Leader Jeffries Discusses Total Chaos in House GOP

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2:35Ben Meiselas:We've been reporting how lots of other MAGA Republican Congress members are threatening to resign. They've had enough of MAGA Mike, they've had enough of Donald Trump, and they want to leave the same way Marjorie Taylor Greene left. By the way, just as Kevin McCarthy went on Fox and said that he believed that Marjorie Taylor Greene's resignation was, quote, the canary in the coal mine, a warning that more MAGA Republican Congress members are about to go and MAGA Mike better do something or he's about to lose his speakership. So what does MAGA Mike do? Well, he goes on Stephen Miller's Wife's Podcast, which as of the time I'm recording this, it got about 233 views.

3:20Ben Meiselas:But I will tell you what happens as MAGA Mike literally loses it. Like the guy is losing his mind. So he's there with his wife and then he starts doing like weird dance moves to pretend he's cool. Here, let me show you this. Here, play this clip. You know who Jelly Roll is? Do I? No. Yes, we have selfies together. Right. So then he's there with his wife, Kelly Johnson. And here's what he talks about over here about being speaker. Let's just play this clip. Probably no downtime. Yeah. Hardly any downtime for me. No, that's right. I mean, even when you think like the work of the day is done and you put the phone down, I mean, this would be 1130 at night.

4:05Ben Meiselas:Ring, ring. What? Another crisis, you know, I mean, you're sort of like a firefighter in a way. You have to put up fires every, you know, every hour. And there's more from MAGA Mike and his wife right here. And he tries to say, like, the Democratic shutdown, it's all of their fault. Here, play this clip. It is such an all-encompassing role because you're in charge of not just the policy and legislative side, but it's the fundraising, the politics, the member management, you know, all the various aspects. And it is a, I mean, somebody asked me the day. We were accused when we were out of session, when the Democrats closed the government down a couple weeks ago, Hakeem Jeffries is the Democrat leader in the House, and he was out saying, Speaker Johnson put the House on vacation.

4:47Ben Meiselas:And I thought it was laughable. And I was on Fox News Sunday last weekend, and Shannon Bream asked about that. I said, that's funny. I haven't had a vacation day in two years. I haven't been off in two years, literally. So it really does. Maybe Christmas Day. Maybe Christmas Day. But even then, even then, last Christmas, I was taking calls from members with their drama. You know, so, I mean, that's part of it. We accept the responsibility. It's first season of life. It's not forever, but it is. It takes everything out of whomever serves in a position and by extension, their family. So we're blessed to have a close knit group.

5:18Ben Meiselas:It's a team effort for sure. And you have to feel called to it together, no doubt. And it's it's a true honor, though. It's it is difficult, but it is an honor to serve our country. And then Maga Mike here talks about how the process of becoming speaker was very rushed because no one wanted Maga Mike to even be the speaker in the first place. Here, let's play this clip right here. It all felt very rushed and not something I don't believe you guys prepared for. Oh, no, not at all. In fact, it was such a surprise that I wasn't even here for it. As I told him, I said, we don't know what's going to happen.

5:56Ben Meiselas:I mean, we've already seen what's already happened. And so I'm just, I'm not going to, I'm not going to come up there. And then, so I missed it. But yeah, our lives changed overnight. And we were not prepared for it, but we've just been taking it one day at a time. And we are adjusting finally. We are finally getting used to it. I just found that first clip interesting where Meg and Mike's like, Being the speaker is like being a firefighter. And every day I've got to put out fires right now. All right, well, let's take a look at some of those fires, MAGA Mike, as Jake Sherman from Punchbowl reported.

6:35Ben Meiselas:First, he talked about all the MAGA Republicans who seem to be ready to be resigning very soon. And then Sherman writes, since his prior report ran four hours ago, he's now gotten countless more text messages from House Republicans agreeing with this sentiment and saying, why the hell should we stay in Congress if all we're going to do is vote on censure motions and be a potted plant for Trump and MAGA Mike? Marjorie Taylor Greene reposts this from Ann Vandersteel, who writes, it's over. The whole MAGA psyop is over. It's America only ride or die. Don't slide into my DMs whining about flipping on Trump.

7:16Ben Meiselas:He flipped on us. Even Tucker Carlson saying, I'm not a Republican anymore. Dave betrayed us. Watch what he has to say. Here play this clip.

7:50Ben Meiselas:and vape shops? Like, how about now? Well, all of that's taking place. Donald Trump's been panicking over the idea, the threat that Republicans may lose Tennessee's 7th congressional district. There's a special election that's taking place in the next week or so there, where you have the MAGA Republican candidate, Matt Van Epps, running against the pro-democracy candidate, Afton Bain. Afton's been on Midas Touch podcast. I'm sure you saw the interview I did with her. She was absolutely great. This was an area that Trump won by 20 points. Trump is freaked out. He's been posting, please vote Van Epps, please vote Van Epps.

