House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Wednesday bashed President Trump’s first 100 days of his second term in the White House as a “debacle.”
The New York Democrat said Mr. Trump’s presidency has been riddled with failure, corruption and cruelty while Democrats are still trying to find their footing in GOP-controlled government.
At an event in Washington marking the 100-day milestone, Mr. Jeffries accused Mr. Trump of failing to follow through on his campaign promises of lowering costs and dinged him for recent polling that showed his approval rating had cratered with voters outside of his base.
Mr. Trump hit the 100-day mark on Tuesday and celebrated it with a rally in Michigan, touting his administration’s quick end to rampant illegal immigration, deportations of thousands of illegal immigrant criminals, and aggressive moves to end woke policies and downsize the federal government.
Mr. Jeffries said the flurry of activity was nothing but chaos.
“Donald Trump and his sycophants spent yesterday bragging about the speed with which they’ve moved during these first 100 days,” Mr. Jeffries said. “They’re right. Never has a president failed so spectacularly, so often, so quickly, as Donald Trump.”
His remarks came on the heels of news that the U.S. economy shrank by a rate of 0.3% during the first quarter of this year, a decline blamed on the president’s sweeping tariffs.
Mr. Trump said the troubling economic news was not his fault.
“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” he said on social media.
Mr. Jeffries also teased a path forward for House Democrats, who, along with their Senate colleagues, have been largely rudderless since the November election that saw Republicans win control of all the levers of power in Washington.
“Over these next 100 days, House Democrats are going to lay out a blueprint for a better America, and you will see a vision for a better America that isn’t about Donald Trump, it’s all about you,” he said.
Still, Mr. Jeffries and other Democratic leaders in Congress are largely unpopular with voters. For example, a poll from The Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos found that more Americans trusted Mr. Trump to handle the biggest challenges facing the country than Democrats.
The House’s top Democrat also accused Republicans of being nothing more than a “rubber stamp” for Mr. Trump’s agenda, and he accused them of planning to gut Medicaid health coverage for the poor.
House Republicans’ budget resolution includes at least $880 billion in cuts from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the health care program.
Mr. Jeffries said Republicans were trying to “rip health care away” from Americans.
Mr. Trump and GOP congressional leaders have vowed not to reduce benefits from legitimate Medicare recipients. They said any cuts will target waste and fraud in the program.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said that “Democrats were frankly lying about the intention of Republicans.” He urged people to “reserve judgement” until the House had finished work on the proposed cuts to Medicaid.
“You’re going to see what the president said yesterday, accurately, that Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security are programs that are sacrosanct to the people,” he said in an interview with Axios. “They depend upon these things, and our job is to shore them up and make sure that they’re there, that we preserve the programs for the people who genuinely need and deserve it.”
