Transcript: GOP Senator Shocked at How Badly Trump Screwing His Voters
Thorne: Stunned that someone like Senator Murkowski is surprised by this, but also it makes sense. This is actually what we’re seeing from a lot of voters in rural Virginia this year. Part of what our organization has been doing for the last several months is calling folks who are registered to vote but haven’t been participating very consistently in elections. And we’ve been reaching out to make them aware of the coming cuts to our health care—not just Medicaid, but how this will impact the ACA marketplaces as well as the cost increases from Trump’s tariffs. And people are stunned that this is happening. Sometimes our volunteers are emotionally struggling because they feel like they are breaking horrific news to people in real time. And people are pissed and scared and feel a little blindsided. So while those of us who have been paying attention are well aware of these cuts, this is devastating news to a lot of people in rural spaces.
Sargent: Well, it’s easy to make fun of Lisa Murkowski—and we all do, and sometimes for good reason. Where has she been for the past 30 years? The Republicans have been screwing rural voters relentlessly for decades. And yet at the same time, she gets at an interesting point here, which is that at a certain point, you expect GOP lawmakers to not screw their voters on literally everything at all times. And this was a thing where Republican lawmakers could be counted on to defend their constituents a little bit. Maybe there’s a prejudice among many conservatives against public radio, but conservative lawmakers would say, OK, but we really need these types of communications outlets in these places, so we’ll continue to support this stuff. And now when Trump comes along and waves a magic wand, they just fall in line. So she’s right to lament that, don’t you think?
Thorne: Yes, I guess I’ll be generous and say sure. My member of Congress, Representative Ben Clein, was at a recent event and I guess the local Democrats had a chalkboard out making sure that people knew that he recently voted to cut Medicaid and Medicare. Apparently he didn’t like that information being out in the world and simply wanted them to remove the sign. I think a lot of what we’re seeing here—the attacks on the Smithsonian, the attacks on our history—they don’t want us to know the truth. Radio is just one of the tethers that helps rural people communicate and stay connected to each other. Every single tether to the truth they can find they want to sever. I think it’s hard for Democrats to recognize that for a long time, rural people have heard about Democrats through the lens of Republicans because they’ve been the only ones to bother to show up and communicate with us. So at the same time that it is true, that we should be talking about the real harm Republicans are unleashing on their own communities, Democrats need to also recognize that we haven’t been bothering to show up to participate, to engage in meaningful ways.
