The MeidasTouch Podcast - Rep. Zoe Lofgren Discusses Trump’s Disaster Policies and Shutdown

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republicans struggling to figure out how to message the disastrous government shutdown as Trump effectively throws them to the wolves while he’s on his Asia trip and Meiselas interviews Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren who has been a Congresswoman since 1995 and offers her unique perspective about Trump’s disastrous shutdown. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The MAGA Republican Congress members just spiraling out of control. They've ordered most of their members to go on vacation and not show up on Capitol Hill. You have some MAGA Republican Congress members in leadership there. They do this morning press conference, and each day it's kind of more bizarre and dangerous than the last one. So this morning, you had MAGA Republican Congress member Steve Scalise act like somehow Republicans are the champion of programs like head star, and other programs that they're the ones ripping away with this government shutdown and with the disastrous budget bill. Here, play this clip of Scalese.

Head Start, which is a program that funds education and nutrition services for 800,000 kids under the age of six. You hear this theme over and over again now. Who the Democrats are using for leverage and hurting is kids and nutrition programs. That's who they've chosen. goes into target. And it's real harm and real pain that they're causing. The level of just utter sociopathy right there is they're the ones destroying the

programs, as Democrats are saying, we need to fund these programs and support these programs. They then blame Democrats for fighting for these programs. I just want you to think, regardless of what political party you're from, I just want you to think about that. Then you have Kelly Leffler, billionaire, who somehow runs the small business administration program in the Trump regime, she says, but the issue here that we can ever agree to is to subsidize the health care programs. And that's what Democrats want to do. Here, play this

clip. They're demanding $1.5 trillion in taxpayer money to fund health care for illegal aliens and other liberal causes. Their spin is fact-free. They want to subsidize their broken, fraudulent, and unaffordable health care system, where premiums have increased by 80 percent since 2014, and those are the enormous costs that are born on the shoulders of small businesses. But the pain is the point. Every single day of this shutdown has stopped 320 local businesses every single day from accessing $170 million in SBA loans for hiring and for expansion. Then you have Maga Republican Congress member Tom Emmer applauding what ICE agents are doing in his own state as they cause utter havoc and chaos play this clip present a district on the western edge of

minneapolis as i recall there have been numerous arrests christianoma's there on friday uh this is the readout since january federal law enforcement officers with homeland security say 4300 have been arrested for criminal activity of who of which 3 300 had a previous criminal history what is the status for what ice and homeland security is doing in your home state First off, God bless Donald J. Trump and Christy Noem for what they're doing. You just referenced the number 4,300 illegal aliens since just January, Bill. And we've all seen the videos now. We know that the Trump regime is raiding car washes and farms and factories and Home Depot parking lots.

And they're targeting people going into courts and they're going after people who are innocent, hardworking people. And it's just very cruel and unusual what they're doing. I want to bring in Democratic Congresswoman, Zoe Lofgren, to the program. Great to see a Congresswoman. I just want your reaction as you see these press conferences and these interviews that the Republicans give every morning. They come up with new excuses to justify that they just refuse to want to extend health care coverage and extend the subsidies for millions of Americans, which will cause lots of people. to lose their health care. And then they try to justify it as though they're fighting for these

programs. I want to get your reaction to that first. Well, it's jaw-dropping, really. They voted to cut these programs. I mean, the hits to the nutrition program and the big ugly bill were huge. None of the Democrats voted for that. And then they've done this shutdown because they refused to act to avoid these astronomical increases in premiums that are going to hit in the Affordable Care Act coverage. I'll just give you an example, a 60-year-old couple in my district earning under $83,000 a year, which is not a lot of money in this area because of the cost of living, their premiums would increase, not the whole premiums, the increase.

would be more than $26,000 a year. I mean, it's just, it's not possible. They are starting to hear from their own constituents about how bad this is, but they're not acting. They have the White House, the Senate, and the House, and they're trying to act like they're just mere victims here. Meanwhile, the speaker refuses to call the House back into session.

