You can't argue with these people.

[hadit]

I am just following MAGA logic.

I have heard no one other than you attempting to make that point.

 

[Lisa558]

Medicaid provides supplemental coverage for 7.2mm seniors on Medicare.
Seniors & Medicare and Medicaid Enrollees | Medicaid

Yes, so what’s your point, other than trying to scare Granny?

 

[Lisa558]

Best to disqualify everyone in Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, West Virginia, and Florida, just to be safe.

Instead, let’s go Trump’s route: disqualify all those on the program fraudulently.

 

[Zincwarrior]

Yes, so what’s your point, other than trying to scare Granny?

Granny should be scared.

Instead, let’s go Trump’s route: disqualify all those on the program fraudulently.

Based on what, some 20year old's AI program. Ok...

 

[Lisa558]

Granny should be scared.

Horrible that you leftists hate Trump so much that you are willing to lie and scare Granny.

Based on what, some 20year old's AI program. Ok...

No, based on the fact that government charity programs are being abused.

I’d also like to see them crack down on food stamps. No reason that a man earning $80,000 should put his Baby Mama on food stamps so he doesn’t have to step up. Time to support your own kids.

 

[Rumpole]

Occasionally politics comes up in the gym. Today a fellow Boomer asked me if I knew that Donald Trump is going to destroy Medicare with DOGE. I don’t know who this person talks to or where this person gets information. I remained calm and told the person that they are probably thinking of Medicaid, which is loaded with fraud and corruption. But it is clear that propaganda is still working after the election. These people have no idea how corrupt the government is, and they are true believers that the government is filled with the wonderfulness of human goodness. No greed, just sacrifice of hard-working bureaucrats.

I know the Great Society produced at least two, maybe three generations of ruined humans, and I know the government grew exponentially. This person has been conditioned to rely on and bow to the government. But this person needs to understand that thousands of 150-year-old collectors of Social Security checks are really just a drop in the bucket revealing the fraud that has been going on Washington for decades.

This person in the gym is a liberal who absorbs the propaganda that Trump and Musk are going to throw old and cripple people off bridges. People like this are angry and believe what they are told by the press that is largely public relations for the swamp.

It isn’t hard to figure out why the Swamp tried to assassinate Trump twice when you consider that trillions have been flowing from the bureaucratic swamp into to the pockets of swamp politicians and dispersed to fraudsters. It is on the verge of being exposed and it is not going to be pretty when the cover comes off the Washington sewer.

Trying to argue with a person like this is futile so, I just quietly nod my head and walk away.

Ah, the eternal wail of the aggrieved conservative, drowning in a sea of imagined persecution while clutching pearls over "government corruption"--as if Trump, the self-proclaimed King of Debt, the man who ran a fake university, a fraudulent charity, and routinely stiffed contractors, was somehow going to cleanse Washington of its sins.

Let’s start with the obvious: Trump has repeatedly proposed cuts to Medicare and Social Security. This isn’t some left-wing fever dream--it’s in the budgets he submitted as president, in interviews he’s given, and in the policies his party has tried to push for years. But, of course, in the minds of true believers, any factual challenge to their faith is just more "propaganda."

And then we get to the real theater: the Swamp tried to assassinate Trump twice? My, my--when did this happen, and why did I miss it in the headlines? Surely you are not being so ignorant as to claim that the two rogue operators were conspiring with the DNC to assassinate Trump, right, I mean, you wouldn't be that daft, would you? Say it isn't so. Or perhaps it’s yet another unfalsifiable conspiracy theory designed to keep the base enraged and distracted from, say, the fact that Trump used the presidency to funnel taxpayer money directly into his businesses.

Meanwhile, we’re treated to the tired old refrain that liberals are gullible sheep who "believe what they’re told by the press"--as if right-wing media isn't a billion-dollar industry built on stoking paranoia, inventing boogeymen, and feeding its audience a steady diet of grievance and victimhood.

And let’s talk about fraud, since you bring it up. Yes, there is some fraud in Medicare and Social Security--largely committed by corporate actors, not "150-year-old welfare cheats." (Which, as it turned out, was a COBOL glitch resulting from the 'age field' on a form not being filled out). But if fraud is the real concern, why no mention of the billions lost to pandemic relief scams, defense contractors fleecing the government, or Trump’s own grift machine? Oh, right--because those frauds don’t fit the approved narrative.

So what do we have here? A perfect case study in projection: railing against the corruption of government while blindly supporting the most transparently corrupt politician in modern American history. Believing every farcical conspiracy about "the Swamp" while ignoring the fact that Trump was the Swamp. And, of course, calling others "propagandized" while reciting Fox News talking points like scripture.