MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explained the ins and outs of President Donald Trump’s controversial, Republican-backed budget bill, which will dramatically cut funding for Americans on Medicare as well as chop globally-used food assistance programs by the billions over a decade.
“Sadistic zombies is not the kind of phrase you’d expect from Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Robin Krugman,” ‘O’Donnell said on his “The Last Word ” program, referencing words Krugman used to describe Trump and the Republican-majority Congress’ move to propose and pass an over 1,000-page legislation package called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
On Thursday, House Republicans approved the bill which is comprised of tax breaks, spending cutbacks, financial support for border security and more, which will impact Americans as they will likely be stripped of long-running government assistance programs like Medicade and reduce funding for nonprofit organizations, including Planned Parenthood.
“The cruelty of the budget bill designed by Donald Trump and the Republican Congress has provoked the mild-mannered Prof. Krugman, not known for rhetorical excess to call Donald Trump and the Republican Congress, sadistic zombies,” O’Donnell said, noting that Trump and the GOP have failed to “read,” “learn” and comprehend the intricate sectors and layers of the U.S. economy.
In addition to Trump and the GOP, O’Donnell added Elon Musk, who donated $288 million to Trump’s Presidential campaign and served as head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.D.G.E.), as one of the “sadistic zombies” who is responsible for nation’s moral and economic downfall.
“And I will take the liberty during this hour to extend Prof. Krugman’s term to include the Trump ally, who actually might be the most sadistic of all, Elon Musk,” O’Donnell said. “Into the group sadistic zombies now trying to control our governing and in Elon Musk’s case, trying to control this starving little girl in a refugee camp near south Sudan. Because Elon Musk believes that she — the girl you’re looking at right there — Elon Musk believes that she has received too much free food from you. Too much free food from the United States of America.”
O’Donnell went on to break down America’s history as leader in servicing food and aid resources while noting how budget bill will effect everyday Americans, particularly who are already financially strained.
“The United States of America has been producing more food than we can consume for more than a century now and we have been sending food aid around the world for almost 200 years as we did during the Irish famine in 1847,” O’Donnell said.
He continued: “The sadistic zombies are trying to take food aid away from people here in the United States who need food aid. They’re trying to take that away from people in their budget bill. They are trying to take healthcare away from the people who earn the least amount of money in this country. They are trying to take healthcare away from Medicare recipients. They are trying to give the most massive tax cut in history to Elon Musk and other billionaires while still maintaining a much heavier tax burden on many taxpayers, and on working couples for example, who can no longer deduct all of their state and local taxes on their federal tax returns because Donald Trump and the Republicans eliminated the possibility of deducting all of your state and local taxes from your federal tax returns, which we’ve all been able to do during our entire lives and they did that during the first Trump presidency.”
O’Donnell concluded his thoughts by saying Republicans have betrayed economy-focused voters by lying about restoring Americans’ ability to deduct state and local taxes and instead raised their tax burdens “enormously.”
“How do you get those Republican House members in New York and California who lied about this in their campaign, saying they were going to fix this, how do you get them to vote for that bill and betray their voters,” O’Donnell said. “They promised they would fix that problem for them. The Republican House leadership is pushing forward to try to pass a bill for a president who has no idea what he is doing, who has no idea how the American economy and the global economy actually work.”
By the end of his remarks, O’Donnell noted that Americans have “finally, finally, finally” come to disapprove of how Trump is running the government. Sixty-six percent of Americans compared to 34% disapprove of how Trump is handling inflation and the cost of living. Sixty-three percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s role in the tariffs war and 58% of the country is unhappy with how Trump is managing the economy overall.
Watch O’Donnell’s full thoughts above.
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