-Millennial, Turning Point USA, Tim Kast, and the Gateway Pundit, all of whom agreed to the reporting restrictions and they're already hard at work holding DOD accountable. Sorry, DOW. Here's conservative influencer Cam Higby just grilling Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, who no one even knew existed until this week. Let's listen. What was the environment like here with the old press corps?

55:12There's a lot of talk online about us and our level of professionalism. I'm interested to hear what the level of professionalism was like before. I've heard stories about ambushing people outside their offices, making a hostile work environment for everyone who works in the DOW. What was that like? Oh, it was absolutely crazy. My first weeks here, they just waltzed in my office, rang my doorbell literally nonstop. My doorbell was going off probably every single second. There were instances where they were hanging outside of the secretary's office trying to see who he was meeting with. In your mind, what is the purpose of the Pentagon press corps?

55:45Because it seems to be that a lot of people online, including the former press corps who have been tweeting at me, that the purpose of the press corps is just to gather classified information and release it to the public. It seems like that's if you're an American journalist. I mean, you're not a Chinese spy. Holding us accountable, I think, is very important. But also communicating to the American people all of the work we're doing and all of the work that our warfighters are doing every single day. That is the role of the press corps is to communicate to the American people all the wonderful things that the government is doing.

56:17One of the most honest things any Trump flack has ever said. I just like thank God her poor ears having to hear her doorbell ring from these reporters that just they were trying to reach her. She is the press secretary. That is the job of the press secretary to talk to reporters. Am I right? Those reporters hanging outside trying to see who Pete Hegseth is meeting with in public spaces in the Pentagon. Bunch of fucking Chinese spies right there trying to suss out a meeting at the Pentagon. And this whole thing was so comical. These people were so embarrassing. I think it was Cam Higby, one of them tweeted.

56:52I just had a great off-the-record conversation with - John Conrad. John Conrad. Great off-the-record conversation with Pete Hegseth. He said great things. He says, Hegseth answered my questions. It's off the record, so no details, but I am very pleased with his leadership. It's so good. He works for the world's top maritime news website. And then in his bio, it says, blacklisted by Wikipedia. So you know it's good. And then they all took – everyone's mad at the Washington Post because they wrote the original story about the second strike. All these people took pictures at different desks saying that they were at the Washington Post desk.

57:31but they couldn't even figure they couldn't even suss that out they all so it's like dan lamoth the pentagon reporter for the post who wrote the original story he tweeted out pictures of all of them at the various desks saying uh i'm at the washington post desk saying you have to figure this out amongst yourselves like this isn't really important but do you think there are other maritime news websites that aren't the top maritime news website oh absolutely absolutely there's a number two number three number four i think you are dramatically uh underestimating the vibrant maritime press that exists i mean to be honest there's there's a lot going on in the caribbean right now that someone could be maybe maybe cricket should have a maritime reporter you know what it's let's send let's send elijah put elijah on a boat get him off twitter for a little bit get him on a boat get him doing some honestly this is a great idea elijah you're going to uh you're going to the Caribbean.

58:25Okay, when we come back from the break, you'll hear Dan's conversation with Leader Jeffries, but two quick things before we get to that. Strict Scrutiny is coming to the West Coast. Join Kate, Melissa, and Leah in San Francisco on March 6th at the Herbst Theater and in Los Angeles on March 7th at the Palace Theater. Grab your tickets before they sell out at crooked.com slash events. Also, go get your holiday shopping done with a visit to the Crooked Store. I know a lot of you are looking for the right Epstein Files-related Christmas presents. May I humbly suggest, I don't even know, I have not read this copy, as always.

58:58May I humbly suggest our Release the Naughty List sweatshirt. We got ornaments, too. We decorated our Christmas tree this weekend, and we were unpacking the boxes, and I found the offline ornament from a few years ago. That's a good one. I like that one. I was like, what is, oh, this is from John's other podcast. That's what this is. Anyway, go check out Offline Reset. don't be that guy on Amazon on December 23rd head to cricket.com slash store to stock up on gifts now

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1:01:10Joining us now is House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Leader Jeffries, welcome back to Pots of America. Great to be with you. Let's start with some good news because that's what we need these days. But so on Tuesday night, Democrats, although we didn't win, had a very good night in the special election in the Tennessee's 7th District where Democrats outperformed Kamala Harris's performance there by 13 points. I take it you see that election as a positive sign in your quest to retake the majority? And why do you think the Democrats did so well? Well, I think it's another positive sign on the trajectory that we've seen from the very beginning of this year.

