If you missed today's Amped Up, you missed one hell of a safari through the rotting guts of Republican-dictated dysfunction—with much gallows humor to go around.
I was joined by the always Emmy-worthy David Schuster and the razor-sharp Jonathan Larsen of The Fucking News fame (yes, it’s real, and brilliant). We started light—some solid ribbing, a few laughs about old-school “teabagger” puns—but then dove headfirst into the economic house of horrors that is Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” scam.
Spoiler: It’s neither beautiful nor a bill, it’s a hand grenade—or something containing a bit more shrapnel, like a Trump steak—that horrid House Republicans lobbed into the very guts of Medicare, working people’s wallets, and the basic concept of our democratic process.
Jonathan broke down how MAGA Republicans passed a thousand-plus-page monstrosity with a 40-page midnight amendment—jammed through in the middle of the night while the country was nodding off like Donald Trump at a meeting with the Saudis. Let’s be clear: What Squeaker Johnson did is what cowards do when they know the public would burn the damn thing if they had time to read it.
They’re gutting public education to fund tax breaks for their rich pals who send their kids to private schools. They’re triggering a $500 billion cut to Medicare under PAYGO. And they’re doing it all while gaslighting the public about a Moody’s credit downgrade that was a direct response to Trump’s economic treason. That in the near future will transform the lives most Americans have grown accustomed to into a disappearing act for once-affordable basics. as America’s starved of investment and the dollar crashes due to this dementia-addled, Stage-9 heffer.
Meanwhile, Trump’s treating business like it’s a mob front—threatening Walmart into silence, lying about $5 trillion in “promises” from Qatar (whose entire GDP is $200 billion, so his calculation only works at Trump University and in MTG’s synapses). And causing such chaos with tariffs that companies like Walmart won’t even give quarterly projections.
You know it’s bad when Wall Street—where quite a few executives who throw a party every time a company fires 10,000 people—starts to panic about Trump’s instability and doofus-ry. And, shit, that’s just the first half of the long-term dangers posed to our economy that we discussed on the show (be sure to watch!)
Bottom line: this isn’t just about budgets or bond yields. As we discussed, it’s about whether democracy can survive a party that has become more Yuri Andropov than Ronald Reagan (the irony). A cretinous entity that passes laws in the dark of night for a feeble, fatuous cult leader who thinks he’s a king. And if Democrats don’t start using power they’re constitutionally provided with he same aggressiveness the GOP abuses power they don’t actually have, we’ll lose the whole damn thing. By that, I mean it all.
Stay amped. Stay angry. And for the love of all that’s decent, fight this “bill” by calling your elected representatives, posting your thoughts online, showing up at an office to protest…hell, sending up smoke signals in morse code if you have to.
But as our final plea during this convo on “Amped Up w/ Cliff Schecter” should’ve made clear, this is “a plan to starve American children and let us die without health insurance so Elon Musk can buy his fifth $78 million plane.” I’ve been in this business a while, and this is easily the most cruel, corrupt, and, yes, criminal act cosplaying as legislation that I’ve ever seen. EVER.
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