Trump’s Base Will Be Screwed by His Health Care Bill. Trump Says He Knows That.

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I guess I’m about the thousandth person to post this video, but it’s seriously bananas:

Did you catch all that? Tucker Carlson points out that working-class areas that voted for Trump would be hurt far more by his health care bill than more affluent areas. Trump’s response? “I know, I know.” Then Carlson says that seems inconsistent with Trump’s campaign message. Trump’s response? “A lot of things aren’t consistent.”

Trump spends the rest of the time whining about the GOP’s thin majority in the Senate and the fact that Democrats won’t vote for his bill because they’re selfish and stupid.

Carlson also asked Trump about his wiretapping claim. Remember how we all used to mock Sarah Palin for her word salad? Now we have Donald Trump. Behold:

CARLSON: So on March 4, 6:35 in the morning, you’re down in Florida, and you tweet, the former administration wiretapped me, surveilled me, at Trump Tower during the last election. How did you find out? You said, I just found out. How did you learn that?

TRUMP: Well, I’ve been reading about things. I read in, I think it was January 20 a “New York Times” article where they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article, I think they used that exact term. I read other things. I watched your friend Bret Baier the day previous where he was talking about certain very complex sets of things happening, and wiretapping. I said, wait a minute, there’s a lot of wiretapping being talked about. I’ve been seeing a lot of things.

Now, for the most part, I’m not going to discuss it, because we have it before the committee and we will be submitting things before the committee very soon that hasn’t been submitted as of yet. But it’s potentially a very serious situation.

CARLSON: So, 51,000 people retweeted that. So a lot of people thought that was plausible, they believe you, you’re the President — you’re in charge of the agencies. Every intelligence agency reports to you. Why not immediately go to them and gather evidence to support that?

TRUMP: Because I don’t want to do anything that’s going to violate any strength of an agency. We have enough problems. And by the way, with the CIA, I just want people to know, the CIA was hacked, and a lot of things taken — that was during the Obama years. That was not during us. That was during the Obama situation. Mike Pompeo is there now doing a fantastic job.

But, we will be submitting certain things and I will be perhaps speaking about this next week, but it’s right now before the committee, and I think I want to leave it. I have a lot of confidence in the committee.

CARLSON: Why not wait to tweet about it until you can prove it? Don’t you devalue your words when you can’t provide evidence?

TRUMP: Well, because “The New York Times” wrote about it. Not that I respect “The New York Times.” I call it the failing “New York Times.” But they did write on January 20 using the word wiretap. Other people have come out with —

CARLSON: Right, but you’re the President. You have the ability to gather all the evidence you want.

TRUMP: I do. I do. But I think that frankly we have a lot right now. And I think if you watch — if you watched the Bret Baier and what he was saying and what he was talking about and how he mentioned the word wiretap, you would feel very confident that you could mention the name. He mentioned it. And other people have mentioned it. But if you take a look at some of the things written about wiretapping and eavesdropping —

And don’t forget, when I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes. That really covers, because wiretapping is pretty old fashioned stuff. But that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that’s a very important thing. But wiretap covers a lot of different things. I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.

This. Is. Nuts.

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We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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