Ashley Etienne, former communications director for both ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Kamala Harris, sharply criticized House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ leadership in a podcast episode released Thursday.
Speaking on Politico’s Playbook Deep Dive, Etienne, who previously led Pelosi’s anti-Trump war room, accused Jeffries of lacking coordination and organizational strength. Citing conversations with House Democrats, she described him as indecisive and insufficiently forceful in standing up to President Donald Trump, the Daily Caller reported.
“If you don’t have coordination, you’ve just got words on a paper that you’re calling talking points,” Etienne said. “It’s meaningless. And I think that’s where we are right now.”
“I was hearing from leadership staff that the leadership on Capitol Hill right now wants to sort of move away from that Pelosi era — that they … don’t want to embrace anyone or anything that’s like Pelosi,” Etienne told podcast host Rachael Bade of Politico. “Which I just think is the dumbest s-h-i-t ever.”
While Etienne acknowledged Jeffries’ talent for communication, she quickly noted that the top House Democrat struggles to make effective decisions regarding messaging.
“What I’ve been hearing from members is that, to sort of sum it up, he thinks too long and wrong about things. He takes too much council and then takes too long to make a decision,” Etienne said.
“Which says that maybe you don’t trust your gut in the moment, which is also fair when you’re a new leader, cause you’re still trying to figure it all out. It might also suggest maybe you don’t have a handle on the caucus, or you don’t have a handle on how to actually land some punches on Donald Trump,” she added.
Jeffries has reportedly faced criticism from the left for not having a plan to counter the Trump administration. Etienne noted a lack of control over the caucus during the president’s joint address to Congress in March.
“I thought the 50 different protests during his joint address was embarrassing. It was a T-shirt, it was a paddle, it was a walkout. The reality is, you’ve gotta learn when to pull the trigger on some of these tactics,” Etienne said. “I also thought it was a problem for Mr. Jeffries. It says a lot about how people value his leadership.
“He asked for no protests, and what did they do? They protested in fifty different ways to the point in which it was just an ineffective protest. I think that was the beginning of a signal that he might have a larger problem,” she noted further.
Following Trump’s joint address, Democratic protests quickly drew media attention, ranging from lawmakers refusing to applaud honored guests to repeated outbursts from Rep. Al Green of Texas, which led House Speaker Mike Johnson to remove him from the chamber.
On the same morning Ashley Etienne appeared on Politico’s podcast, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries delivered remarks marking the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency. Yet, according to Etienne, no one from Jeffries’ team distributed a press release or circulated his key talking points, highlighting what she viewed as a lack of basic messaging coordination.
“And I’m going to be doing TV and this interview all day. That’s a failure,” the former top Pelosi and Harris aide said. “How do you get to discipline if you’re not telling people what the hell you want them to say?”
Etienne went on to say she was “disappointed” after a press conference earlier this year, after Jeffries said the Democrats had “no power” because they’re in the minority.
“It said to me that he’s not seeking out the answers to that actual question, which is what powers do I have in the minority? What can I actually do?” Etienne said. “Trump is just giving us all this incredible red meat. I mean, incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s like the biggest gift any party has been given by the opposition, and we’re just squandering it.”
