Friday Talking Points -- Trump Lied

[ChrisWeigant]

Once again, the Republican Party has laid out its real agenda, in the form of a federal budget. And once again, they have proven what their real priorities are: cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans no matter what -- no matter who has to pay for it, or how.

Democrat Rahm Emanuel, who we should mention is considering running for president in 2028, came up with a slogan for Democrats to use when explaining this to the American people: "Tax cuts for the wealthy, healthcare cuts for the many." We have to admit, that's pretty good, although there are certainly plenty of other ways to phrase the basic point. We might go with: "the reverse-Robin Hood Republican budget," since it conjures up the image of: "stealing from the poor to give to the rich." Or perhaps something more personal, such as: "Donald Trump lied to you," or "Trump does not care about your family at all."

Back when he was campaigning, Trump swore up and down that he wasn't going to touch Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. He lied. Just this week, while giving a pep talk to Republican House members, Trump reportedly told them: "Don't fuck around with Medicaid." Hard to square that with the almost $800 billion that those very same House Republicans just slashed from the program. The New York Times editorial board spelled this out explicitly, in an editorial originally titled: "Make No Mistake, Republicans Are Trying To Cut Medicaid."

But make no mistake: The big domestic policy bill that Republicans are trying to push through Congress is an effort to reverse the progress of the past 15 years. Despite their claims of having become a working-class party, Republicans are seeking to take away health insurance from millions of Americans, and they are doing it to give billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthy.

In fact, the closer you examine the Republican bill, the worse it gets. Not only would it gut Medicaid, but it would also likely force Draconian cuts on Medicare as well -- starting next year:

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans' mammoth tax and immigration bill would add so much to the national debt that it could force nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare beginning in 2026, Congress's nonpartisan bookkeeper reported late Tuesday.

Trump and the GOP's budget reconciliation package -- officially titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act -- would add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office projected, forcing budget officials to mandate across-the-board spending cuts over that window that would hit the federal health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities.

When legislation significantly adds to the national debt, which already exceeds $36.2 trillion, it triggers "sequestration," or compulsory budgetary reductions. In that scenario, Medicare cuts would be capped at 4 percent annually, or $490 billion over 10 years, the CBO reported in response to a request from Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pennsylvania), the top Democrat on the Budget Committee.

In other words: "Trump lied -- not just about Medicaid, but also about Medicare."

This wasn't the only bad news contained within the bill which was reported by the C.B.O., either:

The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as it's officially known, would shrink household resources for the lowest-income households by 2% in 2027 and 4% in 2033, mainly because of cuts to health and nutrition programs.

"By contrast, resources would increase by an amount equal to 4 percent for households in the highest decile in 2027 and 2 percent in 2033, mainly because of reductions in... taxes they owe," CBO director Phillip Swagel wrote in a letter to Democrats.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, requested the CBO analysis of the bill's distributional effects for the top and bottom 10% of households by annual income.

The bill would also kick millions of people off of food aid, just for good measure. And for what? To add a pathetically-small 0.03 percent to the economy's annual growth, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. And while the GOP House did keep two of Trump's tax-cutting promises in the bill (no income taxes on tips and overtime pay), they didn't fully follow through on another, that Social Security benefits would also be tax-free. Once again, Trump lied. To seniors.

With the new cuts for Medicaid and likely cuts for Medicare, perhaps it's time to check in to see how Social Security is doing these days? Not too well, apparently, as they struggle to recover from Elon Musk's idiocy:

But as of this week, many of the major changes DOGE pushed at Social Security have been abandoned or are being reversed after proving ineffective, while others are yielding unintended consequences and badly damaging customer service and satisfaction. The problems come as the agency struggles to cope with a record surge of hundreds of thousands of retirement claims in recent months.

DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency but is not a Cabinet-level agency, had to cancel a plan to cut phone service for retirement and disability claims after drawing outrage from lawmakers, seniors and advocates. Staff reductions and reassignments led by DOGE are slowing the pace of claims processing as field offices lose longtime staff and gain a smaller number of inexperienced replacements. DOGE-driven changes to the agency's website are causing crashes almost every day, and phone customers complain about dropped calls and long wait times. A DOGE-imposed spending freeze is leading to shortages of basic office supplies, from printer cartridges to the phone headsets staff need to do their jobs.

And on Friday, Social Security leaders told employees that the agency was ending a security check, developed at DOGE's request, that was meant to root out allegedly fraudulent claims filed over the phone, according to three employees familiar with the situation and an email obtained by The Washington Post. But the measure -- which involved placing a three-day hold on all phone claims as other staffers checked into the caller's background -- had only identified a couple of potential fraud cases while causing significant delays in claims processing, two employees said.

Ah, but the Social Security Administration now has a new commissioner on the job, Frank Bisignano. Here he is recently, explaining how he got the job:

"I don't think the commissioner of Social Security is, like, a globally known title. It is to you, right? But, like, it wasn't to me," [Frank] Bisignano said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by HuffPost.

"So I get a phone call, and it's about Social Security. And I'm really... I swear I'm not looking for a job," Bisignano continued. "And I'm like, 'Well, what am I gonna do?' So I'm googling Social Security. You know, one of my great skills, I'm one of the great googlers on the East Coast."

Boy, doesn't that just fill you with confidence about his qualifications! The clown parade continues, folks....

There's an old saying which warns: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" -- which seems to apply not only here but to a whole lot of what both Musk and Trump have been doing to the government. Can't wait to see how FEMA handles hurricane season (which we wrote about yesterday, if you're interested in another trainwreck looming on the horizon). Weather offices are short-staffed, FEMA is falling way behind on declaring disaster areas after the fact (before hurricane season starts), and Trump wants to dismantle the entire agency by the end of the year. What could possibly go wrong with all of that?

As usual, there was plenty of other stuff going on in the political world, which we are going to zip through in lightning fashion, in no particular order.

The big budget bill from Republicans, as usual, was crammed at the last minute full of all kinds of bizarre things -- such as eliminating a tax on silencers for guns. Here's a full rundown (so far -- more of these things can be expected to be uncovered as people have more time to digest the massive bill's text).

Kristi Noem badly botched her answer when asked in a committee hearing to define "habeas corpus." Her answer was pretty much the exact opposite of the correct answer -- she said it was the power of the president to deport anyone he liked without any pesky judges interfering (which, again, is the exact opposite of what the right actually guarantees).

The Department of Defense accepted delivery of Trump's new "Qatar Force One" airplane, while Trump made an insanely-optimistic announcement that his new "golden dome" missile shield would be up and running before he leaves office (nobody expects this to actually be accomplished, it is worth pointing out).

Trump is going full-on North Korea-style "Dear Leader" with a giant banner of his face looking out at the National Mall. How long before every school in the country is mandated to display the same photo in every classroom? Your guess is as good as ours! Meanwhile, preparations for the Dear Leader's birthday parade continue....

Team Trump is already trying to skew intelligence reports to say what they think rather than what the intelligence community thinks, which really doesn't come as much surprise (but is nonetheless frightening in its implications).

Trump held his pay-to-play dinner for the biggest investors in his crypto scam, which apparently included a Chinese billionaire. Again, no real surprise there... grifters gotta grift, after all.

A member of Congress has now been charged by the Department of Justice, as the office within the department which oversees such prosecutions is sidelined. Meanwhile, Trump is just not going to enforce any rules he doesn't like.

Trump talked to Vladimir Putin this week, and afterwards had nothing at all to show for it. The consensus takeaway is that Trump got played by Putin. Once again. Trump also appeared in a meeting with the president of South Africa, who was subjected to a barrage of propaganda and lies as Trump spouted his conspiracy theory that there was an absolute genocide of "dead White farmers" that does not actually exist. This was second, on the "worldwide embarrassment" scale, only to Trump's previous meeting with the leader of Ukraine, and it was just as cringeworthy as it sounds.

