Tapper Corners Hakeem Jeffries Over Medicaid Provisions For Migrants

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) may have expected a friendly CNN interview on Tuesday — but anchor Jake Tapper surprised him by pressing on the very issue Democrats have tried to deny: taxpayer-funded healthcare for non-citizens.

When asked about the House GOP’s funding bill, Jeffries repeated the familiar Democrat line that Republicans were hurting “veterans, seniors, children, and healthcare.” But Tapper interrupted and turned to the hot-button issue driving the shutdown fight.

“So let me ask you about a provision that the Republicans are talking about quite a bit,” Tapper said. “They characterize it as, you want to give health insurance to undocumented immigrants. I understand that’s not really an accurate depiction…”

Jeffries jumped in, calling it “a lie.”

But Tapper quickly corrected him — and in doing so, validated Republican arguments.

“What you support does bring back funding for emergency Medicaid to hospitals, some of which does pay for undocumented immigrants and people who don’t have health insurance,” Tapper noted. “And also… this provision… is about people with asylum seekers and people with temporary protected status… about their ability to get Medicaid. So they’re non-citizens.”

In other words, while Jeffries tried to claim Democrats weren’t funding illegal immigrant healthcare, he couldn’t deny that their proposal restores federal dollars that do, in fact, cover healthcare costs for illegal immigrants and other non-citizens.

Pressed again, Jeffries deflected by claiming Republicans’ “One Big Ugly Bill” cut Medicaid so severely that “14 million American citizens are going to lose their healthcare.”

But the fact remains: the very bill Democrats are holding the government hostage over includes healthcare funding that benefits non-citizens — exactly what Republicans have been warning.

Jeffries insisted that “federal law” prohibits direct spending on illegal immigrant healthcare and accused Republicans of lying. Yet as Tapper’s question revealed, Democrats’ spending demands include Medicaid funding that inevitably flows to hospitals treating illegal migrants and expands eligibility for categories of non-citizens like asylum seekers and TPS recipients.

That admission — on CNN, no less — undercuts the Democrat narrative and strengthens President Donald Trump’s argument that the ongoing funding fight is about whether Americans or illegal aliens come first.