Maine’s Trumpian Republican governor, Paul LePage, visited Fox News to promote work requirements for Medicaid. Host Trish Regan gushed over LePage without letting viewers know of his hideously racist behavior. She even hoped his efforts could go national because, “I’m all for what you’re doing.”
In a hilarious Full Frontal episode (video below), Samantha Bee described LePage as “the beta version” of Donald Trump. Like Trump, he has been denounced as unfit for office, in LePage’s case because he left an obscene and threatening voice mail for a Democratic state legislator LePage claimed called him a racist.
But Regan left those inconvenient details out of her discussion with LePage that was obviously designed to promote both his previous war on social safety nets and Trump’s push for work requirements for Medicaid.
LePage predicted that a Medicaid work requirement will be a “resounding success,” just like the work requirements for the state’s TANF program (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families).
The Atlantic noted that while Maine’s work requirements “do slash social spending, and encourage some low-income adults to find a job or find a job more quickly,” they also “leave many individuals and families in extreme poverty, without anywhere to turn.”
That was another detail Regan “forgot” to tell her viewers. She listened without challenge as LePage raved, “What it really does and what the opponents should look at is it takes away isolation, it creates new relationships, it improves the quality of life, it helps the labor force, and most of all, it transitions them to a path to go towards commercial insurance and other forms of employer-sponsored insurance. So it is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.”
Regan made a show of concern about the poor when she asked about “a single mother who maybe has four little ones all under the age of five, that she can’t get out to a job for because she would have to find someone to care for her children.” Would that mother get an exemption, Regan wondered.
Yes, according to LePage. “I strongly believe that a very strong safety net for our children, our elderly, our disabled is very, very important, and those with intellectual disabilities also have to be protected,” he added.
Regan was sold on the basis of that one response. “So if you’re protecting those that need [to be] protected … Why is there such an anger about this out there?” she "wondered."
“I have no idea,” LePage said. Then he blamed Democrats. “The new society we live in, they want you to be dependent on government, and if you’re dependent enough on government, you will vote for those who support you, and it really doesn’t work that way and we’re proving it in Maine.”
LePage even suggested that his constituents love losing their social safety nets. “Financial independence is so, so important for all families and all families love it,” he later said.
Regan then suggested other states should copy LePage. “Do you think that what you have done in Maine could succeed on a national level?” she asked. Of course, he did.
As she closed the discussion, Regan gave her most explicit stamp of approval yet. “Governor, it’s good to see you. I’m all for what you’re doing. I think the value of hard work is something that we do need to keep teaching,” she said.
Watch the war-on-the-poor propaganda below, from the January 11, 2018 Your World.
CORRECTION: This date of the video was erroneously stated as July 11, 2018.