MSNBC’s Jen Psaki Torches Trump ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Tour in Blistering Commentary: ‘Cruelty Is the Priority!’
MSNBC host and former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki torched President Donald Trump over his “Alligator Alcatraz” tour and what she called his “Big Ugly Bill” in a blistering commentary that concluded that “cruelty” isn’t just “the point, it’s the priority!”
The president staged a visit to the migrant detention center at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida — better known among MAGA fans and the media as “Alligator Alcatraz” — as the Senate was passing his so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” Tuesday.
On Tuesday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki, Psaki opened her show with a 12-minute commentary connecting the two by claiming that Trump spent the day in Florida to avoid talking about the unpopular bill — but that both vividly illustrate GOP “cruelty”:
JEN PSAKI, MSNBC HOST: And of course, who could forget Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who responded to constituents who were concerned about losing health care with this?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JONI ERNST (R-IA): People are not — well, we all are going to die. For heaven’s sakes, folks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PSAKI: That doesn’t get weirder the more you watch it. But that statement she just made was, until today, probably the most callous thing any Republican has said in defense of this bill. But today, Vice President JD Vance managed to outdo her somehow.
And what I think might be the most telling defense of this bill yet in a tweet, which I just have to note, means this wasn’t a verbal slip. After getting not getting enough sleep, he wasn’t caught by a reporter in the hallway.
He actively wrote this out and then posted. The CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutia of the Medicaid policy is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions. Immaterial. That’s what he’s talking about. Medicaid cuts.
In other words, what he’s saying there is that the 11 million people who will be kicked off their insurance and the hundreds of rural hospitals that could close, that’s trivial to J.D. Vance.
It’s minutia. And we’ll all be worth it when this bill pours hundreds of billions of dollars into pulling people off the streets, putting them in overcrowded facilities and disappearing them out of the country, all in the name of Trump’s cruel immigration policy. That’s basically what the vice president of the United States tweeted.
And I think that is telling for a lot of reasons. I mean, consider this moment from the presidential campaign when a voter in Wisconsin asked JD Vance about his plans to increase access to health care in rural areas.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WISCONSIN VOTER: What concrete plans would your administration have to protect rural health care access?
JD VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So there are a couple of things here. So, first of all, this goes back to the immigration issue.
Now, you might not think that rural health care access is an immigration issue. I guarantee it is an immigration issue because we’re bankrupting a lot of hospitals by forcing these hospitals to provide care for people who don’t have the legal right to be in our country. We’ve got to stop that.
Kick these illegal aliens out, focus on American citizens, and we will do a lot to make the business of rural healthcare much more affordable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PSAKI: First of all, what J.D. Vance just said there about immigrants burdening rural hospitals and forcing them to close is flat out wrong. And many fact checkers pointed that out at the time.
But let’s just pretend for a second that it was true, because I have a point here, I promise. JD Vance’s argument is that Trump’s cool, cruel mass deportation agenda would be carried out in service of keeping rural hospitals open. That’s his argument of making sure Americans had access to health care.
But today, he basically says the opposite. He says that actually, rural hospitals have to close and people have to go without health care and service of carrying out Trump’s cruel mass deportations. That’s his point.
See, the cruelty isn’t just the point, it’s the priority. It doesn’t matter how many American citizens and Trump voters wind up as collateral damage, and millions will. And that is why Trump spent the day at a swamp prison for immigrants. Instead of celebrating the Senate’s passage of this bill.
The senators who voted this bill know it’s just another part of Trump’s cruel and callous disregard for people living in this country, and they voted for it anyway, too. But tomorrow, this bill heads back to the House, where every single person who votes for it will have to face voters in next year’s midterms.
And Democrats are doing everything in their power to keep the public’s attention on this bill, who it will hurt and how it will hurt them?
Watch above via MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki.
