Dem Leader on MS Rips ‘Dangerous’ Trump Rants About Taking Over Elections

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) blasted President Donald Trump over his repeated rants about “taking over” and “nationalizing” elections, calling the rhetoric “dangerous.”

Trump drew criticism across the board on Monday when he said Republicans “should take over” elections in 15 states by “nationalizing” them.

He doubled down in the Oval Office on Tuesday when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked him to explain himself, and again in an interview with NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas.

On Thursday night’s edition of MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, guest host Ali Velshi asked Leader Jeffries to weigh in:

VELSHI: This — what do you make of this business about nationalizing elections? Every — every day Donald Trump sort of says it differently and then some Republicans say they don’t like it, and the White House walks it back. But he is talking about not — not changing our entire election system, just changing it in some places. He mentioned Detroit and Philadelphia and Atlanta. I wonder what they all have in common. It’s dangerous talk. One can laugh about it, but it’s really dangerous talk.

JEFFRIES: It’s dangerous talk. It unsettles the American people, and it should. Listen, Donald Trump understands that if there is a free and fair election in November, and we’re going to make sure there is one, that the House is lost, Democrats are going to take back control of the House of Representatives. And the Senate is looking increasingly shaky as well, because the American people are rejecting this extremism.

Donald Trump and Republicans have failed. They failed on the economy. They failed on health care. They’re failing on immigration enforcement. They failed to address the challenges of the American people and certainly address them in a way that is consistent with who we are as we celebrate our 250th birthday.

And so we — we have adopted an all hands on deck approach in terms of making sure that it’s the American people who are the ones who decide who controls Congress in the aftermath of the November midterm elections, not Donald Trump and his extreme sycophants.

Watch above via MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes.

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