8:26Ben Meiselas:It's a Trump plus 20 district. I think it's going to be a very close race and it's possible Afton Bain wins. And if she does, Democrats have a real ability to potentially take control of the House. Not after that seat, but we need a few more resignations. And then I think that that could happen actually. And you're hearing lots of reporting about it. By the way, don't take my word for it. Here's what Kevin McCarthy said, that Marjorie Taylor Greene's resignation is a canary in the coal mine. Here, play this clip. Okay. What happened, by the way, with MTG? She's leaving Congress? She's leaving Congress, but I don't think that's the end that you'll see about her.

9:02Ben Meiselas:And I think, look, I've always believed that anytime you have an elected official that's known by three initials, they're effective on what they do. And I found Marjorie to be very effective, but she's almost like a canary in a coal mine. And this is something inside Congress they better wake up because they're going to get a lot of people retiring and they got to focus. I think keeping members out of Congress, you only get two years to be in the majority. And if the Democrats get you not to work every day for two months, that's losing two months of the majority. To help us make some sense of this, if we can, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, Leader Jeffries, it's so great to see you.

9:42Ben Meiselas:What do you make of this right now, these rumblings that we're hearing in the Republican Party of utter chaos? Well, Trump and Republicans are completely falling apart. They've been a total failure from the beginning of the year, broken their core promise, which was to drive down the high cost of living. Costs are going up, housing costs out of control, childcare costs out of control, grocery costs out of control, electricity bills through the roof. And now they continue to refuse to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, meaning they're going to make health care unaffordable for tens of millions of folks.

10:16At the same time, they're unleashing this incredible extremism on the American people. Donald Trump is deeply unpopular. They got wiped out in elections all across the country, up and down the ballot from New Jersey to New York, to Virginia, to Pennsylvania, to Georgia, to Mississippi, to California, and at all points in between. And now you've got Republicans who are ready to get out of town before sundown. And I think these reports that Republicans are going to follow Marjorie Taylor Greene to the exit, these are all consistent with some of the things that we're hearing in the United States House of Representatives when we're on the floor.

10:59Yeah.

10:59Ben Meiselas:What do you make of the fact that Trump was going to talk about, I don't want to call it a plan, but he was apparently going to talk about extending Affordable Care Act subsidies because he realized how popular it is to extend those and how it was harming him. So he was about to do a press conference. Then from all of the reporting, MAGA Mike Johnson with all of his crew in the House said, if you do that, basically, the resignations are probably going to start to happen sooner than expected. You can't do that. And then Donald Trump backed off. So there was an announcement that he was going to do something in public and then they shut it down.

11:38Ben Meiselas:It was erratic and it was odd, but it's also kind of playing with the people who need this right now. And so it was almost extra cruel, I felt. What do you make of it? It's incredible to me that Donald Trump was prepared to address the Affordable Care Act tax credit issue. And then House Republicans, led by Speaker Johnson, made clear that you can't do that because our members, for whatever reason, want to see tens of millions of people experience these dramatically increased premiums, copays, and deductibles. It's extraordinary. But we waged a month-long fight, months-long fight, as it relates to the Affordable Care Act tax credits and indicated that it's not over.

12:22We're just getting started. And this is only going to end in one of two ways. Either Republicans are going to agree to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits before December 31st of this year, or the American people are going to throw Republicans out of office because of their failure to make their life better. And that's the dilemma that Republicans are in right now, as Democrats in the House, we're continuing to press our case with a three-year extension connected with a discharge petition. We have over 200 signatures already. At the end of the day, when we return to Washington next week, we only need a handful of House Republicans to join us, and we'll be able to successfully force an up or down vote on extending the Affordable Affordable Care Act tax credits, and that's our intention.

13:14Ben Meiselas:Do you think there's a realistic possibility for that discharge petition in order to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies from what you're hearing? I believe that the votes do exist to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, and we're in active discussion with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, particularly now that Mike Johnson has killed the ability of legislation to be put forth for us to negotiate negotiate and discuss from the Trump administration. This is going to have to be an approach that has been taken in other occasions, most recently, of course, as it relates to forcing the release of the Epstein files and the legislation that was triggered by the discharge petition when Representative Adelita Grijalva became the 218th signature.

13:59We're going to have to take a similar approach. Listen, Mike Johnson had House Republicans on vacation, a taxpayer-funded vacation, for seven weeks. This guy is uninterested in governing or doing anything to make life better for the American people. That's part of what is causing this great Republican dissatisfaction. And also they know they're headed to defeat. Marjorie Taylor Greene in her farewell video made that clear. Republicans are about to lose control of the House of Representatives. That's one of the reasons why we're going to see continued retirements when people sit down with their families over the Thanksgiving break and realize they don't want to come back to the malignant clown show that has been the House Republican Conference.