Today, Trump threatened to hike tariffs on the European Union to 50 percent on June 1st, and to also hike tariffs on Apple to 25 percent if it doesn't immediately start building iPhones in America. Trump also threatened Walmart to "EAT THE TARIFFS" and not raise prices, and threatened a 100 percent tariff on Barbie dolls (since Mattel also said it would have to raise prices).

This is all because Trump is frustrated that his 90-day "pause" on worldwide tariffs is now half over but all the other countries have figured out that time is on their side. He still has only managed one "trade deal" (it is not, it is merely a framework for a future trade deal), with Britain, while the rest of the world has figured out that the tariffs are hurting America more than Trump is willing to admit:

But according to conversations with ten foreign officials, U.S. business leaders and others familiar with the talks, disagreements are mounting in many of those talks and foreign governments are digging in, even those eager to cut deals, like some in Asia -- a reminder of just how slow and complex traditional trade negotiations can be. Trump and other top officials have recently begun acknowledging that reality out loud, suggesting they will have to set new tariff rates on many countries when they hit the July 9 date for their so-called reciprocal tariffs to kick back in.

. . .

"The wind has come out of the sails a bit on a lot of the trade deal push," said Scott Lincicome, the vice president of economics at the free-market Cato Institute. "I don't think anyone expected 90 deals in 90 days. But I do think we did expect a little more in terms of quick deals to keep things moving."

. . .

"I think the immediate market blowback and then the rapid scramble by the administration to minimize the damage from all of that, I think that showed the folks in Asia that time is on their side," Lincicome said.

No wonder Trump's still far underwater in economic polling. A new poll was released this week showing Trump at a dismal 37 percent approval on his tariff policies, with 63 percent disapproval. His numbers on inflation were even worse -- 34 percent approval and 66 percent disapproval, which is pretty much 2-to-1 against.

Trump keeps on losing in court, in decision after decision -- some by the Supreme Court, some by appellate courts, and some by individual judges. Most prominent are his losses on all his illegal moves on immigration.

And to end on a happy note, this week the commencement address to the graduating class of the University of Maryland was given by none other than Kermit The Frog. Jim Henson graduated from the university in 1960, so it was entirely appropriate that they held a "Kermencement" address in his honor.





There were a few Democrats in congressional committee hearings this week who stood out (most notably Senator Chris Van Hollen, grilling Marco Rubio), but it was all somewhat of a sideshow to the main event in the House.

The Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week that we saw this week was one of the Democratic congressional leaders, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. He is an excellent orator in general (even when speaking off-the-cuff), and he had an advantage over all the other House Democrats since as leader he was allowed to speak on the floor before the big vote for as long as he liked.

We're going to save his remarks for the talking points section, but we had to say we were impressed with how passionately he spoke out against the Republican budget. Jeffries hasn't always been in the forefront since Trump took office, so it is good to see him doing so in a big way this week.

We sincerely hope to see him on a few Sunday morning political talk shows, as well as any other strong Democrat who can get booked. We do not need people who get too far into the weeds, what we need right now is a clear and unequivocal message about the fundamental differences between the parties. The Republican budget bill is ripe for drawing such contrasts, but Democrats simply have to get out there and do so in the upcoming weeks.

And we have to say, Jeffries is certainly doing his part as a party leader to show them all how to do so. For that, we have to bestow this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





Maybe we were just too centered on the big budget debate, but we didn't notice any Democrat who particularly disappointed us this week.

We are pointedly ignoring the whole media fascination with Joe Biden, which was sparked by a tell-all book from a journalist who documented how Biden's staff hid from the media and the public his true state while he was president.

In the first place, it is water which has long since travelled under the bridge. In the second place, we feel no need for a mea culpa, since we were calling on Biden to step down long before he actually did. And in the third place, this is a lot more common than most of the public might think.

