Trump’s Fury at Thom Tillis Backfires, Wrecking His Own Dumb MAGA Scam

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Trump is raging at GOP Senator Thom Tillis for telling the truth about the Senate version of his budget bill, which could knock 10 million people off Medicaid. Trump threatened him with a primary—whereupon he announced his retirement. Tillis has since been sharply criticizing the bill, noting it will bump 600,000 people from Medicaid in North Carolina. This reveals that when Trump vowed not to cut Medicaid, he was lying. But it also shows his much-advertised vow to remake the GOP as working class has proven a sham. By threatening Tillis, Trump has only drawn more attention to Tillis’ truth-telling about his swindle of MAGA voters. And as Trump’s own media allies are warning, this could put the Senate in play for Democrats. We talked to New Republic staff writer Timothy Noah, author of a new piece on GOP lying about the bill. He explains why Trump’s Medicaid cuts are so indefensible, how they expose the core of Trump’s “working class GOP” scam, and what it all means for Democratic hopes of regaining power. 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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0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.5	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:32.1	President Donald Trump has managed to drive Senator Tom Tillis out of the Republican Party.
0:39.2	The North Carolina Senator has been excoriating the Senate version of Trump's big budget bill over its deep Medicaid cuts, prompting Trump to threaten him with a primary. Tillus reacted to that by
0:45.6	announcing his retirement and continuing to speak out against the bill. It's quite a telling
0:51.2	moment. Daring to utter the truth about Trump's policies apparently is now
0:55.7	enough to get you pushed out of the GOP. Yet in key ways, this is already backfiring for Trump.
1:02.4	It means the Senate may be more in play for Democrats, and that hasn't shut Tillis up. Quite the
1:08.2	opposite. We're talking today about all of this with Timothy Noah,
1:11.9	a staff writer at the New Republican author of a good new piece on the epic lying that Republicans
1:17.2	are employing to sell Trump's budget bill. Tim, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.
1:22.9	So let's start with the reason Tillis got so angry. The Senate version of the budget bill is even
1:28.0	worse than the House version. According to various analyses, in addition to adding $3.3 trillion
1:35.1	to the national debt, the bill would result in over 11 million more Americans losing health
1:41.2	insurance by 2034. It would cut $1 trillion from Medicaid. Tim, can you put the
1:48.1	magnitude of that cut in context and explain it? It's the biggest cut there's ever been to Medicaid.
1:54.3	It's about an 18% cut. And of course, the Republicans are running around saying it's not a cut at all,
1:59.8	which is one of many lies they're telling about this bill.
2:03.0	The Congressional Budget Office would beg to differ.
2:06.3	They say that they're cutting close to a trillion dollars out of Medicaid and that there will be drastic reduction in those enrolled.
2:17.3	Yeah, and the big reason for this discrepancy and opinions
2:21.1	is that the Republican bill heaps a lot of work requirements and other bureaucratic impediments
	...

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