Ashley Etienne, a former communications director for both former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Kamala Harris, blasted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ decisions at the helm of the Democratic Caucus during a podcast episode released Thursday.
Etienne, who ran the former speaker’s anti-Trump war room, blasted Pelosi’s successor as House Democratic leader over his alleged lack of coordination and organization, during an appearance on Politico’s Playbook Deep Dive podcast. Etienne, citing conversations with Democratic House lawmakers, portrayed Jeffries as indecisive and too weak in opposition to President Donald Trump.
“If you don’t have coordination, you’ve just got words on a paper that you’re calling talking points,” Etienne said. “It’s meaningless. And I think that’s where we are right now.”
“I was hearing from leadership staff that the leadership on Capitol Hill right now wants to sort of move away from that Pelosi era — that they … don’t want to embrace anyone or anything that’s like Pelosi,” Etienne told the podcast host, Politico’s Rachael Bade. “Which I just think is the dumbest s-h-i-t ever.”
Although Etienne expressed respect for Jeffries’ “ability to message,” she immediately followed up saying that the top House Democrat cannot effectively make decisions on how to message.
“What I’ve been hearing from members is that, to sort of some it up, he thinks long, too long and wrong about things. He takes too much council and then takes too long to make a decision,” Etienne said. “Which says that maybe you don’t trust your gut in the moment, which is also fair when you’re a new leader cause you’re still trying to figure it all out. It might also suggest maybe you don’t have a handle on the caucus, or you don’t have a handle on how to actually land some punches on Donald Trump.”
Jeffries has reportedly been taking some heat from the left for lacking a plan to counter the Trump administration. Etienne said she noticed a lack of control over the caucus during the president’s joint address to Congress in March.
“I thought the 50 different protests during his joint address was embarrassing. It was a T-shirt, it was a paddle, it was a walkout. The reality is, you’ve gotta learn when to pull the trigger on some of these tactics,” Etienne said. “I also thought it was a problem for Mr. Jeffries. It says a lot about how people value his leadership. He asked for no protests, and what did they do? They protested in fifty different ways to the point in which it was just an ineffective protest. I think that was the beginning of a signal that he might have a larger problem.”
After Trump’s joint address, Democrats’ protests quickly made headlines, whether it was refusing to clap for special guests throughout the speech or Democratic Texas Rep. Al Green’s repeated disruptions which resulted House Speaker Mike Johnson promptly removing the lawmaker from the chamber.
The morning Etienne appeared on Politico’s podcast, Jeffries had given a speech about the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency. However, she said no one on the Democratic leader’s team sent out a press release with his talking points.
“And I’m going to be doing TV and this interview all day. That’s a failure,” the former top Pelosi and Harris aide said. “How do you get to discipline if you’re not telling people what the hell you want them to say?”
Etienne also said she was “disappointed” after a press conference earlier this year where Jeffries said the Democrats had “no power” being in the minority.
“It said to me that he’s not seeking out the answers to that actual question which is what powers do I have in the minority? What can I actually do?” Etienne said. “Trump is just giving us all this incredible red meat. I mean, incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s like the biggest gift any party has been given by the opposition and we’re just squandering it.”
“Hakeem Jeffries is the so-called leader of a team that doesn’t fear him, doesn’t follow him, and now, doesn’t even pretend to respect him,” National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spokesman Mike Marinella said in a press release.
Jeffries on Monday dodged the Daily Caller News Foundation’s question on his messaging to House Democrats on taking trips to El Salvador to protest reputed MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation. Reports later surfaced that Jeffries was telling Democrats behind closed doors to stop the trips to the Central American nation.
Jeffries and his office denied the reports, calling the discussions “a complete and total fabrication” at his Thursday press conference after another reporter asked if he supports members of his conference going to El Salvador in the future. Jeffries said, “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
“Hakeem Jeffries greenlit a trip to support an illegal immigrant and alleged MS-13 gang member, then turned around and threw his own members under the bus when it blew up in his face,” Marinella said in a statement. “Now he’s acting like he had nothing to do with promoting an alleged domestic abuser as their poster child. This is what Democrat ‘leadership’ looks like.”
Jeffries’ team did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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