House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) accused the Supreme Court of corruption on Tuesday in a scathing attack on the court’s conservative justices, which led to CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asking for clarification.
Blitzer began the exchange by asking Jeffries to respond to Sen. Angus King’s (I-ME) justification for voting to reopen the government and end the shutdown, a move that has angered many in the Democratic Party’s base.
“Well, the suffering that has been visited upon the American people over the last several weeks is very consistent with, unfortunately, the suffering Donald Trump and Republicans have visited upon the people since day one of his presidency, where we’ve seen these Republicans unleash extreme levels of aggressive behavior that does not make life better for these Americans. It makes life worse,” Jeffries replied, adding:
And we’ve seen it: an all-out assault on the economy, an all-out assault on health care, an all-out assault on nutritional assistance, an all-out assault by these Republicans on veterans and farmers and law-abiding immigrant families and the American way of life and, of course, democracy itself.
And so our fight obviously is going to continue through whatever happens this week because as House Democrats we’re committed to driving down the high cost of living, to fixing our broken health care system, and at the same period of time cleaning up the corruption that exists in Washington, D.C. — in the Congress, at the Supreme Court, and of course with the Trump administration, the most corrupt administration in American history — so we can actually deliver a country of the people, by the people, and for the people.
“I just want to be precise. You say the Supreme Court has been corrupt. Is that what you’re saying?” Blitzer followed up.
“Yeah, what I’m saying is that the outrageous behavior by individual justices like Clarence Thomas and Justice [Samuel] Alito, and the failure to have an ethical code of conduct, is corrupt. These are the only people in the country who can operate above the law,” Jeffries alleged, adding:
And so what I am suggesting is that as we focus on delivering a country that actually works for working-class Americans, we’ve got to make sure that every single branch of government is working in a manner consistent with lifting up the quality of life of everyday Americans and holding themselves to the same standards that working-class Americans are expected to live by: work hard and play by the rules.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
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