I found this new piece in Politico about Medicaid politics genuinely jarring. Reporters Rachel Bade et al. concoct this alternative reality in which House Republicans are pressuring Trump to cut Medicaid while he’s deeply “wary” of doing so. As you’d expect, this story comes from “six White House officials and top allies of the president.”
This is obviously bogus and is new positioning driven by the fact that Trump’s proposed Medicaid cuts are now generating serious pushback from congressional Republicans. But then comes something even wilder. Trump is so skeptical, according the aforementioned six, because “he remains profoundly wary about pursuing anything that might be construed as ‘cuts’ to a program he has vowed over and over again to protect.” This is entirely made up. Trump has pledged again and again that he’d never cut Social Security and Medicare. Whether you can put stock in those promises you’ll have to decide. But it is something he’s said again and again going back to the first campaign. Medicaid is an entirely new addition. Again, it’s a new, concocted history made necessary because of the mounting resistance to the cuts.
I continue to find it amazing that these things get published. You don’t rely on politicians, certainly not Donald Trump, for faithful accounts of history. But reporters are supposed to correct for that.