1:01:45The first special election of this year took place in late January, a state Senate seat in Iowa that Donald Trump had just won the previous November by 21 points. Democrats won it by four. That was a 25 point over performance. We flipped that state Senate seat and we've been winning special election after special election after special election ever since. And if we've failed to win, we've overperformed dramatically, as we just saw in Tennessee. And of course, during the off-year elections that occurred in early November, we saw decisive Democratic victories all across the country in New Jersey, in New York, in Virginia, in Pennsylvania, in Georgia, in Mississippi, and of course in California with Prop 50 up and down the ballot at all points in between.

1:02:36I think that the thing that unites these consistent Democratic victories, or if we fall just short, our dramatic overperformance numbers, are that the American people are tired of the extremism that they've seen from Donald Trump, the failure to do anything meaningful to make their life better. And Democrats, of course, leaning in aggressively and consistently on two messages. Affordability, we're working hard to drive down the high cost of living, which is out of control, and health care. We want to fix our broken health care system and, of course, deal with the Republican health care crisis that's crushing the American people.

1:03:17So affordability was a big part of this campaign. It was the central focus of Afton Bain's message to the Democrat in that race. in New Jersey and Virginia, where Democrats did well earlier this month, the Democrats not just ran on saying prices were too high, but because they were governors, had specific proposals about what they would do to lower prices. Mikey Sherrill, the governor-elect of New Jersey, talked about freezing utility rates. As you think about 2026 in the midterms, do Democrats need to have some specific proposals about what we would do to lower costs, not just what Trump has failed to do to lower costs?

1:03:52Yeah, I think that is going to be important. as we pivot from 2025 to 2026. And listen, there are a variety of different ideas that we've already begun to articulate. We need to repeal the Trump tariffs. These tariffs have actually increased costs on everyday Americans by thousands of dollars per year. That's both groceries and its goods, and the American people are feeling it right now in a significant way. Congress needs to reassert its authority in this area because Donald Trump has usurped the congressional power over tariffs, claims some emergency authority, and as a result, he's adversely impacting the American people.

1:04:30So one of the first things that Congress can do is to repeal the Trump tariffs. It's absolutely essential if the Supreme Court doesn't beat us to it. I think with respect to health care, and when people talk about the affordability crisis, the three things that I hear the most from folks as I travel across the country, it's housing, it's health care, and of course, It's groceries, goods, utilities. And in terms of health care, one of the more immediate things that we need to do right now is to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits because the failure to renew them is actually going to result in tens of millions of people experiencing dramatically increased health care costs.

1:05:07We're talking about$1 ,000 or$2 ,000 per month in some instances. This is unaffordable for working class Americans, middle class Americans, and everyday Americans. It's a big difference between what Democrats are all about and what Republicans are all about. I think on housing, we need to use the tax code to both incentivize increased production to deal with the supply problem that we have. And if you increase the supply of housing, you bring down housing costs, both on the rental side and on the homeownership side. but also, I think, use the tax code to incentivize and make it easier for first-time homebuyers to be able to purchase a home and get their piece of the American dream.

1:05:53This was done previously under President Barack Obama, as you know, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and it was successful. I think we need to look at that type of initiative. What Republicans have done is use the tax code to provide massive tax breaks to their billionaire donors while leaving everyday Americans behind. Could you see the Democratic leadership putting together an equivalent of what the Democrats did in 2006, which was a six for six, like a set of policy ideas that would be that most Democratic candidates, whether incumbents or challengers, could run on? Is that one of the things you guys in your leadership team are thinking about?

