The Big, Beautiful Heist: A Message to MAGA

Being a Republican is tough these days. I suppose if you squint—maybe after downing a 30-pack of Busch Ice—you can almost convince yourself that Jesse Watters has a fraction of the charisma Tucker Carlson once brought to Fox News. But let’s be honest: MAGA now takes dating advice from humanoid potato Charlie Kirk and political strategy from Marjorie Taylor Greene—a woman who sounds like she’s delivering a book report on The Communist Manifesto after reading only the Facebook comments.

The truth is, believing in the MAGA movement already requires a certain kind of faith—but now, you’re expected to believe in Trump’s biggest, most beautiful lie.

The Trump administration and Republican Party are on the verge of enacting one of the most expensive and destructive bills in American history—a legislative monolith projected to add $3.3 trillion to the national deficit over the next decade. It is, quite literally, a bill our children and grandchildren will be paying for in blood and interest.

At its core, this isn’t policy. It’s a socialistic heist masquerading as patriotism. A transfer of public wealth to private billionaires—gutted from Medicaid, dismantled from public education, torn from climate initiatives, and torched straight through the working class.

The Congressional Budget Office anticipates over $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, with nearly 17 million Americans expected to lose coverage. Researchers at Yale went further: they tried to quantify the human toll. Their high-end estimate? 50,000 preventable deaths annually.

300–338 hospitals in Republican-led states rely heavily on Medicaid funding; these closures would devastate elderly, pregnant women, and chronically ill folks—a lifeline snatched away.

Independent rural hospitals could lose $465 million in patient revenue in 2026 alone, potentially pushing dozens more into negative net income—leaving 380 at severe risk nationwide. Rural areas would see a drop of $87 billion in hospital revenue over the next decade, far outstripping the proposed $25 billion relief fund added to the Senate bill to humanize Lisa Murkowski and perpetually “concerned” but complicit Susan Collins.

“Imagine a small town without a hospital. No ER. No maternity ward. No ambulance. Just a long, lonely drive to the nearest city—if they make it in time. That’s already happening in America. Over 300 rural hospitals—facilities that serve as the lifeblood for millions—will verge on closure under this bill, which slashes Medicaid reimbursements by up to $1.8 billion for just 15% of them . In West Virginia alone, seven small hospitals could vanish—deal breakers for thousands who rely on these critical access points.

“This isn’t belt-tightening. This is a scalpel to the spine of a generation of children who will grow up poorer, sicker, and less prepared—all so a handful of men in tailored suits can buy another yacht.” “If these policies were enacted in Venezuela or Iran—cutting healthcare for millions, abandoning children to predators, dismantling hurricane protections—we’d call it a humanitarian crisis. Here, we call it ‘fiscal responsibility.’”

You may have voted for President Trump. Maybe you thought this time would be different. But this bill—this second-term fever dream—isn’t an outlier. It’s the blueprint.

Trump’s FEMA has dismantled the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program—canceling over $882 million in preventative disaster funding, money that would have saved taxpayer dollars after future storms. At the same time, the Pentagon is halting distribution of weather satellite data critical to hurricane forecasting, effectively rewinding our preparedness by decades.

For all its chest-thumping on the fentanyl crisis, the administration proposed cutting $56 million in grants to train first responders to use Narcan—the medication that has literally reversed death for thousands of Americans.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined Navy Federal Credit Union $95 million for illegally charging overdraft fees to U.S. troops and their families. Trump’s administration? They dismissed the case, letting the union pocket millions allegedly stolen from veterans.

And then there’s the lawsuit the administration dropped against Southwest Key Programs, the largest housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children. The allegations? Unspeakable. Repeated sexual abuse of minors. Threats of violence. Institutional cover-ups. And still, no accountability.

But here’s the truth: many won’t care. Because the news cycle keeps moving, and accountability is just another word for partisan warfare. Maybe none of this registers. But it should. Because many of the people impacted are your neighbors. Your family. Maybe even you.

When far-right MAGA provocateur and formally credentialed campaign surrogate and advisor to Donald Trump Laura Loomer joked about turning the southern border into “Alligator Alcatraz,” where 65 million migrants (Coincidentally the entire population of Latin Americans living in the United States, legal and otherwise) would be fed to reptiles, it was easy to dismiss it as fringe rhetoric. Just another mask-off moment in the fever swamp of online extremism.

