Donald Trump Doesn’t Care About His Base
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025. This is a bill that the White House claims “delivers the largest tax cut in history for working-and-middle class Americans”, touts “this legislation does not make a single cut to welfare programs”, and boasts that the bill “reduces deficits by over $2 trillion”. All of this is a lie. The Big Beautiful Bill does the opposite of almost everything listed on the White House’s Myth vs. Fact page. It may seem far-fetched that the President would be able to drum up adequate support from his base for a bill that will make their lives, and the lives of many Americans who did not vote for Trump, worse. But, with the assistance of politically-aligned representatives and the media class, Trump was able to successfully manufacture consent for and pass a bill that will add $3 trillion to the United States' debt.
The American worker is not doing well right now. 5.8 million student borrowers (31% of all student loans) are in late stage delinquency. Late payments on car loans hit a 30-year peak, along with credit card debt reaching a new record high. Increasingly, Americans are relying on buy now, pay later (BNPL) micro loans, where roughly a quarter of BNPL users are funding necessities like grocery shopping. The U.S. household debt hit $18.20 trillion, a record high. American workers are being stretched thinner than ever and they are borrowing money to make ends meet.
Under this economic reality, Donald Trump’s supporters were understandably looking forward to the Big Beautiful Bill’s signing, giving them much needed reprieve, as the President has claimed. Yet, those who have not sworn political fealty to Trump have described the impact of this bill differently. Senator Bernie Sanders summarized the effects of the bill in a video on his Youtube page, highlighting how the bill will enable:
Top 1% receive $975 billion in tax breaks
Wealthiest 2/10 of 1% (0.2%) receive a $211 billion estate tax break
Large corporations get a $918 billion tax break
16 million people will be taken off of their health insurance by slashing Medicaid/ACA by $1.1 trillion
Rural hospitals all over the country will be forced to shut down
Cuts to community health centers and nursing homes
Wipes nutrition assistance for millions of hungry kids while we have the highest rates of childhood poverty of nearly any major nation on Earth
$150 billion to the Pentagon to continue forever wars (15% increase)
$175 billion for ICE
This just scratches the surface (for more financial information, see this article). According to research from the University of Pennsylvania, the passing of this bill will result in over 50,000 additional American deaths each year due to administrative barriers, subsidy rollbacks, and work requirements imposed. Ultimately, this bill is a death sentence for low income and working class Americans.
Trump’s bill is far from beautiful for the vast majority of Americans. According to the Economist, federal cuts to SNAP will impact rural red states the most. Additionally, NPR reported that the proposed cuts to Medicaid will increase the risk of closures for hospitals in rural states, taking away accessibility to healthcare for millions of Americans. The Big Beautiful Bill disproportionately hurts rural American states the most, despite the fact that these states overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Why, then, are Republicans celebrating the passing of this bill as a victory when much of their constituency will suffer? And why are they likely to not face any political repercussions for making the lives of those who voted for them worse?
How Does This Happen?
At first glance, it is easy to blame Republican voters for this outcome. Democrats often repeat the mantra of “they got what they voted for” whenever Republican constituents face hardships, due to those they voted to put in power. But given this recurring reality, we must go beyond the “blame game” if we want to make material change. Time and time again, those whose lives get worse at the hands of Republicans in office continue to vote to keep them in power. Voters struggle to connect those hardships (which Republicans leverage in their campaigning) to the policies enacted by said Republicans. This behavior could be attributed solely to ignorance or unintelligence, but it may be something more nefarious: Republican voters are convinced by Republican-led and billionaire-run media to continue voting against their interests.
Of course, these voters are still adult human beings with agency and the ability to critically think. With Americans facing more and more immediate concerns, however, there are scarce opportunities to fact-check and verify information from our elected officials and media – after all, it should be fair to assume the people who campaigned on helping improve our lives only have our interests at heart. Who has the time to actually read the 1,100 page bill themselves?
Fox News, which receives more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined, positioned the Big Beautiful Bill in a positive light, quite the opposite of Senator Bernie Sanders. But calling Fox News’ description of this bill as “positive” is somewhat of a misnomer. It may be more accurate to say that Fox News misled viewers and lied about different aspects of the bill. In their coverage, Fox host Sean Hannity stated that the bill “does not increase the deficit, instead the deficit will go down.” They also repeated that the bill’s changes to Medicaid would improve government efficiency by “cutting waste, fraud and abuse,” but never elaborated that more efficient really just meant less money for the program. Taking Fox News at face value, the bill sounds wonderful. Donald Trump also made sure to keep his followers from any skepticism regarding the bill, stating: “And I just want you to know, if you see anything negative put out by Democrats, it's all a con job.”
Throughout his Fox News coverage of the Big Beautiful Bill, reporter Sean Hannity continuously hammers home that this bill will benefit working class Americans the most. It is easy to blame those who vote for Republicans for the reality they find themselves in. And in part, they are responsible. But when the President they voted for promises improvement and the media apparatus they consume does everything in their power to convince them of a certain truth, it feels impossible for Republican voters to break from these shackles.
Working class people, the vast majority of Americans, have many tangible issues they face today. From the cost-of-living affordability crisis to a lack of access to quality healthcare. The right-wing media apparatus in the United States successfully identifies material problems many Americans face, like the high cost of living. They provide a cause and a solution to these problems. Today they say we waste money on immigrants and urge voters to expel this population, but in a few years there will be a new scapegoat. Establishment Democrats rarely acknowledge these issues, and when new Democrats that enter the scene propose to materially improve people’s lives, Democratic leaders refuse to back them. Republicans voting against their interests goes beyond the Big Beautiful Bill. It has less to do with continuing to vote for a political party that does not fulfill every campaign promise, and more to do with the fact that Republicans in power, regardless of how you feel about their actions, actually do something. Republican voters are seeing the mass deportations taking place in America right now not as an authoritarian police state, but as a campaign promise kept. In time, they will find that these actions barely impact their lives and won’t solve the plethora of problems they face. But, to voters who are exhausted with the steady decline of American quality of life, it makes sense that they vote for a political party that speaks to their issues and does something rather than voting for one that barely pays lip service to their concerns and does nothing.
In order to show people who are convinced that moving rightward politically is the only way to improve our lives, as Fox News and others do, there has to be a political movement that adequately opposes Republicans. Currently, the Democratic Party is not that opposition party. We cannot blame Republican voters when the only other option that exists does not actually provide alternative policies that would improve their lives. It is crucial to acknowledge that Republican voters are not a monolith, they are not completely married to the MAGA movement. When given a viable alternative to Republican proposals, Democrats can find success in otherwise unexpected places. Andy Beshear, a Democratic governor of the deep red state of Kentucky, has a 68% approval rating. He’s found this success without sacrificing marginalized groups that are otherwise demonized by Republicans, as he addresses the material conditions of his Kentuckian constituents and works to improve them. If we want Republicans to stop voting against their interests, we have to both diagnose the problems they face and offer viable solutions to improve their lives.