One of the symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome is failure to realize the President actually understands negotiation. This symptom is caused by exposure to echo chambers that spew non-stop propaganda. For those who’ve spent the 10 years in such toxic environments, the TDS appears to be irreversible!
See as Scott Adams spells out in Win Bigly, one of Donald Trump’s negotiating tactics is anchoring to hyperbole, then backing off. He proposes an exaggerated plan, demonstrates his dominant position, measures everyone’s reaction, then dials things back with an earnest concession. If someone hasn’t read the book, or been paying attention to Trump for the last, oh, 40 years, they might have noticed he did this exact thing with tariffs a month ago.
At least, this tactic is what many of us who support the President hope is the case with proposed Medicaid cuts. In late May, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed its comprehensive FY2026 federal budget bill along a straight party-line vote. The bill includes long-overdue tax cuts but also includes reductions in Medicaid appropriations. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that it would cut $625 billion by effectively removing 7.6 million Americans from the program.
A legion of pundits and advocacy groups have pounced on this legislation, waving it like a bloody toga as final, irrefutable evidence of all that horrible TDS-inducing vitriol.
MSNBC’s Michael Cohen called the bill “brutal.” Families USA’s Anthony Wright said, “Republicans today took a bad bill and made it even worse.” The Association for Community Action Plans’ Margaret A. Murray said, “How this makes America either healthier or wealthier is hard to see.” American Hospital Association President Rick Pollack said the bill would “severely restrict the use of legitimate state funding resources and supplemental payment programs, including provider taxes and direct payments, under the guise of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.” Macquarie Equity Research estimated that budget reductions will create a “2 percent of demand destruction across healthcare products and services.” (We’re not sure what demand destruction is, but it doesn’t sound great.)
While of course our bloated federal budget needs to be reduced, federal Medicaid cuts would be fiscally irresponsible. They would devastate state budgets by forcing state governments to make up the difference, possibly spurring dramatic local tax increases.
Medicaid cuts would put even more strain on rural hospitals already facing financial challenges. This would lead to reduced services hospitals that primarily support the rural voters who voted for President Trump three times and trusted him to improve their way of life after decades of neglect from both political parties. Medicaid cuts also jeopardize care for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers roughly 37 million children nationwide. These cuts also threaten seniors who rely on Medicaid to pay for home care or assisted living.
Beyond the importance of not wanting to harm farmers, children, and the elderly for its own sake, we also don’t want to risk anything that even looks like harming them because of the potential political fallout. Given that President Trump made it clear he would not cut Medicaid, this seems like a great time to keep his pledge. (However, no matter how well funded federal healthcare programs are, they will probably never be able to cure Trump Derangement Syndrome.)
Of course, the federal budget is unsustainable. If DC Republicans want to save the taxpayer some money, let’s look at our bloated defense budget. Yes, it’s important for America to have the strongest military in the world, yes, we need to keep a sharpened sword, yes, we don’t want to neglect our promises to our veterans, and on and on. I don’t know by what percentage our military budget could comfortably be reduced; I know the answer is not zero percent.
For the America First movement, the 2026 midterms will be make or break. Our enemies abroad are unburned by biannual elections and are waiting to pounce on the weakness that Democrat victories inevitably bring to Washington, DC. Moreover, a loss would invite groundless impeachment proceedings, frustrate the President’s domestic agenda, and demoralize nationalist movements in Europe.
The next Democrat Congressional victory will give gavels to maniacs. With the tenuousness of today’s global political economic uncertainty and global instability, keeping an America First Congress must be our first priority. The world can’t afford for President Trump to not win bigly.
Jared Whitley has worked in the US Senate and White House. He has an MBA from Hult business school in Dubai. Recently the Top of the Rockies competition named him the best columnist in the Intermountain West.
