Today, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber where he emphasized that the Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill will gut healthcare and nutritional assistance for millions of hardworking Americans in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.

ARI MELBER: The Democratic Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, joins us now. Good evening, and thanks for joining us at this very busy time.

LEADER JEFFRIES: Good evening. Great to be with you.

ARI MELBER: Great to have you. I want to just begin, before we get to any of the Washington politics, with this tragedy down in, of course, Kerr County, Texas. Death toll is over 100. As of tonight, we have the latest reporting, which is 161 people are still missing, including a lot of individuals that, of course, have not been accounted for and the worst is feared in terms of what we’re hearing. What is your response to this ongoing, unfolding tragedy that’s affecting so many? You know, what else can the federal government do?

LEADER JEFFRIES: Our thoughts and prayers are certainly with all of the families who’ve been impacted by this terrible tragedy, and we’ll continue to stand with them and do everything that we can to try to be there for them as a federal government in terms of the recovery and the rebuilding that will necessarily have to take place. Right now, we’re also appreciative, of course, of the fact that we have first responders who are still engaged in a search and rescue effort to try to hopefully find folks who have not been currently located. I think there will also be a moment where, as a Congress, we need to aggressively ask some questions about what happened? Why did it happen? How do we prevent this type of tragedy from ever happening again? There’s real concern, Ari, with the fact that, you know, the National Weather Service has been decimated by the Trump administration. There’s real concern that Donald Trump and his Homeland Security Secretary have threatened to defund FEMA. And there’s real concern that the Texas State Government may not have necessarily done everything that they could have done in advance of the flooding to protect those communities.

ARI MELBER: Is this, since you mentioned, an area where you think that defunding at the state or federal level could have played a part in an avoidable level of tragedy?

LEADER JEFFRIES: That remains to be seen, but certainly we have to ask those questions, and we’re going to have to get those answers, and we’re prepared as Democrats to aggressively do just that.

ARI MELBER: Yeah. Understood. We showed you speaking on the floor there fighting the budget, I guess you and Cory Booker, I don’t know if you guys trade tips in the hallway about how you go that many hours. And I want to ask you about this, you know. We try to call it straight here and follow the facts, the evidence on all these issues here on this program. And it seems like on this one, Democrats have lost a lot of public skirmishes. It seems like Democrats won the messaging battle, but still didn’t have the votes. So I want to get your response to that, but I’ll put up on the screen the numbers here. Just top line—you have a lot more debt, kicking off over 11 million people from their current health coverage, going after popular programs like Medicaid and, overwhelmingly, as you know, as people learned about this bill, the more they learned, the more they didn’t like it. It’s overwhelmingly opposed. Before I get your answer, I just want to show again. Let’s get out of the coastal national news, let’s get out of the television news of coming out of these, you know, folks who might follow politics every day. We checked the polling. This was going underwater 18 points. And local coverage has actually echoed some of the facts Democrats have mentioned against the bill. Take a look.

VIDEO 1: It’s going to be a big, beautiful challenge for hospitals.

VIDEO 2: Rural hospitals could face a loss of medical care and services. Millions of Americans who have Medicaid face losing their healthcare coverage.

VIDEO 3: They’re anticipating about 500,000 people will be cut, will have their Medicaid benefits cut from the Big Ugly Bill.

VIDEO 4: There is no spinning this as if there’s a positive thing.

ARI MELBER: Did you get your message out effectively? And if so, what do you say to people who are frustrated that the bill still passed?

LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, the One Big Ugly Bill represents the largest cut to Medicaid in American history. Hospitals will close, nursing homes will shut down, community-based health clinics will be unable to operate and people are going to die in community after community after community, including in rural America. I think it certainly has been the case that we have successfully communicated across the country the implications of this One Big Ugly Bill. It hurts everyday Americans in order to reward billionaires. And we’re going to continue that effort in state after state after state, in congressional district after congressional district after congressional district. The American people should understandably be frustrated that they clearly have rejected this bill, did not want it to be passed, but Republicans in the House of Representatives have decided to once again be nothing more than a rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda. All we needed were two additional Republicans to join us, and we could have stopped this bill, that’s out of 220.

ARI MELBER: And what does it mean that Republicans said out loud they oppose the bill, or big parts of it, and still voted for it?

LEADER JEFFRIES: I spent a lot of time on the House floor, going through a lot of the letters that had been written by my Republican colleagues complaining about the Medicaid cuts, complaining about the cuts to the clean energy tax credits, complaining about the cuts to nutritional assistance and the fact that this bill rips food out of the mouths of children and then they turned around and bent the knee to Donald Trump, because that’s what they do. They don’t work for the American people at this particular point in time. They work for Donald Trump. They act like a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump administration. It’s an embarrassment. And now that embarrassment will actually result in the American people being hurt in devastating ways.

ARI MELBER: We also track culture. As you know, sometimes the punchlines give you a sense of where the story is. Here is Jon Stewart.

JON STEWART (VIDEO): Holly s*** you what? You somehow managed to severely cut the safety net and expand the deficit. That’s impressive. That’s one of those. ‘Hey man, how did you gain all that weight?’ ‘Ozempic.’ That’s something that’s hard to do.

ARI MELBER: Does this tag the GOP as the fiscally irresponsible party? And where do we go from here? I mean, you’re a pretty young guy by the standards of Washington. Are we going to hear from them when they’re out of power again in however many years that a Democratic White House is growing the deficit? Does that even make sense given their record right now?

