Title: Monday Morning Politics: Sen. Ernst on Medicaid; Democrats and 2028 & More

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Brian: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and happy June. On today's show, we'll check in on both June primaries in our area, in New York and New Jersey. We'll compare the New York City mayoral candidates on the issue of transit and transportation generally, including quality, affordable, and safe mass transit, plus what we might call the chaos on the streets with cars, pedestrians, and various two-wheelers, and also congestion pricing.

We'll have Nicole Gelinas from the New York Post and the Manhattan Institute comparing notes with Dave Colon from Streetsblog. WNYC's Nancy Solomon will give us the latest today on the New Jersey gubernatorial primaries with early voting beginning in Jersey tomorrow. At the end of the show, we'll have a call-in for people ambivalent about becoming parents.

What are your pros and cons for our latest call-in of ambivalence? Pros and cons those of people who are talking to you about it, if it's not you yourself. Maybe you are the potential grandparents, and your kids are ambivalent about having their kids or anyone else that's coming up.

We begin with Monday morning national politics, especially with the Trump budget, his central legislative agenda item, with the tax cuts, spending cuts, deficit increases, and more now heading to the Senate, where Medicaid cuts and more might have a harder time than in the House. Maybe you've heard or seen this viral video clip of Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst the other day being challenged about the potential impact of Medicaid cuts in the bill, which the voter says might cause people to die.

Senator Joni Ernst: When you are arguing about illegals that are receiving Medicaid benefits, they are not eligible, so they will be coming off.

Voter 1: People will die.

Senator Joni Ernst: We all are going to die.

Brian: We all are going to die. Democrats getting ready to run against Senator Ernst might be thanking their lucky stars this morning that that clip is now out in the universe. We'll discuss that and more with Jonathan Lemire, contributing writer at The Atlantic and co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, where he just finished the hour that he anchors, the 9:00 AM Eastern Time Hour. Jonathan, thanks for the generosity of joining us right after that. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jonathan: It is always my pleasure. Good morning to you.

Brian: I saw you discussing the Joni Ernst clip with some amazement that she said what she said. What exactly happened there?

Jonathan: It is a twofold here and just extraordinary act of, I would say, political tone deafness to be generous. You just played the clip from the town hall itself, where she was pressed on the possible cuts to Medicaid in this so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill." The Republicans have now passed the House, but it faces an uncertain future in the Senate. At minimum, it's going to receive some substantial changes. Her remarks at the town hall immediately went viral online, became a topic of news, certainly will soon be a topic of Democratic campaign ads.

Then over the weekend, she doubled down on it, issuing a sarcastic apology for social media, filming herself walking through a graveyard and saying basically that, yes, I'm paraphrasing her, but more or less sarcastically saying, "I'm sorry I had to be the one to break it to you that everyone is indeed going to die. Am I going to have to spoil the tooth fairy for you next?" Just perhaps meant to be funny. I don't think it landed. To me, just was the latest example of how Trumpified the Republican Party has become, where you dare not cross the president, but also you dare not apologize, that that is the ethos here is you never back down, you never say you made a mistake. You just forge forward.

Brian: That's like the Roy Cohn dictum, right? For people who saw the movie The Apprentice, which was about a young Donald Trump studying at the feet of former Joe McCarthy and Nixon lawyer, Roy Cohn, who was telling him basically always be on offense and never back down and never admit you're wrong about anything.

Jonathan: That's been Trump's playbook ever since, and has served him anyway pretty well in politics. Often it feels like it's outright lie after outright lie, but yet he'll never admit to making a mistake. I think for Ernst in particular, she's an interesting case study here, because in the past, there have been moments where she's been willing to break with the Trump agenda. This past winter, I'm sure your listeners will recall, she was perceived as the swing vote in the confirmation hearings of would-be Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

There was a lot of early reporting and also her own words where it seemed like she was very skeptical of Hegseth, his position on women in the military, some of his personal behavior, some of his views for the use of armed forces, et cetera, et cetera.

Brian: She's a veteran, right?

Jonathan: She's a veteran herself, and these are issues she's always put at the forefront of her public persona. Yet she was the recipient of a real pressure campaign from Trump's allies, but particularly the outside advisors, the MAGA spheres, those associated with Don Jr., JD Vance, and the like, who basically threatened her with a Republican primary challenge, were she to block Hegseth, to not vote for Hegseth.

