Breaking News from Pod Save America - Republicans Face BACKLASH After Trump’s Disastrous Bill Passes | Liberal Tiers

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Tommy Vietor and Brian Tyler Cohen break down Trump’s disastrous bill, the fallout for Republicans, and the latest on his cruel deportation stunt—“Alligator Alcatraz.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, Brian, a few seconds ago, Republicans rammed through Congress, literally the worst bill I have ever seen in my 20 years in politics. I'm 18, the nasal 214. The motion is adopted. I can't remember ever being this angry. And all I can think about now is, how do we make these guys pay a political price? This episode of Liberal Tears is brought to you by PDS debt. Look, it's going to be nearly impossible for the Republicans to run away from this thing. And already today, even before this bill actually passed,

We had news come out of Southwest Nebraska where the CEO of a community hospital came out and said, quote, unfortunately, the current financial environment driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services, many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years. And so already, even in anticipation of this bill being passed, we're seeing one hospital closed down. And there's reporting that as many as 300 rural hospitals can close down as the result of this. So if the Republicans think that they're going to be able to do what they always do, which is just to kind of pass this thing under the cloak of darkness and skate by and there's some provisions that won't take effect for a few years, this ain't it. Like this is a whole different ballgame where we are going to see the consequences of this play themselves out immediately.

And a lot of them are happening in districts where Republicans are in control right now. This district, for example, the clinic that I'm speaking about, this is in Curtis Nebraska. It's in Nebraska's third congressional district, a Republican representative. that district. And whereas that district may certainly be more conservative, there are dozens of Republican lawmakers who represent districts where the, the, uh, represent the, uh, represent constituents where the percentage of folks who are on Medicaid, for example, is, is astronomical. David Valadeo right out here in California, half of his district is on Medicaid. So if you don't think that this is going to have immediate consequences, uh, on those folks and on those

representatives, you're kidding yourself. Yeah. Um, we're going to talk about the polling in a minute, but the Kaiser Family Foundation did a bunch of research on the bill and how different parts of it make people feel. And support for the bill drops to 21% when voters are told it would decrease funding for local hospitals and lead to hospital shutting down, like you just mentioned. A quick summary of what this piece of shit actually does. So up to 17 million people will lose access to health care. That breaks down to about 10 to 12 million people through Medicaid cuts and millions more through will lose access to insurance through the Affordable Care Act. and then the rural hospitals will shut down. Millions of poor people will lose access to food assistance.

The richest people in the country get a huge tax cut. The total cost of the tax cut is estimated to be at least $3.7 trillion over 10 years, but some say it could cost up to $5 trillion. And the majority of that tax cut goes to the people with the highest incomes. Our debt will explode by $5 trillion, maybe $6 trillion. The Cato Institute, a conservative organization, just reported that they think the bill will lead to $6 trillion more in debt. It's going to cripple renewable energy. It funnels about $75 billion to ice to build

more mega prisons and send more, you know, mask thugs to our streets to beat up people. But besides that, it's a great legislation. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? Exactly. This would, to your last point, this would turn ice into the, it would be the 16th biggest military in the world just by the size of its funding. It would be, it would have a, it would have a budget that's bigger than the full military of Italy, Israel, Netherlands, Brazil, and Switzerland. And to your exact point, we've seen what ICE is doing with that money, how they're just sending masked, jackbooted thugs all across the country to find, to pluck off people that are

standing outside of Home Depot, those hardened criminals who are waiting to just do day laborers, who are looking to do work, to keep our economy functioning. These are the people who are picking our food, who are making our food, who are building our houses. That's what gets all this funding to the detriment of health care for 17 million Americans, meals for 18 million kids and hospitals in 300 different communities. Yeah. Yeah. So the bill is extremely unpopular.