1:06:30Yeah, it's definitely under discussion. And we've been in conversation about that. Initially, we wanted to make sure that we just articulated a framework around three different issues. The economy affordability, issue one, issue two, healthcare, and issue three, corruption. And to make clear to the American people, listen, what we'll focus on as House Democrats are driving down the high cost of living because America's too expensive. We're focused on fixing our broken healthcare system, which Republicans are destroying, largest cut to Medicaid in American history, hospitals, nursing homes, community-based health clinics closing all across America because of their one big ugly bill.

1:07:08Their refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, that's a disaster. They're attacking the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health, making it harder for people to get vaccines, including children. It's an all-out assault on the health care of the American people. We need to fix our broken health care system. And then third, deal with the corruption that exists in the Congress, in the courts, and of course with the administration, the most corrupt presidential administration in American history. Now that we've got a framework of the issues that we want to work on, economy, health care, corruption, I think the logical next step for us is to begin to articulate to the American people some more concrete ideas as to what a Democratic majority in the House would look like.

1:07:56On the Obamacare tax credits, you know, Senator Schumer is reportedly going to propose a three-year clean extension and try to force a vote on that. You guys have been pushing that. Where does that stand? And are you open to negotiating with Republicans on it? Or is the three-year extension your bottom, clean extension your bottom line? Well, our view is that the most urgent and important thing that we can do right now is to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits and the legislation and the path to getting something toward an up or down vote in the House right now runs through the House Democratic proposal in our discharge petition.

1:08:29All 214 Democrats support that discharge petition, which means, as you know, Dan, that all we need are four Republicans. There are 219 of them. Dozens of them have said that they know we need to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. All we need are four to join us. And then, of course, in the Senate, let's see what happens next week. Now, months have gone by, and we've repeatedly said to our Republican colleagues, we are willing to work together to find a bipartisan path forward, find some common ground, but we have to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits on a multi-year basis. And Republicans have talked a lot and done nothing.

1:09:13So I think time is running out to do anything other than a straight extension. But when we return to Washington next week, if there are traditional Republicans who put a proposal forward in good faith, we'll certainly evaluate it. But their leadership has shown no interest in doing anything, which is why we launched the discharge petition and are working hard to get four House Republicans to join us. The other big news happening on Capitol Hill today is the Trump administration briefed senior members of Congress, Intel, Armed Services Committee leaders about this very controversial boat strike in Venezuela that involved a second strike that killed two survivors.

1:09:59I understand they showed the video. Have you been briefed on that by your team? And what's your reaction to where this stands right now? Yeah, I haven't had the opportunity to go down to the skiff to view the video during the time that the admiral was there. But individuals who have seen the video have made clear it's very disturbing and certainly demands further investigation, which is what I expect, you know, will take place. Pete Hegseth clearly is a disgrace. Called for his resignation months ago. And the sooner he's gone, the better off for the American people. And I think the American people increasingly know that.

1:10:40The question for us is, you know, why Why is it that we have a president who claims to want to stop the flow of narcotics into this country, is engaging in what appears to be extrajudicial killings? We've yet to see any authority or evidence presented to the Congress, either in a public way or in a secure location, to justify the strikes that have taken place, including this horrific one. And yet same period of time, Donald Trump pardons one of the biggest narco traffickers, narco terrorists, the former Honduran president in the world. And so it's very unfortunate that the administration can't really be taken seriously here.

1:11:35And now we've seen efforts by them to obfuscate the fact that the buck should stop with the leadership. And that certainly means the so-called Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. Earlier in this sort of as reporting came out about this with the big Washington Post story and some subsequent reporting, there seemed to be an appetite, at least in the Senate, but maybe in the House, too, for bipartisan investigations into this bipartisan oversight in the way in which Congress used to operate before these Republicans got in charge. Do you see any chance of that in the House or was this briefing probably enough to get sort of the lemmings back in line?

1:12:17You know, well, I got to be honest that I'm very skeptical of the Republican willingness to actually act like a separate and co-equal branch of government. Because what we've seen from the very beginning of Donald Trump's time in office is that they're just sycophants. And when he says jump, they say how high. They're nothing more than reckless rubber stamps for his extreme agenda. But it has been interesting to see Republicans, certainly in the Senate, and even Mike Rogers, who issued a strong statement calling for an investigation and then followed it up by opening up the investigation and demanding that the admiral come to Capitol Hill as part of the process of that ongoing investigation.

