Summary
A growing Republican backlash, including hospitals and Steve Bannon, is challenging Trump’s proposed Medicaid cuts.
The GOP budget seeks at least $880 billion in reductions, risking healthcare access for millions. Bannon warned that many MAGA voters rely on Medicaid, while hospitals and moderate Republicans urged caution, fearing economic harm.
Speaker Mike Johnson supports work requirements but lacks enough fraud-related savings to meet budget goals.
Critics argue the cuts could gut essential services, contradicting Trump’s promise not to harm Medicaid recipients.
Bannon knows if they don’t precisely fuck over the right people then the entire thing will backfire.
The dude is a complete fucking psychopath but he’s right.
The old guard GOP IMO has raised a populist dragon they can no longer effectively control. McConnell, the Fox News media cabal, and other old guards never stopped to realize that eventually their dragon would start to turn on them. The brand of populism used doesn’t always line up with traditional GOP aims. If they harm the wrong crowd, the populist branch could quickly turn on them.
The amazing thing is it’s not even the first time they’ve leveraged a movement for votes and then lost control of it. A century ago, the Republican Party was just the corporatocracy party. This doesn’t get you votes and they were getting annihilated by the Democrats, so they used the Southern Strategy to get the racist vote. They didn’t actually care one way or the other, but it got them votes. Then the racists started getting elected as Republicans and the corpocrats lost control of the party for a while. Then they did it with evangelicals and had the same problem. Now they’ve done it with fascists.
Great points and well put.
Oh it was always going to end this way, I’m just surprised it took this long.