'Let's break it down': Ex-RNC chair buries Trump USDA secretary in brutal fact-check

10 July

Former Republican National Committee chairman and MSNBC host Michael Steele on MSNBC on May 20, 2025 (Image: Screengrab via MSNBC / YouTube)

President Donald Trump's new massive tax and spending law makes more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, partially through imposing stringent new work requirements on recipients. One of his Cabinet secretaries recently posed a solution to Medicaid beneficiaries scrambling to deal with their new reality — hard manual labor on American farms. U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke maintained that all undocumented immigrants, including farm workers, should be deported, but argued that they could be easily replaced with Medicaid recipients.

"Ultimately, the answer on this is automation. Also, some reform within the current governing structure. And then also, when you think about, there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program," Rollins said recently. "There are plenty of workers in America."

During a Thursday segment on MSNBC's "The Weeknight," co-host Michael Steele — the former lieutenant governor of Maryland who also once chaired the Republican National Committee — took issue with Rollins' remarks. He observed that at the time of the broadcast, there was an ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at a farm in Oxnard, California "in which workers are. being detained and some have already been arrested" and suggested that her idea was both nonsensical and nearly impossible to implement.

"Apparently, this is the plan of this administration. I knew we were going to have this conversation. I really wanted to sort of get in front of people. Who are we talking about? Who's the secretary talking about, 34 million able bodied individuals?" Steele said. "Let's. break it down."

Steele cited research from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) showing that of the tens of millions of people on Medicaid, 38% are children, 17% live in rural areas and 15% have at least three chronic health conditions. Additionally, KFF's data showed that roughly 70% of adults who receive Medicaid are already working (44% have full-time employment and the other 26% are working part-time).

"And that 30% of folks that are not working, guess what? They're not working because they have to care for other family members who otherwise don't get cared for. They have illness or disability. They they have school attendance issues they've got to deal with because they're trying to better themselves, even though they're living in poverty," he said. "It's amazing to me how they want to rebrand and reframe the storyline ... about human beings who are just trying to get through the damn day, who are just trying to care for a loved one, who just trying to raise their families and have enough to deal with in that vein, and then layer on top of that, being poor and having to find health care wherever they can get it. And this program is there for them."

"And so now this secretary wants to ship them off and put them in a field?" He added. "Because she thinks they're able bodied and should be working?"

Watch the segment below, or by clicking this link.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

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