Bulwark Takes - Tim and Sam: The GOP Is Pathetic

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein join MSNBC’s Deadline: White House to discuss the political cowardice behind the GOP's rushed passage of Trump's deeply unpopular bill. They unpack Senator Lisa Murkowski's baffling decision to support legislation she knows will harm Americans, and Republicans' willingness to cave to Trump's demands at the expense of their own constituents.

Hey y'all, Tim Miller from the Bullwork here. I just got off cable with Sam Stein. Look at us, multi-platform and Claire McCaskill, maybe my favorite Deadline White House partner. And we're trying to kind of work through the rationale for why the Republicans jammed this bill through the House, a little behind the scenes. I showed up a couple minutes late for TV. I never do that. I just, I'm already, I already have my summer vacation. I'm on vacation brain. I don't know what's happening. So but I got in there in time. And I had a little quibble with Claire over some of what the Republican rationale is on this. But one thing we all agree on is it's just pathetic. How Holly and John Ron Johnson and Murkowski have behaved in particular, given that they

all know that this was a bad bill. So stick around Claire, Sam, me, check it out, subscribe to the feed. And we'll be having much, much more on this and everything else going on in the news right here at the Bulwark. So stick with us. See you soon. Republicans swallowing a political poison pill in the form of Trump's signature legislation is where we start today with former Democratic Senator and MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill. And here with me in Washington, managing editor of The Bullwork and MSNBC contributor Sam Stein.

Sam, talk to me about how this came together in the final hours. It's kind of remarkable, honestly. We had an incredibly rushed process with a totally arbitrary deadline in which people were basically adding billions of dollars, taking billions of dollars, crossing out provisions, amending provisions, making changes up into the last moment. And Senate Republican leadership had four holdouts, Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Tom Tillis,

and Lisa Murkowski. Rand Paul would have moved if they had scrapped the debt ceiling raise in the bill. That was not going to happen because they didn't want to do that because Trump doesn't want to do that. Tom Tillis had already made his position known and he's retiring now, so that wasn't going to happen. So it came down to basically, could they get Susan Collins, who hinted she was very much against this bill, or Lisa Murkowski.

And through a series of provisions, basically gifts to Alaska, they got her vote. And what's kind of remarkable about this is that Lisa Murkowski managed to score some provisions to shield her own state from the devastating consequences of this bill in order to vote for it. And she acknowledged that those devastating consequences will now be afflicted on 49 other states.

And she said, well, I'm going to try to fix this and hopefully it comes back to the Senate. In reality, and she knew this, the next step is for the House to just try to pass what the Senate passed, which means it will never come back to the Senate. And so Murkowski took a plunge, whether she did it because she felt it was honestly coming back or not is up to her to explain. But I think everyone else other than her knew that this is the last time the Senate will likely get its hands on it.

Claire, I want you to take a stab what you think Senator Murkowski's calculus was here, but also just more generally, what Republicans were thinking in passing legislation that they know is unpopular with the majority of American people. Yeah. Lisa got stuff for Alaska, and I think she probably got herself in a position where she was saying, I won't vote for it.

And they said, well, let's do this for you. Let's do that for you. And she said, well, if you'll do this for me. And I'm betting that they kept giving her everything she asked for. And then she kind of was in a hole. And she kept, you know, it would have been like her keep moving the goalposts. I'm not going to make excuses for Lisa Murkowski and what she did. But what about somebody like John Cornyn running in Texas next year?

What about somebody like McCormick in Pennsylvania who barely beat Bob Casey? And there is so much about this bill that is politically toxic, Alicia. I mean, you know, the fact that the mere pittance they're giving on taxes on tips and Social Security, guess what? That goes away immediately after the next presidential election. And then, on the other hand, the tax cuts for billionaires, they're permanent. And the cuts for Medicaid don't happen until after the midterms. So there is so much cynicism in this bill. They are banking so much that people will buy what they're selling, which

is a lie. And what's going to happen, there's going to be real devastation, and people are going to feel the pain. And I do believe that the people who voted for this bill will regret it. Tim Miller, your thoughts on this legislation. Well, I agree with Senator McCaskill there. I almost, boy, that would have been an insult calling you Senator Murkowski there for a second. I agree that certainly the swing district Republicans in the House are going to regret this.

