Hakeem Jeffries’ allies see a racial double standard in the backlash over his Kushner meeting

Progressives say their criticism is about his politics, while defenders argue the potential first Black House speaker is held to a different standard.

U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the Democratic leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, is facing blowback after privately meeting with President Donald Trump‘s son-in-law to discuss ways the White House can work with Democrats as Washington, D.C., braces for a likely shift in power after November’s midterm elections.

According to The New York Times, Jeffries met with Jared Kushner in New York City in recent weeks to talk through “potential areas of common ground” on issues such as housing, immigration, and the high cost of living. The move signals that the White House appears to be accepting Republican defeat in Congress amid tanking poll numbers for Trump, and the rising costs of gas, groceries, housing, and other essential goods.

Kushner does not have an official title within the Trump administration, but serves as an outside advisor to his father-in-law and often serves as a surrogate for the president in foreign affairs.

Left-wing critics of Jeffries’ meeting with Kushner say it shows yet again how much the Democratic leader is out of touch and doesn’t meet the current political moment, and what Democratic voters, particularly Black, brown, and younger voters, want from elected Democrats. Defenders of Jeffries, who will likely be the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, should Democrats win the majority in November, say the outrage is unwarranted and that Jeffries is being treated differently as a history-making Black leader within the party.

“The people who are criticizing him are right to criticize him,” says Nina Turner, a liberal Democrat and former state senator from Ohio who ran for U.S. Congress in 2022.

Turner represents a wave of progressive voices who have called out Jeffries and Democratic Party leadership over policy issues, from Israel’s military strikes in Gaza to, most recently, Jeffries denouncing his past support for Medicare for All.

She told theGrio that Jeffries is a “slick talker in a slicker suit” who represents “corporate Democrats at their finest.” Turner said that rather than having a private meeting with Kushner, who faces accusations of corruption as a private citizen working unofficially for President Trump and as a real estate businessman making international deals, Jeffries should make a “public declaration” of where he stands on the issues to “lift the people,” particularly Black Americans.

Speaking about the criticisms against the Democratic House Leader, Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist who has advised Jeffries for years, said, “Hakeem Jeffries can meet with whoever the hell he wants to,” adding, “That’s his prerogative, that’s his business. And so it’s stupid for anybody else to think that they get to decide who he should or should not meet with.”

He dismissed the blowback against Jeffries as “silly, manufactured, convenient outrage by some on the left.”

Seawright also argued that most of the outrage from the left is coming from white progressives and others online who “seem to take issue every time he sneezes or every time he does not look their way.”

He told theGrio, “They take this approach of their way or the highway, and that’s not how things work. Truth be told, there are some who really take issue with the fact that a Black man is poised to be speaker, and they make it known in different ways.”

Michael Hardaway, a former senior advisor and communications director of Jeffries, agrees, telling theGrio, “I think as a Black man, Hakeem has been held to a different standard this entire period. And I know that, as Speaker, that will continue, unfortunately.”

He added, “This is a larger conversation about the way that Hakeem Jeffries is covered by the media and how Jeffries is treated in this town.”

Hardaway says there’s a “misunderstanding” about Jeffries meeting with Kushner.

“Jared Kushner is one of the most powerful people around the president…Trump has empowered him. Whether he works in the White House or does not work in the White House is irrelevant because he has Trump’s ear,” said Hardaway. “If you want to get something done, you have to deal with that guy.“

Moreover, the former Jeffries communications director said of his former boss: “Hakeem doesn’t approach this from an emotional perspective. He approaches this strategically…So he says, even though we are investigating this guy and we are the opposition, it is our job to find a way to help people if we can do it.”

Seawright called out a double standard in criticisms of Jeffries’ meeting with a Trump ally, citing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s two meetings with President Trump, both in the Oval Office.

“I find it ironic because they had no problem when the mayor of New York had a meeting with the president. And that was celebrated. They take no issue when members of Congress that they like, like [U.S. Rep.] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, work with Republicans on things that they agree upon,” he told theGrio. “But when Hakeem Jeffries, the first African-American leader of any caucus and poised to be the first African-American Speaker, does it, then those who are fluent and privileged seem to take issue with that.”