1:13:04So now it remains to be seen when Donald Trump cracks the whip, what's going to happen? But this issue is now broken into the public domain. And it's going to be hard for them to try to misdirect the attention of the American people at this point because it's horrific what has occurred. And as you know, the American people overwhelmingly are not interested in another foreign war. It's deeply unpopular, including with elements of Donald Trump's MAGA base So I think it may be the case that some Republicans are both repulsed by Pete Hegseth And also understand that parts of their base aren't necessarily interested In the path that Donald Trump seems to be dragging us down As it relates to Venezuela and the possibility of another failed foreign war I assume that if the Republicans, if there's no bipartisan oversight of this, the Republicans do not do their duty here, that this would be a ripe line of investigation for a Democratic majority in 2027.

1:14:12Yeah, there's no doubt about it. But listen, the line is also very long. We've got an out-of-control Homeland Security Secretary, an out-of-control Attorney General, an out-of-control Secretary of Health and Human Services, all doing great harm to the American people, to due process, to the rule of law, to law-abiding immigrant families and communities because of what has been unleashed by ICE in the Department of Homeland Security in ways that are turning earning off the American people significantly. And then, of course, we've got the most unqualified so-called Secretary of Defense in American history.

1:14:51And so from an oversight standpoint, there's going to be a lot to do. Yes, I can imagine. And we are prepared to do it all. Going back to the Tennessee election for a second, the Democrat did overperform by 13 points. That's a few points less than Democrats have traditionally been performing in these congressional special elections this year, about five points. Part of the discourse that happened afterwards among a lot of sort of political strategists and pundits was the candidate, the nominee, who I think ran a vigorous race in terms of turning out the base, particularly in Davidson County where Nashville is, but was probably not the best ideological fit for the district.

1:15:27She was quite liberal, endorsed by the DSA, had been a very active organizer who had a lot of videos of the Republicans sort of weaponized. I don't know that another candidate would have won that race. I'm not arguing that. But as you think about 2026, to win the majority and especially win a sustainable majority where you actually have a margin for error, you're going to have to win districts that Trump won by five, six, seven, eight, nine, sometimes more than 10 points. How are you thinking about candidate selection there? And are you and the DCCC planning on getting involved to sort of ensure that the candidates that you think are the best fit would be nominated?

1:16:05Well, it's certainly the case that we want to make sure that there are Democrats whose life experiences and whose perspectives match the districts that they're hoping to represent. That's the reality all across the country. And that will differ from place to place. In the Deep South, it differs from the Midwest. In the Midwest, it may differ from the coast in terms of the type of candidate, type of life experiences, the type of perspective. We've got to make sure that they're authentic. of course, that they're communicating on the issues that matter, as was done in Tennessee in terms of speaking aggressively to the issue of affordability, but that there's a sense that they can connect to the broadest possible swath of the electorate.

1:16:55And there are always two things that have to be done, as you know, to win these elections. energize the base and then move swing voters who can go either way in your direction and we certainly i think are going to make sure that there are as many candidates who are able to do both as possible everybody at capitol hill whether you're a progressive or a blue dog or a new dem knows to win these tough seats you got to do both things energize the base and move swing voters in your direction. Now, a lot of that has to do with speaking to the issues that matter authentically around driving down the high cost of living and, of course, addressing the health care crisis that exists in America and just generally wanting to make life better for the American people.

1:17:45But, you know, I think what was successful for us in 2018, and there were new Dems and there were Blue Dogs and there were progressives like Katie Porter who won swing districts. But what they had in common was that they spoke authentically. They were from their communities. They had a real close, authentic, affectionate relationship that was developed with the people that they were hoping to represent. And they had life experiences that made clear to folks that, you know what? I'm not a career politician. I'm interested in serving the people. Your counterpart, Speaker Mike Johnson, has been having a tough week.

