Bulwark Takes - 6: McConnell Goes FULL VILLAIN With Heartless Medicaid Remark

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein break down the Senate’s rush to jam through cuts to Medicaid, Mitch McConnell’s brutal quote, and why Republicans keep targeting their own voters.

Hey everybody, it's Sid Miller from the Bulwark here with managing editor Sam Stein. We got something just across the wire here over on Capitol Hill and it includes possibly like one of the worst, most damaging quotes I've seen from a Senator in a while. Second worst. Yeah. One of the worst and most damaging quotes I've seen from a member of Congress in a while. It comes from Senator Mitch McConnell and it's related to the big turd, the big beautiful bill, whatever we're calling it. And it comes from the folks at Punchbowl News who cover Capitol Hill as well as almost anybody besides Joe Perticone. The quote is

as follows. It comes, McConnell is kind of is responding to some concerns that Tom Tillis had had, we're going to get to that in a a second about the Medicaid cuts in the bill. And McConnell says this failure isn't an option regarding this bill. It has to be passed no matter what's in it. Failure isn't an option. And then he goes on quote, I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid, but they'll get over it. Yeah, that feels like a quote that sticks around. I know we're hearing about Medicaid, but they'll get over it. It's just, it's such an easy thing to encapsulate the fight against it. These guys do not care. They pretend to be a working class party. They're jamming through a tax cut for the rich. And when you say to them, but what about poor people's healthcare?

Their reaction, they'll get over it. Am I overstating it? No, I think it's really bad. I just don't, I don't know. I think it's a second tier just below, we're all going to die. That's a lot of journey errands to your thing. Journey errands really, it's hard to really pass. Well, they're going to die or we're all going to die.

So we're all going to die anyway. Cause getting over it, you're still alive. I got to say, I think McConnell might be worse because Joni Ernst's comment was just more of like a, I can ask a very philosophical comment about how we, to dust, we all come into dust. We all return, you know, sort of thing. Is this a simulation? Do we even alive? To dust we all return, you know, sort of thing. Is this a simulation? Do we even need Medicaid?

And McConnell is just basically, like, for the Dems, it's got to feel good to have the old crow back as an enemy, since he's been like, you know, he's kind of like a quasi-resistance member for a couple months. Yeah, there's something unsettling about it. It's like, oh yeah, I forgot about that guy. Oh, right. That is why we hated that guy. Oh yeah, that's a reminder. Yeah, it's just, it's just totally just no concern at all. And also kind of resembles a kind of a relic a little bit of the old guard Republicans like the new Trumpy, Maga Republicans are super into Medicaid and, you know, you have Josh Hawley and Tom Tillis. It's not really that mega, but he knows that there's tons of Republicans on

Medicaid. In fact, if you look at the data, it's more likely that you're going to get Trump voters on Medicaid than Democrats at this point. And so they all know it, but McConnell's McConnell's not of that era. He's like, this is a government program. It's a country. Coverable Republican. Cut it. Cut it.

Get rid of it. That's right. And the magazine is at least more thinking about how to frame it. Do they actually care about the people on Medicaid anymore? Not a lot of evidence of that so far, but are they conscious of like pandering to them? Yes. And like you see the ad, there's an ad that's been running. Have you seen it? There's an ad that's been running by a Trump super pack. I don't know why we're getting here in Louisiana, but like kind of supporting the bill, trying to prop up this bill, which is very unpopular

and the whole ad frames it as it's a working class tax cuts. You know, this is going to help the working class, right? I guess it just makes no tax on tips. Yeah, no, it's not. Yeah. Yeah. They say no tax and tips extended data, but just the fact that they feel they need to frame it that way shows they think they realize it's a vulnerability. And here's Mitch McConnell just being like, actually working class people, healthcare, no thanks. Well, also Mitch is not running again, so he doesn't really care.

Whereas Tillis is up this cycle and he's telling Thune, apparently, give me some cover here, buddy. Let's go to Tillis. Actually, let's just go to what he said and then I'll get your reaction to it. So he had this, this, I guess, a flyer that he created for his colleagues. It's kind of nice old school, go to the meeting, pass out a little flyer. It does feel old school. Couldn't have emailed.

Could have been an email, buddy. So he's passed out this flyer and it goes through the states and, and it's his state North Carolina has the most Medicaid funds lost. Um, Virginia's second, my state, Louisiana is third. Then it kind of goes down the list and it's mostly red states. It's all, it's all red states. It's all red. It's all states Trump won on those except Virginia.