I would direct anyone who doubts that last point to the deterioration of Ronald Reagan while he was in office. Or the biggest textbook example in all of American presidential history, the infirmary of Woodrow Wilson, whose wife Edith essentially ran the government for him for a period of years after he suffered a stroke. Edith Wilson has even been called "the first female President of the United States," and for good reason.

It's not just presidents, either. Plenty of members of Congress have held on long past the point they should have, and their staffs just took over their duties for them. Which we've also spoken out against previously, we should mention.

So, like I said, to us the whole Biden kerfuffle is nothing more than old news and it certainly doesn't rise to the level of a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.




Volume 797 (5/23/25)

First, we must mark the passing of Representative Gerry Connolly and the news that Joe Biden has been diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. Our thoughts are with their families.

Getting back to the politics of the week, though, we sincerely hope that Democrats everywhere fan out next week (another weeklong vacation for Congress) and start making some noise about the Republican budget. A framing battle has begun, where Republicans are going to try to convince everyone that what they cut from Medicaid was merely "waste, fraud, and abuse," while Democrat push back and point out the gargantuan size of the cuts and the millions upon millions of Americans who will lose their healthcare. This should be a relatively easy battle for Democrats to win, but to do so they've got to get out there and aggressively make their case -- everywhere at once. Town halls, speeches, media appearances, online, political ads -- just anywhere they can speak directly to the public.

So instead of us coming up with our own talking points this week, we decided to instead highlight a few that are already out there. And we're not going to enumerate these, instead we'd just like to feature a few good quotes that other Democrats should be able to pick up on and start using.

As we began this article by pointing out, it's really not all that hard to come up with this stuff, given the reverse-Robin Hood nature of the Republican budget. Trump and the Republicans are already weak on public confidence that they're doing the right things on the economy and inflation, so adding the subject of what they're doing on taxes really just fits right in to the public perception that already exists.

The first good bit of commentary came during the middle-of-the-night committee meeting the Republicans held to jam through their bill:

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) excoriated Republicans in the early hours of Wednesday during a House Rules Committee hearing on President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill," which the GOP had conveniently scheduled for 1 a.m.

"This is a farce, an outrageous insult to the people of this country, to bring up a 1,000-page bill at 1 o'clock in the morning," McGovern said in the hearing. "A bill that's still being written, by the way, by Republicans, as we speak, in a backroom somewhere, for God's sake."

. . .

"And then to try to jam it through Congress in the middle of the night when nobody is watching is just unbelievably cynical," McGovern, the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, said Wednesday. "This is why people hate Washington."

Pete Buttigieg (who is also considering a presidential run in 2028) was pretty quick out of the gate, releasing a new video before the bill passed the House in which he tells people to call their representatives and hold them to their promises. Here's the text of his whole video:

Well, the president was with congressional Republicans today. They are working on a major piece of legislation. And here's three of the things that it would do:

One, add trillions of dollars to the national debt. Two, cut taxes for the wealthy. And three, kick millions of Americans off of Medicaid.

So this is a good time to reach out to your member of Congress and ask them if they're going to keep the promises that they made earlier this year not to cut Medicaid.

This bill is bad policy no matter which part of the political spectrum you come from. Most conservatives I know hate the idea of adding trillions of dollars to the national debt. Most liberals I know are especially troubled by the idea of more tax cuts for the wealthy. And most Americans I know understand that kicking millions of people in this country off their health care is just wrong.

Our country can do so much better. And it starts by demanding that this Congress put together a budget that actually reflects the values of the American people.

The day the bill passed, Rahm Emanuel chimed in, speaking directly to Democrats about their messaging and framing of what this bill means:

This will likely be the most significant piece of legislation to pass during Trump's term and should be understood by the public in one phrase: "tax cuts for the wealthy, health-care cuts for the many." The simplicity of that binary is its virtue. Trump is a chaos machine -- a disciple of professional wrestling who will try to distract from the underlying reality. (See his comment that he's "not going to touch [Medicaid]." ) We can't chase every shiny bauble -- we need to laser focus on points that will deliver strategic value. This is our opportunity to define Trump and his congressional enablers.

