‘the Dumbest S--t Ever’: Ex-pelosi Adviser Gets Candid About Jeffries

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries received mad props from the base this spring for his showdown with the GOP over Elon Musk and a potential government shutdown.

But to hear one longtime Nancy Pelosi whisperer tell it, the New York Democrat’s leadership is lacking.

For Playbook Deep Dive’s podcast this week, I invited the woman who ran the former speaker’s anti-Trump war room, Ashley Etienne, to discuss Democrats’ latest efforts to find a path back to political relevance. We talked about what Democratic kingmakers need to do to win back voters — from building out a better ground game to ditching attention-grabbing stunts that reek of desperation. She scoffed at the Democratic Party’s failure to conduct an autopsy of what went wrong in 2024, which has left the party reaching contradictory conclusions about how to fix its problems.

But the most interesting part of our conversation centered on Jeffries. While Etienne said she has “a tremendous amount of respect” for Jeffries, she gave voice to concerns I’ve heard from some Democrats privately: that the New York Democrat hasn’t shown enough backbone as a leader, and that his organizational skills are deficient at a time when strong, creative leadership is badly needed.

“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,” Etienne said, pointing to Jeffries as the main culprit.

Etienne believes Jeffries isn’t doing enough to wire the Democratic infrastructure with an anti-Trump message. He’s not coordinating enough with outside groups and elected officials around the country, she said, or deploying his moderates to argue that the party needs to heed the center.

“If you don't have coordination, you've just got words on a paper that you're calling talking points,” she said. “It's meaningless. And I think that's where we are right now.”

Her criticism speaks volumes. Not only did she have a front-row seat to Pelosi as speaker — and her famed political instincts and iron grip on the party — Etienne ran point for the speaker on coordinating messaging. Earlier she worked for Barack Obama and House Oversight bull Elijah Cummings, and most recently, she served in the Biden White House, where she advised Kamala Harris for a time.

The most shocking part of our conversation: Etienne said Jeffries’ team has spurned the idea of seeking advice from Pelosi or her former team. She said she recently ran into Jeffries staffers and offered to help them. But they told her that “the members don’t want any Pelosi.”

“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,” she said. “Which I just think is the dumbest s-h-i-t ever.”

Pelosi, she added, is “the baddest in the business. We actually landed punches. We actually won 40 seats. I'm just surprised that they're not calling everybody that has landed some punches on Trump asking for the best advice.”

Jeffries spokesperson Christie Stephenson disputed the characterization of Jeffries’ relationship with Pelosi as well as the description of the office’s outreach. She said Jeffries often seeks the ex-speaker’s input, something Pelosi’s office confirmed. As for coordination, Stephenson said their office holds weekly calls with outside grassroots where attendance regularly tops 100 people, and often schedules calls with talking heads and outside strategists.

To be sure, Jeffries has had some winning moments as leader, which Etienne acknowledged. Democrats credit him in part with helping push Joe Biden out of the 2024 race — though Pelosi herself started the mutiny behind the scenes. And months after taking over, Jeffries rallied his caucus to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker at a time when many were predicting that the party would fracture and the California Republican would survive.

More recently, he’s received praise for presenting a united front against the GOP’s tax bill. Some centrist Democrats who might be enticed to negotiate with Republicans have instead blasted the bill as a giveaway to the rich.

Still, Etienne is not wrong that Pelosi dominated the party apparatus in a way that Jeffries does not — at least not yet. In many ways, Pelosi operated like the conductor of a sprawling orchestra, bringing in liberal groups when she needed them to fire at Trump and cueing moderates when she needed the center to cool down the left. She knew exactly what turn of phrase would make Trump go ballistic — and she’d often press his buttons for maximum impact at just the moment to suit her needs.

Jeffries is still finding his conductor’s baton, Etienne suggested.

Outside groups are thirsting for more guidance and many are asking her how to help replicate what she did with Pelosi’s team.

“They're not hearing from Capitol Hill right now, and I think that's a huge loss,” Etienne said.

Not everyone agrees. Some believe Pelosi’s outreach amounted to getting groups on the phone and dictating to them. Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee told me last night that “we hear more for Jeffries than we ever heard from Pelosi.”

Yet during our interview in the POLITICO newsroom Wednesday, Etienne held up her phone and gave an example. That very morning, she noted, Jeffries was giving a speech about 100 days fighting Trump, but no one from his team sent talking points about what he said.

“And I'm going to be doing TV and this interview all day,” she said. “That's a failure.”

“How do you get to discipline if you're not telling people what the hell you want them to say?” she added.

Jeffries’ office says they did multiple calls with outside groups to preview the speech and that Etienne was on one of them.

Meanwhile, some longtime centrist party bosses have privately questioned whether Jeffries can stand up to the left. His decision to embrace a shutdown earlier this year — averted only after Chuck Schumer threw himself on the sword — has led some to question whether the new leader has what it takes to tell the base no, though Etienne did give him credit for keeping the caucus together.

Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal, did it all the time, “I need your energy, not your policy,” she’d often say. And the former speaker would regularly quash progressive ideas bubbling up in her own caucus, from Medicare for All to the Green New Deal.

Jeffries hasn’t done much to push back on the left so far. Some Democrats wanted him to rebuke Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) for his outburst during Trump’s joint address to Congress; Jeffries refused. Others argued that he bowed to liberal groups when he decided to whip his members against a GOP bill targeting sanctuary cities, even as the party maintains abysmal poll numbers on immigration.

Jeffries is generally known for his caution, sticking to his talking points and rehearsed lines. He's a former corporate lawyer and often acts like it. But with Democrats divided, Etienne said members are craving forceful and visionary leadership. She’s heard some House Democrats express frustration that Jeffries — who has a reputation for governing by consensus — solicits too much feedback before making a decision. (Though some Democrats like that he’s the opposite of Pelosi’s top-down approach.)

“He takes too much counsel and then takes too long to make a decision — which says that maybe you don't trust your gut in the moment — which, you know, is also fair when you're a new leader, because you're still trying to figure it all out,” Etienne said. But it “might also suggest maybe you don't have a handle on the caucus — or you don't have a hand on how to actually land some punches on Donald Trump.”

Even when Jeffries has planted a flag, she points out that he’s had trouble containing his members at times. During Trump’s address to Congress, Jeffries specifically instructed his caucus not to protest; instead, dozens of them made such a pitiful scene breaking decorum rules that the party became the story instead of the controversial president at the podium.

One thing Pelosi did in moments like this was “leverage the moderate Democrats against the progressive Democrats,” Etienne said. I remember it well from covering her: Behind the scenes, she’d green light people like then-Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) or other frontline members to blast ideas from the left — like impeaching Trump or defunding the police and ICE — as dumb politics.

“Where Pelosi would always start is: We've got to get to a win — that's all that matters,” she said. “Without the moderates, we don't win. Without winning, we don't have the majority. We can't do what we really want to do. And progressives would eventually cower to that argument.”

Etienne has a simple theory on why she says Jeffries isn’t going to Pelosi for help: “Ego — I hate to say it.”

She said Jeffries and his team are trying to establish themselves as leaders — and in fairness, it’s hard to imagine Pelosi as a quiet sidekick who wouldn’t dominate the entire conversation. But Jeffries could certainly pick up some useful pointers from his predecessor even as he puts his own stamp on the role.

After all, Pelosi had decades to hone her skills before she met her greatest match in Trump. Jeffries is effectively learning everything on the job.

Per Etienne, maybe he should pick up the phone and call Nancy more often.