House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., shared just a brief four-word response when a reporter asked him on Tuesday why he missed a congressional vigil for Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n
‘I had a meeting,’ Jeffries said when the matter was broached during his afternoon press conference.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced on Monday that Congress would hold a vigil later that evening to honor the conservative activist.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kirk was assassinated last week when a gunman opened fire on him during a college campus speaking event in Utah.<\/p>\n
Fox News Digital witnessed just a handful of House Democrats at the vigil, side by side with dozens of Republican lawmakers.<\/p>\n
When asked why more Democrats did not attend, Jeffries said Tuesday, ‘I don’t know.’<\/p>\n
‘I guess you’d have to talk to the individual Democrats as to what else was going on and why they were present or why they weren’t present,’ he said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The vigil was held in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall in the 6 p.m. hour on Monday evening.<\/p>\n
Democratic lawmakers who attended include Reps. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., John Larson, D-Conn., Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., Chris Pappas, D-N.H., and Don Davis, D-N.C.<\/p>\n
Notably absent were the top four House Democrats in senior leadership, including Jeffries.<\/p>\n
Johnson, however, downplayed the lack of Democratic attendance in comments to reporters on Monday.<\/p>\n
‘I honestly did not even see the composition of the group,’ he said when asked if he was disappointed in the number of Democrats who showed up.<\/p>\n
‘I’m glad it was bipartisan, and I wish more had participated, and I’m not sure why they didn’t. So I don’t know what else we can do other than offer an all-member bipartisan vigil. And we’ve done that routinely for other things.’<\/p>\n
Fox News’ Kelly Phares and Fox News Radio’s Ryan Schmelz contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., shared just a brief four-word response when a reporter asked him on Tuesday why he missed a congressional vigil for Charlie Kirk. ‘I had a meeting,’ Jeffries said when the matter was broached during his afternoon press conference. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced on Monday that Congress would…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetradingdictionary.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}