Recall that we spent 2024 trying to convince Americans that our democracy was in Trump's crosshairs. That message failed. We now need to paint the reality we know and the public perceives, but which the Trump Show often obscures: The administration and its Capitol Hill minions are beacons of the three C's: corruption, chaos and cruelty. Set aside the rhetoric about fascism, oligarchies or Democratic weakness. Any utterance that fails to burnish the public's understanding of the three C's is our own distraction. The present fight over the budget bill, which the House approved Thursday morning, is the ripest opportunity we'll have to lift the fog that can define 2026.

. . .

That's why the One Big Beautiful Bill is target-rich. Trump and the GOP Congress want to cut taxes on well-connected billionaires by slashing health care for working families. That might not be corruption the way Washington good-government groups define it, but it's how the public sees a corrupt system at work. Democrats have yet to make this the signal through the noise.

Representative Brendan Boyle, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, was pretty blunt in describing the bill's effects. This was after he (and Hakeem Jeffries) had asked for an analysis of how the bill would affect the top and bottom income-earners in America (which showed the poor will lose while the rich will gain):

"This is what Republicans are fighting for -- lining the pockets of their billionaire donors while children go hungry and families get kicked off their health care," Boyle said in a statement. "CBO's nonpartisan analysis makes it crystal clear: Donald Trump and House Republicans are selling out the middle class to make the ultra-rich even richer."

As previously mentioned, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had quite a bit to say about the bill on the floor of the House before the final vote:

[Hakeem] Jeffries, who as a party leader is allowed to speak for an unlimited amount of time during debate, spoke for roughly 37 minutes starting around 5:30 a.m., calling the sprawling party-line legislation "an assault on the economy, an assault on health care, an assault on nutritional assistance, an assault on tax fairness and an assault on fiscal responsibility."

. . .

"Children will get hurt. Women will get hurt. Older Americans who rely on Medicaid for nursing home care and for home care will get hurt. People with disabilities who rely on Medicaid to survive will get hurt. Hospitals in your districts will close. Nursing homes will shut down. And people will die," he said. "That's not hype. That's not hyperbole. That's not a hypothetical."

"We're here to say as House Democrats... if your representatives won't fight for you, we will," he continued.

. . .

"This day may very well turn out to be the day that House Republicans lost control of the United States House of Representatives," he said. "Because the American people are paying attention. They are smarter than you think, and they know when they are being hurt, they know when their interests are not being served, and they know when they have been lied to and deceived."

That is more elegant than just "Trump lied," we have to admit. But it doesn't fit on a bumpersticker as easily....

Jeffries unveiled two other excellent talking points (both capitalized, for Trump's benefit we assume) in his remarks on the bill:

"Donald Trump promised to love and cherish Medicaid. Instead, his One Big Ugly Bill represents the largest healthcare cut in our country's history," Jeffries said in a statement. "Millions of people will lose their Medicaid coverage and hardworking American taxpayers will be forced to pay higher premiums, copays and deductibles."

He added that Trump's promises to lower the cost of living have yet to come to fruition, and that the GOP-led legislation represents "the ultimate betrayal."

"President Trump promised to lower the high cost of living in America. He has failed. Costs aren't going down, they are going up. The GOP Tax Scam will make life more expensive for everyday Americans and it's his toxic legislation that represents the ultimate betrayal," Jeffries said.

Democrats need to jump on these things if they want to turn them viral online. the "One Big Ugly Bill" is easy to remember and sums it all up very nicely, and "The GOP Tax Scam" builds on the Trumpian insistence to call everything he doesn't like a "scam," so what's not to love?

But we're going to turn over our final word today to a Republican -- a holdout who voted against the bill. And he is entirely correct, as the downgrade of America's bond rating and the reaction of the bond market quickly proved:

"This bill is a debt bomb ticking," Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) said early Thursday on the House floor. "Congress can do funny math, fantasy math, if it wants, but bond investors don't."

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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