Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Kristen Crowell: Thanks so much for having me, Greg.
Crowell: Well, thank you. I’m right now sitting in Rochester, Minnesota—and as you mentioned, I’ve been traveling the country talking to voters and citizens who are so furious and angry and understand that this reconciliation bill is a giveaway of our tax dollars to fund another tax cut for the rich while cutting vital services like health care and food assistance that families right now are relying on as a lifeline. This bill is the most egregious, immoral, hostile bill that has ever faced our communities. It is the largest redistribution of wealth that our country has ever seen. The people that we speak to every single day are angry and afraid of what is going to happen to their families and their communities if this bill does, in fact, get passed by the House.
Kristen, first of all, JD Vance is lying his ass off about the scale of the problem of undocumented immigrants getting benefits—but put that aside for a sec. By citing the “minutiae” of Medicaid policy and saying it’s “immaterial” compared to the money that’s going to ICE, he’s quite literally telling Trump voters that they shouldn’t think about the fact that they’re about to lose their Medicaid. Instead, they should think about how many migrants are now going to be jailed and frog-marched onto deportation planes. The swindle here is as clear as day. You’ve been doing politics for a while, Kristen. Have you ever heard the scam laid out quite that way?
Sargent: What are you seeing out there on this? Can you tell us?
Sargent: Well, speaking of what Trump voters are thinking, Trump’s got a sense of what he thinks he’s going to be able to get them to think. He did this long rant on Truth Social, calling on House Republicans to pass the Senate bill. He said this, “Additionally, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security Benefits are not being cut, but are being STRENGTHENED and PROTECTED from the Radical and Destructive Democrats by eliminating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse from those Programs.” Now, Kristen, this is an old GOP argument: slash the safety net and then blame welfare cheats for it. It seems to me the public ebbs and flows on this. It has a lot to do with who’s in the White House. Do you have a sense of what people are thinking when it comes to that component of it—whether Medicaid is riddled with fraud and needs to be purged of layabouts who are taking advantage of it, or not? Sometimes over the last 50 years, there have been periods where people believe that, but then other periods where they don’t. I’m wondering what you’re hearing on that precise point.
And like you said, I’ve been doing this a long time; I’m getting up there. And it is very different. This is a true grassroots populist movement. And I do not believe that the voters are going to buy this. And as this goes to the House, I would just caution the members of the House caucus, the GOP: Do not believe your voters are going to fall for this rhetoric. They are angry and they are fired up. Just this afternoon, we were in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where 130 people marched to the Republican congressman’s office demanding to be met with, demanding to be heard—and they would not open the door. I think there will be massive ramifications for leadership siding with billionaires over their community members and their families.
Crowell: I still remain hopeful that there’s a handful of them that are watching what played out in the Senate debate over the last several days. We now have members of the Republican Party standing up—Senator Tillis on the floor saying, This will decimate Medicaid in my state. You have the statement that Senator Murkowski put out afterward, Well, it got better for Alaska, but it’s really bad for the rest of the country. And they’re even admitting this is really bad. The more you know, the worse this bill gets. So I’m still hopeful. And we are seeing [that] as more of the American public is understanding what is at stake, the uptick in activity, the uptick of calls that are going in.… These House members are going to get pounded in the next 24–48 hours by their constituents. And so we’re really calling the question: Do you have a spine and will you stand with your district, or are you going to do what the party says and what Donald Trump says?
Sargent: I’ve pulled up the statement that you just mentioned from Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and it really is shocking in many ways. It’s quite revealing, actually. She says pretty much straight-out that the bill isn’t close to good enough. She says it’s going to hurt the country. There’s one part where she says, “It is the people of Alaska that I worry about the most, especially when it comes to the potential loss of social safety net programs—Medicaid coverage and SNAP benefits—that our most vulnerable populations rely on.” She says that straight-out, then lists a few things that she got into the bill to rectify that. But then she also says, “This has been an awful process—a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution. While we have worked to improve the present bill for Alaska, it is not good enough for the rest of our nation—and we all know it. My sincere hope is that this is not the final product.” That’s remarkable stuff. Now, it’s frustrating as all hell that she voted for the damn thing in spite of all this.
Sargent: Right? But she did basically say that every Republican knows that it’s a piece of shit that’s going to hurt a lot of people and it’s going to hurt Republicans’ own constituents. What do you make of it?
Sargent: It’s interesting that you bring up the state reps. The level of spinelessness in the Republican Party to let this thing become law is really remarkable. It doesn’t just stop with Trump and his advisers and the Republican Congress. It requires input and complicity from all levels of the Republican Party. You have these state representatives and governors—Republican governors—who know that their state is going to get the crap kicked out of it as a result of this. That’s the whole point: By cutting Medicaid at this volume, you shunt a lot of the burden over onto states that can’t bear the load. And for those Republicans to just put up with that—to allow their own states to get this huge burden thrown on them—is just incredible.
Sargent: I just want to return to one point about JD Vance before we close this out, which is that when he goes through this routine where he essentially says, Don’t worry about the Medicaid cuts, you’re going to get to watch a lot of immigrants suffer, I don’t think they even realize how unpopular the immigration side of their argument is. It’s as if he’s saying, Oh, the Medicaid cuts are all right, the public is going to love what we’re about to do on deportations. Guess what? No, they don’t. They don’t like it at all. What we’re seeing now is on Trump’s “strongest” issue—immigration—disapproval of him is high, particularly for the deportations, which are faring really terribly in the polls. You’re seeing major public backlash against that. So they’re basically saying, Don’t look at this one deeply unpopular thing we’re doing—cutting the heck out of Medicaid. Go look at this other deeply unpopular thing we’re doing—deporting day laborers and landscapers and gardeners and carpenters. What are you seeing out there on the immigration front? Are you seeing a shift in how the public is perceiving that stuff?
Sargent: So how does this play out from here until Election Day 2026? [If] this thing goes through, they’ve obviously structured this bill so that some of the impacts don’t hit before the midterms. But we’re going to see a ton of discussion in local media around the country, and we know independents care a lot about local media. We’re going to see a lot of discussion of rural hospitals closing. We’re going to see a lot of discussion of people fretting about their health coverage and so forth. Does this sustain until Election Day 2026, and what does that look like?
Again, the only thing I can say to the House Republicans right now is underestimate us at your own peril. This is going to be the driving force of the midterms. There is no way to put this genie back in the bottle, and the public is ripshit pissed. And they’re not going to be satisfied by talking points from JD Vance or Donald Trump. This is their day-to-day life that is at stake, and they totally understand it.
Crowell: I don’t think that will happen. Again, going back to this is something I’ve never seen before, that people are coming together. They’re doing so much work right now and so much advocacy against this bill, but they’re doing it together. People want to be in public spaces together. They want to organize. And I think there’s going to be a requirement that we understand that we’re going to have to all step up and help each other—and that the Republican leadership put us in this position. And never again will we allow them to lie to our face and get our votes.
Sargent: Well, we did see that happen in 2018. There was a different kind of energy, a different kind of organizing, and I’m really hoping it’s replicated. Kristen Crowell, it was really good to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on with us.
Crowell: Thank you so much.
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