I mean, the data I've seen ranges from it being 19 points underwater to 29 points underwater. Even Fox News had the bill at 21 points underwater. So it's extremely unpopular. But there will be a huge messaging fight around it and Democrats need to get in the game here because an organization called Priorities USA did some polling that found that nearly half of Americans haven't heard anything about the big, beautiful bill, and only 8% of all Americans named Medicaid cuts as the detail of the bill that they have heard about. So we have a huge job to do in terms of educating people. Yeah, and I think one of the more insidious aspects of this bill is a lot of these provisions

either don't take effect until a couple of years from now, knowing full well that by the time they take effect, I mean, our memories are so short, politics moves so quickly, the Republicans will be able to say, like, oh, now that the consequences of this bill are taking effect, in 2029, for example, let's say Trump isn't in office anymore, which is a big question mark at this point, because who knows what stunts are going to try to pull. But let's say, you know, Trump is out of office and then suddenly the consequences of Trump's own bill

start to take effect, Republicans are going to come out and say, hey, don't you miss when Donald Trump was in office? Because this didn't happen when Trump was in office, ignoring the fact that the only reason that these consequences are taking place is because of Trump himself, is because of these Republicans themselves. And on the flip side of that,

there are some smaller provisions that Republicans were able to put in so that they can tout them, like no taxes on overtime and no taxes on tips, but they're capped. The no taxes on tips is capped at $25,000. Not exactly huge upside here. And no taxes on overtime is capped at $12,500. So again, these are not big numbers.

And they only last two years. And then the programs go away. So it's just crumbs that were thrown so that they can be able to say. hey, that's what this bill does while ignoring the fact that, you know, this is just some minute part of the bill that has very quick expiration, really to give cover to a Republican Party that's looking to take Medicaid away, that's looking to take health care, food assistance away, and heap tons of money onto ICE and the wealthy. Yeah, and look, what it does is provide, you know, a huge tax cut to people who get their income through S-Corps or there's a huge tax cut for, it eliminates estate taxes for single-filer. worth up to $15 million. And married filers, married couples, worth $30 million. So extremely wealthy people can just pass all of their wealth down to their kids tax-free.

And Fox News will talk about this. Republicans will talk about this and say, hey, the communist, Marxist Democrats are trying to take your money away when you die. They're trying to impose a death tax on you. They are talking to people who are worth $15 million, who are leaving $15 million or more to the next generation. How many people fall into that category? Very, very, very few. This bill overwhelmingly helps not just the 1% but the 0.1% of this country. So, Brian, one of the things that is just on a personal level so infuriating and hypocritical

about the bill is it for decades. Republicans have claimed to care about spending and deficits and debt. Here are a few examples. The number one threat to our nation right now is our debt. It's not China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. It's the debt. The national security risk we have right now is our national debt. You know, America's still the greatest country in the world, but it won't be for much longer

if we don't solve the debt problem we have, and we're running out of time to act. It's Marco Rubio in 2011. Great job, Marco. But, like, this was supposed to be part of their political identity, right? Like, the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus. Now they are ramming maybe $6 trillion worth of spending through Congress on a party-line vote. It's like they're so full of shit. And this is after they already own 25% of all debt accrued because of the $7.8 trillion

dollars they added during Trump's first term to do the exact same thing where they were giving themselves a tax cut. And so now the vast majority of the debt will be at the hands of the very people who have predicated their entire identities on this idea that an existential risk for the United States, the thing that's going to prevent us from being the best country in the world to Marco Rubio's own point is going to be the debt, which they are exacerbating themselves. We've got to make sure people know about this. Please, one way to do it, like, share, send this video around, comment on it. Like, we just kind of have more people need to understand. this because you're right. Fox News is on overdrive. Republicans want to make it all about the ice

funding and immigration and protecting the border. And that's true. There's a lot of ice funding. It's actually quite scary what the implications are of creating these massive ice prisons all over the country. But the real impact is going to be throwing poor people off their health insurance, off of a food assistance and providing a huge tax cut to the richest people in the world. No, you're exactly right. And I think the onus then falls on us to make sure that everybody knows about this. Republicans will be working on overdrive to only, tout the aspects of this bill that either benefit them politically

or that they've decided to make up out of whole cloth. Yeah, or just lie. Carolyn Levitt is coming out and saying that this bill is going to eliminate taxes on Social Security doesn't exist in the bill. It is a non-existent provision. She might as well just say that everybody gets $10,000 checks tomorrow. We all get a pony. Yeah.

