On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” outgoing New York Times columnist Pamela Paul said that Democrats have a problem that “the only way to argue against” the Trump administration’s moves on foreign aid “is to say, no, no, we like the status quo. The government was working fine,” and this is comparable to them defending the state of the economy during the 2024 election.
Paul began by saying that the Trump administration’s approach isn’t “anything approaching a reasonable way to go about it. And it’s largely performative. That whole Elon Musk in the Oval Office, he’s just trolling everyone. And even if, for example, they did cut one-fourth of the federal workforce, that is not going to reduce federal spending any more than about 1%. So, this is not — this is just, I think, largely, performative and bluster.”
Later, after the discussion turned to foreign aid, she said, “I think that the problem for the Democrats is the only way to argue against all this is to say, no, no, we like the status quo. The government was working fine, which is not a winning position. It’s the same thing as during the election, when they were saying, well, the economy is great, the stock market is up, there’s low unemployment, and, meanwhile, people can’t afford decent housing or health care or eggs.”
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