LEADER JEFFRIES: Republicans are complete phonies when it comes to be claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility. All they have done, administration after administration after administration—they did this during the administration of George W Bush. They did it during Ronald Reagan’s administration. And now, of course, they’re doing it again during Donald Trump’s second administration—is explode the debt and the deficit. Why? In order to provide massive tax cuts for the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected and subsidize the lifestyles of the rich and shameless. Now you’ve got a bill where they actually have combined hurting everyday Americans, largest cut to Medicaid in American history, largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history, hurting veterans, hurting seniors, hurting children and at the same time, exploding the debt and the deficit. We are going to tattoo this disgusting abomination of a bill to the foreheads of every single Republican who voted for it.

ARI MELBER: Hardball tattoo politics there. All right. I want to ask you about the ongoing abuses of power alleged by Donald Trump. We’ve seen National Guard there in the streets. Democrats have sued over that. We have Marines used on a small basis, but seems like a test case. We have then, related, in the courts, although it might not get as much dramatic attention, certainly not the visuals like you see here. But this report about Trump claiming sweeping powers to literally nullify laws just passed by Congress, supported by Republicans, by the way. Legal experts telling The Times that Trump is claiming this power to immunize private parties to commit otherwise illegal acts and blatantly defying the recent TikTok rule, whether people agree with it or not, and I think you all know there’s some controversy about that TikTok ban. Since when does the President just say, well, we’ll enforce it later, or maybe not at all. And what specifically does your party do about that?

LEADER JEFFRIES: Well, Donald Trump has launched an all-out assault on the American way of life, on the rule of law and democracy itself. And this is going to require, of course, a Congress that actually functions as a separate and co-equal branch of government. We will not get that from the modern-day Republican Party, although we are still looking for some folks, just a handful, to show Liz Cheney or John McCain levels of courage to push back against the extremism that is coming from the Trump administration. We haven’t seen it so far, and that’s shameful, but we’ll continue to press them to try to achieve it on behalf of the American people. You know, the courts will need to function as a backstop. And unfortunately, we’ve seen, increasingly, an unwillingness by this Supreme Court to actually push back against Donald Trump and some of his executive overreach. At the end of the day, it was said during the founding of the Republic that when the people fear the government, there is tyranny. But when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

ARI MELBER: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

LEADER JEFFRIES: And at the end of the day, it’s going to be the people rising up, pushing back against this extremism, showing it in community after community after community and then, ultimately, when it’s time to go to the polls, to send a clear message that America is better than this.

ARI MELBER: So, let me take exactly where your answer goes. Someone listening might say, wow, that sounds good. I hope Hakeem Jeffries is right, but what if he’s wrong? What if we’re actually past the point where we can just count on free and fair elections when, as you know, and to be fair—you’ve spoken out about this, of course—the person in the office, he won lawfully, he won the Electoral College in what we know to be a free and fair election. But previously, when he lost, he tried to subvert that. We had a convicted sedition. He then freed the sedition convicts, as everybody knows. And so, there’s great concern about not a repeat of 2020, but a more effective version of it. And you’ve heard this concern. It’s not just random, sort of, activist or the most extreme sort of people worrying about it. James Carville, a longtime, sort of, centrist Democratic figure, said this about rigging the midterms.

JAMES CARVILLE (VIDEO): Actually, your concerns are legitimate. I would never tell anybody that’s worried that no, don’t you worry about that. He’s been trying to do anything that he can possibly to try to extricate himself from what is almost certain to be a humiliating loss in October, November of 2026. So, people should be worried, they should be vigilant, they should watch this.

ARI MELBER: Is this a legitimate concern? And if so, what are you doing about it?

LEADER JEFFRIES: We have to be incredibly vigilant to make sure that there are free and fair elections. I think we have to look at what’s in front of us. And this year, of course, there are off-year elections in New Jersey and in Virginia. We’ve got to make sure that the Democratic nominee, Mikie Sherrill, wins in New Jersey, the Democratic nominee, Abigail Spanberger, wins in Virginia. They’re both tremendous public servants, have served this country in a variety of different ways, including in the Congress. And then, of course, be prepared as it relates to the midterm elections. Now, the good news is—to the extent that there’s a silver lining in our electoral system—is that we don’t have a national election system. It’s state by state by state. And in many of the states where there will be competitive gubernatorial elections, and certainly in the overwhelming majority of the states where the House will be decided, there are Democratic Governors, Democratic Attorney Generals and Democratic Secretaries of State. I’d be far more concerned, honestly, Ari, if we were looking at a situation where the fate of the House would be determined in states where Republicans are in charge.

ARI MELBER: So, you’re saying—to be clear, because it’s a patchwork—you’re saying you’ve studied this, and if there are Republicans trying to play games, they’re not actually overseeing the races that you think would control the House outcome?

LEADER JEFFRIES: That’s absolutely correct. There are seats in New York, seats in New Jersey, seats in Michigan, seats in California, seats in Wisconsin, seats in Pennsylvania, seats in Arizona that, you know, by way of example, that are going to determine in large measure who controls the House in the aftermath of the midterm election. Every single one of those states have Democratic Governors, there are Democratic Attorney Generals, Democratic Secretaries of State. And so, that’s kind of the landscape that we find ourselves in. And I’ve got trust in those leaders to make sure that there are actual free and fair elections.

Full interview can be watched here.

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