Brian Schatz had come out on to Twitter and he posted, quote, it is entirely possible that we win the Senate if they pass a bill with such unspinnably terrible consequences across society. The impacts will be inescapable, and it will be obvious who to blame. I hope this bill dies, but if it passes, they will pay a steep political price. And I think it's our responsibility, and everybody watching's responsibility,

to make sure that that political price is paid, that we don't just allow this to fall by the wayside, that this thing does actually have legs. And we will see, unfortunately, rural hospitals continue to close. We'll see people lose their health care. The problem is that by attacking Medicaid, these are the people with the least amount of political capital. There's a reason they went after Medicaid and not Social Security over. overtly or Medicare overtly. It's because those cohorts of people, those demographics have a lot of political power. Medicaid is kids, the disabled, the elderly. And so these are people who they know

they can strip health care away and pay the least amount of a political price for it. So the onus falls on us then to make sure that when this stuff happens and it's already happening. I mean, we've already spoken about the one hospital that's closed, even in anticipation of this bill, that we make sure everybody knows about it and that this is what the midterms are a referendum on. Yes, it's on us to fight. American Dream is under attack and hardworking people like you are being crushed under mountains of debt. Why? Because creditors love debt. They want you to be stuck in their high interest trap. They want you drowning in student loans, credit card debt, and skyrocketing mortgage rates.

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It's all the Republicans want to talk about. Their new thing is alligator alcatraz. And they're just Republican fetish for harming immigrants. Yeah. So alligator alcatraz, for those who don't know, it's this new immigrant. center that's being built in the Florida Everglades, about 50 miles west of Miami. When it is finished, it will reportedly be able to hold up to 5,000 people. It's mostly just like warehouses and literal cages.

Republicans seem to think it's hilarious that people who might escape from this facility could be eaten by alligators or killed by snakes. And remember, we're not talking about hardened criminals. I think 10% of people arrested or booked by ICE are accused of violent crimes. These are just people caught up in the immigration system. But here's President Trump. Speaking annoyingly close to a jet engine, mind you, talking about alligator alcatraz.

The idea, I guess that's the concept. This is not a nice business. I guess that's the concept. If you, you know, the snakes are fast, but alligators are, but we're gonna teach them how to run away from an alligator, okay, if they escape prison. How to run away. Don't run in a straight line, run like this.

And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%. Okay. Not a good thing. Hilarious, right? The hard part is knowing how to contend with a political party that has lost every semblance of its humanity. Yeah, there's no empathy.

There's no humanity. They're just devoid of it completely. And I think it's important to remember that they're still operating under this pretext that all of the people that they're picking up are these hardened criminals are murderers and rapists. This is something that Trump's been saying. That was the promise.

He's been saying this stuff since he came down the escalator in 2015. But the reality is, because we've seen these photos and we've seen these videos online, that when you are just stopping these ice vans outside of Home Depot, when you're going into the fields where these folks who are, by the way, doing jobs that you won't find any Americans doing, working long hours and miserable conditions, making sure that we all have food to eat,

when you're watching these people go to construction sites so they can build the houses that we all live in, build the businesses and buildings that we all work in, that these are not the hardened criminals, that they themselves are pretending they're going to be. These are just regular people who, in many instances, have been here for years and years and years. Decades, who pay taxes.

And even in some instances... Of kids who serve in the military. These are people who are parts of communities. They're being terrorized. And even in some instances, they're picking up American citizens. They're picking up legal residents. They're beating the shit out of them.

Right. And so when you recognize that these are people who are functioning and valuable members of our societies ingrained into our communities that are being thrown into these concentration camps, basically where the only way out is to like contend with fucking alligators, it really does put on full display the extent to which the humanity of this political party has just completely disappeared.