They're not even talking to us. So they're bizarre. You've represented the Congressional District in the Santa Clara area in California since 1995. You won the election in 1994. You've seen other government shutdowns before. This one feels different in the sense that at least before, there were efforts between the parties, like the schoolhouse rocks taught me growing up in fifth grade government. They're supposed to talk to each other and have conversations and negotiate.

And here, Maga Mike Johnson and the Republicans refuse to speak with Democrats, refuse to show up, yet alone negotiate. So from your perspective, what's different about this and what are you seeing? I think you offer a unique perspective. Well, that is the big difference. You've hit it right, right? The nail right on the head. But I remember the first shutdown that I was in was in December of 1995.

Newt Gingrich threw a hissy fit. when President Clinton made him leave Air Force One through the back stairway, and he shut down the government. And they thought they were going to win. It went on and on and on. And at the time, I was president of the Democratic freshman class. And I finally, I called the president of the Republican freshman class. It was a huge class who was Roger Wicker, now a senator from Mississippi.

And I said, Roger, you know, what's plan B? And he said, well, there is no plan B. Our plan is that, you know, the Democrats came. I was like, well, Roger, that's not going to happen. And what happened at that point was that Clinton became engaged, seriously engaged, and pulled it together. Now, instead of the president weighing in, we've got him doing weird little dances as he lands in Asia and he's missing in action. The Senate is refusing to negotiate across party lines, and the House of Representatives isn't even meeting.

I mean, I've never seen anything like this. Before I was in Congress and before I ever ran for office myself, I was in local government. I worked for my predecessor right out of college. And so I've been watching Congress since 1970. This is unprecedented. This is just darn weird. Yeah, you mentioned Trump's weird dances that he's doing in Malaysia, ripping down the East Wing after saying that he wasn't going to touch any area of the facade.

$40 billion goes to Argentina. In a way, it feels that he wants this shutdown. In effect, it feels like we were in a government shutdown, frankly, since January or February, based on what Doge and he were doing to the government. Now it feels kind of a formal version of it, but it seems like they don't want government to function. Like, that seems that that's part of it. I don't see an end in sight to this.

Like, it will definitely be the longest shutdown, but I don't see how this gets resolved before the midterms, and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic. I just don't think how it ends. Well, one possibility is the Senate acts without regard to the filibus. rule. I think that's being discussed. Honestly, I've always opposed the filibuster. I think it's unconstitutional, and it makes an anti-democratic institution, the Senate, where the minority of

Americans rule the majority, even less representative. So although no one wants to see the Republicans less bound for the institution itself, it would be good to rule by, you know, majority. already vote. That's one possibility. A better possibility would be if they'd actually come to the table and deal with the health care crisis that they have created. I guess the other thing that strikes me, I was interesting to watch the clips from the Republican leadership in the House, they're now embracing these programs that they vote against and hate. So they must be realizing that these programs that they've defunded have a lot of support in the country. Will that realization lead them to make changes in what they're doing, we'll see.

You know, the question is, is do more Americans support the private jet tax exemption, which we know the private jet industry is booming, or the 42 million Americans who rely on supplemental nutrition assistance program, the 20 million Americans who may lose health care? Now, talking about nutrition, we focus a lot on these ice raids and just how, how unlawful they are, the chemical weapons that are being used against Americans that we see. There's also another impact that I know that you're seeing, and a lot of Congress members are seeing in California, which is the farms no longer are having workers, and that's going to have a major impact.

