J.D. Vance’s Stunning 2020 Admission About Trump Exposes Big MAGA Scam

In an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer in June 2017, Vance decried the version of Obamacare repeal-and-replace that Republicans were moving through Congress at the time. He faulted its deep cuts to the ACA’s Medicaid spending, and explicitly cast this as a betrayal of Trump voters. Trump had been elected because he was a Republican who wasn’t saying, “I’m going to take away your Social Security and your Medicaid,” Vance said, allowing Trump to differentiate himself from other Republicans who wouldn’t “take care of working-class people.” That bill would indeed have hurt untold numbers of poor and working-class Trump voters.

Yet Trump aggressively pushed for it to pass—while congressional Republicans were a major driver of it, Trump absolutely was, as well. Indeed, you can watch video of Trump celebrating the House’s passage of the plan as then–Speaker Ryan and other Republicans applauded gleefully (before repeal died in the Senate). That plainly was a betrayal by Vance’s own lights. There’s no way to pretend now that Trump was stymied by them into committing this sellout.

If anything has changed since then, it’s that along these lines, Trump has only gotten more shameless. It’s true that Trump does differ from Ryan-style Republicans in some ways, such as with his promise of more tariffs, which the GOP donor class likely will oppose. But Trump has vowed that in a second term he would make his 2017 tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations permanent, and he has even promised to cut corporate taxes further, which could be a huge giveaway to the biggest, richest corporations in America.