And again, from a political perspective, it makes it difficult to know how to contend with these people. But I think the onus falls on us to the earlier point to make sure that people know what's happening. And that's why I am grateful that we do see these videos showing the reality of the situation, showing what these ICE agents are doing. Because otherwise, if you took the Trump administration's word for it, you would would think that these are the most dangerous people on earth when, in fact, these are the people

busting their asses to do, to do the work in many instances that none of those Trump supporters would ever find themselves doing. Yeah, they're completely full of shit. And for a while, the most high profile, like, immigration action Trump had was sending, you know, 238 men or 260 men to rot in this prison in El Salvador, the Sukkot Prison. One of them was a guy named Kilmar-Abrigo-Garcia, who lived in Maryland at the time. The administration admits that Abrago-Garcia, was sent to El Salvador because of an administrative error. So he's now back in the United States because the courts ordered them to return him. The administration is trying to prosecute him.

But through that process, Abrago Garcia has filed some legal documents that outline his treatment while he was in El Salvador in this mega prison. Here's some detail from those documents. So when Abrago Garcia arrived, he was told, welcome to Sukkot. Whoever enters here doesn't leave. He was forced to strip naked and was beaten when he didn't put his purse. prison clothes on fast enough. Shortly after he arrived, he was forced to kneel for nine straight hours. So from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. He was forced to be on his knees kneeling. And anyone who fell over

from exhaustion was then beaten. And during this time, they were denied bathroom access and Abrago Garcia soiled himself. Over two weeks, he lost 31 pounds. And if he ever complained, guards threatened to move him into cells with gang members who Abrago Garcia said, you could hear beating each other and no one went to help them. So clearly, this is torture. And to your point, Brian, I mean, CBS News did an examination of all public records of these 238 men who were sent to El Salvador. 75% of them had no criminal record either in the U.S. or Venezuela or any place else they had lived. Yeah.

And I think the important thing to note here is that in light of that, in light of the fact that this is what they're doing with the funding that they have thus far, the fact that they are now getting an infusion of cash, thanks to this bill, to, again, make them make their budget bigger than the entire military budget of a good portion of Western Europe. It goes to show that we're going to see more of this. You know, there is no disincentivization. There's no, there's no consequence for them to do this. And so, you know, already we've seen ways in which the Trump administration has defied the courts or they'll support these people and kind of act first, apologize later and then claim that they can't even find the people that they've deported.

So, so sadly, I think that this is, this is an instance where we're going to see more of this and not less. Yeah, and look, the evidence is so thin. I mean, Donald Trump literally thought that an image of Abrago Garcia's hand with MS-13 photoshopped on the knuckles was real. Like Photoshopped generous. This is like MS paint. Yeah, MS-painted on his knuckles.

And he actually said when the Sukkot Guards brought him in, they separated out detainees based on gang tattoos. Yeah. And there was one cell full of gang members and another cell full of non-gang members. Full of the whoops. You guys probably shouldn't be here. Exactly. And one of the guards literally told him, no, your tattoos are fine.

And they put him in the non-gang members cell. So clearly the administration doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. Our president is a moron who fell for an MS paint Photoshop. And I've never been more angry at the United States government. So we've got to stay on it. Talk about what's happening here. Go to Votesaveamerica.com to figure out ways to get involved politically. please subscribe to Brian's channel,

subscribe to Potta of America on YouTube. We're trying to get good information into the YouTube algorithm because currently when you search for political information, you find shitheads like Benny Johnson, who works for TPSA, bragging about how we bought a alligator alcatraz hat. And it makes me want to move somewhere,

do something terrible. Yeah, I mean, the reality is that for the next year and a half, it is going to be a messaging war where we have an entire right-wing media ecosystem with no scruples, no shame about spreading straight up fucking lies. And so it's going to be on folks who are willing to tell the truth about what's happening to get this good information out. And knowing full well that a lot more people are tuning into independent media

to get their information, and that's going to shape a lot of these people's worldviews. Help to elect Donald Trump. Help to like Donald Trump. So the impacts of that can't be overstated. So if you're not yet subscribed, please subscribe and help elevate the voices of people. we're actually going to tell the truth about what's happening. Thanks for watching.