Trump and Musk want you sicker so they can be richer

"Diagnosing cancer at its earliest stages often provides the best chance for a cure," says the Mayo Clinic website.

If Donald Trump and Elon Musk's approach to health care were cancer, you would have to say they—being the superspreaders they are—are a Stage IV cancer. That's when, the Cleveland Clinic explains, "Cancer has spread (metastasized) outside of the original site to other organs or distant areas of your body."

The war the Musk/Trump regime is waging against America's health care has not been contained to a single organ of our government. It is already metastasizing into every aspect of our lives.

They are working to "simultaneously increase toxins in our air, food, and water." They are gutting medical research in "colleges and hospitals in every state." And they are aiming to kick millions—as many as 36 million of the hardest-working Americans—off of Medicaid.

And that's just the beginning of the metastasization. Veterans, for instance, have already had their suicide hotline slashed and are guaranteed to face "higher costs and lower quality" in their health care due to Trump and Musk's cuts in a system that was already incredibly understaffed.

Mark Vieth, who coordinates the Defense Health Research Consortium, which usually spends most of its $1.5 billion budget on cancer research, told Stat News he was shocked by the size and scope of the cuts in the new Republican budget.

“No money for kidney cancer,” Vieth said. “No money for pancreatic cancer. No money for lung cancer. It leaves so much completely unfunded. Yeah, wow. It’s pretty devastating.”

Yet, verily, I tell you, Americans do not yet understand the brutal diagnosis our country has just received.

They're even willing to support the cancer of Trump and Musk's hatchet to your health care if—and only if—Democrats fail to make the case for an immediate effort to contain and then defeat this threat to all of our lives.

50 years of GOP propagandizing can kill you

I recently reminded you of the half-century plot to undermine America's progress since the Great Depression. A cornerstone of that effort is the attack on "government spending."

It's a perfect trope because when people hear those two words, they never think of "cancer research" or any program that benefits them or their families. They also generally don't think of the Defense Department, which is the fattest suck of tax dollars in the US government. Instead, they think of programs that affect "them."

You know "them."

Historically, "them" are Black people who the right has spent generations pretending are living on the largess of the public using the logic of racism to erase all facts—including that poor white people are the largest beneficiaries of government support, by far. Today, "them" are also immigrants and trans people. It's whoever the fascist media can conveniently smear to hide the theft of more than $50,000,000,000,000 over the last 50 years by the wealthiest Americans.

This propaganda effort has been so successful that even as Americans have begun to sour on Trump and Musk and their policies in general, their slashing of government programs and jobs has near majority support.

"Before any information about the Trump administration’s spending cuts, Americans are split on whether Trump is making the government work better (49 percent) or worse (51 percent)," Navigator Research found at the end of last month.

Just putting a little detail on the cuts makes them less popular.

"A narrow majority agrees more with progressive messaging that “Trump and Republicans are recklessly cutting critical funding that Americans rely on” and are threatening “funding for cancer research, food for hungry kids, and protections for people who have been scammed by big banks and credit card companies” over conservative defenses of big spending cuts (net +4; 52 percent progressive argument – 48 percent conservative argument, including net +6 among independents)."

But—because of how thick the propaganda against government investments (a much better way to describe what the money does without the right-wing taint)—the public likes the messaging even more if you nod to the Republican framing.

"This argument becomes even more effective when also acknowledging that “everyone knows there is waste and government that should be cut” among all Americans (net +12; 56 percent progressive argument – 44 percent conservative argument), particularly among independents (net +28: 64 percent progressive argument – 36 percent conservative argument)."

But by using the right's words, you're implicitly vouching for the GOP's sneak attack on everything good the government does.

Our job is not to say that Trump and Musk aren't doing a good enough job cutting the government. It's that they're doing too good of a job looting us, making us sicker to make Elon Musk richer.

No one has to pretend their slashing has any point but to transfer more trillions to people like Musk and Trump who need it the least. We know this for a fact because Trump and Musk have already cost taxpayers more than $500,000,000,000—more than Republicans will even pretend Musk has cut—by disrupting the IRS.

This is what we could be doing

These are times that try all good American souls—too much. And so many of us are looking for good things we can be doing to stop this assault on our government and our freedom.

We can all step up to educate the public about what is being taken away from us to pay off Elon Musk.

Charles Gaba is the model of this. At ACAsignups.net, he is heroically documenting how many people in each congressional district are on the ACA or Medicaid and thus threatened by the House GOP's proposed effort to gut both programs.

People in your area need to know which essential healthcare programs are being cut by Trump and Musk, which cancer trials are being cut, and how many patients are affected. You may be able to find that information yourself. Maybe you can take the information others have gathered and share it with your friends and family. There's so much to do, and the time to act is now.

Our job is to ensure this debate is about how our health care is being taken away, not any budget line item or pretend audit of anything.

That requires a big message: "They're making you sicker to make themselves richer." With every example that proves that point—and there are too many—that message can begin to drown out 50 years of lies.

Americans need their diagnosis now. Their lives and the lives of everyone they love depend upon it.