Congressman Suhas Subramanyam on Trump Fallout

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Speaker 3 Earlier this morning, we got some troubling news that jobless claims in America are spiking worse than expected. There were an estimated 242,000 jobless claims that were filed last week.

Speaker 3 This exceeded the expectations above most economists.

Speaker 3 And we're hearing now from Democratic voters, Republican voters, independent voters, people who aren't even all that political, just how pissed they are.

Speaker 3 And we're learning about a lot of stories from people who were former Trump supporters as well, who are regretting their votes.

Speaker 3 We're seeing in Ruby Red Districts as well, these red state voters showing up and saying, this is not what I voted for. You promised this, you promised that.
None of the promises are happening.

Speaker 3 And in fact, prices are surging. I mean, you've got posts like this, the Let's Go Brandon store has its,

Speaker 3 they lost their lease. You have people posting on the various right-wing subreddits and social media chats saying that they're losing their jobs right now.

Speaker 3 A lot of people on Trump's social media platform responding to that bizarre post that he made about Trump Gaza. And they were like, what the hell are you even doing right now?

Speaker 3 And I think people are realizing that this tax cut is a scam that's just going to be helping the billionaires and screwing over working people. Well, all of that's happening.

Speaker 3 You've got like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that these federal jobs that are being cut are not even real jobs and the people who are losing their jobs deserve it here. Let's play this clip.

Speaker 4 You can protest all you want outside of departments of this government. You can protest all you want, but the American people disagree with you.
You're protecting the bureaucracy.

Speaker 4 The bureaucracy is not a business. Those are not real jobs producing federal revenue.
By the way, they're consuming taxpayer dollars.

Speaker 4 Those jobs are paid for by the American tax people who work real jobs, earn real income, pay federal taxes, and then pay these federal employees. Federal employees do not deserve their jobs.

Speaker 4 Federal employees do not deserve their paychecks. And these are jobs that can be fired at will.

Speaker 3 Wow. Let's bring in Democratic Congressmember Suha Subramanium.
Congressmember, first off, welcome to the Midas Touch Network, your first time appearing.

Speaker 3 You are a Congress member from Virginia's 10th. What do you make of that? I know your district is being impacted by these cuts.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you know, she said a couple interesting things. She also said that Congress couldn't cut Medicaid, but that's exactly what they're trying to do right now.

Speaker 5 But, you know, I represent a lot of federal workers and contractors, and those are real jobs. They're real people with real families.

Speaker 5 So, certainly, the government does actually employ a lot of people, that many of them are veterans. But, second, you know, aside from just that, I mean,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 think of someone who's an employee at the IRS. They actually generate revenue for the government.

Speaker 5 They can make sure that taxes are collected. They make sure waste, fraud, and abuse is found and removed.
And so a lot of the federal civil service actually saves taxpayers money in the long run.

Speaker 5 That's why a lot of these programs exist. They were authorized by Congress to do just that.
So, you know, what she said is not true. It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 5 And, but, you know, we shouldn't be surprised, right? What we should be surprised about is is a good thing, which is what you were saying before.

Speaker 5 I think now even Republicans are starting to understand that Trump's agenda was really just about helping the most

Speaker 5 richest billionaires and richest corporations at the expense of kids who want to be fed and people who just want basic care on programs like Medicaid.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm hearing that Republican leadership all the way up to MAGA Mike Johnson and Trump are telling the members of Congress, the Republicans, to stop doing their town halls because it was so humiliating what happened.

Speaker 3 Then Magamike Johnson went on CNN about a night ago and he was saying, saying,

Speaker 3 you know, all of those people that you're seeing in these ruby red districts, he's like, they're not real people. This is all fake.
Don't believe your eyes.

Speaker 3 Let me just show you a bit of what he said, then get your reaction to that. Let's play it.

Speaker 6 Just asking, because as you know, your home state of Louisiana, about 80% of the Medicaid spending there is covered by the federal government.

Speaker 6 We've seen it in a lot of red states, of course, across the United States. It's not just a blue state issue.

Speaker 6 As you have seen through this and we've seen the blowback that some Republicans in your caucus are getting when they go back home to their districts, worried about these cuts or worried about what Doge is doing.

Speaker 6 Do you have concerns that that's anything that Democrats will be able to use to run against those Republicans?

Speaker 1 No, because

Speaker 1 the videos you saw of the town halls were for paid protesters in many of those places. These are Democrats who went to the events early and filled up the seats.

Speaker 1 If the videos had panned.

Speaker 6 You can't argue they were all paid protesters, though, Mr. Speaker.

Speaker 6 What are your Republicans acknowledged they were his constituents?

Speaker 1 One Republican acknowledged they were his constituents. That's fantastic.
Okay, but they

Speaker 3 yeah, what's your response to that?

Speaker 5 We had one town hall in my district that we had room for about 150 people in the room. 500 people came and people left.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but a lot of people actually stayed in the lobby of the building just to hear what we were saying and then came and talked to me afterwards.

Speaker 5 We have one tonight where we've decided to increase the capacity of the room room to 650, got a new menu, and 800 signups. We had to close signups.
And these are all real people.

Speaker 5 Not one of them is paid. And a few of them are even, more than a few, are Republicans, actually, who are really, really pissed off, to be honest.

Speaker 5 And so I think that that's, you know, he's got to say what he's got to say to cover his tracks, but he's not living in reality if that's what he actually thinks.