She did a remarkable about-face, supported Hegseth, and has stood by him ever since, but it seemed like she realized a vulnerability, perhaps, that she did not want to be challenged from the right by a Trump-backed candidate. This is another example there where she's trying to stay in the president's good graces and support this bill, even as it generated such anger from her own constituents.

Brian: To the specific of her comment, when somebody from the audience shouted, "People are going to die," because of these Medicaid cuts, and she said, "Everyone's going to die," do we even need to say out loud, that the argument from the voter is, people are going to die sooner than they need to if they can't access health care anymore that they can currently access because of Medicaid. Do we really need to say that out loud?

Jonathan: We don't, [chuckles] but that is so clearly the intent here is that this is just the latest example of Republicans facing real fury from some of their own voters, about the impact that the Trump and then previously Musk DOGE cuts would provide. Now, from this piece of legislation, of course, this person knew that all of us would die someday. Ernst went on to suggest that they need to have more faith in her savior, Jesus Christ, to suggest they will have eternal life. Again, she's willfully missing the point here. The voter is not suggesting that we're not only going to die because of these cuts, but she is suggesting more people will die sooner because of them, because of the services being taken away.

Brian: Why does Trump want these Medicaid cuts? He came in as a Republican, who we don't have to say for the millionth time, increased his share of voters we can call working class in each of his three elections. There are a lot of working poor, if you want to call them that, or working class who are working-- I know a lot of this conversation is around working for benefits, if you're getting free health insurance from the government. A lot of people on Medicaid are workers, but they still can't afford health insurance in the private market.

They're only being paid so little that they're below the threshold where they qualify for Medicaid either through the Obama expansion or even in the old rules. People are going to lose their Medicaid. There doesn't seem to be much dispute about that. I think it's fair to say. Trump came in as a champion of people, including those. There are a lot of people in rural areas and urban areas among lower-income whites, especially who might have voted for him, who may, in fact, be disadvantaged by this. Why does Trump want this?

Jonathan: Certainly, Joni Ernst represents a state with a lot of rural poor, and those, in particular, are going to be impacted by these cuts. Trump himself has warned off Republicans from touching Medicaid at times, but at other times, he seems to be willing to go along with it. It's an interesting phenomenon, and it's not unique to me to make this observation. There are times where Trump almost feels like an observer to his own presidency, but he doesn't actually realize he can get in there and advocate for things he likes or doesn't like.

This one, he has been very hands off, even though it is his entire legislative agenda is all packed into this one "Big, Beautiful Bill." He has actually done very little to shape it. We know, though, there are Republicans, some staunch MAGA acolytes who have voiced opposition to it. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who is about as close as they come to adhering himself and aligning himself with Donald Trump. He has said and written op eds suggesting we can't touch Medicaid. He's thinking about the rural poor in his own home state of Missouri.

We'll see what happens here. It feels like Trump might be sitting on the sidelines, trusting the Senate will make good here, and he can just talk about Republican unity at the end, and maybe at least some of these Medicaid cuts will fall out. You raise a good point. It's another example where Trump just seems content to sit on the sidelines and take the eventual credit without being part of the process or therefore being vulnerable for the blame.

Brian: Is Steve Bannon, at this point, a MAGA dissenter from this particular set of cuts or other things in this bill, and is he accusing Trump now of being so focused on his tax cuts, which go primarily to the wealthy in terms of total dollars, that he's willing to sacrifice people's Medicaid in order to keep that? Because that's Trump's real bottom line.

Jonathan: Bannon put himself in an interesting position this time around, whereon most things, he's quite supportive of the Trump agenda and hugely influential behind the scenes. Still in touch with a lot of senior folks at the White House as well as hosting his own show, which draws a lot of viewership from MAGA world, but he's not afraid to break with Trump on certain things. He's made no secret of his distaste for Elon Musk. Bannon fancies himself as the protector of the real MAGA ideology, that he understands it in some ways more than Trump does.

He does believe that the working class and the working rural poor and the like, that's the heart of the MAGA base, he believes, and those people will be impacted negatively by these cuts. He has been sharply critical of the tax cut that the Republicans have planned for the wealthy. In fact, Bannon's gone so far as to suggest a tax hike on the extreme wealthy, thinking that that would be politically popular and save more services for the rest of what he feels is the true MAGA base.

Brian: Trump flirted with that idea over the last couple of months, but then did not push for it to be inserted in the bill. Why not?

