House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) delivered a jab at Republicans on Friday, pointing out their history of election denial in a speech that began with a moment of bipartisan celebration and ended up showing the two parties divide.
Speaking at the House dais, Jeffries opened with a statement that resulted in loud cheers and whistles from Republican lawmakers:
“Two months ago, the American people elected Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States of America,” Jeffries announced.
The chamber erupted with applause, and GOP lawmakers jumped to their feet in celebration of Trump.
But Jeffries didn’t miss a beat, quickly following up with another statement:
“Thank you for that very generous applause,” he said with a wry smile. “It’s OK. There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle.”
As Republican cheers abruptly stopped, Democrats rose to their feet, applauding and cheering even louder than their counterparts. Jeffries seized the moment to deliver a message about patriotism and the values his party stands for:
“One should love America when you win and when you lose,” he said. “That’s the patriotic thing to do, and that’s the America that House Democrats will fight hard to preserve because we love this country.”
.@RepJeffries: "Two months ago, the American people elected Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States of America."
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 3, 2025
[applause]
Jeffries: "Thank you for that very generous applause. It's okay. There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle." pic.twitter.com/9P9jbiTPzr
The moment, captured on C-SPAN, is a prime example of the great divide between the two parties.
Jeffries’ comments are a reminder of the actions taken by many Republicans following the 2020 presidential election. In January 2021, just hours after an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol fueled by Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, 147 Republicans voted to overturn the certified results of the election.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has also faced scrutiny for his role as an orchestrator of a legal strategy to challenge the 2020 results. Other prominent Republicans, like Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), have been criticized for their actions during that tumultuous period.
In a 2021 text to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Norman urged the Trump administration to impose martial law—though he misspelled it as “Marshall Law.”
Norman later expressed regret about the message—not for its content but for the spelling error.
