During Thursday's Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus press briefing, Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA) discussed President Trump's funding cuts and the taxpayer funded programs it will effect.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Let him ask.
00:01Thank you all for doing this.
00:02I'm interested, obviously, if there's, like, Republicans capitalizing on voter distrust
00:03in the federal government.
00:04You know, is there a role Democrats should have in countering that distrust, you know,
00:05looking at 26 and 28, outside of, you know, popular programs like Medicaid, Medicare,
00:06and Social Security?
00:07Okay.
00:08Okay.
00:09So, Suhas, go first.
00:10Yeah.
00:11I think it's our job to make the American people understand that these cuts to government
00:27and these attacks on government are an attack on them and programs that help them a lot.
00:31And so if we have a role, even if it's just one role, it's by connecting the actions of
00:37the administration to the harm they are doing to the American people and not letting them
00:41blame Democrats or DEI or something else.
00:44So you look at the example of what happened at DCA, for instance, and, you know, the first
00:49thing the president did was blame DEI, right, even though he had just fired a bunch of people
00:53at the FAA a couple weeks before.
00:56And so we have a responsibility to make that connection.
01:00And on the previous question, I want to say that I've talked to AAPI voters that voted
01:04for Trump that did not realize he was going to be cutting federal services and the federal
01:10government the way that he has and the way that he's empowered DOJ.
01:13And they regret their vote already.
01:15I think they thought he was going to do a lot on the economy and immigration.
01:19And so far, what he's done is the opposite of helping the economy.
01:23I would just add to the previous question, at the 30,000-foot level in the presidential,
01:30obviously messaging was an issue.
01:32But if we drill down, we actually picked up a seat in the House.
01:36And individual members, you know, folks like Derek Crown, working their community, talking
01:41to their community.
01:42So we've got to, you know, we're taking time during this retreat to figure out what that,
01:47you know, what was the difference between what we were doing on the ground in our communities,
01:50where we have trust in those House races, versus what is our brand at the national level
01:56and what does that look like and how do we get that out there.
01:59And then on the question of cuts to the federal government, yeah, the federal government's
02:04an easy scapegoat at times.
02:06But most Americans don't actually realize how much they rely on, you know, what's happening
02:11in their schools, what's happening in their health care.
02:13A lot of folks have Medicaid, but they don't actually know it's Medicaid because it's not
02:16called Medicaid.
02:17It's called Malena Health Care.
02:19It's called something else.
02:21They're going to have a rude awakening if they take that away.
02:23And again, we have to make sure who did this and, you know, get that message out both in
02:27our districts, but then also have a national brand message.
02:30So again, the public knows those services that they were getting actually were coming
02:36through their tax dollars and so forth.
02:38So it is going to have a real impact on the American people in their everyday lives.
02:43Thank you, everyone.
02:45Thanks.
02:47All right.