1:18:32It seems like chaos is breaking out across the Capitol. You have members of his own leadership team attacking him. There were brief fears that there was going to be members just retiring left and right, even further narrowing his incredibly narrow majority. I don't know how much scuttlebutt you're picking up or what you're able to observe on the floor, but what is happening over there in the Republican caucus right now? Yeah. I mean, it's the GOP civil war that is raging. The bottom line is they can't stand each other. And a lot of them hate Mike Johnson. We have that in common. This is somebody who apparently has repeatedly lied to them.

1:19:09And we know he's repeatedly lied to the American people. And they're falling apart over there. They have no affirmative agenda. They've done nothing to make life better for the American people. And I think we kind of reached a boiling point to some degree this week because, again, you've got them not doing a damn thing to even pretend like they care about dealing with the high cost of living or addressing the fact that the Affordable Care Act tax credits are going to expire in just a few weeks. And I think a lot of Republicans, like Elise Stefanik, who I've never really agreed with on any other issue before, but clearly she can't stand him at this point, and, you know, believes that they're rudderless.

1:19:54And then you've got a group of other people who are like, why have we continued to castrate our majority and not even pretend as if we are a separate and co-equal branch of government? And I think as Donald Trump's approval ratings continue to speed rapidly toward the basement, he's at 36 in Gallup, maybe it in fact is the case that some House Republicans are like, yeah, do we have to agree with him on every single thing? Can't we find some space, particularly now that we're heading into an election cycle that looks increasingly difficult for us? So it's going to be very interesting to see how things unfold.

1:20:37in the next week or so, they already have such a narrow majority. And this, I think, was underappreciated heading into this year, that it was a tough cycle. And it's very bitter for all of us to have to absorb that we're dealing with this guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue again. And that, of course, we fell just short in the House of Representatives. But the reality is that when Donald Trump came into office in 2017, he just lost the popular vote, but he walked into a Congress with a majority of 241 House Republicans and only 194 Democrats. This time around, Donald Trump wins the popular vote and unfortunately does better directionally in every single state in the union.

1:21:29And yet he doesn't walk into Congress with a big majority. He walks into Congress with the narrowest majority that any party has had since the Great Depression. 220 House Republicans, 215 Democrats. And so things are very fragile for them. And that is also why we're starting to see the cracks really emerge because just a handful of Republicans who express dissent can collapse the whole situation. Last question for you, Leader Jeffries. You brought up – you talked about how corruption is part of the message. You brought up Trump's pardon of the narco, the drug trafficker. I want to talk to you a little bit about the Trump's pardon of your Democratic colleague, Congressman Cuellar, who serves in one of the most endangered districts in the country.

1:22:20You told CNN you thought that was probably the right outcome. Is that really the right outcome here, or would it have been better to go through the actual court process? Yeah. Here's what I thought. What Donald Trump has done in other instances is actually pardon people after the fact who've already been convicted by a jury of his or her peers in a court of law. That's completely and totally unacceptable. Now, I don't know why Donald Trump actually decided to go down this road, but it is my view that the charges that have been brought against Cuellar, and he's innocent until proven guilty, and whether you're a member of Congress or an everyday American taxpayer, hardworking American taxpayer, you're entitled to that presumption that the charges that had been filed, to me, read as very thin.

1:23:14Now, there may be members of the Department of Justice who brought this case who take a different perspective, and that's certainly fair for them to take that perspective. But what we've also seen is that these type of cases have repeatedly been thrown out by the Supreme Court. Now, this has happened over and over and over again by people on the Supreme Court who don't otherwise agree with each other. Literally, 8090 decisions. decisions, everyone from Ketanji Brown-Jackson to Elena Kagan to Sonia Sotomayor joining with John Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh and others, repeatedly throwing out these very cases.

1:24:01And so that's the perspective that I articulated. And it wasn't just based on the specific facts connected to that case that was brought, But the pattern that has repeatedly appeared over and over and over again, ultimately resulting in public servants being exonerated by the Supreme Court, whether they were Democrats or Republicans. But I mean, so I'd say a couple of things here. One is, yeah, everyone, you're exactly right, is presumed innocent until proven guilty. There will never be an opportunity to prove someone guilty here. But it's also in many of these cases, and as you say, he's presumed innocent right now.

