“This lunatic, Hakeem ‘Low IQ’ Jeffries, should be charged with INCITING VIOLENCE!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on the morning of Thursday, May 7
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NEED TO KNOW
- President Donald Trump has called for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to be prosecuted, accusing him of “inciting violence” in relation to the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
- On Thursday, May 7, Trump referenced Jeffries’ previous statement, in which Jeffries called for “maximum warfare, everywhere all the time,” following an electoral victory in Virginia last month
- Jeffries has since responded to Trump’s latest message, telling the president in part, “The American people are suffering because you’re a complete and total failure”
President Donald Trump has called for the prosecution of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., accusing Jeffries of “inciting violence" ahead of the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
“This lunatic, Hakeem ‘Low IQ’ Jeffries, should be charged with INCITING VIOLENCE!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on the morning of Thursday, May 7. “The Radical Left Democrats actually want to Destroy our Country. President DJT.”
In his post, Trump included an image of Jeffries standing next to a sign of Trump with the words, "Maximum Warfare, everywhere, all the time," a statement Jeffries made against Trump and Republicans across the nation after declaring victory in a Virginia redistricting battle. A photo alongside it was an image of the scene from the assassination attempt with the words "3 days later" above it.
In his initial statement, Jeffries addressed political battles, telling reporters in a news conference, “We are in an era of maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time, and we are going to keep the pressure on Republicans in every single state in the union to ensure at the end of the day that there is a fair national map."
It appeared to be a reference to a quote in The New York Times in August 2025 by an unnamed source “close to the president” who described the White House’s redistricting strategy as “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”
There is no evidence that the alleged WHCD gunman, 31-year-old California man Cole Tomas Allen, was inspired by Jeffries’s remarks.
Jeffries has since addressed Trump's latest comments in an Instagram video.
“What’s wrong with you, bro? Why do I stay on your mind?” Jeffries asked on Thursday. “Gas prices are surging, grocery bills are out of control, Americans are drowning in your failed economy and you ain’t got nothing better to do?”
“You need an intervention, get some help! The American people are suffering because you’re a complete and total failure,” Jeffries added.
Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty
The Brooklyn Democrat called Trump’s post a “deranged rant” and lamented he had to respond to “an out-of-control president” after feeling good about the New York Knicks winning the first two games of their second-round NBA playoff series with the Philadelphia 76ers.
“You ain’t intimidating a damn person,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries is attempting to lead Democrats to victory in November and win back the House, which would elevate the longtime lawmaker and protege of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi to become the first Black speaker of the House in U.S. history.
A flurry of mid-decade redistrictings in states across the country has created maps favorable to Democrats in Virginia and California and favorable to Republicans in Texas and Florida. As Trump and Jeffries traded barbs on Thursday, Tennessee Republicans approved a map that splits up the state’s only majority Black district.
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Trump has frequently threatened his political enemies with prosecution, and his Justice Department has followed through on those threats on numerous occasions since his return to office.
Just last week, the Justice Department charged former FBI director James Comey for the second time in six months, this time for posting a photo of seashells on a North Carolina beach arranged to read “86 47” — a coded call for Trump’s assassination, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche argued. Blanche is Trump’s former criminal defense attorney.
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Also on Thursday, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly attended a hearing before a federal appeals court to determine whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon could punish the former Navy captain and astronaut for filming a video warning active-duty troops not to obey illegal orders.
When the video of Kelly and other Democratic lawmakers was released in November, Trump called for their prosecutions and hangings.
Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty
Most notably, Trump encouraged thousands of his followers to march on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to stop the certification of his 2020 election loss.
In the four years that followed, more than 1,500 people were charged with crimes, including 608 who were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers and 174 who were charged with using a “deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.”
As one of his first acts upon returning to the White House, Trump pardoned virtually every person charged with a crime in connection with that day, except for 14 defendants who were freed from prison after he commuted their sentences.
Christopher Moynihan, a Capitol rioter who was sentenced to 21 months for the crimes he committed on Jan. 6, 2021, was arrested again in October 2025 by New York State Police for threatening to kill Jeffries. He pleaded guilty in February.
"Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” Moynihan wrote in a text message, according to the criminal complaint. “Even if I am hated, he must be eliminated… I will kill him for the future.”
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