During my latest interview with Congressman Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia, I couldn’t help but marvel at the absurdity of what has become of the Republican Party under Donald Trump’s so-called leadership. We are living through a government shutdown that Trump personally engineered, and instead of leading, the White House’s official social media accounts are pumping out memes that look like they were made by anonymous trolls on 4chan.
I opened the interview by reporting on the backlash Trump is receiving for these posts online. The official White House account, yes, the official account, is now using taxpayer dollars to mock Democrats with juvenile memes while millions of Americans are terrified about making rent.
It’s an embarrassment to the country. And as the congressman told me, it’s not just embarrassing, it’s dangerous. “It seems more and more clear to me at this point that the Republicans planned all along to shut down the government,” Subramanyam said. “They think this is funny, but it’s not funny. This is going to hurt a lot of people, including my friends and neighbors in Virginia.”
He’s right. Virginia is home to hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors, people who serve their country quietly and competently every day. These are the people who pay the price when MAGA Republicans decide to turn governance into performance art. They’ve been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration since day 1, deemed “less than” simply because they work for the federal government. “Most of all,” Subramanyam continued, “it’s going to hurt the American people. They’re sick of this. And these shutdown fights only seem to happen when Republicans are in charge.”
It’s hard to argue with that. Every time Trump or his congressional enablers get the reins, they crash the car and then laugh at the wreckage. And while they blame Democrats for the shutdown, their own official accounts are spamming the internet with claims that the shutdown is somehow about “transgender surgeries in Peru” and “healthcare for illegal immigrants.” The lies are so grotesque and over-the-top that it’s hard to even respond symmetrically, and that’s the point.
As the congressman put it, “They rely on gaslighting. They’ve been firing federal workers, taking away veterans’ benefits, cutting food access programs like SNAP, and now they’re pretending to be defenders of the working class.” He added that Republicans weren’t even showing up to work: “They were told to stay home this week. Most jobs, if you don’t show up, you get fired. And I hope they all get fired over this.”
They can’t govern, so they distract. They can’t pass a budget, so they meme. And they can’t tell the truth, so they lie about “trillions” of dollars of imaginary savings or revenues that no one, not Treasury, not the appropriations committees, not even the OMB, has ever seen.
When I asked about Trump’s claim that he “brought in $17 trillion,” Subramanyam didn’t miss a beat: “I’d love to see his math on that. What I do know is we have all the accounting on how he’s enriching himself and his family.”
From Jared Kushner’s $2 billion Saudi payday to Trump’s “Club Rose Garden” remodel, it’s an endless exercise in self-enrichment and spectacle. Meanwhile, farmers are going bankrupt, workers are furloughed, and costs are crushing families. The contrast could not be starker.
“Let them eat cake,” Subramanyam said, summarizing the Republican ethos. “Let’s cut Medicaid benefits for people who need it most so we can fund tax cuts for the richest corporations.”
But he also made clear that resignation isn’t an option. “We can’t ignore this. We have to keep speaking up. Every time people push back, you see them retreat. The American people are not accepting these policies.”
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