As evidence by the fact that Tom Tillis, who is going to have the toughest race of all the Republicans in the Senate, besides maybe Susan Collins, essentially quit over not wanting to vote for this bill. So, and the bill is a big time political loser. But I mean, the policy ramifications are very severe. And I just, I, the Senator Murkowski's explanation for voting for this bill is something that it's hard for me to think of other precedents for this. Like before this time where, you know, you would have a senator, it's not just her, it's also Josh Hawley and Ron Johnson, who are

out there saying essentially that this is a bad bill. Hawley's rationale for voting for it is that the Medicaid cuts won't go into place ever and that he'll fight them in the future. You know, Ron Johnson hasn't even given a rationale for why the bill that he was railing against he's now voted for. Murkowski said in an interview afterwards that she knows this is going to cause pain to people in other states. And like, it's not as if the Alaska, Alaska is getting a great deal here. They're just getting a carve out on some of the snap reimbursement so that it won't be quite as painful for people on food stamps in the state. That's not a great deal for Alaska. So

voting for it just because the Alaska deal is less bad than the rest of the country when you recognize that it's gonna cause a lot of pain in the rest of the country. That's not even getting into the ice side of it, the cuts to energy production. The Murkowski rationale for supporting this is extremely befuddling. And there really was no rush. I guess she felt pressured by Thune and maybe, you know, the President of the United States, but she's bucked him before. So it's a flummoxing decision to pass a bill that so many people who even support it recognize

it's serious flaws. So what happens, Sam, now in the House? Well, Bill goes to the House. The House Republican leaders are saying they want to move it tomorrow, which I mean, sometimes you just got to step back and say, what are we doing this for? Like, everyone who is voting for it.

Those billionaires need their tax cuts ASAP. Those tax cuts are expiring tomorrow. You have some time here. The debt ceiling's not being hit tomorrow. But to Tim's point, it's like, everyone who's voted for this bill, not everyone, most people who voted for this bill have been like, well, it's really a bad piece of legislation, but we'll fix it later. Fix it before you pass it, right? It's hard to underscore how much this is so arbitrary. Trump wants to sign a bill with fireworks going off behind him because it's July 4th.

That's like literally the entirety of this reason. So they could hit the pause button and say, instead of voting for passage, why don't we get it right and then vote for passage, which is, you know, how you would normally operate. And he can have his fireworks in July. You can have your fireworks. Push the fireworks back.

We'll allow it this time. You ask what happens next. So it's going to go to the House. House Republican leadership is like, we're going to vote for it tomorrow. What we know now is that a number of House conservatives are publicly saying they don't like what the Senate did because it doesn't abide by the framework that they had passed

initially in the House. And by that, I mean it doesn't cut enough for them. Mike Johnson had made a deal with them. He'd said that the Senate was going to actually cut more. It doesn't cut enough for them. Mike Johnson had made a deal with them, he'd said that the Senate was gonna actually cut more, it does not cut enough for them. So they have a choice, they can say no, we don't like this, we wanna revise it and cut it even further, the Senate's version, and then send it back to the Senate, but I think we all sorta know that,

we've seen this before, right? House conservatives huff and puff, and then when their bluff gets called, they fold, and so I fully expect people like Victoria Sparks, Chip Boy to make a big stink, and then ultimately get some sort of promise down the road that they will address their concerns and then vote to pass.

And the New York Republicans? The salt issue, which was the big hangup for them, is resolved. It actually got resolved with the deal with the Senate. The question is, can they stomach these Medicaid cuts? And Tim's point, can they stomach these Medicaid cuts? And Tim's point, can they stomach the clean energy cuts? I've seen nothing really to indicate that they're going to take a firm stand.

And the history on them taking a stand is even worse than the history of conservatives taking a stand. Claire, you have the president saying he wants the House to take up the Senate version of the bill. You think that happens? Yeah, I think it happens. I can't tell. I mean, I can't take any of these people seriously at this point.

I mean, Ron Johnson, you know, and Josh Hawley are two great examples. I mean, Josh Hawley is actually saying, I'm going to work the next two years to get the Medicaid cuts out. All he had to do was vote no. That's all he had to do. The bill wouldn't have passed. The Medicaid cuts wouldn't have passed. They would have come back around with something else

to try to get the tax cuts for the wealthy. Because let's be honest about this, Alicia. What they care about are the tax cuts for the wealthy, period. They don't care about the deficits. They don't care about the debt. They don't care about health care. They don't care about clean energy and job creation. All they care about, all of this, is in the name of making the tax cuts that Trump did

in 2017, which favored the wealthy by enormous margins, permanent. That's what this is all about. And they are willing to bet that the American people won't pay close enough attention and get mad enough to throw them out of office because they have done this. And I think that the House will pass it. I think they will. I have nothing to tell me that they're going to have any more sense than the Senate just had. Yeah, Tim, I think what we're all trying they're going to have any more sense than the Senate just had.

Yeah, Tim, I think what we're all trying to assess and Claire sort of touched on it there are these political cross pressures. The fact that there are a lot of Republicans who felt that part of their mandate was to help their billionaires and millionaires extend that tax cut. They've got Donald Trump breathing down their neck. But then you also have the mus Musk of it all, right? The fact that he's publicly threatening Republicans with a primary challenge that didn't seem to move anyone. And I wonder, Tim, what you make of that.

