What about the freedom to not have a giant rich corporation beat me up because I have no choice

but to buy the food that they sell? What's the freedom of allowing Walmart to get so big?

It destroyed all the mom and pop general stores and grocery stores that when I was growing up,

I was told are the quote unquote backbone of Main Street in America.

So we talk about taxation as a means of limiting freedom,

but what about all the freedoms that are taken from us because now the government doesn't do its job?

Hello, welcome. Why is this happening? With me, your host, Chris Hayes.

If you were to ask yourself the question, what is the defining feature of the Republican Party?

There's a lot of ways you can answer that question. You can say conservatism, although that's itself kind of a little question begging because there's different ways you define that.

People can talk about opposition to reproductive choice, which has been a bedrock sort of center of the coalition for, you know, 45 years.

You could talk about fiscal conservatism sometimes what people will talk about, but that's nonsense because deficits go up under every Republican president, particularly under

combined Republican governance, like always.

So that doesn't, that's actually like a complete lie.

It's 180 degrees away from the truth.

The answer, I think, is the central

core feature and belief of the Republican Party is cutting taxes for rich people. Whenever they

get in power, there's stuff they might do. They might put on tariffs or they might take tariffs off or they might run deficits.

They might cut social service programs.

Sometimes they cut them.

Sometimes they don't cut them actually kind of depends on like what they do.

The one thing you can always be sure of, always, is that they will cut taxes for rich people.

Ronald Reagan cut taxes for rich people. Ronald Reagan cut taxes for rich people.

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