And so, yeah, I think he's trying to point out to his colleagues here. It's like, guys, this is like the, it's, we're we're disproportionately hurting ourselves with this. These cuts, but I don't know. No, no, no. Yeah. Well, it's, it's tough to know what to make of it because I don't have any anticipation or confidence that Tillis will vote against this bill. Like I don't think gun to the head. You would say, yeah, till someone to put in against this bill, even though he's now is public with his own reservations about what's in it. And same with Holly. I mean, Holly's been out there constantly saying, we can't do this.

Can't do this. I mean, again, gun to head. Do you think Holly will vote against this bill? So I don't really think so. And you know, maybe that's whatever happened to Ron Johnson, wasn't he going to vote against this? He's going to vote against it because it wasn't enough on the deficit But it's just let me just kind of appeared. So let me just lay out

I guess the sort of larger picture here for the viewers. It's 330 on Tuesday Basically, the Senate is rushing to do a version of their bill that they want to vote on on Friday Maybe over the weekend, and then they're gonna tell the House take it or leave it. And the House will basically have to say we're gonna pass nothing or we're gonna pass this. And we're at a really high stakes moment here where basically every Republican is gonna be forced to either defy Trump or back a bill that many of them say they

don't like or at least components of say they don't like, or at least components of which they don't like. And Tillis will be at the top of that. Holly will be there too. Johnson, who knows, but there's a number of house members who are going to have to take very difficult boats. And Tillis is up for re-elect. Yeah.

And he's up for re-elect. All the house members obviously are up for re-elect too. I have absolutely no, I mean, I would bet money that this thing passes. And it's shocking to me that the process is playing out this way, where you will have huge chunks of Republicans, red states, Republican voters losing their health care coverage with how many hearings in the Senate? Zero. How many CBO analyses in the Senate bill have there been?

Zero. Will they go to conference between House and Senate to hash out their differences no it is an insane process and for Mitch McConnell say you know what they'll get over it don't worry about it that's the premise on which they're passing me is right they've gotten over a lot I guess yeah the only thing I'd hand although I will say I used a little surprise but I guess I was a little surprised things in the aggregate are actually I wouldn't I'm not trying to say it's been a great month for Trump, but it's been a better than expected week for Trump.

And yet the polling data, and maybe it just hasn't caught up. His polling data has never been worse. So I don't know, maybe people aren't over it. Yeah. I just basically have a personal policy where I'm going to just not... Ignore polls. Yeah. Well, I know you're in Trump's approval rating polls for this year, because I just think that there's a lot of noise. There's

a lot of shit happening. It doesn't matter that much. But I hear you though. I think it's at least possible. There's some people not getting over it. I want to just, the one thing about the Hill, I just had one other point about the Hill side of it, which you brought up, which is like this, it's basically being passed through inertia. Like the first part of the McConnell quote is really the operative part failures That isn't an option and and but this just takes me back to the original kind of point of like They could have just extended the Trump tax cuts through a no tax on tips on top of that You know cut a few unpopular things that don't actually cost that much money

But you know things that aren't probably the base and and just called it and they have to pay for it. No, they had to pay for it. Why under the reconciliation rules, they could have created their own reconciliation rules. They don't they run the house in the Senate. I know, but they I guess in theory, I guess my point is they could have put something up that had less political pain than this. It's pretty interesting to me. But they want but a lot of them want to cut Medicaid.

Isn't that the point? I mean, that's the point. It's a lack of leadership from Trump, I guess what I'm saying. Trump could have forced their hand to do something more politically popular. And he chose not to. No, I 100% agree with that. And on top of that, he could have gone full Bannon and like, you know, paid for some of this, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime by saying, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll raise taxes on like the very, very wealthiest, which is what Bannon was arguing. Yeah. Do that.

Um, well, I think that's a quote that's going to stick around for a while and be interesting to watch Tillis, uh, in the coming weeks, but how will he get out of this one? How could he possibly vote? Yes. Well, he's going to vote. Yes. But I mean, I think it's going to be, it's either going to be Tom Tellis is kind of in a pick your poison situation. He can either ride with Trump and have an ugly primary or excuse me, and have an ugly general or try to triangulate away from Trump and probably have an ugly primary. Um, and, uh, so I think that's, he's just kind of stuck there.

All right. We'll keep watching it. Subscribe to the feed. Um, we care about you, you know, we know if, so I think that's, he's just kind of stuck there. All right. We'll keep watching it. Subscribe to the feed. Um, we care about you, you know, we know if we do something that upsets you, uh, audience, we're not just going to be like, you'll get over it. All right. We, we, we hear your concerns. So we appreciate you.

You know, we are all going to die, but along the way we do care. Yes. Not the bullwork. So we'll see you guys soon. Tell your friends. Bye.