1:24:42But many of these cases, it's not that the conduct was actually not corrupt. I'm not talking about this specific case involving Representative Cuellar, but in the cases that have been thrown out by the Supreme Court and other courts, it's that the Supreme Court has just raised the threshold of what an actual crime of bribery is, is so high that it's hard to meet. And so under this current threshold, you're getting – there's a lot of corruption that's happening that is not criminal. Having said that, I think the question here is, you know, I'm not a legal scholar. I can't argue that case, so I won't.

1:25:14But from the political perspective here, like corruption is one of your the three pillars, as it absolutely should be. I 100 percent agree. This is the most corrupt administration in history, more corrupt than Nixon. And there's nothing that better embodies that corruption than Trump's pardon process, where he's just doling out pardons to crypto people who have given his family money, to people doing business deals with his son, to these drug traffickers. Do you think it makes it harder for Democrats to run against those pardons or criticize those pardons when the one pardon we're okay with is the one that happens to be for someone on our side?

1:25:49Well, there actually, I think, have probably been a few other pardons that he's issued in the criminal justice area related to people, African-Americans largely. And a lot of this happened during the first Trump administration. And I, of course, worked with some parts of the administration to enact the First Step Act, the largest, most successful criminal justice reform legislation to merge through Congress in a century. and it in fact has resulted in tens of thousands of people being released from incarceration because of the failed war on drugs that we've finally begun to turn around in some way, shape, or form.

1:26:31We've still got a lot of work to do to deal with mass incarceration and particularly its impact on black and brown communities. So I take your point more broadly on the corruption issue. I think that our view on corruption is that we've got to clean up the mess in every single institution. So that means the Congress, that means the courts, and that certainly means the administration. Now, in that vein, I think the one piece of legislation that we've united behind as House Democrats and Senate Democrats is that we have to prohibit congressional stock trading. and that you're right. If we're going to go after corruption, we should go after it wherever we find it, which is why out of the gate, our view is we need to ban congressional stock trading.

1:27:21It should not happen. There's no justification for it. It also shouldn't happen in terms of judges or justices who get to decide cases before them where they may actually have a financial interest connected to stock that they own. And it also should never happen with the administration. Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, president, vice president, cabinet secretaries. It's insane that Donald Trump has actually most recently purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, in Warner Brothers stock. At the same time, his administration is deciding on a potential merger that would be a financial boon to the company and therefore any stockholders.

1:28:01But on this issue, the corruption issue, we've intentionally decided to start by addressing the mess that exists in our own house. And that's why we've led, to your point, to make sure that we maintain the high ground on banning congressional stock trading. And will you guys sign the discharge petition that a Republican representative has put forward to try to bring this to a vote? Yeah, so I am scheduled to talk with a few of the leaders on that issue over the weekend, and that includes Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of course, Pramila Jayapal, Joe Morelli, Seth Magaziner, whose legislation is connected to the bill that may be discharged, to figure out what path we want to take and whether Republicans are serious.

1:28:48part of the challenge that we have here is Mike Johnson immediately said, we're not bringing that bill to the floor of the House of Representatives. And so we haven't had the opportunity to even talk to our Republican colleagues about, okay, what's the strategy? We can try to discharge this bill, but then are they going to stick with us when Mike Johnson erects these other procedural obstacles that he could erect to try to prevent the bill from getting an up and down vote? So we just want to make sure that we've got reliable, at least I want to make sure we've got reliable partners on the other side of the aisle so we can see this through and make a clear promise to the American people that we're going to deliver it.

1:29:30Now, I can guarantee you when House Democrats take back control of the majority, if this issue is not resolved, we are going to resolve it and make sure that we ban congressional stock trading and then move on to the other aspects of corruption that exist in the other branches of government. but we're going to start by making sure we address the challenges that we have in our own house. Leader Jeffries, thank you so much for joining us and we'll talk to you again soon. Thanks so much, man.

1:30:00That's our show for today. Thanks to Hakeem Jeffries for coming on. Alex Wagner will be back in the feed on Sunday with a discussion with The Atlantic's Michael Shearer about the rise of RFK Jr. Check it out. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.

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