‘Grow Up!’ Joe Scarborough Trashes Left-Wing Hakeem Jeffries Critics — Calls Them Out for Hypocrisy in Cheering Mamdani’s Summits With Trump

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough offered some sharp criticism of those on the left who critiqued House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) for meeting with Jared Kushner, pointing out on Thursday that many of those same voices praised New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for meeting with President Donald Trump.

The New York Times first reported on the previously secret meeting on Sunday, revealing that Jeffries and Kushner met privately in New York in recent weeks to “discuss potential areas of common ground,” including housing, immigration and the cost of living.

Many progressive voices, however, were not at all happy with the minority leader’s move. Pod Save America’s Tommy Vietor wrote on X, “Jared Kushner has no actual government job,” stressing that “the only way” Jeffries should consider meeting with him “is with demands for documents and subpoenas.”

Yet on Monday’s edition of Morning Joe featuring Maggie Haberman, who broke the story for the Times, Scarborough went to bat for Jeffries, citing his own meetings with Kushner as proof that the president’s son-in-law is often willing to converse. “You talk to everybody,” Scarborough said of the minority leader’s role. “Is there a deal on immigration, for instance, that could lessen suffering over the next two years? It’s what your job is as a leader.”

Jeffries himself has responded to the critics, emphasizing on Monday that Kushner requested the meeting to discuss the “affordability crisis,” adding that Americans are “stressed the ‘F’ out” and Democrats have a “responsibility to address it.”

Responding to an X post from The Wall Street Journal promoting an article on the minority leader’s response, Scarborough wrote on the platform Thursday, “If you’re keeping score at home, Mayor Mamdani meeting with Donald Trump and calling him regularly is cool. But Leader Jeffries talking to a peace envoy with no official position in the administration is a betrayal of all that is good. Grow up.”

After both of Mamdani’s meetings with Trump in the White House — one in November and one in February — plenty were quick to praise the mayor’s ability to make the president happy.

Politico’s Jonathan Martin called the February meeting “a vivid display of graduate-level Trumpology,” while The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote that Mamdani was playing Trump “like a fiddle.”

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