14:42Ben Meiselas:Are you noticing a difference in the way Republicans are acting in the past few weeks since the shutdown? I mean, you mentioned that they seem more receptive to potentially a discharge petition on the Affordable Care Act subsidy extension. If you and I were speaking, say, two months ago, doesn't seem like that would ever be the case. So that seems like a new development. Are you seeing that these cracks that are being talked about behind the scenes, Republicans who see themselves as very vulnerable are now speaking to either you or the whip or other people in leadership to say, what can we, what can we do?

15:20Ben Meiselas:Like, we'll, we'll agree to these things. Are you seeing things like that? Because that sounds like a difference. It's a combination of a few things coming together at the same point in time. We took the fight to them during the Trump Republican shutdown. The American people clearly have held Republicans responsible for shutting down the government, saw all manner of cruel and irresponsible behavior during the Trump shutdown, including ripping food away from the mouths of hungry children and seniors and veterans unnecessarily, while at the same time refusing to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

15:54Republicans are struggling with their gerrymandering scheme at best. We are going to fight them to neutral. That's not what Republicans expected was going to happen. And there's a worst case scenario for Republicans where they actually may net lose seats at the end of the day. So you've got angry Republicans, particularly from California, who feel like their seats have been taken away from them because of Republican action on this gerrymandering stuff to no end at the end of the day. Then Republicans were wiped out in early November across the country because of their unwillingness to address the cost of living issues, which is out of control in this country, while Democrats are running toward that affordability issue, making clear we want to fight hard and we'll continue to do so to lower the high cost of living, fix our broken healthcare system, and clean up corruption that's rampant under Republican control of government right now.

16:53And then, of course, they lost the battle as it relates to the Epstein files. The survivors won. The American people won. All of these things are coming together at the same period of time. And so Republicans, I think, are starting to realize that despite their claim that they had some massive mandate, nobody can find it. It doesn't exist. The American people are rejecting their extremism and embracing the democratic view, which is anchored in making life better for the American people.

17:22Ben Meiselas:And Donald Trump goes on vacation again. I mean, he leaves on Tuesday. I mean, Thanksgiving's Thursday, and I understand that it's a holiday, but dude, I mean, you're like, there's a lot of things going on right now. And it just seems over and over again, all this guy wants to do is rush out to go to Mar-a-Lago and golf and grift just over and over, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. That's right. Golfing and grifting seems to be, you know, his favorite pastime as president of the United States of America, which is one of the reasons why the overwhelming majority of Americans are saying the country is moving in the wrong direction.

17:56Republicans have gone too far enough with the extremism and their failure to do anything to make life better for everyday Americans. We've seen this unprecedented assault on all of the things, on the economy, on health care, on law-abiding immigrant communities, on veterans, on farmers, you know, on the American way of life, on the rule of law and democracy itself. And the American people are rejecting this extremism. And that is the opportunity that's in front of us so that we can continue to pour into the American people the notion that we're going to preserve this great country, this union, this democracy of ours, and we're going to end this national nightmare.

18:36Ben Meiselas:You know, also, you know, just as I observe Trump's behavior, here. He also just seems like deeply unwell. I don't know how else to describe it. I mean, you know, he often needs help walking. I see him zigzagging in the meeting with Putin. When he was with the prime minister of Japan, she had to like show him like where to go. He talks about phone calls that he has with people. And it seems like he's not having these phone calls and he's just, you know, he's just making it up. And then he was asked about this MRI that he got. And he said, I don't know which body part it was on. Who knows? People don't know where they get MRIs, but it was the most perfect MRI.

19:20Ben Meiselas:It strikes me as something that should be important and discussed that we don't just go, hey, by the way, he's the only person who's ever gotten an MRI who says, I don't know what body part. Let's move on. I mean, because this guy is close to the nuclear weapons, you know, and I'm watching him and I'm like, this is someone who looks unwell. I don't know if it's dementia. I don't know if it's him getting old and that's how his bodies respond. I just know observing it that he looks deeply unwell. It's hard to tell what the heck is going on because the guy's been out of control for such a long period of time, lying for such a long period of time, norm breaking for such a long period of time.

20:00The one thing that is clear is that this presidency has been a disaster and a failure. And it doesn't look like it's getting any better. He spends more time on the golf course than he does solving problems for the American people. And as you pointed out, Ben, going off again, jet setting down to his luxury resort where we'll see images again of him being on the golf course. Meanwhile, everyday Americans are struggling to make ends meet, can't thrive, can barely survive. Too many people live in paycheck to paycheck and the American people are done with it all. And, you know, it's going to be very interesting when we get back to Washington to see the continued erosion, I believe, of Donald Trump's grip on the Republican Party.

20:46The whole thing is falling apart. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene, this was his ride-or-die biggest supporter. And now they're in the middle of a civil war. The whole thing is crashing and burning.

21:01Ben Meiselas:Leader Jeffries, we appreciate your time, as always. Thank you so much. Thank you. Everybody, hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers.

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