Transcript: How can Democrats combat Donald Trump?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : You know, so I thought about this a lot as somebody who, you know, in the year 2020, like Trump won my congressional district that year, but so did I.
53% : Gideon Rachman I mean, and it's easy to take aim at a lot of what Trump has done, and we'll do this in a second.
51% : Andy Kim Well, look, I can't say I have a good understanding of what Newsom has been up to, but at least in terms of work that I've done over time is, you know, I was somebody, I was a Democrat that won a congressional district that Trump won twice.
51% : And that's, I think, something that's become much more clear to me, especially when I was in the House of Representatives, cutting my teeth there, like power in the House of Representatives is binary, you either have it or you don't.
50% : So again, we need to focus and really help people see like, hey, look, I know there's 10mn things that you're worried about, you know, but let me point out some of the ones that we think are gonna . . . (overlapping speech) Gideon Rachman And you mentioned tariffs and Medicaid.
49% : But I think what they fail to understand is that like, look, it's a very large group of people and 2mn out of my 9mn constituents are on Medicaid.
49% : And same thing with Medicaid, it requires people to get out and speak out about that.
46% : But there was only seven of us Democrats in the House that won districts that Trump won that year.
46% : I see a very coherent push by Trump and his administration to impose a neo-isolationism policy.
46% : Gideon Rachman What is actually planned for Medicaid?
46% : Because the Republicans are feeling the heat in the same way that Trump reversed himself on the tariffs, which I thought was the most important moment for this fight against what he's doing because we saw him actually reverse himself because he was feeling the pressure.
45% : I went back to New Jersey and I had this terrifying conversation with a hospital leader in New Jersey who was saying that Medicaid is such a large percentage of their reimbursements for their hospital that if there's major cuts in Medicaid, this hospital might close down.
44% : You know, I was a candidate eight years ago when the last time that Trump was in the Oval Office, you know, how we were able to mobilise the fight back against that time was to make sure that we're staying focused.
43% : Yeah, and I think that that's indicative of just the capture that has happened to the Republican party by this Maga movement, this idea that it demands not just loyalty, but fealty to Trump, to the executive.
42% : I began the conversation by asking senator Kim if Democrats are still searching for the best way to combat Trump.
42% : And that's gonna affect everybody, not just those on Medicaid.
42% : They are worried about touching this third rail of Medicaid now in ways that they weren't just a couple of weeks ago.
41% : And we see that right now with just the equation that Trump has made between the border and immigration writ large.
40% : The big push right now is the fight to be able to save Medicaid.
39% : And you worked also for USAID, didn't you, which Trump has effectively destroyed.
39% : Not just those on Medicaid, but recognising that this is going to impact all of us, affect all of our costs of living.
38% : But I guess maybe the Sanders-AOC thing fits an emotional needle of a lot of Democrats and, you know, even non-partisan people are pretty outraged by some of what Trump is doing and feel you've really got to fight this with everything.
37% : And isn't that, in a sense, a kind of failure of the Democrats, that everybody wanted it done and Trump seems to have demonstrated, perhaps, by using brutal and maybe even illegal methods, but he's done it?
37% : And I'm hopeful that we'll actually be able to stop the Republicans from putting forward proposals that will gut Medicaid in the ways that we're fearful of.
36% : Gideon Rachman Coming to some of those bread-and-butter issues in a sec, but when we met in Munich back in February, you said to me that you thought that the real moment of crisis constitutionally would be if Trump refused to follow court orders.
34% : And so I do think that the Democrats, while we need to make sure we're addressing the wide breadth of what Trump is doing, we can't give into the chaos.
30% : And just the economic sabotage that is happening to our country right now, like Trump is leading us into recession.
29% : So yes, we have reached it and unfortunately, we will probably continue to see Trump further digging in in that way.
29% : But what we're seeing right now with Donald Trump is not just the dangers domestically, but the chaos and much of what we see internationally, to me, it is not chaos.
27% : I mean, I've been astonished by how much Trump appears to be able to do just by signing a piece of paper in the Oval Office.
26% : And we know Trump is unfortunately very good at getting attention and the Democrats, we need to make sure that we are fighting for that as well.
26% : That, and you see this in the private sector right now, the shakedown that Trump is doing of law firms and businesses and demanding that they come to him with whatever offerings they have to let him ameliorate the problems for them.
25% : [MUSIC PLAYING] Some of the most energetic opposition to Donald Trump is coming from the leftwing duo of senator Bernie Sanders and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, universally known as AOC.
24% : So how should the Democratic party take on Donald Trump?
24% : Because some people will say oh this is a scare, Trump will never do that.
14% : With Medicaid, you know, I think Trump was hoping that Medicaid doesn't have sort of a cogent voter base, like Social Security or Medicare, which are more senior.
13% : And sadly, when you see this memecoin -- blatant corruption by Donald Trump, where he and his family are literally making hundreds of millions of dollars right now.
12% : One is about saving Medicaid and protecting our healthcare, stopping these tariffs and the high prices that Trump's imposing on the American family, and exposing the corruption of this administration.

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