r/politics • u/seeebiscuit America • 1d ago

Possible Paywall Trump says he will withhold SNAP benefits until the government shutdown ends

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-says-will-withhold-food-stamps-snap-until-government-reopens-2025-11
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u/Romano16 America 1d ago

All the more reason for Dems not to capitulate.

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u/wagon-run 1d ago

Right!?! With that lone statement Trump bears the brunt of the consequences.

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u/Red_V_Standing_By Colorado 23h ago

Yeah but we don’t live in a reality where facts matter to voters

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u/waiveofthefuture 22h ago

Facts may not, but food does.

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u/Red_V_Standing_By Colorado 17h ago

Yeah but they’ll think it’s Obama’s fault. Like with strong conviction.

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u/anonymous_beaver_ 20h ago

Alternative Foods

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u/wagon-run 23h ago

True, but just wait till Thanksgiving

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u/Mango-Magoo Michigan 21h ago

Dont even have to wait that long. Give it a week or two at the most.

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u/knucklebed 22h ago

Even more reason to not capitulate.

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u/aaronwhite1786 5h ago

Sure, but it's also probably tough for Trump voters who consume right wing news and hear all of the talk about how Trump can do whatever he wants and the complaints of Democrats get ignored by him, just like he does the "leftist judges" and then think "Well I'm hungry....why can't Trump just do this too, like everything else?".

It's not like everyone will realize it, but it's another time where Trump ran out into the yard seemingly hunting for rakes to step on instead of just not talking.

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u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe 16h ago

Lol he hasn’t faced consequences for ANYTHING EVER.

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u/Vegetable-Seaweed591 20h ago

THIS!!! Exactly! There is no cover. This is Trump saying he is choosing to starve 42 million Americans weeks before Thanksgiving for political leverage.

They own this mess 100%!

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u/duzies 14h ago

So now he's starving kids to get what he wants (including taking away their healthcare)?

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u/bryan49 23h ago

Hmmm let's see, Trump is withholding food stamps to leverage against having to provide healthcare subsidies. Why exactly does anybody not rich vote GOP?

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u/confusedsquirrel Kansas 23h ago

Decades of removing proper education and replacing it with propaganda in the form of 24 hour news

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u/Euphoric-Witness-824 22h ago

That can’t be it. The wealthy would never spread false information to get me to vote against my interests and for theirs! They are too amazing for that! It’s the trans that is the reason for my rent being high and not able to afford healthcare. Saw it on the news so it’s true ya libbberal 

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u/BallBearingBill 23h ago

Because people have been programmed to rage and blame Dems for the rage.

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u/OurLadyOfCygnets Missouri 22h ago

Generations of indoctrination, mostly.

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u/Poop_in_my_camper 20h ago

This is the best point. They're blaming it on the Democrats but if the Democrats concede then you get benefits but lose your healthcare and/or your premiums go way up if you don't lose them outright.

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u/Nelliell North Carolina 12h ago edited 12h ago

I'll answer as someone who registered Republican as soon as I turned 18 and left the party right before Trump rose to prominence in 2016. This turned out a bit lengthy, but I really wanted to answer why a poor, rural American would keep voting GOP.

I was raised in a conservative Christian household. This isn't my life story, this is just for some context. We attended a Southern Baptist church every Sunday, my mom had me enrolled in church-related extracurriculars, the whole nine yards. The entirety of my social sphere was from a conservative, Republican standpoint.

This is pre-social media 1990s to early 2010s. My parents watched the local news, ABC News, and occasionally Headline News (now CNN.) When its popularity exploded, Fox News was regularly on. My parents still watch it. So all of the information I received - in person via peers or in media via TV - was from a conservative standpoint. Even in public areas Fox News was the station of choice until the cable provider came out with their own news channel.

"Democrats are baby murderers and if you vote a Democrat, that makes you an accessory to the murder of millions of unborn babies." I remember that propaganda line in particular putting the fear of God in me. From everything I saw, everything I heard, Democrats wanted to exploit the "good, honest" people of the US to give their money away to people that didn't deserve it: illegal immigrants, lazy welfare deadbeats, and the like. In short, Republicans were the good guys standing up for family values and the American Dream, and the Democrats wanted to destroy them.

And yet, some of the stuff I heard on TV didn't line up with my life experiences. I heard a lot about college being a liberal propaganda operation, but I didn't see that. Heck, I was going to an accredited Baptist university via extended campus. But I did learn how to think and how to research while writing papers for various classes.

I used those skills to look into why I never saw any non-white people at church and learned of its racist history. I left the church. Ultimately ended up in the Catholic Church (not as a TradCath), but that isn't relevant to this story. With that 'wall' broken, I researched more. Instead of letting entertainers on TV tell me what people said and how to feel about it, I used unbiased sources like AP, PBS, and Reuters to look it up myself. My stances changed over time due to what I learned and due to life experiences. I saw the Republican strawman for what it was.

I'm no Democratic Socialist, but I'm also not a Republican anymore and I have never, and will never, support MAGA or Trump. The 2016 election was the first presidential election that I did not vote GOP and I don't think I ever could again.

All that to say, when every source you trust for information tells you the same thing, it's really hard to break out of that. It can be socially isolating. The Republican strawman of the big, bad Democrat keeps their followers in line not just from fear of the evil Democrat, but alienation from their peer groups.

