Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D-Central Brooklyn, Coney Island/Queens) discussed the “unthinkable presidency” and lack of “presidential etiquette” at his State of the District Address delivered last week at Long Island University’s Paramount Theater in Downtown Brooklyn.
Jeffries took a hard-line against Republicans in Washington, D.C. for looking “to turn back the clock” and repealing the Affordable Care Act. He also criticized President Donald Trump for attacking Representative John Lewis (D-GA) a veteran icon of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.
“John Lewis did more in one day on Bloody Sunday than you-know-who did in his entire lifetime,” said Jeffries to about 3,500 supportive attendees.
“When I first got to Washington, Rep. Lewis told me to stay out of trouble, unless it’s good trouble,” Rep. Jeffries recalled. “Well, the Montgomery bus boycott was good trouble. Letters from a jail in Birmingham was good trouble. The Democrats’ sit-in on the house floor last year, which I was proudly a part of, was good trouble. The women’s march was good trouble.”
Rep. Jeffries predicted that Democrats would bounce back against Republicans who now controlled all three branches of government: “We got knocked down. But we’re weren’t knocked out.”
Further to that, a vociferous Jeffries turned his attention from Washington to GOP voters calling some of them “racists.” “Not all of Donald Trump’s voters are racist,” he said. “But all of America’s racists voted for him.”
