Great job by Rachel Maddow, skewering the godawful MAGA Glenn Youngkin:
“So here’s the local press coverage on what Governor Glenn Youngkin had to do today. Dateline Richmond: Governor Glenn Youngkin said today that the state is preparing an aid package for Virginians losing their jobs in the Trump administration’s gutting of the federal workforce. But he said the cuts are necessary.
In his first extended public remarks on the cuts, Youngkin told reporters that he feels deep concern for those who are anxious about their employment future as the White House purges people at almost every agency. Hundreds of workers at the FAA lost their jobs over the weekend, for example, and a sweeping elimination of workers ahead of a Tuesday deadline affected mapmakers and cancer researchers and FEMA staffers among thousands more cut over the past few weeks.
But Youngkin defended the Trump administration’s actions, which disproportionately affect Virginia as one of the top states in the country for federal employment and spending, with more than 140,000 federal workers. Even one of Youngkin’s signature achievements – a computer science laboratory high school in Richmond – has been touched by the cuts, with cancellation of a federal grant for a teacher residency program. The governor said he wanted it known that, quote, we understand and we’re here to help, he said. The state, quote, will have the ability to support federal workers through any job dislocation.
But the governor declined to provide details about what kind of help the state is prepared to offer. He said that when the plan is ready, quote, I want to communicate it in a package; we’ll have a good one for you. Well get back to me…I don’t know what it’s going to, but it’s going to be good. I don’t know, it’ll be great. We’re going to come up with something. In the meantime, please report that I said that I support Donald Trump 1,000%, and also that I am working to figure out how to clean up the giant, deliberate mess he is making of people’s lives and our economy in this state, for which I have a lot of empathy. Say that too, even though I definitely 1,000% support this infliction of pain on people who live in my state and even on myself, even though we’ve done nothing wrong. Can you get all that in the lede? Thank you sir, may I have another? Can you put that as the caption?
Did I mention that Virginia has elections this year in just a few months? You feel like your Republican politicians in Virginia are looking out for you? So we’re going to keep watching this dynamic. Republicans who can’t actually bear what Trump is doing to their own states and to their own constituents, but they’re too scared to say they’re against it…Republicans just eating it in their home districts and their home states as their party’s leader does things that are devastating to those states and to those constituents. And just seeing that in states all over the country is, is…a lot of thing; it gives me many, many feelings of many different kinds.
But as a matter of political science, it’s also important to watch in terms of what kinds of constraints this president, this administration might ever feel. Political scientists will tell you that one of the only constraints that matter on an ascending authoritarian is the constraints put on him by his own party. The distance between what people think they voted for and what people realize they got ultimately does matter. Sometimes it’s the only thing that matters. The Wall Street Journal yesterday spoke with Trump voters who just one month in, say they are now horrified by what they helped cause when they voted for Trump…
…So as long as we still have a political process, voters feeling that way, *Trump* voters feeling that way, Republican elected officials desperately seeking exemptions for their state from what Trump is doing to try to save their constituents from what Trump is doing, saying Trump’s policies are bad if they apply in their state. Republicans finding Trump’s actions and chaos and dysfunction not only damaging, but indefensible. And they’re being caught out at home, unable to defend the indefensible. If we still have a political process, that will matter in terms of what Trump can do and for how long.”
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
