Washington, DC – Today, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell where he emphasized that Democrats will continue to push back against the far-right extremism of Trump and House Republicans.

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Leading off our discussion tonight is House Democratic Leader Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I understand how difficult your work week is these days, and I really appreciate you making the time for us tonight.

LEADER JEFFRIES: Great to be on with you tonight, Lawrence.

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: And I want to ask you about where your points of leverage are coming up, because in the House of Representatives, the minority has very few operative rights. You can introduce legislation, but it’s impossible for you to get bills passed. You can’t even get hearings on the bills. And the committee is run by Republicans. But it seems like the budget issues coming up, as far as I can see, are your first point of real leverage where you can negotiate real outcomes with Donald Trump.

LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, it’s an all hands on deck effort from beginning, every day, every week, every month. And that’s been the case. That means that it’s state, it’s local, it’s federal, it’s the House, it’s the Senate, it’s the courts, it’s the lawyers, it’s the governors back at home, certainly it’s the people in the community. With respect to the upcoming legislative dynamics here in the House, as we approach the March 14 spending deadline—that’s currently being negotiated in a bipartisan way, but we have made clear to our Republican colleagues that they have to respect Congress’s ability pursuant to the Constitution to appropriate funds and that we have to hold the executive branch accountable for laws that are enacted requiring funds to be spent on behalf of the American people. And that will certainly be part of our discussion, Lawrence, as we approach the March 14 spending deadline.

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Where—you know, what are you going to do about it? I know how challenging a question that is for members of the minority party in the House of Representatives. But the questions you’re getting and I know you’re getting back in New York and you see it online, is—what are you going to do about it? And the question people are asking is, what are you going to do about a president who simply doesn’t care about the law and no one in your position has ever had to strategize against that before?

LEADER JEFFRIES: Yeah, one of the things that will continue to be important is our partnership with lawyers and advocacy groups as part of the litigation strategy. We’ve seen a flood and an avalanche of outrageous executive actions that have been taken by the administration and by the current president, but that has also prompted a response of righteous litigation. There are more than 20 different lawsuits that have currently been filed, challenging at least 11 of the unlawful executive orders that have been filed. And that will continue as we move forward. At the same time, of course, we have to continue the opposition, where merited, in pushing back against far-right extremism here in the Congress. And we will. And we also have to make sure that we continue to win the battle for public sentiment. Abraham Lincoln made the point that public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed. And we’ve seen that in some of the forceful pushback that has caused the Trump administration to step back from their unlawful funding freeze and most recently to step back from the wide-ranging imposition of tariffs on our North American allies.

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Rachel made the point at the beginning of our hour here tonight that you are in a position with this extremely narrow margin in the House now to be able to exert a leverage that others in your position haven’t had because that—that vote that broke out of—the two parties are so narrow—and at the edge of the Republican vote count there, there’s certainly 5 to 10 Republican members who have to be very worried about their own ability to get reelected in districts that don’t support this extremism.

LEADER JEFFRIES: That’s exactly right. At the end of the day, the House Republicans have the narrowest majority of any party in Congress since the Great Depression. And as of the moment, it’s 218 Republicans, 215 Democrats. There are certainly 15 or 20 Republicans who are in swing districts who should be held accountable for pushing back against the extremism that is attempting to overwhelm the sanity of the American people. And we’ve got to make sure that on every issue, Republicans are held to account and that they can join us. If three Republicans—all it takes is three on any given issue to partner with the 215 members of the House Democratic Caucus to stop some of the madness from happening. And we’ve got to make sure that those Republicans are called to account on every single issue, including are they going to stand up for Social Security or not? Are they going to stand up for Medicaid or not? Are they going to stand up for Medicare or not?

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: New York’s Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Full interview can be watched here. 

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