Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) revealed over the weekend that he’d yet to speak with his House counterpart, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), since splitting with most of his party to advance a GOP-crafted bill to avoid a government shutdown.
The revelation laid bare the icy relationship between the pair in the wake of Schumer stirring outrage among Democrats for departing from demands within the party to oppose the stopgap spending measure, a move that would have almost certainly led to a shutdown.
Schumer, pressed repeatedly in an interview with The New York Times, eventually conceded he and Jeffries “haven’t spoken since the vote, but we speak all the time.”
“We speak regularly, and we have a good, close relationship,” he added.
Jeffries refused three times last week when prompted by reporters to address whether he felt Schumer should remain Democratic leader in the Senate, an eyebrow-raising position that some Senate Democrats also adopted.
Next question,” Jeffries twice told reporters, failing to come to the aid of his fellow New Yorker.
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He later said his conversations with Schumer would “remain private” and scolded reporters for pressing him a third time.
“You keep engaging in these parlor games because you want to take the focus off the American people,” Jeffries said. “What we’re saying is we look forward to continuing to work with our Senate colleagues, all of them, in opposition to the extremism that’s being unleashed on the American people.”