Lawrence: Trump says 65% of Americans are ‘FOOLS!’

Lawrence: Trump says 65% of Americans are ‘FOOLS!’

Well, Donald Trump,
who is facing the disapproval of 54 % of Americans, continues
his politically losing ways by saying something that could
get
that disapproval number up.
Something that no president in history has
ever said,
two thirds of Americans are
fools. Donald Trump put that in
writing. Donald Trump said in writing,
people that are against tariffs
are fools. 65 percent of Americans are fools,
according toto Donald Trump. 65 percent. 65 percent of Americans
oppose the Trump tariffs and Donald Trump’s response to
that is
to call them fools with the
exclamation point. 65 % of the country knows
that Donald Trump’s tariffs are
causing inflation, causing them higher
costs
that they’re facing. 65 know that the Trump tariffs are
economically hurting them. And Donald Trump calls them fools
and then says,
he wants to send them for the economic harm
that his tariffs have caused
those people. The Wall Street Journal
editorial board
responded to that idea saying,
quote, if tariffs are a free economic
launch
and their benefits abound, why why offer a rebate? Donald Trump is the most
inconsistent,
incoherent, ignorant federal elected
official
in history on the subject of
tariffs. And because he spreads so much
madness
and chaos every day, the Washington news media is
incapable
of what would be their standard
reaction to a and out of touch that Democrat
is
for saying 60 % of Americans are
fools. Imagine Imagine the number
of articles that would pour
forth out of the Washington news media
about how elitist and out of
touch that Democrat is for saying 65 % of the American people are
fools. Donald Trump can say it
and the Washington news media
doesn’t even notice it because his
madness has
understandably worn them down.
They have lowered their standards for
Donald Trump. Later in this hour we will hear
from President Obama’s chair of the Council
of Economic Advisers Jason
Furman on Donald Trump’s idea
about paying $2 ,000 to 225
million people he calls fools.
Also later in the hour we’ll hear
from an expert on how to refund
tariffs if the Supreme Court properly
rules
that Donald Trump’s tariffs are
illegal and unconstitutional then those
illegally
collected tariffs will have to
be refunded. And Donald Trump is lying
about such a refund now claiming that it would involve trillions
of dollars being refunded from
the Treasury. That is a complete lie. Only $195 billion has been
collected
in Trump tariffs and all of that could easily be
refunded. The IRS refunds that much every
year
and overpaid income taxes. Our guest joining us later
in the hour will show you
exactly how tariffs are paid
and exactly how they can be
refunded, and it’s just as easy as the
refund
that the Treasury sends to
millions and millions of income tax
payers every year. That expert will show you an
actual receipt
for tariffs paid, $98 $68 ,000
in tariffs paid, which includes all the information
that the Treasury needs to
refund that tariff money to the
American payer of the Trump
tariff. But we begin tonight with your
feelings. There was much disappointment
about the way the end of the shutdown was brokered
in the United States Senate by five Democratic senators who
appeared
to change their position at the
end of seven weeks of shutdown. By the time I presented that
news last night,
there had been an outpouring of outrage on social media all
day
about Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer failing to control every
Democratic vote
in the Senate, something no Democratic leader
of the Senate has ever been able
to consistently do. The late-night comedians had
their usual l fun
at Chuck Schumer’s expense. Some of them clearly think
that they would be better at the
job of Democratic leader of the
United States Senate,
because obviously it’s easy in
their view. When I explained what I think is
the reality
of Senate leadership here last
night, based on my experience working
in the Senate,
I wasn’t so much concerned with the feelings of the
disappointed
than I was with the reality of the situation and getting
that reality as clear as
possible here. But our first guest tonight is
much better
at addressing feelings than I
am, as he showed in this video
posted yesterday. I know that a lot
of people are feeling some
pretty strong feelings today, feelings of
frustration,
even betrayal. I have somewhat the advantage
of,
from being in the Senate, being a couple of days ahead of
everybody,
seeing that this was going to
happen. So I’ve had a bit more time to
process it
than people who discovered it
yesterday. And while I think everybody is
entitled
to their feelings on this, and I don’t want to derogate
those in any way,
we need to remember the battle
that we’re in. And every ounce of energy that
we put
into fighting with each other, fighting with other Democrats is
energy
that is lost to the fight to defend our country from Trump
and MAGA. Whatever your feelings are, I
validate them. Great.