The way we're seeing soybean farmers suffer right now and others, cattle ranchers suffer. There's another crisis that's brewing quite literally that we're going to be seeing soon. talk through that because I don't think farmers have the workers anymore, and that means that we're not going to get food here. It's a slow-moving catastrophe. I represent, in addition to Santa Clara County, the redistricting commission several years ago switched up my district with Jimmy Panettas, and so I have a large section of ag territory in my district, the Salinas Valley, the salad bowl of the world, San Benito County, Watsonville, strawberries and other berries. And I've really learned a lot about agriculture,

which is heavily, heavily dependent on farm workers, many of whom, maybe most of whom, lack documentation. In fact, before I ever represented ag territory, I led a bipartisan effort to legalize farm workers and modernize the temporary program. It passed the House twice with the bipartisan vote, but was blocked by the Republicans in the Senate. That failure to pass is going to have a real big impact coming soon. One of my colleagues sent me this morning some news about the Coachella Valley, which is obviously not in my districts in the far south of California.

where farm workers are not showing up to work because they're afraid they'll be snatched and that's the source of almost all fresh fruits and vegetables in the United States in the wintertime. So if it doesn't get picked, not just California, but people across the United States are going to see that in their grocery stores. That's compounded by the other source of fresh vegetables and fruit, which is imported from Mexico, in some cases, Central America, New Zealand, and the like.

They've been all hit with tariffs. So prices are going to go up, and there will be scarcity. The other thing that is hitting the food industry, and this is not a big California thing, is the packing industry, which is heavily dependent on immigrant workers. For a long time, there were undocumented workers in the packing. industry with enforcement earlier several years ago. Many of those workers were replaced with refugees whose status has now been yanked. And so there's a real labor shortage in that area, which is going to contribute to the cost of meat, chicken going up. And then the other thing

that could be a real catastrophe, and we do have dairies in California. As a matter of fact, California is the largest producer of milk in the United States, of any state. The dairy industry is very, very dependent on immigrant workers. If you've ever been to a modern dairy, it's very mechanized and it's highly skilled. Well, if they are afraid to go to work or if they are abducted by ICE, the impact in in dairy will be catastrophic and immediate. The cows need to be milked, and if there's no one to milk them, those herds have to be sold off, and it will be a dramatic thing. Someone called it a black swan event that could be coming

to us because of what's happening in immigration enforcement. The stunning thing to me is that the White House appears to be oblivious to what's going on in farm country, saying, well, there's plenty of unemployed Americans. Well, I'll tell you, if there's somebody is unemployed, you know, in Chicago, it has nothing to do with picking lettuce in the Coachella Valley. I mean, it's absurd. Well, finally, you know, it seems, with Trump being in Asia, what their plan is, though, is not to focus on these systemic things, but instead to come up with another fake trade deal announcement, a framework that isn't actually a binding agreement. We have zero binding agreements with anyone. They said 90 deals, 90 days. There are like six-ish frameworks that are non-binding that the other

countries disagree with the terms. And then, you know, everyone's talking about, oh, he's going to China. I see the markets going up on this. And it's like they're coming up with the framework. I was like, wait a minute. Didn't they announce this in May? And I saw May 11th they did. I said, didn't they announce this on June 27th? They did. And so every two to three months, they come back.

They make their China announcement. The markets go up. Their rich friends make a ton of money while people suck. It seems that that's what the focus is versus the systemic things, which is breaking the country. So I'll give you the final word because that's to me what they're doing. It's a pumping dump. And they just hope the dump doesn't happen during these. four years. Well, you know, when we get the majority, we're going to find out who did

short sales and stock manipulation in the White House. But putting that to one side, I think their strategy is that propaganda and frankly just BS is going to work and the reality of what's going to happen will then be ignored by the American people. We'll see. That does work to some extent. But if you've lost your job, if you've lost your farm, if you've lost your health insurance, if you can't buy milk for your kids, that's a reality it's hard to obscure through just a bunch of BS. So I wish that they would show some responsibility, govern with us, but I don't have high hopes. This is the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States. They're all in it for the money. Congresswoman Zo Lachgren, great to see you.

Thanks for coming on. Good to see you seen. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers this month. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our substack at Midasplus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, add free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at Midasplus.com.