Hakeem Jeffries Torches Trump Over Breaking No. 1 Campaign Promise: ‘They Lied’

The House minority leader (D-N.Y.) also pointed out that Trump’s casinos went bankrupt, “which is, like, impossible to do.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) says President Donald Trump “lied” when he promised on the campaign trail to lower everyday costs for the American people — and mocked the MAGA leader Tuesday for his business failures.

“We know that he bankrupted at least three different businesses, including bankrupting a casino, which is, like, impossible to do,” Jeffries said on the “MeidasTouch Podcast.” “The house always wins, unless the house, in terms of the casino, is being run by Donald Trump.”

“Now he’s actually trying to bankrupt the United States of America, crashing the economy and driving us toward a recession,” Jeffries added.

In 2014, Trump’s casino company filed for bankruptcy for a fifth time, a fact that is still being mined for jokes on late-night television more than a decade later.

But the fate of Trump’s businesses has become a serious subject with Trump back in office. He has imposed steep international tariffs on U.S. imports that threaten to risk a recession — or worse — and seem to fly in the face of his own political promises.

“Donald Trump and House Republicans spent all of last year on the campaign trail promising to lower costs on day one, to bring down inflation and to make life more affordable,” Jeffries said Tuesday. “That was their central promise to the American people.”

“They lied,” he continued. “There was never any intention to do it.”

Trump vowed to reduce inflation and lower the cost of groceries while campaigning against former President Joe Biden and then former Vice President Kamala Harris. He walked this back after winning the election, however, stating: “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up.”

“And we now see that costs aren’t going down, they’re going up,” Jeffries said during his podcast appearance. “Tariffs are actually adding thousands of dollars of additional costs to hardworking American taxpayers.”

Yale University’s Budget Lab has estimated the tariffs will cost the average household $4,700.

Jeffries also noted that members of the Trump administration “think that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme,” referring to tech mogul and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s remark on Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this year that Social Security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

“I think it’s fair that a lot of Americans across the country that I run into are questioning whether Donald Trump is actually fit, at this point, to be able to carry out the duties of the United States of America, in terms of being the president and the commander-in-chief,” Jeffries added.

Watch the New York Democrat’s full remarks below.