White House, Emmer call for Jeffries to apologize

The White House on Friday called for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to apologize for remarks pledging to push back against the Trump administration's agenda.

Jeffries at a press briefing stressed "the need to look out for everyday New Yorkers and everyday Americans who are under assault by an extreme MAGA Republican agenda that is trying to cut taxes for billionaire donors and wealthy corporations, and then stick New Yorkers and working-class Americans ... with the bill."

"We are gonna fight it legislatively. We are gonna fight it in the courts. And we're gonna fight it in the streets," Jeffries said.

A release from the White House communications office Friday then blasted Jeffries for what it characterized as “a sick call for violence.”

“Will Minority Leader Jeffries apologize for this disgusting threat? Or will he double down on the same calls for violence that have plagued the country for years?” the statement read.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) also said on social platform X that Jeffries “should promptly apologize for his use of inflammatory and extreme rhetoric.”

“President Trump and the Republicans are focused on uniting the country; Jeffries needs to stop trying to divide it,” Emmer said.

But Jeffries’s office in a statement obtained by NewsNation flatly denied the inferences about his remarks.

“The notion that Leader Jeffries supports violence is laughable. Republicans are the party that pardons violent felons who assault police officers. Democrats are the party of John Lewis and the right to petition the government peacefully,” the statement read.

Jeffries during his press conference denounced the now-rescinded federal funding freeze and also knocked Trump for suggesting that federal diversity initiatives contributed to this week's deadly crash between a military helicopter and an American Airlines plane near Reagan Washington National Airport.

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