MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Monday suggested Democrats are too focused on policy amid a “ketamine-fueled, middle-of-the-night, autocratic power grab,” and hinted the party needed more “steel in your spine.”
The cable news anchor’s comments came during an interview with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) for a feature on voter frustration with the Democrat response to the second Trump administration.
Maddow explained the anger generated by the Elon Musk-led remaking of the federal government, as evidenced by explosive town hall meetings across the country, was being directed at “all the Democrats, including the Democratic leader in Washington, Hakeem Jeffries.”
Footage of protests outside Jeffries’ office was accompanied by Maddow arguing the demonstrators wanted Democrats to be more “aggressive.”
During the interview with Jeffries, Maddow pointedly said that “policy doesn’t feel like it’s the main conversation right now” among stressed Americans.
“It feels like we are in the middle of a ketamine-fueled, middle-of-the-night, autocratic power grab that is rendering Congress irrelevant, that’s rendering policy irrelevant and that’s rendering the rule of law an afterthought, if not a joke, to those who are planning on staying in power indefinitely, without benefit of further elections,” she said.
Musk has admitted to regularly using ketamine, a horse tranquilizer and powerful anesthetic that’s become a popular recreational drug, to treat depression.
The broadcaster added she believed Americans wanted to hear from a senior Democrat that “you understand the scale of the threat, and you have ideas about how to interrupt what feels like something that we have not experienced since the Civil War in terms of the threat to our republic.”
In response, Jeffries agreed “our communities have been under siege” since before the Civil War, and that “we’re winning in court. They’re losing.”
“More than 35 different unconstitutional and unlawful executive orders and administrative actions have been challenged,” he added.
Maddow then suggested that the town hall protests were in part an effort to “try to put steel in your spine, among others.”
After quoting Abraham Lincoln, Jeffries responded directly: “I don’t think anyone needs additional steel put in their spine. Let’s be clear about that.”
Watch the full interview below.