Feel that way. But we’ve got a battle on our
hands.
And it’s a battle who’s put real obstacles in the way
of Trump’s corruption and
misconduct. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is
one
of the people who one of our faithful viewers
suggested
on Twitter last night should be
the new Senate Democratic leader. I’ll ask Senator Whitehouse
if he thinks Chuck Schumerer
should be replaced as leader and if he wants that
job. It’s worth noting that no
Democratic member
of the Senate has said their
leader should be replaced. And we now have reporting
indicating
that the small g group of Democratic senators who
reached a compromise
with Republicans started working on that compromise on the first
night
of the government shutdown, seven weeks ago. Politico reports Senators Gene
Shaheen
of New Hampshire and Angus K Kig of Maine began talking
with Republicans the first night
of the shutdown, by Shaheen’s account. So, with a small group
of Democrats working with
Republicans from the first night of the
shutdown. Chuck Schumer was able to
convince
those Democrats not to make a
deal until after last week’s election. Donald Trump himself blamed the
shutdown
for the Republicans’ wipeout in last week’s election. And if that’s true,
does Chuck Schumer deserveve soe
credit for pushing the shutdown
through last week’s election so it could have that impact on
the election. The final Democratic vote that
sealed
the deal came from Tim Kaine of
Virginia, who was Hillary Clinton’s vice
presidential running mate. There appears to be a belief out
there
that the minority leader of the Senate can simply tell
Tim Kaine
what to do. Tim Kaine said that his number
one issue
in the shutdown was always
protecting federal government workers
and he achieved some protection for government workers,
many of whom live in his state
of Virginia, in his negotiations with
Republicans. Politico reports Tim Kaine
privately
laid out weeks ago what he
needed in return
for his vote to end the
government shutdown, a moratorium on mischief. He meant no more firing of
federal workers. So there’s the final vote that
sealed the deal,
that got them to 60━the final
vote━sealed the deal,
negotiating with Republicans for
weeks. Negotiating with Republicans
weeks
before last week’s election, and through it all,
Chuck Schumer tried to hold on to those Democrats. And our leader Chuck Schumer,
who told members invnvolved in e
talks about two weeks ago he were sketching out,
continued privately urging them
to hold out even as they moved to concede this
week. Every Democratic senator had
exactly the same
chance to talk Tim Kaine out of
it. Every single one of them. Every Democratic senator had a
chance to try
to change John Fetterman’s mind, but John Fetterman and two other
Democrats voted with the Republicans even
before any compromise was
struck. There were three Democrats
siding
with the Republicans basically from the start on this shutdown,
and so the shift to a compromise
was done by only five Democrats,
and that then added up to a
total of eight Democrats who were
willing to vote
for the compromise that brought that total to the necessary 60
votes. The minority party has never
won a major concession in a
government shutdown. It’s never happened. That’s one
of the facts that moved those
five senators toward compromise. Most Most of the people
with the most hurtrt feelings about this seem to believe that
they know
for a fact what was going to
happen next in the government shutdown. They have mistaken their guesses
for facts. There are never answers
for what happens next in a
government shutdown, only guesses. And in the past,
the reason shutdowns ended is that both sides were rational. Donald Trump is not rational. Donald Trump is not running for
reelection. Donald Trump doesn’t care about
anything. Donald Trump doesn’t care about
starving people. Donald Trump doesn’t care about
health
insurance premiums. Donald Trump doesn’t care
about government itself. That makes him a unique
negotiating partner
in American political history. He has no political future to
care about
and he doesn’t care about the future of his
political party. The five Democrats who made the
compromise
made the guess that they were never going to
get the big
thing they were asking for, so they asked for and got
something smaller. Only in the age of Trump
with a news media that lost
perspective a long time ago could this
outcome be reported as a loss for the
Democrats,
meaning all Democrats, instead of a strategic choice
by five Democrats who changed
their position in exchange for 271 Republicans,