But the line wasn’t just racist—it was predictive. Because fascism doesn’t stop at the border. It doesn't stay confined to its first target.

All regimes that rise by dehumanizing one group eventually devour their own.

And rural Americans—those who live in the red counties that helped build this movement—are now being cannibalized by the very policies they were promised would make them “great again”:

• Their hospitals are closing. Hundreds of rural facilities are going to be on the brink, thanks to Medicaid cuts and shredded budgets.

• Their air is poisoned. Trump’s EPA has gutted enforcement, dropping lawsuits against corporations polluting small towns across the South and Midwest.

• Their water is unsafe. From lead contamination in Appalachia to cancer clusters in Louisiana, federal protections are disappearing.

• Their crops are drowning. FEMA disaster programs have been defunded, leaving farmers at the mercy of floods, droughts, and storms with no federal relief.

• Their kids are dying younger. Life expectancy is falling fastest in Republican counties—proof that this isn’t a political wedge issue. It’s a death spiral.

“They may laugh when 65 million migrants are threatened with alligators. But the gators don’t stop once they’ve fed. The cruelty is never the end. It’s the engine.”

You don’t need to be undocumented or urban or liberal to be hurt by this. You just need to live downstream. And in this America, everyone does.

Godless Economics

I’m not a liberal because of identity politics. I don’t dye my hair blue. I don’t wave foreign flags. I’m far from a polarizing liberal. In my youth, I would be considered relatively Conservative. In many ways, I am everything the Republican Party used to respect: pro-military, pro-freedom, pro-accountability, pro-economy. I want America to thrive.

And yet, we now live under a Republican Party that more closely resembles a clown caravan. A movement so consumed with owning the libs that it’s willing to burn the country down just to say, “We showed them.”

And if it worked - if it made America greater, actually greater - I’d embrace the chaos. But it’s failing miserably, and splintering our society. The modern GOP leaders have no core values. They haven’t made America better in our lifetime. They fail to value deficit reduction, and they haven’t boosted our economy. The movement doesn’t operate from the realm of reality. It doesn’t cite sources or value evidence. In fact, it belittles nuanced, factual opinions, and this works because in our modern world, bad actors have realized an unsettling truth: if you repeat a lie enough times, that lie has just as much validity as any known truth. In today’s algorithmic world, people become more Liberal and more Conservative, and reality takes a backseat to our baser instincts.

I believe MAGA exists as a counterwave to stifle popular Liberal causes.

Let’s talk numbers. Since 1957—the last time a Republican president passed a balanced budget (Eisenhower)—we’ve had five federal surpluses: 1969, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001. All under Democrats.

Ten of the last eleven recessions? Began under Republican administrations.

From 1989 to 2025, U.S. job creation looks like this:

• Under Republican Presidents (Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Trump): 1.6 million jobs

• Under Democratic Presidents (Clinton, Obama, Biden): 49 million jobs

I thought those numbers were fake, too. Because I was taught that Democrats wreck the economy and Republicans save it. Turns out, Republicans wreck the economy and say Democrats are trying to cancel Christmas.

Even geographically, the myth breaks down. In 2020, Biden won 477 counties that accounted for 70% of U.S. GDP. Trump won 2,497 counties that made up only 30%. That’s not coastal elite spin. That’s math.

According to a Princeton study by economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, the economy outperforms under Democratic presidents by nearly every metric: GDP growth, job creation, unemployment, corporate profits, stock market returns. The gap is, in their words, “startlingly large.”

Perhaps more jarring: Blue‑leaning counties have significantly higher life expectancy and lower mortality rates than those in red‑leaning ones. Between 2001 and 2019, mortality dropped 22% in Democratic counties—but only 11% in Republican ones.

• In 2019, Democrat‑voting counties had 15% lower overall death rates than Republican‑voting ones—a difference that was nearly nonexistent in 2001.

• A 2023 study found that individuals living in Republican counties faced higher death rates from heart disease, cancer, chronic lung issues, injuries, and suicide

• As of 2023, the average life expectancy in “blue” states eclipses that in “red” states by over two years.

