By The Daily Blast The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent
Kristen, first of all, JD Vance is lying his ass off about the scale of the problem of undocumented immigrants getting benefits鈥攂ut put that aside for a sec. By citing the 鈥渕inutiae鈥 of Medicaid policy and saying it鈥檚 鈥渋mmaterial鈥 compared to the money that鈥檚 going to ICE, he鈥檚 quite literally telling Trump voters that they shouldn鈥檛 think about the fact that they鈥檙e 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鈥檝e been doing politics for a while, Kristen. Have you ever heard the scam laid out quite that way?
Crowell: This is classic diversionary tactics, like, Don鈥檛 look at the thing we鈥檙e actually doing, which is shredding the safety net, ripping up our promise to cover you under Medicaid and provide food assistance. Look over here at something that we鈥檝e been telling you to be very afraid of. But I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 going to land. I don鈥檛 believe that the American public is going to buy the set of lies, no matter how many tweets JD Vance pumps out in the next 24 hours.
Sargent: What are you seeing out there on this? Can you tell us?
Crowell: We鈥檙e on a bus tour traveling the country. We started in New York, and we鈥檙e going all the way to California. Today is the eleventh day on the road. We鈥檝e had 20 stops. And at every single stop, the predominant concern鈥攚hether you are a health care provider, a doctor, or a home health care aide, or whether you are reliant on Medicaid as your coverage鈥擺is that] people are really terrified of what this will mean for their health care, what this will mean if they have to go into medical debt, what this [will] mean for families that are already incredibly stretched. And they鈥檙e also really angry because Trump and the GOP promised them something different. We see Trump voters showing up at our events to say, This is not what we voted for. We didn鈥檛 sign up. They promised us that they were going to reduce costs, that our grocery bills were going to go down, that they were going to fight for families like mine. And so I don鈥檛 believe that the American public is going to buy any number of these lies that are being put out by JD Vance or others that are trying to shill for this horrible piece of legislation.
Sargent: Well, speaking of what Trump voters are thinking, Trump鈥檚 got a sense of what he thinks he鈥檚 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, 鈥淎dditionally, 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.鈥 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鈥檚 in the White House. Do you have a sense of what people are thinking when it comes to that component of it鈥攚hether 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鈥檛. I鈥檓 wondering what you鈥檙e hearing on that precise point.