Jonathan: He did not. This is another moment where Trump, it's been described to me as being influenced by the last people in his ear and the belief that, "Look, this will be good for the economy to give the wealthy businesses tax cuts that will spur more corporate growth and the like." The typical Republican trickle-down arguments. You are right, Trump had a few days there where he was potentially willing to sign off on that. Later, he not just walked away from it, he denounced the idea pretty strong terms on social media, suggesting it was a betrayal of what Republicans believed in. At least on that round, he is not siding with Steve Bannon and his uncle.

Brian: There are critiques out there now, like from Jamelle Bouie and The New York Times, many others, that for all the talk about MAGA being a new kind of Republicanism that's away from forever wars and globalism on economics and things like that, that this is the old Reagan era Republican plan playbook, tax cuts for the wealthy above all, and assuming that the rest is going to fall into place as long as you cut enough services from the poor on the argument stated or implied that they don't deserve their benefits because of their personal behavior.

Jonathan: It's a very reasonable case to make that Trump, for all the talk that he's not a traditional Republican, but at least on this economic playbook, he is. Now, there are obviously other ways where Trump has really broken with Republican orthodoxy, particularly on foreign affairs, Russia and the like, but here, he is still a believer in these tax cuts and the growth he thinks they will create. Economists have different views on that, but the tax cuts were the biggest piece of legislation he got passed the first time around in his first term, and he wants to make them the centerpiece this time as well.

Brian: Or just put more money in people's pockets and become popular that way because the tax cuts do apply to many, many more Americans besides the very wealthy and kick the can down the road regarding the national debt and hope that there isn't a crisis because it's going to be on some future president's watch anyway. You think?

Jonathan: I think that's certainly part of it. Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe today spent quite some time, we know how he feels about deficits and debt, really blasting Trump and Speaker Johnson for moving forward for this bill, for exactly what you just outlined, that this will eventually become deeply dangerous for the fiscal health of this country, but yet they'll both be out of office by then and we won't have to pay the price outside of, perhaps, an entry in the history books. They're full steam ahead.

I think one of the absolute truisms in Washington is that both parties, but particularly Republicans, only care about deficits and debt when the other party is in power. The Democrats have control of the Congress and the White House. Yes, cut spending, this matters, this is imperiling our country's future, but when they're in charge, they spend and they cut taxes.

Brian: Although an argument that the Democrats might be able to make legitimately-- I'm curious your take on this. I don't know if you've heard it put this way, but maybe you have. My guest is Jonathan Lemire from MSNBC and The Atlantic, if you're just joining us, as we're talking Monday morning national politics. We'll get some calls in from some of you. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, calls or texts. Francesca in Westchester, I see your call that's already up there. Don't go away. You're going to be first.

An argument that Democrats might legitimately make is that when they add a lot to spending, it's through the actual Keynesian principle that you do spend money, government money, and go into debt in emergency times to avoid depressions and things like that. When did the Democrats really ramp up spending in recent times? It was under Obama after the financial crisis caused so much economic hurt for so many Americans, 2008 and going forward.

Then under Biden, because of the pandemic when he bailed so many Americans-- First, Trump, to be fair, and then Biden, once he took over, bailing out Americans from the potential economic devastation of the shutdowns and everything else. Whereas when Bill Clinton was president, another Democrat, obviously, he took steps to balance the budget, and there was actually a surplus at that time, because those were boom times, so he could. When George W. Bush came into office, it was with this philosophy of tax cutting no matter what.

I don't know if you remember this, Jonathan, or if you're too young to remember this. I was in the game then. Bush started running on cutting taxes because there was a surplus under Clinton, and he thought there should be a refund to the American people. By the end of that campaign in 2000, there had already begun to be an economic downturn, the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. There were some scandals that also affected the stock market and the broader economy.

Did Bush change his tune toward the end of the campaign? No. He said, "Now we need tax cuts because people are hurting, so we have to put money in their pockets." That was just the Republican orthodoxy. Then arguably, the same thing, when Trump became president, the economy was slowly but surely recovering from the long trough of the financial crisis, but he came in with a classic Republican message of cutting taxes when maybe they didn't really need to be cut. This is just a long way of saying the Democrats may have a legitimate argument that they are for more deficit spending for more legitimate reasons.

Jonathan: I think most economists would agree with you that, at least in recent decades, the Democrats have been the more fiscally responsible party, spending in times of emergency, being more mindful when there is not one, while Republicans seem hell or high-water intent on cutting the taxes. Your example of Bush is exactly right, that he changed the justification for cutting taxes, but didn't change the goal that he wanted to cut taxes. I think that's what we have here, certainly, for Trump as well.

