President Donald Trump’s budget is gutting Medicaid—and rural America is on the front lines of the damage. And big shocker: Most of Trump’s fervent supporters refuse to accept reality.
A health clinic in McCook, Nebraska, which has a population of 7,446, recently made national headlines after announcing that it’s shutting its doors, unable to survive the massive GOP Medicaid cuts.
“Anyone who’s saying that Medicaid cuts is why they’re closing is a liar,” a resident of nearby Curtis, which has a population of 806, told the Washington Post.
Another resident brushed it off as people just “trying to blame everything on Trump,” calling it “horse feathers.” Must be a Nebraska thing.
And the town’s mayor, who proudly displays an Obama punching bag labeled “Obama stress reliever” on his desk, insisted, “I don’t think the signing of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ had one thing to do with the closure of this clinic.”
Okay then.
For years, Trump and the Republican Party have sold rural white voters a story: that the real problem with government isn’t that it fails people like them—it’s that it helps the wrong people. Benefits aren’t going to “deserving” Americans like them but to immigrants, big cities, Black and brown people, and coastal elites. It’s a lie, but a potent one. And it still works.
Right-wing message boards are full of people claiming that the only health care being cut is for “illegals” or freeloaders. So when the cuts hit them instead—the “hard-working, God-fearing patriots”—they short circuit. The media must be lying. There has to be another explanation. It can’t be Trump.
Their political identity is built around the idea that Trump is their champion, even when it’s crystal clear that he’s the one twisting the knife into them.