Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner. The New York Times reported it. The Democratic base lost its mind. Jeffries filmed a defensive response video in what appeared to be a hat borrowed from a St. Patrick’s Day parade and a camera angle that made the whole thing look like a hostage recording. Then JB Pritzker tried to help and accidentally confirmed that Kushner had successfully played Jeffries like a fiddle.
Let’s take these in order.
The meeting. “He asked for a meeting, and I took it,” Jeffries said, confirming he met with the man his own party calls a member of the “Trump cartel.” His explanation: they discussed affordability issues. That’s the entire justification for sitting down with Jared Kushner — affordability. The same Hakeem Jeffries who promises to hold every member of the “Trump cartel” accountable met with one of its allegedly most powerful members to talk about grocery prices. Good strategy.
The video. The camera angle was baffling. The hat was inexplicable. The energy was defensive. The content was essentially: I met with Kushner, I’m still against Trump, stop being mad at me. It accomplished none of those objectives.
YIKES:
Left-wing “Young Turks” hack Cenk Uygur immediately posted a theory that the outfit was designed to trick the base into thinking Jeffries has working-class credibility. The internet’s assessment ranged from “he looks like his mommy dressed him for his first day of school” to “quadruple negative aura” — the latter from Greg Price, who is not wrong.
Then Pritzker stepped in to help. “Jared Kushner clearly requested a meeting so he could leak he had one — and I don’t think Democrats should be divided by MAGA tricks.”
Read that again slowly. Pritzker’s defense of Jeffries is that Kushner asked for a meeting specifically to leak it and make Jeffries look bad — and that Jeffries took the meeting anyway, and that Democrats shouldn’t be divided by this obvious trap that their own Minority Leader walked directly into.
This is help. From the governor of Illinois. In the middle of an election.
The mockery from both directions tells the complete story of where Jeffries is as a leader. The DSA left is furious he met with Kushner at all. The right is laughing at the hat. JB Pritzker’s rescue attempt confirmed that Jeffries got played. And the video itself will be a fundraising email for Republicans within 24 hours.
Hakeem Jeffries was supposed to be the competent establishment alternative to the DSA wing — the guy who could hold the center while the socialists won the primaries. His response to a single meeting with a Trump family member was to film a defensive self-tape in a leprechaun hat.
The center is not holding. It is wearing an inexplicable hat and explaining itself to a socialist/commie hack named Cenk Uygur.