Yes, there are other Americans beyond the uber-rich who will benefit at least temporarily from having their taxes cut, but the disproportionate is for that, the biggest businesses and the biggest billionaires in the country, which seems to be handing the Democrats a particularly potent campaign ad come midterms next year.

Brian: Let's take a phone call, and this goes back to the Joni Ernst clip. Listeners, if you weren't listening at the top, we played that clip that has gone viral of Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa at a town hall the other day being challenged by a voter about Medicaid cuts potentially leading people to die. She said, "Everybody's going to die." Of course, she's been taking a lot of heat for that. The context of the clip, if you listen very carefully, and Jonathan, just back me up on this, because the audio was not so clear that all of the listeners might have been able to hear it well. The context seemed to be that she was talking about undocumented immigrants getting Medicaid benefits. Do I have that right?

Jonathan: Yes, I believe that is correct.

Brian: Francesca in Westchester wants to weigh in on that aspect of it. Francesca, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Francesca: Thank you for taking my call. That is exactly what I want to weigh in on. First of all, from what I understand, undocumented people cannot receive Medicaid reimbursement for visiting a doctor. They can get it for vaccines, or they go to an emergency room, they can do that. If that doesn't happen, our insurance premiums go up because we have to pay for people without insurance going to emergency rooms. That's what I understand. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The second part is that people on Medicaid are very highly vetted. You can't just walk in and say, "I need Medicaid," because their disabilities are vetted, their income is vetted, their potential for being able to get off Medicaid is vetted. I know, because I know people personally who receive Medicaid, and the process is very extensive. I think it's like a red herring. This whole undocumented and people who are able-bodied shouldn't be getting it. It's all a red herring. It's all a distraction that the people that are getting Medicaid deserve Medicaid and that they've been vetted for it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Brian: Francesca, thank you very much. Jonathan, everybody would say they are for stamping out waste, fraud, and abuse, which could lead us on to a whole other topic about Elon Musk and DOGE and DOGE post-Elon Musk, but everybody's for stomping out waste, fraud, and abuse. The question is how much is really about waste, fraud, and abuse, and how much is just about ideology or redistribution of wealth. They use accusations of waste, fraud, and abuse as a cover.

In fact, I'm sure you know one of the primary Democratic arguments against the way the Medicaid cuts are being rolled out is that they're creating a red tape barrier, a paperwork barrier to deserving people being able to qualify because there is vetting and there's going to be more vetting that's going to take, let's say, a person who is working full time, trying to raise a family, but still qualifies for Medicaid. It's going to push some of them off the rolls because the vetting is so intense. With all of that, what's your reaction to what Francesco is saying?

Jonathan: I think that's right. Senate Minority Leader Schumer, in fact, joined us on the show this morning and made a similar case, that this is just about ideology and it's going to hurt people and create these barriers for people who are deserving of the care. As far as undocumented immigrants go, they're generally ineligible for the federal health care funds, but are in emergency situations, life-saving situations. They do qualify in certain circumstances.

I think, to the broader point, this has been a longer-term goal for Republicans is to shrink these roles, to put fewer people on relying on the federal government for these things. Let's remember, of course, that Trump's first term, a central push was to try to undo the Affordable Care Act, to try to undo Obamacare, but then was defeated by a couple Republicans in the Senate. John McCain, most famously, undermined that effort.

The shrinking of the Medicaid, as such, is not something that originated with President Trump. I think we have seen other Republicans recognize that that would be potentially very risky for political purposes, but also, as I said, not to keep approvingly quoting Josh Hawley, but he made the case that, beyond the politics of it, it would also just simply hurt Americans and the like, who have come to depend on these services.

Brian: Here's a text from a listener who writes, "You need to stop referring to tax cuts in this "Big, Beautiful Trump Bill." There are no tax cuts. All it does is continuing extending the reduced rates Trump passed way back in 2017. This bill prevents taxes from going back up to where they were in 2017. That's not a tax cut." From a listener in a text message. Is that factually accurate?

Jonathan: I don't have the bill in front of me. I think that is largely correct. I think there are some additional cuts for certain economic brackets. The biggest part of this is to keep in place the Trump tax cuts of 2017, but hearkening back to your point, economists were soured on those, thinking that that just simply weren't needed at the time and would create that much more of a deficit.

We should add as a corollary to this is that some of this revenue was supposed to be made up by President Trump's tariffs, which again, perhaps an economically dubious proposition at its face, but now the tariffs, their futures seem that much more uncertain because of both court decisions and the fact that simply there haven't been any deals struck. That's another reason why there are some growing very concerned about where the debt and deficits are going, simply because what Trump promises as a revenue stream very well may not come through.

