Rachel Maddow took aim at Donald Trump’s swath of unpopular ideas and policy moves in recent weeks on Monday’s show, specifically calling out the president’s decision to go after Americans in default on their student loans by using collections agencies.
“At the top of his supposedly populist agenda this week, as of today President Donald Trump is siccing collection agencies on Americans whose student loans aren’t paid up to date,” Maddow said. “This is a change from the policies of President Biden, the Trump administration as of today has sent out the first notices that the Treasury is going to start taking away tax refunds and then siphoning your wages if you do not pay up on student loans.”
Maddow continued, explaining that this change affects millions of Americans.
“5 million Americans are in default on their student loans already, millions more are on the verge of default on their student loans, and now Trump is handing these millions of Americans over to the tender administrations of collections agencies. You ever had a collections agency come after you?”
Elsewhere in the segment, Maddow quoted Trump’s “Meet the Press” interview from Sunday where, when asked about the prices of goods going up as a result of his tariffs, he argued kids need fewer dolls.
“I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs – that’s 11 years old – needs to have 30 dolls,” Trump said. “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable. We had a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China.”
“Three dolls, five pencils, and be grateful if you get that, American child!,” Maddow quipped.
The MSNBC host then ran down all the times Trump has expressed a lack of concern for prices going up as a result of his tariffs.
“The president has recently mused publicly that he does not care if the price of cars goes up, he does not care if we have a recession, he does not care if small business want relief from the tariffs, he does not care if strollers cost more.”
Maddow closed out the segment: “Remind me, please, what populism is. Somehow three dolls, five pencils and a pounding on the door from a collections agency is not how I imagined it.”
The post Rachel Maddow Slams Trump for Siccing Collections Agencies on Student Loan Borrowers: ‘Remind Me What Populism Is’ appeared first on TheWrap.