JD Vance’s shutdown bet: MAGA loves racism more than health care

To hear Vice President JD Vance talk, you’d think the only people who ever see a doctor in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants. He insists that Democrats are refusing to support a Republican budget bill because “they want to give hundreds of billions of dollars of health care benefits to illegal aliens.” As Vance repeats the lie, the number gets bigger. He’s even claimed that it’s a “trillion dollars for medical benefits for illegal aliens.” By the time you read this, Vance might even be saying that Democrats plan to ban all citizens from ever entering a hospital again. After all, if you’re going to shamelessly lie, why not just go buck wild?

And make no mistake: This is a lie. As he usually does, the vice president traps the press into playing his game by saying something flatly, outrageously untrue. Then, when he is called on it, Vance pretends he actually meant [fill in with a much smaller claim]. He did this during the campaign after being called out for his overt lie about Haitian immigrants kidnapping and eating people’s pets. The lie, he insisted, was fair play — because the part where there are Haitian immigrants living in the U.S. is true. Using this logic, I could almost write “JD Vance kills and eats babies,” and when — justifiably — challenged about it, I could insist it’s not a lie because he kisses babies with his mouth.

In this case, the vice president’s belabored justification for his lie is that a tiny percentage of the trillion dollars in question — the price tag of GOP health care cuts — is spent on legal immigrants. So his claim is 99% a lie: The part about their legal status, the part about the money and the part about Democrats doing it. But since a legal immigrant once saw a doctor, the press is expected to bend over backwards to adjudicate whether one is a liar just because one is lying about 99% of the story.

Vance lies — and he does it well. It’s why he was brought on as Trump’s second in command. But what may be even more important is the assumption driving this particular falsehood, which is to lure people into a “debate” about whether any immigrants should ever get health care.

Vance lies — and he does it well. It’s why he was brought on as Donald Trump‘s second in command. But what may be even more important is the assumption driving this particular falsehood, which is to lure people into a “debate” about whether any immigrants should ever get health care. Vance is betting that the typical Trump voter would rather lose his own health insurance than see a dark-skinned immigrant receive medical treatment.

When you dig into it, this strategy presents itself as especially vile, because it depends on the MAGA base being so racist that they would choose bankruptcy, or even death, over having to share a doctor’s waiting room with people speaking Spanish.

If you follow Vance’s logic — which is, admittedly, hard to do because of his thicket of lies — this is what he’s saying: Democrats are withholding votes to pass a budget, which is forcing a government shutdown, and demanding that Republicans restore health care spending. If the GOP doesn’t meet their demands, millions of Americans will lose health care coverage, and millions more will see their insurance rates soar. But if the Republican cuts stay in place, a small number of legal immigrants will lose coverage, along with millions of citizens. In conclusion, it should be worth it to you, loyal Fox News viewers, to lose your health care to make sure some guy from Venezuela doesn’t get to see a doctor.

No rational person would take that deal. But Vance is gambling that Trump voters are far too blinded by racism — or by not paying close enough attention to the argument — to be reasonable. This bet is fair enough. Let’s be honest: Merely voting for Trump is an affirmation that racism matters more to a person than basic decency or logic. Nor is Vance alone in the view that celebrating racism will be enough to quiet the doubts Trump voters might have about the administration’s latest assaults on the larger economy and their ability to afford basic necessities.

As usual, Trump was utterly explicit about this. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have been giving regular press conferences where they explain that the goal is to restore health care funding so that Americans don’t lose coverage or see premiums soar. In response, the president posted AI-generated videos that portray Jeffries, who is Black, in a sombrero while mariachi music plays. The message to MAGA voters is blunt: Don’t listen to what these men are saying. Instead, think about how much joy you get from being obnoxiously racist!

On Wednesday morning — the very day the shutdown began — Russell Vought, the Christian nationalist who runs the Office of Management and Budget, used the standoff as cover to announce that Trump would be shutting off infrastructure funding to blue cities and states to starve off support for what he called “DEI principles.” Roads and subways have neither race nor gender, but somehow they manage to be included in GOP loathing of diversity and equity initiatives. DEI, after all, is really just a modern right-wing euphemism for the N-word, which Trump recently complained he “can’t use.”

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The infrastructure cuts included $18 billion to New York City alone, which should not come as a surprise. Although Trump longs to be celebrated in his hometown, Gotham’s diversity is a frequent target of his and MAGA’s racist ire. Vought’s comments echoed a common Fox News talking point, with the term “DEI” being used to justify the firing of all manner of federal employees, as if voters should be glad to lose access to veterans’ services or national parks, just as long as they know that some Black or Latino employees got the ax.

The vice president is especially ham-fisted, but the tactic of using racism to persuade white voters to reject their economic self-interest is hardly new in Republican politics. In 1981, Lee Atwater, the cutthroat GOP strategist, famously explained how a core component of the “Southern Strategy” was using terms like “welfare queen” and states’ rights” as stand-ins for the N-word. Atwater, who died in 1991, would no doubt have loved “DEI” and how it’s deployed by Republicans.

Similar tactics were widely used by Republicans in their fight against the Affordable Care Act. Besides insinuating that Democrats would steal white people’s health care to give it to people of color, the GOP nicknamed the bill “Obamacare,” which some have argued was intended to stigmatize the program, at least in part, on racial grounds. (I have MAGA relatives who refused to use the ACA for fear of getting Obama cooties. I suspect, given Vance’s background, he’s heard similar sentiments.)

But it remains unclear whether this form of politics will be effective with the shutdown. Americans of both parties have grown accustomed to the lower health care costs and accessibility that resulted from Obamacare, so much so that the name has in some quarters shifted from a scare term to one of endearment. The expansion of Medicaid under the legislation reached into red states, and increasing numbers of working-class white people decided that seeing a doctor mattered more than taking a stand against the former president. Moreover, loss aversion theory says that people will react more strongly to losing health care than they did to not having it in the first place.

A messaging strategy tailored solely for the MAGA base is treacherous ground for Vance and the GOP. Trump barely won in 2024, and he did so mostly because swing voters chose to tolerate his racism in exchange for his promise to lower costs. Now he’s offering what is, in effect, the reverse: Raising costs, and doing so rather dramatically, in exchange for racism. His approval ratings are already in the tank, and this is unlikely to help. The troglodytes that populate X — among whom Vance spends an inordinate amount of his day — may be thrilled. But for voters who thought they were in this to get cheaper costs, it marks a huge betrayal.

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