Yeah, a couple of things. I don't think that the Musk primary threat moved anybody because Republican primary voters have shown again and again over the last decade that what they want is loyalty to Donald Trump. And so you can threaten people and say, I'm going to run a bunch of ads in your district, but a lot of these guys already have a lot of ads running in their district. And if the ads aren't potent enough to resonate with Republican voters, then it's not going to work. A primary is not going to work. And so I just don't think it's a very credible threat for Musk. We'll see. Who knows? If he can go out and recruit candidates, that's

easier said than done. Maybe it's possible. But I think that's why you haven't seen that movement on that. And I just kind of want to slightly quibble with something that Claire said and just sort of expand. I think there are three reasons why they voted for all this. I think yes, she mentioned the tax cuts and the extension of the Trump tax cuts. I do think is something that is important to these folks in part because of their donors and part because of ideology. But there are two other things. Number two is Trump just wanted something.

Like Trump just, that's what he calls a big beautiful bill. He just wanted to be able to say that he passed something. And as silly as that sounds like these guys didn't want to get crossways with Trump and Trump the devil isn't was not really in the details for Trump on this bill. He would have said anything was the big beautiful bill He was even I think open to not by extending the top tax bracket when Bannon was suggesting that for a while I Trump just wanted something done. So it was a we need to please mr Trump part of this that That's number two. And number three, I just don't think we can understate the importance

of the ICE funding here. Now, again, they could have pulled that out and put it in another bill, but JD Vance said this explicitly last night on Twitter. He said all of the other stuff, all the stuff that you guys in the media and the Democrats are complaining about about the cuts to healthcare and the cuts to food stamps. He's like, all that is immaterial. What really matters is that we're getting enough money to ICE so they can put more migrants in jail. And I think that there is a part of the Republican base for whom that is even more animating now than the tax cuts.

And some of the people in the Senate and House and include and certainly JD Vance and Stephen Miller in the White House. And so I think that making sure they have enough money to continue to send these masked thugs into communities to put people into detention centers without due process is a genuine policy view that not every Republican voted for this house, but that some of them have and that was a big motivator for getting this passed. — Concerns about the Medicaid cuts, though, Mr. President. — No, no, we're not going to be playing with Medicaid. Only waste, fraud, and abuse.

— And it's made up to that point a million Americans could lose their coverage of a great deal of this? — Yeah, the Democrats have it wrong. Yeah. Waste, fraud, and abuse. In fact, if you look at what's gone on, we've gone way back. We take care of Medicaid, we take care of Medicare. They will blow Medicare and Medicaid because they have no idea what they're doing. Just like

they don't have any idea what they did on the border. They have no idea. Medicaid is in big trouble with the Democrats. So you must not miss anyone who loses their health care coverage. That is because of waste, fraud and abuse. Waste, fraud, only waste, fraud and abuse, which is what everybody wants. It's a little bit of that weave you've heard so much about there, Sam Stein, but listen, there's been great reporting in the New York Times about the fact that a lot of the Medicaid stuff is actually sort of, their theory here is that they can have people not sign up because

they change deadlines, because they change paperwork, because they simply make it more difficult for people to get access to all of this. That is not tackling waste, fraud, or abuse. Yeah, I will see your New York Times reporting and raise it, Bullwork reporting by Donathan Cohn. It's a very Bullwork Tuesday here, go ahead. But this is death by paperwork for a lot of people. And when I say death, in some cases, literally.

Literally, yep. Because when you do not have access to healthcare, which is what will happen when people do not have access to Medicaid, you have worse health outcomes and sometimes you will die. And yes, it's all paperwork, it's bureaucracy, it's work requirements, it's people having to show that they're looking for work, it's people having to show why they can't look for work. And there are countless studies because states do versions of this, much less onerous versions

of this, that show thaterous versions of this, that show that people will fall off the rolls. And that's not waste, fraud, and abuse. You can spin it, you can weave it. You can say, well, if people are able-bodied, they should be working, they should be on employer health insurance, or you can say, well, there's illegal immigrants who are taking these benefits, and therefore,

we are cracking down on this. But by and large, well, you will, exactly. And this is all intertwined, as Tim notes, taking these benefits and therefore we are cracking down on this. But by and large... Which is what J.D. Bantz, the argument he was making that to. Exactly. And this is all into trying, as Tim notes, around this idea that if you can go after illegal immigration... And the other thing is, you have to understand, one of the political factors here is that the Trump coalition, more Trump voters are on Medicaid than Democratic voters.

And so they have to sell this to those people who are their constituents. And one way they do it is by saying, the illegal immigrants are taking these healthcare benefits away from you, and we are gonna stop that to strengthen the program so that you can access it. It's not accurate, it is a distraction, and they are hoping that if they just repeat it enough,

it can become politically palatable for them.