Jeffries spars with CBS host on claims the upcoming midterms will be ‘rigged elections’

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., briefly sparred with CBS’ Margaret Brennan on Sunday over his claims that President Donald Trump will “rig” the midterm elections.

During an interview on “Face the Nation,” Brennan pressed the New York representative about his past comments insisting there were “no election deniers” in the Democratic Party despite recently suggesting the upcoming midterms could be “rigged elections.”

“Democrats were appalled when President Trump used language like that,” Brennan said. “How do you justify using that now? Doesn’t that undermine faith for voters you need to show up?”

“No, I’ve been using that term in the context of Donald Trump’s unprecedented effort to gerrymander congressional maps in a partisan fashion all across the country in order to rig the midterm elections and deny the ability of the American people to actually decide who should be in the majority as it relates to the House of Representatives,” Jeffries said.

“You know Democrats are also going through gerrymandering and redistricting,” Brennan interrupted.

“No. No. No. Well, Democrats are going to push back aggressively to make sure that we have fair maps across the country, not partisan gerrymandering, which Republicans have initiated in state after state after state,” Jeffries insisted.

The interview concluded shortly after that exchange.

Jeffries was previously pressed about his support for redistricting in blue states, including his own, while attacking red state redistricting during an August interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

“You praised New York’s state legislature for redrawing new ones,” Bash said. “Is criticizing Texas hypocritical given what you pushed for in your own state?”

Bash also pointed out that Jeffries had been against redrawing New York’s congressional maps in 2022.

“What’s important is that in New York, the redrawn map that was actually adopted by the legislature was adopted on a bipartisan basis,” Jeffries said. “Democrats and Republicans in the Assembly voted for the map because the redraw was fair. That’s not what’s happening in Texas. In Texas, this is a racial partisan gerrymander ordered by Donald Trump as part of an effort to rig the midterm elections. And we’re not going to let it happen.”