Brian: By the way, on the history of Bill Clinton, listener writes, "Aren't you skipping the part where Clinton at first ran his administration as a traditional Democrat, and when it wasn't working, then he started working with Newt Gingrich and acted more fiscally responsible, cut spending, put requirements on welfare benefits, and fired government workers." That is fair to some degree, right? If Clinton worked to balance the federal government's budget, a lot of it was based on losing the majority in the House in his first midterm election in 1994 and them really putting the screws to him politically to do something about expanding deficits. Fair enough, take from the listener on that piece of the history, yes?

Jonathan: Agreed, and the brief answer is yes, Clinton did take the beating in the '94 midterms, moved to the center on several issues, triangulation, the buzzword at the time, and co-opted some GOP ideas and was willing to work across the aisle to balance budgets and the like. We saw him really benefit politically from that, far more so than Newt Gingrich did, who was drummed out of leadership not too long later, while Clinton cruised to re-election in '96.

Brian: Oren in Jefferson, New York, you're on WNYC with Jonathan Lemire from MSNBC and The Atlantic. Hi, Oren.

Oren: Hi, everybody. Good morning, and thanks for being here. My question is on a slightly different part of the so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill," which I've been calling the big ugly bill, and that is what's going on in the Senate with reactions to the provision of that bill that will prevent the judiciary from holding various members of the executive branch in contempt for disobeying court orders. The Medicaid's getting all the press, but that provision is equally terrifying to me, or maybe more so, and I just wasn't sure what's the status of that or what anybody thinks is going to happen with that.

Brian: Oren, thank you very much. There's a specific question there, and there's a general question there. The specific question, to your knowledge, Jonathan, is there anything in this bill, which we talk about mostly as a budget bill, that would also weaken the judiciary?

Jonathan: That is something, truthfully, Brian, I don't know. I have not poured through all of it. I'm looking it up as we speak.

Brian: The more general question that the listener suggests, I have a text like this too, I'm looking for it, is that all this focus on Medicaid may wind up, as needed as it is, distracting people like us and the country in general from talking about other things in this bill that might or should be extremely controversial. The text message is about something that would make it harder to have free and fair elections. I'm curious if you have anything of a general nature on, let's say, non-budgetary items in this bill or budgetary items in this bill that have other kind of social or political implications.

Jonathan: First, I have the answer about the weakening of courts. In our defense, it's one sentence in an 1,100-page bill.

Brian: Sometimes that's all it takes.

Jonathan: That's all it takes. It prevents federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from enforcing contempt orders unless the plaintiffs have posted a monetary bond, which rarely happens in cases against the government. That's according to the Reuters write-up. They're the ones who dug up that provision that perhaps the caller there was referring to. I do think what we have seen from this piece of legislation, as well as-- Frankly, I'd argue just about everything that's happened since January 20th is an attempt to widen executive powers. That is at the very heart of everything President Trump is trying to do this time around is to weaken the other two branches of government.

Now, Congress hasn't needed much persuading. They have willingly handed over a lot of their traditional powers, Article One powers, to the presidency, because they're all Republicans and they live in such deference to President Trump. The courts, though, as I'm sure your listeners very well know, have, with some frequency, stood up to Trump, tried to curb what he can do on issues of immigration, tariffs, and far more. I think we are seeing some efforts in the Trump legislation, both in executive actions, but also some of the stuff that's in this bill, to try to continue to broaden the powers of the president.

Brian: We're not going to solve the federal budget and all of the Trump administration, and push back today. Just tell us, Jonathan, when is this bill supposed to be acted on? The new federal fiscal year doesn't start till October 1st. Are they going to be having this debate in the Senate through the summer?

Jonathan: They hoped for a timeline, and the Congress, first of all, is back today after being out last week. The Senate will start taking this up. There's definitely going to be some action this week. Timelines can change, to be sure. Republicans have said, though, they floated the idea of getting this done for a signing ceremony on July 4th. That appeals to President Trump's sense of symbolism. That, though, just a month away, that seems very rushed. I think others who I've spoken to in the process think that's overly optimistic. You're right. It doesn't have to get done for a while, but Republicans are going to try to fast-track.

Brian: Jonathan Lemire, contributing writer at The Atlantic and co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, where he anchors the 9:00 AM Eastern Time Hour, as well as contributing throughout the morning. Thank you for extending your day once again with us. We always appreciate it, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Brian, happy to do it. Let's do it again soon.

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