Republicans Broke Rural Healthcare—Then Blamed Democrats
Bulwark Takes
The Bulwark
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 October 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
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Summary
Read Jonathan Cohn's article for The Bulwark: https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/government-shutdown-emergency-medical-care-illegal-immigrants
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Building a coffee business? |
| 0:01.9 | Serving the best Americano in town is up to you. But winning back time and growing your business, leave that to sum up. Take orders and payments anywhere with the new sum-up terminal. Turn occasional customers into regulars with a free loyalty program. And with the sum-up point-of-sale system, you'll always know when you're running low on your best-selling blends. Visit sumup.combe.combe. Hey, it's Will Salatin from The Bullwork. I'm here with my buddy Sam Stein. |
| 0:23.5 | We're here to talk |
| 0:24.1 | about what was going on the Sunday shows this weekend, and the answer is Mike Johnson, |
| 0:28.0 | the speaker of the house. He was on Meet the Press and doing his usual shutdown spin, |
| 0:34.9 | except he threw a little bit of a curveball today. So Sam and I are going to |
| 0:39.1 | talk about that. What did you think was the curveball? I've been watching this guy, Sam, |
| 0:44.6 | for two weeks, and he's been doing the same boring shutdown spin, the same thing about illegal |
| 0:50.4 | aliens this, illegal aliens that, and then today came the curveball. So he's on with |
| 0:55.7 | Kristen Welker and he starts out with the standard spin. So we're going to start out with that. |
| 1:01.0 | This is the first thing that Johnson said to Kristen Welker about the Republican position on the |
| 1:08.4 | shutdown and why he says the Democrats are, in his view, |
| 1:12.3 | shutting down the government. |
| 1:13.2 | Because we got illegal aliens and able-bodied young men without dependents off of Medicaid. |
| 1:18.1 | They were never planned to be there in the first place. |
| 1:20.7 | And what the Democrats are demanding right now to keep the government open is we put them all back on there. |
| 1:24.8 | I've heard spin before. |
| 1:25.8 | That one didn't personally strike me as outrageous spin, although I know it's not actually factual. But what stood out to you? So, all right, this is Johnson's standard span, and he always says, you know, if you go to page 57 of the Democrats' CR, we'll find this thing, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's like 71, but maybe, whatever. Yeah, no, he's got like a, it's page 57, 21, clause 41. Yeah, it's like a, let's lawyer game, right? So, and he always says, like, go read it, right? And the point is, Sam, you're never supposed to actually go read it. Because if you go read it, you'll find out, yeah, of course. I mean, so I've read it. Did you? No, screw that. |
| 2:17.7 | I've read it. Because if you go read it, you'll find out, yeah, of course. I've read it. Did you? No, screw that. I've read it. So that's Johnson's game, right? He's going to say page 57. It's all on my website and you're not supposed to. So if you go and look, there is nothing in there about Democrats demanding anything for illegal aliens. And the Democrats have said, it's already illegal. |
| 2:22.4 | All right. They've already said that. What there is, just so people know this, it's a paragraph. It's a paragraph that says, we want to repeal a bunch of Republican cuts to health care. |
| 2:27.9 | Right. And okay, so what's in the Republican cuts to health care? Some tiny fraction of them have to do with enforcement mechanisms to |
| 2:34.5 | make sure that people who are here illegally can't get health care. And Sam, it's only about the |
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