Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “All In” that if Republicans passed President Donald Trump’s spending bill as is, they would “get smoked” in the 2026 midterm elections.
Host Chris Hayes said, “Josh Hawley, Republican, Missouri, wrote a big op-ed in The New York Times saying Medicaid cuts are a bad idea. Does that end up mattering in the Senate?”
Murphy said, “I think it’s a great question, Chris because the Republican Party still does essentially operate like a cult. And that’s not fundamentally different in the Senate than it is in the House. I mean, yes, you’ve got people like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins who, you know, are definitely going to have a hard time voting for these massive cuts, but after that, you know, my read is that Donald Trump kind of can say jump and everybody else in the Senate probably says how high?”
He added, “So the Republican Party is the Republican Party today, and right now, he’s got an enormous amount of power. Now, if he forces these senators, as he did in the House, to vote for $15 billion of Medicaid cuts, and the corruption continues at the level that it is, I think they’re going to get smoked in the midterms. Donald Trump doesn’t need to stand for reelection three years from now. So what does he care? But I’m not necessarily sure that you’re going to see the kind of independence that the Senate used to exercise, and Republicans used to exercise even just 3 or 4 years ago.”
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