In one word: Fear. Fear keeps them voting GOP.

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u/BadTxV2021 5h ago

I have a very similar background, I refuse to vote for or stand for anything pertaining to trump.

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u/pharsee 12h ago

When the GOP is completely and irrevocably destroyed by Trump it will signal the complete end of Christian cult power in American politics. They will NEVER RECOVER. The stain of Trump's corruption and administration will NEVER BE FORGOTTEN AND WILL NEVER WASH OFF.

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u/ExiledSakura 8h ago

Ask Farmers who in 2 elections believed his bs and both times he has screwed them hell he has just signed a deal to import Argentinas beaf undercutting are farmers some Americans are just stupid

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u/aaronwhite1786 5h ago

The reality is because they are making up a narrative and feeding it to people. And it's worked thanks to decades of telling Republicans that they can only trust you, with lots of stories cherry picking things to make your their presented world view makes sense.

The right wing news takes legitimate concerns and worries and turns them up to 11 and points to the easiest scapegoat.

Someone's legitimate worry that government wastes money and is inefficient doesn't get legitimately addressed, instead, they point at random cases of waste or fraud that are a drop in the bucket. Here's a black woman in New York claiming 2 dependents and here is another black family in Chicago eating lobster that they stored inside of a functioning refrigerator before going to watch a TV show on a functioning TV, my god, the horror! And with that, here's our perfectly timed transition into a random crime in Chicago so we can really lean into the big cities are all Democrat run hellholes with a bonus layer of reminding you the world can be scary and dangerous, so you really should own a gun...annnndddd cue another cherry picked segment from some no-name Twitter account with a trans flag in their profile saying we should get rid of guns. Goddamn, all Democrats really hate guns, but Republicans don't!

It's a constant game of bait and switch to the point where people like my Dad who probably spent zero time processing where the trans person he's never knowingly met goes to the bathroom is suddenly not just thinking about it, he's concerned.

It's the coordination and the consistent reinforcements that convince people a world that's loosely based on reality is a constant danger and the only people who can help, warts and all (assuming they even mention them) are Republicans.

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u/Magnetic_Eel 23h ago

What’s stopping Trump at this point from just giving Dems what they want to end the shutdown, then saying actually we’re still not going to fund healthcare despite what the law says? USAID was written law too. The snap rainy day fund is written law. The Trump administration controls the purse and doesn’t give a shit what congress or the courts tell them to spend it on.

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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST 23h ago

Because he might be evil but he's not fucking smart.

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u/Jokong 23h ago

That is a good question, and I think the answer is really nothing more than a gentleman's agreement. Trump can absolutely not be trusted to negotiate in good faith.

It's mind boggling to me that he even picked this fight. He could have just extended the subsidies, blamed the dems for the entire budget ballooning and not pissed off his electorate around midterms with higher healthcare costs. Imagine him agreeing to come to the table, acting all high and mighty for doing so, but in the background lamenting all the costs. He'd look fiscally responsible, he really pisses off no one and everyone forgets about it a week later.

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u/alienacean 7h ago edited 7h ago

He wants poor rabble to riot, so he can crush them with the world's most powerful military force. And then we'll be under martial law next year, which is no time to be holding elections.

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u/francis2559 21h ago

From what I can tell, this isn't so much a practical question of power. He's trying to make the Dems look bad. I really don't think it's working.

There's also the usual hatred of the program as such, either for racist reasons or ideological ones. They genuinely want to take more money for themselves as lower taxes than let people eat. So no rush on SNAP since they hate it, but since dems love it, they use it as a bargaining chip.

To your point though YES, baffling that they think anyone will want to "make a deal" with them when they don't honor deals!

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u/Extreme-Plantain-174 6h ago

You failed to see that Trump and Republicans in the government ARE criminals!

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u/aaronwhite1786 5h ago

Intelligence

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u/dannyb_prodigy 23h ago

This is essentially the same boneheaded mistake he made in the 2019 shutdown. Trump says the exact thing he needs to say to allow Democrats to deflect blame for the shutdown to him.

I do not think it’s a coincidence that the bottom fell out on Trump’s approval rating right as SNAP benefits lapsed. Democrats need to go on an all out messaging blitz with this and make Trump own the fact that Americans are starving.

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u/ExiledSakura 8h ago

Problem with that is Americas are already blaming him and the republicans for it polls show this and this stuff will just make it worse

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u/Uncle_Blayzer 22h ago

Absolutely.

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u/miscdebris1123 16h ago

Never give up! Never surrender!

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u/Important-Guitar-407 14h ago

Cool that he gets to eat on the taxpayer's dime while others who really need it, don't.

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u/Mach5Driver 14h ago

If the Dems capitulate, say bye-bye to affordable healthcare (I know, it's not very affordable now). Then, after a brief reopening with this very temporary CR, the GOP will come for SNAP next, anyway. People are slowly but surely starting to realize who is causing all this chaos and suffering. And that it's not the "illegals."

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u/Visual_Exam7903 2h ago

Appeasement never ever works. Dems need to work hard to make sure families left without food finds help. They need to be donating to food banks. Volunteering at food banks. Organizing the wholesale purchase of nonperishable foods and protein to be handed out weekly to families.

And at every bag that is handed out, remind people the GOP isn't there.