These aren’t small differences. They reflect millions of lost years—lives shortened by policy, not chance.

According to the ADP June job report “Private employers shed 33,000 jobs in June. Losses in professional and business services, and education and health services led the decline. Leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing showed gains.”

The US dollar has also had its worst start to the year since 1973. And last night, President Trump announced his new trade deal with Vietnam: a 20% U.S. tariff on Vietnamese goods as well as a 40% “transshipping” tariff. last year, Vietnam shipped roughly $137 billion worth of goods. Rather than the planned 46%, the deal imposes a 20% tariff on goods from Vietnam—effectively raising consumer prices on everything from electronics and apparel to motorcycles.

In exchange, U.S. businesses—including automakers—get unrestricted access to the Vietnamese market. Trump specifically cited “large-engine cars”, suggesting hopes of American SUVs flooding Vietnam, because the roads in Vietnam are clearly equipped for our gas-guzzling vehicles, right?

If we’re here to make America great again, we better put some numbers on the board soon. Could I be wrong? Well, sure.

Hear me out: there’s a chance—however slim—that President Donald J. Trump is right. Right about, well, everything.

Maybe America is back. Back in a way we've never seen before, and likely never will again—a shimmering flash of Cheeto dust across the skyline, here to usher in a new age of prosperity before slipping back beneath the mud-waters to preside over the remnants of the very swamp he once promised to drain and now seems proud to gatekeep.

But there’s also a chance—an increasingly likely one—that we are witnessing the first administration in our lifetime to define success not by how many Americans it serves, but by how many it shoves into the unemployment line.

According to President Trump, this is all part of the plan. Temporary hardship, he assures us, is merely the prelude to unimaginable wealth. America, he says, will become richer than ever before. “Unbelievably wealthy.”

And six months in, we’re already transitioning—leaving behind the commemorative gold coin stage and entering the “10-karat Trump Phone” chapter of the online store. If wealth is indeed coming, it’s clear the President was referring primarily to himself.

God Is Not in This Budget

This budget has no moral compass. It is an act of ideological nihilism—designed not to help Americans, but to prove a point: that government should do nothing, and that by doing nothing, it somehow becomes great.

Senator Rick Scott—whose healthcare company was once found guilty of the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history—has the gall to demand more Medicaid cuts, even as independent estimates predict 50,000+ deaths per year if the BBB is enacted.

I suppose this is what Joni Ernst meant when she said, “We’re all going to die.” It’s just that some of our leaders want to live like Kings and Queens while their constituents suffer.

We lead the developed world in obesity, soda consumption, mental illness, and porn viewership. We lag in life expectancy, healthcare access, paid parental leave, infrastructure, and education. The top 1% now holds 20.7% of all national income. The bottom 50%? Just 13.4%. Nearly 98% of all wealth is now held by the top half of earners. These people do not care about our ideologies. They have no morals, no firm core values. They divide us to conquer us.

Billionaires will traverse Mars, crack the frozen seas of Titan, and bottle stardust before they allow us a living wage.

The Future We Deserve?

Some days, I picture the future: a gilded dome shielding American suburbs from rocket fire—Canada and Mexico now our enemies in a war we manufactured to win reelection. Our president prematurely declaring victory while eggs cost $14.95 and bridges collapse in swing states.

We balance the budget, we’re told, by slashing everything that keeps us alive. We conquer Mars before we conquer fentanyl. We declare greatness as the water turns brown and children dodge hurricanes without forecasts.

I have friends who wear MAGA hats and friends who kneel during the anthem. I’ve had beers with people I disagree with, and left laughing. That’s America. But we’re losing the plot.

Discourse has been shattered. We no longer argue over facts—we argue over whether the other side is human. If a Democrat says the sky is blue, the response is: “No, it’s red—and you can’t even define gender.”

I am not asking you to become a liberal. I’m asking you to look at the receipts. To look at the body count. To understand that patriotism doesn’t mean watching people suffer so long as your side gets the last word.

This isn’t a football game. This isn’t the Yankees vs. Red Sox.

MAGA: this is your country.

And right now, it’s bleeding. Please call your lawmakers, because they won’t listen to us Liberals.