Trump Nixing of Dem State Disaster Aid Backfires, Screwing MAGA Voters

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In recent days, President Trump has approved federal disaster aid for the red states of Nebraska, North Dakota, Missouri and Alaska while denying it to the blue states of Maryland, Vermont, and Illinois. The White House has not offered meaningful explanations for the discrepancies, which just happen to punish states that didn’t support him in 2024. But we noticed something interesting about this whole saga: In Maryland, the disasters and damage in question severely afflicted the state’s westernmost counties. Allegany and Garrett counties are in Appalachia, deep in Trump country: Both voted for Trump by at least 40 points. We talked to MSNBC’s Steve Benen, author of Ministry of Truth, who has been writing well about Trump’s selective approach to disaster aid. We discuss the explicit nature of Trump’s punishment of states that don’t support him, how Trump screws his own voters while seducing them with promises of pain to blue America, and how this latest saga illustrates MAGA ideology larger depravities. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:46.4	This This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:48.7	I'm your host, Greg Sargent. In recent days, President Trump has approved millions and millions of dollars in disaster aid for a number of states.
1:04.1	He's also denied disaster aid to a number of other states.
1:08.6	You'll be shocked to hear that the states that got aid voted for him in
1:12.0	2024, and the states that didn't get aid did not vote for him in 2024. But a funny thing
1:18.8	has happened in this saga. In the process of trying to screw democratic states, it appears
1:24.7	Trump has also screwed at least two counties that heavily voted for him.
1:29.3	This captures something essential about MAGA.
1:32.5	Trump's agenda is often sold to his voters explicitly as something that will hurt Democrats,
1:38.1	yet it's actually also hurting them.
1:41.5	MSNBC's Steve Bennon has been writing well about Trump's ugly efforts to punish states that
1:46.9	don't support him, so we're talking to Steve about what all this means today.
1:51.5	Good to see you, Steve.
1:53.0	Great good.
	...

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