Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries says President Donald Trump is little more than a “studio gangster” who “pretends to be a tough guy,” according to Politico .
Jeffries made the comments Sunday morning during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press in light of the recent events which has seen Trump trade blows with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It all started earlier this week when Trump reportedly walked out of a meeting on infrastructure with Pelosi after only three minutes, leading to Pelosi publicly urging Trump’s family and friends to stage an effort to keep him calm. This infuriated Trump so much that he shared doctored videos of Pelosi appearing to slur, leading to further antagonism between the White House and the House Speaker’s office.
Jeffries said that Trump’s ruffian attitude during important meetings was hurting the American people.
“You know, the president didn’t just walk out on a meeting with [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and infrastructure, Chuck. He walked out on the American people,” Jeffries said.
Trump later suggested that he would start working with Democrats if they stopped investigating him, but Pelosi seemed to have made no such promises to the president. Jeffries said that Trump was trying to bully the Democratic leadership into terminating the investigations into him, but Pelosi was beginning to give him a taste of his own medicine. Jeffries said that Trump must leave his temper tantrums behind and focus on what’s important for the country.
“Donald Trump is functionally a studio gangster. He pretends to be a tough guy, but he is really just playing that role on TV. Hopefully, he will have gotten this temper tantrum out of his system. He can come back from Japan. We have crumbling bridges, roads, tunnels, airports, mass transportation systems. We need to get to work to fix it. We have a plan and we’d like to do it in a bipartisan way.”
“Well, I certainly think there’s reason to believe that there was obstruction of justice,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries said. https://t.co/NDGSVReO57
— POLITICO (@politico) May 26, 2019
Jefferies also insinuated that the Democratic leadership isn’t quite ready to bring impeachment proceedings against Trump. The Democratic Caucus Chairman said that his responsibility is to see that the president is not overreaching his executive privilege, pointing out that Pelosi and other Democratic lawmakers were not interested in politicizing the issue of impeachment against Trump. He basically appeared to rule out the move.
“The only way to proceed is to make sure that politics don’t dictate a decision to impeach or politics don’t dictate a decision not to impeach,” Jeffries said.