including the President, changing their positions
and agreeing to increased
funding for Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance. For agreeing to protect
government workers,
to not allow Donald Trump to
fire them, not allow any of the layoffs
that Donald
Trump has executed during the
shutdown to hold. All of those people will be
rehired
because of what Tim Kaine
negotiated. They will all get back pay. There was nothing unusual
in what those five Democrats
did. There is no reason to presume
that they were trying to
sabotage anyone. Everything that they’ve publicly
said
about it indicates that those five Democrats were
trying
to do the right thing in an
unprecedented situation,
a situation that no one in the Senate has
ever faced before. And the choice that they made
was a guess, just like the rest of the
Democrats,
who guessed that the best thing was to keep the shutdown going,
to try for the first time in
history to legislate from the minority
in a shutdown. A small minority of Americans. A small minority
of Americans pay Obamacare
premiums, 6 % of Americans pay Obamacare
premiums. The The Democrats were holding out
in the shutdown, fighting for
those six percent
of Americans who desperately
need help to pay for health insurance. They are the kind of people
that the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party alone
cares
about and has cared about since Franklin Delano Roosevelt
made concern
about the people who need help from the government,
the soul of the Democratic Party
in 1933. And it has been ever since. That small group of people,
6 % of the country, was
successfully leveraged by the Democrats
during the shutdown to show
Trump Republican cruelty, to vividly show it in a
way
that anyone could understand it.
Without the attention of the shutdown,
94 % of the country would have
no idea that those premiums were going
up. The shutdown made the Republican
position
hugely unpopular. And my guess is it didn’t just
pay off
in the last election, my guess is it will pay in the
next election,
but that is just a guess like everything else in this
situation. I’ve seen many legislative
losses
in Congress and the smart losers never blame themselves. They don’t really admit they
lost
because they don’t admit that
it’s over. They just say
that they’re going to keep
fighting. They treat it like the third
inning
of a nine-inning game, which is what it is. It is exactly what it is. We’re in the third inning, in a
nine-inning game. The sixth inning is a year from
now
in November and the ninth inning is the next
presidential election. And you can start attacking
people
on your own team in the third
inning if you’re that kind of player. Here’s a guess, and it’s just a
guess. Maybe with Thanksgiving flights
canceled
and the holiday ruined for millions more people
than the six percent who pay
Obamacare premiums, a large majority
of the country might turn against the small group of
Obamacare
beneficiaries who they would
then see as ruining their Thanksgiving
for the majority if the shutdown
had continued through the
holidays. Now, that’s just a guess.
That’s just a possible scenario. It’s all it is.
It’s just a guess. I’m not suggesting that,
it’s not something I believe, I’m just coming up with it as an
example. It’s just a guess.
But no Senator. No Senator could tell you
that that absolutely would not
happen. Maybe it would. Maybe most
of the 94 % who don’t pay
Obamacare premiums would resent the
disruption
of their holidays, or maybe they
wouldn’t. Maybe they would be generous about it. Maybe they would be thankful
on Thanksgiving that they personally didn’t have
to pay
higher Obamacare premiums and want to help those other
people. Maybe they would want senators
to keep fighting
for that 6 % of the country. Who Who knows?
Your guess is as good as mine. guess is as good as everyone
else’s guess. That’s in the nature of
guessing. So many of the people who were
crushed
by those five Democrats seem to
think the future is a fact,
not a guess. They seem to think that when
they look
into the future, when they see the Thanksgiving
holidays
and a government shutdown, they can see facts and not just
guesses. But the future is not a fact. The future is a guess,
especially in politics. Sometimes about what would happen in the
future. But don’t pretend that it was
something more
than a guess.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains how the shutdown fight demonstrates that Donald Trump “doesn’t care about starving people” or rising health insurance premiums or “the future of his political party.”

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