But Ashley Etienne, a former communications director to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, says there is a significant difference between Jeffries meeting with Kushner and Mamdani’s meeting with Trump. She told theGrio that while Jeffries deserves credit for trying to position Democrats to achieve policy wins for the American public, “I would not have advised him to go about it this way.”

Mamdani’s meeting with Trump was “more powerful,” she said, because it was a very public meeting with the “guy in charge,” including a joint press conference. However, she said Jeffries has an opportunity to “own the narrative.”

“My advice to him would be to come out and say, listen, I met with Jared Kushner, who’s got the ear of the president of the United States. And I laid out what the Democrats’ priorities are,” said Etienne. “He’s got an opportunity, if he plays his cards right, to position the president, the leader of the Republican Party, Mr. [U.S. Rep. Mike] Johnson, and all those around the president as the opposition to progress on the issues that the American people care about. That takes strategy. That takes risk. So the meeting was a risk, but now you’ve got to figure out how do I own it.”

Hardaway says, at the end of the day, voters do not “send their elected officials to Washington to do nothing or just complain on television.” He argued, “Their job is to get something done.”

“Even if you don’t like the person personally, even if they’re massively corrupt, which Donald Trump obviously is, that’s not really the point…if you can still do something to help people, you should do that,” he told theGrio. “It’s not at all connected to Hakeem’s ability as speaker to oversee and the congressional investigations that will certainly happen as it relates to Epstein and Donald Trump, stock trading, and everything else he has done.”

Seawright says Jeffries “welcomes constructive criticism,” however, “it’s silly for those who have not constructed anything to find themselves criticizing his efforts and his leadership.”

Etienne acknowledged that, unlike her former boss, Nancy Pelosi, who negotiated deals with Trump and former President George W. Bush (“who many Democrats consider to be the anti-Christ at the time”), Jeffries is “operating in a different environment.”

“There is so much frustration, animosity, and disillusionment among Democratic voters toward Democratic leadership. So that’s what made him vulnerable to criticism,” she expIained, pointing to a CNN poll showing 64% of Democratic voters want a “radical change within the Democratic Party, starting with leadership.”

Nina Turner tells theGrio, “We’ve got to start calling these people out. I don’t care if they’re Black…they’re not our kind.” Taking particular umbrage with Jeffries recently saying he doesn’t support Medicare for All, she said, “He knows that Black people have the worst health outcomes in the United States of America…Hakeem Jeffries is not looking out for the everyday working-class people of this country. And he’s especially not looking out for the African American community.”

She is calling on Democrats to be uncompromising and to be aggressive in achieving an economic agenda to help Black and other Americans suffering in Trump’s economy, including reinstating the Child Tax Credit, which expired due to bipartisan dealmaking during the Biden administration.

“They’re not going to do that because they’re cowards. They’ve been co-opted,” said Turner.

Hardaway dismissed criticisms over Medicare for All, explaining to theGrio that, as the leader of the party, Jeffries has to be more strategic in leading his caucus to a majority this November. That includes not alienating Democrats in swing districts, where the party is trying to flip Republican seats.

“It’s not about Hakeem…if we don’t win those districts, we don’t have a majority. And if we don’t have a majority, then we can’t stop any of these horrific, illegal, and unconstitutional acts by Donald Trump,” he told theGrio.

Etienne says that while there is “no right way to do these things,” she does believe “two things can be true at one time.”

“The volume of the criticism…[and] the tone and the tenor in which it has been presented have been unfair, and one can say it is undergirded by sentiments toward his race,” she told theGrio. “I also think that it’s a fair criticism when you have a private meeting, and you’re not transparent about your intentions in the content of that particular meeting.”

The communications veteran, who also worked with former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, says it’s not just about the next two years of power dynamics between Congress and the White House.

“His objective, which I think is lost on people who are criticizing him right now, is that his primary objective is not just to win [back Congress] in November,” she said. “The primary objective is going to be, how do you position the Democratic Party to win the White House [in 2028].”