Speaker 3 I'll give you a little trip down

Speaker 3 memory lane, although not so long ago. When you were running for the 10th congressional district, you did an interview from WUSA 9, and they were saying things about the economy then.

Speaker 3 And we're not really, we're not talking about years ago. We're talking about months ago.
This was the interview. This is how they were describing the economy then.

Speaker 5 Here, playlist clip.

Speaker 7 I had to ask you here deeper on the economy. So, top economists are saying, look, the GDP is solid, unemployment numbers, the labor market have rebalanced close to pre-pandemic levels.

Speaker 7 Inflation is at a three-year low.

Speaker 3 So, that's where it was then. I just wanted to show that because in a matter of months,

Speaker 3 this guy has like taken a sledgehammer. Trump's taken a sledgehammer to this economy and I think has destroyed it quicker than most people expected.

Speaker 3 I mean, prices are surging right now and he can try to distract with all of the posts that he's making, but the data's the data.

Speaker 5 Yeah, someone once described the economy to me and the president's relationship to it as like a baseball manager and a baseball team where, you know, the manager can set the lineup, but they can't always hit, you can't always catch.

Speaker 5 But in this case,

Speaker 5 this president has actually given us a lot of self-inflicted wounds. You talk about the tariffs, for instance, and the threat of tariffs.

Speaker 5 Now, private sector and the markets don't really want to make big investments right now. They're afraid of actually moving on investing in the United States.

Speaker 5 A lot of business has come to a standstill. Here in Virginia, a lot of government contractors spent hundreds of thousands, not millions, trying to implement government contracts.

Speaker 5 And now they've been canceled overnight. And they're never going to work with the government again.
And they're trying to figure out where they are in this economy. But

Speaker 5 a lot of the disruption that's happened has directly led to this. And now you talk about getting rid of federal civil servants, scientists,

Speaker 5 workers who are very essential to our government's operations.

Speaker 5 And so if you fire the person, for instance, involved in crop safety and health at the USDA, well, yeah, you know, you saved $100,000 maybe in the short term, but it's going to cost us millions over the next five years as we see damage to our crops.

Speaker 5 And that's just one example. You spread that across hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants, and you end up in a really bad position.

Speaker 5 So I think this is different than when we had struggles under previous presidents in that this is actually self-inflicted and caused directly by the president and his administration.

Speaker 3 Now, this is the first year that you've been in Congress.

Speaker 3 What I hear from the American people, they don't like process answers of we can't do things simply because we're in the minority and we can't hold the hearings.

Speaker 3 I think people are looking for fighters right now who are going to stand up because people are pissed. Now, you've been a very outspoken freshman member of Congress.

Speaker 3 You haven't hesitated to call out Trump and Musk in no uncertain terms. You've been utilizing all digital platforms as,

Speaker 3 you know, being innovative in Congress. So the question I always get asked is, all of this is great, Ben.
You know, Congress member Subbermanium is great.

Speaker 3 What can we do? What do you want us to do? Where do you want us to go?

Speaker 3 Help lead us, because I think this is a time where people just want to say, please help us and please tell us what we're ready to do what you want us to do to stand up to a lot of these atrocities taking place.

Speaker 5 Yeah, absolutely. You know, first I'll say, you know, I come from the state legislature and where no one really paid attention to what we did.

Speaker 5 So coming to Congress, when I saw I had the opportunity to speak on the floor whenever I wanted to, like I've taken advantage of that. And I think some of my colleagues are starting to as well.

Speaker 5 I think we in Congress do have a megaphone and we've encouraged each other to use that as much as we can.

Speaker 5 So even if we don't call the hearings, well, we can go on the House floor and call out the hypocrisy, call out the bad stuff that's happening, and bring attention to it.

Speaker 5 And I've also tried to be on different social media platforms because we have to find people where they are, right?

Speaker 5 Everyone's not on, you know, in front of their TV at six o'clock. listening to Dan Rather anymore, right?

Speaker 5 Things have changed, right? They listen to you. They listen to a lot of other mediums.
and so we're trying to get out there as much as possible.

Speaker 5 In Virginia, we have elections every year, and so I've told people now is the time, sign up with our campaign, sign up with

Speaker 5 any campaign, and certainly the governor's campaign here, because we have a chance to send a message to the United States and to voters across the country right now.

Speaker 5 And then there's special elections as well, too. So you can get involved that way.

Speaker 5 And third, you know, let's especially if they're going to ignore court orders or really ignore the will of Congress and the American people and continue to break the law. Let's take to the streets.

Speaker 5 Let's do whatever we can.

Speaker 5 I know the rallies don't feel like they make a difference. I know showing up to the Republican town halls doesn't feel like it makes a difference, but let's keep putting the pressure.

Speaker 5 There's three Republicans that won

Speaker 5 districts that Kamala Harris won. Let's start there and let's go all the way out to these vulnerable Republicans.
All we need is three people on any issue to stop it from happening.

Speaker 5 And certainly we should use all the leverage we can as members of Congress.

Speaker 5 But we cannot put the pressure without you, the people, we the people working together and doing everything we can every day to make sure that this administration and all the Republicans in Congress know that we mean business.

Speaker 3 Congressman Suez Sabramanyam, great to have you on the show. We hope you come back soon.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I'm glad you just said, hey, we're ready to protest and we're ready to be by, you know, you're ready to be by the people side when that happens.

Speaker 3 It is happening now, we're seeing it grow.

Speaker 5 Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 Everybody, hit subscribe. Let's get to 5 million subscribers and have a great day.

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