MSNBC’s Chris Matthews responded this week to the largest tax-reform package in three decades by asking why rural Trump voters would cheer the milestone.
The host of “Hardball” told a panel of guests on Wednesday night that “regular Republicans” are inexplicably pleased with President Trump’s signature achievement — a $1.5 trillion tax bill that lowers the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent.
Mr. Matthews said the bill will only put money into “corporate coffers” instead of creating jobs.
“Why do regular Republicans who are not rich, including the rural people who voted for Trump, cheering for a tax cut, which goes to people that they’ll never meet, maybe see in a movie or hear about on Wall Street,” the host asked, the Daily Wire reported. “They’ll never meet these people. Why do they say, ’great work, Donald Trump, keep giving money to the top 1 percent of 1 percent?’”
Mr. Matthews also said that his own parents never benefited from the “Republican bounty for the rich.”
“[Voters] will never be invited to their homes, never meet them on the street because they’re not on the street? Why did they vote this way?”
Contributor Jason Johnson of “The Root” agreed with the host’s premise that supply-side economics is nothing more than a “bounty for the rich.”
“It doesn’t work,” Mr. Johnson said. “The most basic question, the people who are not involved in politics who I talk to, are like — they just went to the tax calculator like ’am I going to get anything?’”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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